The origin of the name is said by some to be derived from the fact that
the plains thereabouts were exposed to such high winds that the grain
in the poor land was frequently overturned (_versés_). The lord of
these acres first named in history is Hugues (Hugo) de Versaliïs, who
lived early in the eleventh century and was a contemporary of the first
kings of the Capet dynasty. A long line of nobles of this family
succeeded him. In 1561 Martial de Léomenie, Secretary of Finance under
Charles IX, became master of Versailles. The farming village being on
the route between Paris and Brittany, he obtained from the king
permission to establish here four annual fairs and a weekly market on
Thursdays. Martial perished in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in
1572. Henry IV, as a prince, when hunting the stag with Martial often
swept across the low plains of Versailles. The rights to the lands of
the barony were acquired by Maréchal de Retz from the children of
Martial de Léomenie, and inherited from the noble duke by his son,
Jean-François de Gondi, first archbishop of France. It was this
prelate that sold to Louis XIII in 1632, for 66,000 pounds (about
$27,400), the land and barony of Versailles, consisting, in the phrase
of the original deed, "of an old house in ruins and a farm with several
buildings."

In 1624, Louis XIII, who had hunted in the vicinity of Versailles since
childhood and in later life had sought relief there from ennui and
melancholy, often slept in a low inn or in the hill-top windmill after
long hunts in the forest of St. Leger. It occurred to him that it
would be convenient for him to have a pavilion or hunting-lodge in this
unattractive place, and accordingly he ordered one erected at
Versailles, on the road that led to the forest of St. Leger. In 1627,
concluding that in no other domain of its limited acreage could he find
so great variety of land over which to hunt on foot and horse-back, he