 Upon the death of the duchess in 1753, the mansion became the property of the maréchal de Biron, hero of Fontenoy, whose name it has carried.A plan of the house and gardens as they were in 1752 shows the deep terrace at the rear with a few wide bowed steps that led to matching parterres containing shaped compartments set in gravel and surrounded by shrubs tightly clipped in cones which flanked a wide central gravel walk.To the left of the deep "cour d'honneur" and entered from it, neatly clipped "cabinets de verdure"—small open-air rooms and recesses in fanciful shapes, connected by short galleries—were cut into solid greenery.