Speaker 1: Also media, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 1: about terrible people. You know, we've got a great episode,
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes for you this week with Ed
Speaker 1: Zitron of Better Offline.
Speaker 2: Ed.
Speaker 1: How you doing, buddy, I'm.
Speaker 3: Doing fantastically, love being here.
Speaker 1: I'd be doing better. But you know, we have something
Speaker 1: sad to talk about today.
Speaker 2: Ed.
Speaker 1: We're gonna give a little moment of silence for fourteen
Speaker 1: FDA agents who were just trying to do their job,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, you know, they got between Sophie and her
Speaker 1: hgh ring and you know that's just never, never a
Speaker 1: safe thing to do. Also back on the show is
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichterman, who is recovering south of the border in
Speaker 1: a hidden steadfast. Sophie, why did those men need to die?
Speaker 4: Why is that the cover story you gave me? I
Speaker 4: feel like you could have done something so much cooler.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty cool shooting it out with the
Speaker 1: FDA and going on the run to Mexican string. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an hgh Ring, Well, I didn't want to like accuse
Speaker 1: you of selling hard drugs. I mean sure, and everybody
Speaker 1: loves loves hgh at least Joe Rogan loves HGH so
Speaker 1: fem you can.
Speaker 3: Get on the show.
Speaker 4: Is that the I mean, I've been sent some very
Speaker 4: fascinating messages. Is that the only reason you told people?
Speaker 1: I was how I just told people you'd shot it
Speaker 1: out with the FDA and you were on the run.
Speaker 4: I mean I kind of wish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it would be more fun.
Speaker 1: But you know you're back, you're healing. Uh, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: feeling feeling a little better.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, surgery sucks. Don't have surgery unless you
Speaker 4: absolutely need it, as my surgery sucks.
Speaker 1: And let's let's talk for a second here. Doctors are
Speaker 1: not giving out enough painkillers. You should have gotten delauded
Speaker 1: for for for what you went through, and they just
Speaker 1: gave you a little bit of code own. I'm livid
Speaker 1: on your behalf.
Speaker 4: The amount of times you've set me that.
Speaker 3: Writing is so funny. ED, welcome again to the show.
Speaker 4: But I just have one more thing to say. Sure,
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry for anything that happened without my supervision.
Speaker 1: It was fine, it was fine. I was on my
Speaker 1: best behavior.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be today even listen, and I
Speaker 2: know that's not true. Today we're going to get really
Speaker 2: out of pocket. You know, because I've got a subject
Speaker 2: that I could only have brought a British guest on for.
Speaker 2: And that subject is France, right, Okay, specifically, specifically, I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about the culture of Versailles, the subculture
Speaker 2: of the nobility at Versailles that started in the reign
Speaker 2: of Louis the fourteenth, the son king, and led right
Speaker 2: up to the French Revolution. And I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about this because, and I'm sure you've heard a little
Speaker 2: about this, we've caught a little case of the oligarchy
Speaker 2: here in the United States.
Speaker 3: I have been hearing this.
Speaker 1: We've all been hearing this. Yes, you know, as unless
Speaker 1: you're listening to this years after the fact, and we
Speaker 1: did it, Joe again, you are probably here listening to
Speaker 1: this on a day where you have slightly fewer rights
Speaker 1: and freedoms than you had a few days earlier. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's that's been the vibe of the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks.
Speaker 3: And someone who looks and sounds like both Beavis and
Speaker 3: butt Head knows my Social Security number.
Speaker 1: Yes, the day I started typing out this episode February nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, President Trump made a very funny joke
Speaker 1: describing himself as as a king, and this set me
Speaker 1: to thinking about the first Trump rally I attended in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, in which I met a British man who
Speaker 1: was a naturalized US citizen, who told me that he
Speaker 1: supported a Trump dynasty ruling the United States from here
Speaker 1: on out. He wanted Trump Junior to take over after
Speaker 1: his dad finished his terms. And I was like, man,
Speaker 1: you are in the wrong country. You lived in the
Speaker 1: country that did that.
Speaker 3: He did this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think I talked to that same
Speaker 4: guy at last RNC.
Speaker 1: Oh good. Yeah, he was also.
Speaker 4: British, and I also looked at him like he was like, yeah, well,
Speaker 4: I mean there's many of them, you know, you go dogs.
Speaker 3: Trump's yeah, and He's.
Speaker 4: Like, and what about that baron? And I'm like, sir, what.
Speaker 1: The fuck about that baron? Yeah, he could probably hoop.
Speaker 1: You do have to give that to him. He's got
Speaker 1: at least potential, alois, don't. I don't think he's very
Speaker 1: fast anyway. When you've got the guy in charge of
Speaker 1: your country talking about being a king, and you've got
Speaker 1: a group of the wealthiest people talking openly about ending
Speaker 1: voting rights and solidifying themselves as a permanent aristocracy. You know,
Speaker 1: you're in a situation where it's not unreasonable to start
Speaker 1: looking at other quote unquote permanent aristocracies in history and
Speaker 1: what happened to them, Right, And so that's why I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about Versailla this week. Right, You know,
Speaker 1: this is a case where the bastard is this system,
Speaker 1: this world of the nobility, where they were cloistered away
Speaker 1: from the rest of the country deliberately for some interesting reasons,
Speaker 1: and like what happened to their brains as a result
Speaker 1: of that, and kind of why it all came crashing down. Right,
Speaker 1: This is not going to be obviously, Mike Duncan's done
Speaker 1: the much more full version of like why the French
Speaker 1: Revolution happened. This is not These aren't episodes about the
Speaker 1: French Revolution. These are specifically episodes about how the Court
Speaker 1: at Versailles came into being, how it kind of how
Speaker 1: it deranged the people who lived there, and how that
Speaker 1: aspect of things contributed to the revolution. So largely we're
Speaker 1: talking about what's wrong with French people.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, yeah, on nine episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what do you know about Versailles?
Speaker 3: Oh? Alarmingly little just the Treaty of Versaill and how
Speaker 3: well that went.
Speaker 1: That did go really well, really well. There were a
Speaker 1: couple of those treaties and they all went well. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a Probably the best popular culture touchstone on
Speaker 1: this recently would be that two thousand and sixth Sophia
Speaker 1: Coppola movie about Marie Antoinette.
Speaker 4: Sure, and everybody knows about you know, the garden.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know about the garden, the garden of Versailles. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean you mean the literal guy that you're talking
Speaker 1: about a movie called the Garden. No, Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: nice garden versall.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is that is the borderline like basic knowledge
Speaker 4: that everybody has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, which is why I knew about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice garden, big palace, you know, but I think
Speaker 1: that Okay, I'm glad that's what you know, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot more there. The story of Versailles is the
Speaker 1: story of, among other things, the invention of like the
Speaker 1: modern centralized administrative state, just done in kind of the
Speaker 1: craziest way imaginable. And in order to tell that story,
Speaker 1: we've got to start with a guy who is probably
Speaker 1: close to you know what, what of the contenders for
Speaker 1: like best at being a king, just on a technical level,
Speaker 1: of anybody who was ever a king. Louis the fourteen,
Speaker 1: better known as the Sun King because he had a
Speaker 1: very high opinion of himself but which was somewhat justified.
Speaker 1: This is the guy who is the longest reigning king
Speaker 1: in human history, like nobody, nobody was king for longer.
Speaker 1: Probably he spent seventy two years on the throne, which
Speaker 1: is nuts, like an objectively crazy amount of time to
Speaker 1: do any job. El Davis of Kings, I do, crazy podcaster.
Speaker 1: He was wretched and crazy at the end. He's so
Speaker 1: wretched and crazy. Oh my god, his ass is rotting.
Speaker 1: That's what kills him.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 1: From ass Rod, Yes he sure does. And oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this story's got it all baby. So Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth. All of the French kings in this period
Speaker 1: are are Louis right. They will be referred to kind
Speaker 1: of casually by some historians as the Louis Right because
Speaker 1: they're kind of interchangeable, with the exception of the Son
Speaker 1: King in some ways where you just talking about like
Speaker 1: and then this Louis and that. Yeah, So Louis the fourteenth,
Speaker 1: our boy was born in September of sixteen thirty eight
Speaker 1: to Anne of Austria and Louis the thirteenth. His mom
Speaker 1: was shockingly old to give birth at the time. She's
Speaker 1: like middle aged and had had four stillbirths before him,
Speaker 1: so the fact that he came out not just alive
Speaker 1: but very healthy was regarded as a miracle and a
Speaker 1: good sign right he would grow up to be a
Speaker 1: mama's boy. So Louis the thirteenth dies like immediately after
Speaker 1: his son is born, and he had been very clear
Speaker 1: in his last days that Anne, his wife, should not
Speaker 1: govern after his death. This is a thing in a
Speaker 1: lot of other European countries, like in many European countries,
Speaker 1: like in Russia, right women can reign, you know, like
Speaker 1: the queen if things work out that way, the queen
Speaker 1: can be the regent, that she can run shit. Right.
Speaker 1: That is not the case in France. They do not
Speaker 1: allow that in this period in France, and Louis the
Speaker 1: eighth is like, Anne should not govern after my death,
Speaker 1: and so he creates a regency council to manage things
Speaker 1: until Louis the fourteenth is old enough to run France
Speaker 1: on his own and part of why he does this
Speaker 1: is that Anne is not French, right, She's Anne of Austria. Now,
Speaker 1: that's also not a good description of who she was,
Speaker 1: because you would expect giving them the name is Anne
Speaker 1: of Austria, you would expect her to be from Austria, right, right?
Speaker 3: Where is she from?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Ed, of course she's not from a She's from Spain. Obviously.
Speaker 1: You call Anne of Austria the Austria the woman from Spain.
Speaker 1: She's the Queen of Navarre. She's like the whole sta thing.
Speaker 1: And her name has nothing to do with geography. It's
Speaker 1: purely a result of the fact that she is a Habsburg. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a branch of the family who are Spanish, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that that's why she's Anne of Austria, because the
Speaker 1: happenings are also the house of Austria. Yes, yes, yes, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's so many Habsburgs. Oh, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: Habsburg jaws later in this story.
Speaker 3: Don't worry, buddy, don't worry.
Speaker 1: There's there's Habsburg's all throughout on his Fatherfucker, that makes
Speaker 1: me so happy, makes me? Does it make you Habsburg Habspurg?
Speaker 1: Hopefully then your blood wouldn't clot Actually, I don't think
Speaker 1: that was a Habsburg problem, that's anyway.
Speaker 3: I truly don't actually know. I just know that they
Speaker 3: will have sex to each other. They all did.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people fucking their cousins in this story.
Speaker 1: That's just not just how royalty is. So from age
Speaker 1: four on, which is like when his dad dies, Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteen's earliest memories would have been a political turmoil
Speaker 1: between his mother and her native country, because again, the
Speaker 1: fact that she's a Habsburg means that the French people
Speaker 1: don't trust her. They're like, well, she's obviously going to
Speaker 1: be more loyal to Spain and to Austria than she
Speaker 1: is to France. This is a constant problem because you
Speaker 1: are always bringing in nobles from other houses in Europe
Speaker 1: to like marry the king, and there's always this kind
Speaker 1: of like, well then they can't possibly put France first, right, right,
Speaker 1: And there had just been a war between, you know,
Speaker 1: as there is constantly in this period between France and Spain.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of reasons why people don't trust Anne,
Speaker 1: and that's going to have a big influence on him.
Speaker 1: Is this like distrust for his mom by the French people. Now,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about European nobility this week, I really
Speaker 1: need to emphasize everything that I say explain about these
Speaker 1: people is going to sound ridiculous. This whole culture that
Speaker 1: has come up around the nobility is nonsense by this period.
Speaker 1: They've just been in power for too long and the
Speaker 1: system is crazy. Louie is going to make it a
Speaker 1: lot crazier. But I do think it's worth kind of
Speaker 1: emphasizing that. So the next time you read that our
Speaker 1: Grand Vizier Elon Musk has appointed a man named big
Speaker 1: Balls to control all of our personal tax data, remember
Speaker 1: that people in power have always been irritating dipshits. Right,
Speaker 1: That's not unique to the United States. That's just something
Speaker 1: that comes with giving small groups of people all of
Speaker 1: the power, right.
Speaker 3: The traditionally we did it in the post.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and now we're doing it in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Good stuff, great stuff.
Speaker 1: So Anne actually had gotten his mom had gotten confined
Speaker 1: to house arrest for passing military secrets to her dad
Speaker 1: at one point. But she does this thing that is
Speaker 1: very common when she becomes the Queen Regent. She exiles
Speaker 1: a bunch of her own supporters and kind of betrays
Speaker 1: her family to run France. Right, she chooses to go
Speaker 1: for France, and this was a pragmatic move because once
Speaker 1: her husband died, her position was not really stable. Now,
Speaker 1: most of the big decisions made for France in this
Speaker 1: period are not.
Speaker 3: Made by Anne.
Speaker 1: They're made by a guy that Ann appoints to rule
Speaker 1: in her son's stead. And that guy's name is Cardinal Mazarin,
Speaker 1: and he is one of these like extremely powerful, like
Speaker 1: non royal ruler, like he's not like a king, but
Speaker 1: he's kind of governing France for a period of time. Here.
Speaker 1: By the time the child King Louis the fourteenth is
Speaker 1: eight or nine years old, the Thirty Years War, which
Speaker 1: is this war that his dad, you know, had spent
Speaker 1: his life fighting, is drawing to a close. And given
Speaker 1: the fact that it was a thirty years war, it
Speaker 1: had been monstrously expensive and kind of a financial disaster
Speaker 1: for France the end of it. Cardinal Mazarin is anxious
Speaker 1: to keep the army funded until everything is locked down
Speaker 1: about the peace treaty. And since the crown had no
Speaker 1: more money after thirty years of war, this meant that
Speaker 1: they had to institute new taxes now France is a
Speaker 1: semi feudal society.
Speaker 3: At this point, it.
Speaker 1: Is less feudile than basically all of the rest of Europe.
Speaker 1: In Germany, there are still serfs, right, as in like
Speaker 1: the common people are literally like like bonded to the land,
Speaker 1: Like they're essentially a kind of slave. They can't leave
Speaker 1: without the permission of the landowner.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Serfs are really not much of a thing in France
Speaker 1: and the period that we're talking about, and they are
Speaker 1: become they're basically going extinct. Right, France has modernized to
Speaker 1: that extent, and in fact they're kind of the country
Speaker 1: is sort of in the process of becoming less of
Speaker 1: a feudal state and more of kind of like a
Speaker 1: hybrid like modernized semi feudal state. Right, Like you still
Speaker 1: have a nobility, the nobility our most are going in
Speaker 1: this period are going from like literally governing directly where
Speaker 1: you've got this duke and he controls this area too.
Speaker 1: You've got this duke and he doesn't govern anything directly,
Speaker 1: but he does have the right to collect taxes in
Speaker 1: this certain area, or to collect duties in this industry
Speaker 1: or whatever, and right that's his privilege as the duke
Speaker 1: but he's not doing the governing. We have like professionals
Speaker 1: who are doing the actual governing in this region or whatever.
Speaker 1: Now during the Thirty Years War, again, the only way
Speaker 1: that they can pay for this is by increasing taxes.
Speaker 1: And these these taxes don't primarily hit the nobility. One
Speaker 1: of the nobility's privileges that they maintain is an exemption
Speaker 1: from the taxes paid by peasants and the bourgeoisie. Right
Speaker 1: like this, basically you call them the small business owners
Speaker 1: of France.
Speaker 3: Right, suggesting is that the poorer people pay more and
Speaker 3: the richer people have found a way around taxes somehow.
Speaker 1: That's that's a big parts, yes, But there's a caveat
Speaker 1: to that, which is the peasants are poor people and
Speaker 1: they are paying taxes. The bourgeoisie are often wealthier than
Speaker 1: the nobles, right huh, But they're not nobles. These are
Speaker 1: guys who start businesses, who are running trade and stuff
Speaker 1: for France. Some of them are extremely wealthy, and they
Speaker 1: are also paying taxes, and they're really not happy about that, right, right,
Speaker 1: But the nobility get a big exemption from taxes in
Speaker 1: this period.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the conflicts that's going to like increasingly be
Speaker 1: a problem up to the revolution. Is the BOURGEOISI being like, well,
Speaker 1: why are we paying taxes and these people are exempt? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're not thrilled about that. So this does mean that
Speaker 1: regular French people are largely being kind of brutalized by
Speaker 1: the cost of the war against the Habsburgs of Spain.
Speaker 1: The job of approving new taxes, like the king will
Speaker 1: say I want this tax, but it has to be
Speaker 1: approved by the parliaments. Now to you and I. Coming
Speaker 1: out of the English tradition, parliament means like essentially a
Speaker 1: governing body, sort of like a congress, is right, that's
Speaker 1: not really what a parliament is in France. Parliaments in
Speaker 1: France are courts, right, They're court systems. Like the Parliament
Speaker 1: of Paris is a court system in Paris, and you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of judges who are nobles who own
Speaker 1: their seat as a judge. Like that judgeship is the personal,
Speaker 1: hereditary property of a noble who is one of these
Speaker 1: members of the parliament. And the parliaments have a lot
Speaker 1: of judges and clerks and whatnot. But these are like
Speaker 1: court systems when we talk about parliaments, but it is
Speaker 1: their job to approve new taxes. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of one of the ways in which the French state
Speaker 1: has started to modernize in this period. Right, just this
Speaker 1: duke controls this area and he takes taxes. We've got
Speaker 1: this professional legal system, right that is responsible for approving
Speaker 1: these things, and a lot of conflicts with the crown
Speaker 1: are going to be the parliament trying to protect its power,
Speaker 1: right when the king wants to do stuff directly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this causes issues because it makes the fact that the
Speaker 1: king wants these new taxes on the common people in
Speaker 1: the bourgeoisie, and the parliament has to approve them. Right.
Speaker 1: You've got these parliaments in royal courts that have to
Speaker 1: approve the taxes and they don't want to. They don't
Speaker 1: want to not because they like love the peasantry and
Speaker 1: think that it's unfair. They don't want to because the
Speaker 1: peasantry riots over a new taxes I was going to say,
Speaker 1: not dying, right, and the parliament needing to approve them.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the situation the kings have developed so
Speaker 1: that like, hey, if these guys have to sign off
Speaker 1: on it too, maybe they're the first people who get
Speaker 1: sort of mobbed you know, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The people with the signature. Probably the one why the
Speaker 3: kings so insulate is, well, is it just because they
Speaker 3: can deploy the army against the peasantry.
Speaker 1: They can deploy the army, And this is a thing
Speaker 1: that increasingly happens in this period where there's this desire
Speaker 1: to strip the nobility of direct power. Right, So just
Speaker 1: kind of a smart play if the nobility has to
Speaker 1: is in this position where they're doing, you can make
Speaker 1: them do unpopular things, right, You can kind of loop
Speaker 1: them in on the shit you need to do. That
Speaker 1: nobody likes to the extent that they get blamed for that.
Speaker 1: It makes it harder for them to like have their
Speaker 1: own power base, you know, and they get they don't
Speaker 1: get tax than a nobility.
Speaker 3: No, they do.
Speaker 1: There they are in this period immune to most taxes.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's the trade off, I imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's part of the trade off. And kind of
Speaker 1: the issue here is the nobility or not friendly always
Speaker 1: with the crown, right, Like the nobility are both the
Speaker 1: people who govern with you, right and who are supposed
Speaker 1: to be taking your lead as the king. But whenever
Speaker 1: there's a rebellion against a king, it usually comes from
Speaker 1: the nobility in this period. Right. So that's part of
Speaker 1: why you would want a system like this as the king,
Speaker 1: because it protects you to a degree, right, But it
Speaker 1: does mean that there's constant conflicts between the crown and
Speaker 1: these parliaments. And these judges resist some of the central
Speaker 1: government's new taxes. Cardinal Mazarin and Ann repost by threatening
Speaker 1: to change the rules about how judge ships work and
Speaker 1: like make it so that you don't own your seat today. Again,
Speaker 1: in this period, being a judge is like being a
Speaker 1: subway franchise owner, right, and that it's your property and
Speaker 1: you pass it on to your kids, right. And the
Speaker 1: rules governing this are part of something called the paulette tax,
Speaker 1: which came up for renewal in sixteen forty eight. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit like you could consider it a little
Speaker 1: bit like a union contract coming up. And so Mazarin
Speaker 1: and Ann are like, well, we don't have to let
Speaker 1: this work the same way we can take these privileges
Speaker 1: away from you. And I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from an article by the UK College of Arts and
Speaker 1: Sciences Department of History on the matter and their anxiety
Speaker 1: to force through new tax edicts Anne of Austria and
Speaker 1: Mazarin drove the judges of Parliament too far. On fifteenth
Speaker 1: January sixteen forty eight, they brought the nine year old
Speaker 1: king to a formal session of the court called the
Speaker 1: lit de Justiced, to force the judges to register an
Speaker 1: unpopular tax measure. The judges exercised their right to remonstrate
Speaker 1: or criticize the edict, starting a series of events that
Speaker 1: culminated in a call for the judges of all the
Speaker 1: Paris courts to come together to consider reforms in the kingdom.
Speaker 1: On the twenty sixth of June, acting without the Regent's support,
Speaker 1: the Parliament summoned those judges to meet in a body
Speaker 1: called the chambret Is Saint Louis. This date marked the
Speaker 1: beginning of the fraud. Street demonstrations organized by Retz showed
Speaker 1: that the judges had strong popular support. The Frondeurs focus
Speaker 1: their anger, especially on Mazarin. They'd announced him as a
Speaker 1: foreigner who had no respect for the laws and institutions
Speaker 1: of France and as an intriguer who is using his
Speaker 1: influence over and to enrich himself and ruined the country.
Speaker 1: Paris was flooded with printed pamphlets called Mazarinades, vicious personal
Speaker 1: attacks on the minister. This foreign rogue, juggler, comedian, famous robber,
Speaker 1: low Italian fellow fit only to be hung as one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: That is us.
Speaker 1: He's a juggler, Buddy is a juggler.
Speaker 4: I feel like if this was twenty twenty five that
Speaker 4: it would have been like podcaster, where's bathrobe?
Speaker 1: Oh? Sorry, Cardinal Mazarin. I mean, first off, as a
Speaker 1: low Italian, I hate this kind of racism. As a judge,
Speaker 1: oh man, foreign famous.
Speaker 3: Guy doing something to as well.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, can you imagine that that would never happen.
Speaker 1: Just it is funny bringing up Musk too that like
Speaker 1: he keeps bringing his little kid into these like massive
Speaker 1: like these moments that are like going to be major
Speaker 1: political moments, like sticking his child in there.
Speaker 3: It brings his child at PHP to the White House.
Speaker 1: Like I think it's fun that in this and this
Speaker 1: just does show how even our dumb system is a
Speaker 1: little less dumb than things used to be. Where today
Speaker 1: the nine year old child king, doesn't you know, is
Speaker 1: not the one like like the nine year old is
Speaker 1: not like in charge of anything. He's just being brought
Speaker 1: around by his dad, who's basically the Cardinal Mazarin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I wanted to establish, is this child
Speaker 3: in France power? Can the child do things? Yet not
Speaker 3: called the Mazarin? No, no, it's obviously it's not this.
Speaker 3: This society isn't stupid. They would not let a young
Speaker 3: child run things. You don't get to run things until
Speaker 3: you are the mature age of thirteen. Of course, that's
Speaker 3: when you become a man.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's when you're a full man and able
Speaker 1: to govern. So as a nine year old, of course
Speaker 1: not that would be So what you possibly know?
Speaker 3: You have four long years to go.
Speaker 1: I think I think I could have governed France at thirteen.
Speaker 3: I'm busy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would have spent the entire national budget on
Speaker 1: Warhammer miniatures. But honestly, can you tell me that's worse
Speaker 1: than what the French are doing now? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't pay it better than I I fucking mccrun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, guys, you don't get health care this year
Speaker 1: because I really went on a spending spree in Nottingham.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of unpainted plastic and resin come
Speaker 1: into my pyids and you're just like just like this
Speaker 1: is why you can't eat, Like your power is one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars pounds an hour or what you're all last year,
Speaker 1: But I will be happy painting, but I'll have a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do. No, So they bring this
Speaker 1: nine year old king to this this formal session, and
Speaker 1: it causes as a result of how bad it goes,
Speaker 1: you get this rebellion. This is a civil war called
Speaker 1: the Frond Right, which is, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: on one side. You've got these these judges and nobles
Speaker 1: who are angry at the fact that the king is
Speaker 1: are angry at the fact that the king is continuing
Speaker 1: to like pull strip powers from them, or at least
Speaker 1: that you could. You'd say the crown is right, and
Speaker 1: so they're trying to protect their traditional powers and the
Speaker 1: crown is trying to protect its absolute power, as you know,
Speaker 1: the monarch right. And so you get a civil war. Now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't go well for the fraud Right. They sort
Speaker 1: of start out this thing, but they never they never
Speaker 1: get momentum. There's never like much popular backing. The common
Speaker 1: people are like, I don't really like in part because
Speaker 1: the nobles in these parliaments are the ones who approve
Speaker 1: new taxes. Regular people are never like one side is
Speaker 1: much better than the other, and they tend to overall
Speaker 1: back the crown. So the young King Louis the fourteenth
Speaker 1: doesn't get uprooted by the Frond. Right, but there are
Speaker 1: a couple of points that come close to a disaster
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a shitload of riots in this period. He and
Speaker 1: his mother have to flee the capitol Paris for a
Speaker 1: palace in Saint Germain nearby. The army clashes with rioters,
Speaker 1: and while they put down the riots, the next year
Speaker 1: more nobles join the insurrection, and they put together an
Speaker 1: army large enough to force Mazarin to resign and flee
Speaker 1: the country temporarily. The height of danger for young Louis
Speaker 1: comes when a rumor spreads in Paris that the king
Speaker 1: and his mother had fled the palace for a second time,
Speaker 1: and a mob forms the palace to make sure that
Speaker 1: the king is still there, right, that like he's not,
Speaker 1: he hasn't left again, and they demand proof, and so
Speaker 1: they break into his bedchambers and like as they're like
Speaker 1: busting down the door, basically Queen Anne and like this
Speaker 1: ten year old kidder talking and He's like, what the fuck.
Speaker 3: Do I do?
Speaker 1: She's like, just pretend like you're sleeping. Just pretend like
Speaker 1: you're sleeping. And so that's what happens. This mob busts
Speaker 1: in and Louis the fourteenth just pretends to be asleep.
Speaker 3: Did it work?
Speaker 1: It does? It does work. Again. These guys are not
Speaker 1: This isn't like it'll be in seventeen eighty nine. They're
Speaker 1: not busting into the palace because they want to kill
Speaker 1: the king. They're busting into the palace because they want
Speaker 1: to make sure he's still there. And like when he's
Speaker 1: asleep there and he's like, he's sorry, he's twelve. Like
Speaker 1: these people number one, they're not like anti monarchy. And
Speaker 1: number two, they see like a sleeping twelve year old
Speaker 1: and they're like, eh, we should probably go maybe this
Speaker 1: guy out of hand. Yeah when did he fall asleep?
Speaker 3: Is he gonna be up?
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, maybe we don't want to like fuck
Speaker 1: with this little kid who's asleep. So the front this
Speaker 1: is obviously this is traumatizing, right having a mob basically
Speaker 1: force their way into your bedchambers at age twelve. This
Speaker 1: fucks Louis the fourteenth up and is going to massively
Speaker 1: impact the decisions he made as an adult and regent,
Speaker 1: but the frond ends with him still in power. That said,
Speaker 1: he again, he's like traumatized by this, and he comes
Speaker 1: away from the whole experience with a couple of conclusions.
Speaker 1: One of them is that the nobility of France are
Speaker 1: fucking out of pocket, and they need to be They
Speaker 1: have too much power, and they need to be somehow
Speaker 1: corralled and stopped from building bases of power of their own,
Speaker 1: and they need to be put in a position where
Speaker 1: the crown can keep an eye on them and make
Speaker 1: sure that they're not plotting or scheming independently from the king. Right,
Speaker 1: that's one conclusion he makes. The other conclusion he makes
Speaker 1: is Paris is not a safe place, and he's got
Speaker 1: this palace at Saint Germain, but he has bad memories
Speaker 1: of it, so he's like, as an adult, he's going
Speaker 1: to be like, I want a new seat of power. Right,
Speaker 1: that's where we're going to get Versailles from. So cut
Speaker 1: forward by about a decade or so. Louis the fourteenth
Speaker 1: is twenty four years old. He is already a veteran
Speaker 1: of war in the Spanish Netherlands. So he's gone to
Speaker 1: war successfully. As the monarch. At this point, he's going
Speaker 1: to spend most of his time going in between palaces
Speaker 1: and the front He is a most of his reign
Speaker 1: a wartime king. He had pushed France's frontiers outward, and
Speaker 1: he had kind of built up a military. That is,
Speaker 1: France is the number one land power in Europe at
Speaker 1: this time, right and economically, the only country in Europe
Speaker 1: that is a bigger economy than France is Denmark because
Speaker 1: Denmark's doing a lot of overseas trading. This would be
Speaker 1: the last time this kind of period of Louis the
Speaker 1: fourteenth reign will be the last time for a century
Speaker 1: or so in which France is actually in the black,
Speaker 1: as in a good economic condition. But right now Louis
Speaker 1: is rolling in it. He's got a shitload of cash
Speaker 1: and a very powerful army, and he decides to use
Speaker 1: that money to build a palace where he can number one,
Speaker 1: feel safe and number two, all of the nobility away
Speaker 1: from the rest of France to keep an eye on them. Right,
Speaker 1: That's where Versailles comes out of. So speaking of a
Speaker 1: bunch of out of touch rich people, let's throw to sponsors, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So I think when you look at like
Speaker 1: casual histories of the revolution, they always talk about Versailles
Speaker 1: and the situation there, how out of touch people are
Speaker 1: this inwardly focused ruling class who live in this palace
Speaker 1: altogether as like a contributing fact of the revolution.
Speaker 3: And I just want to establish something. Yeah, all the
Speaker 3: nobility was made to move in.
Speaker 1: I mean not one hundred percent of them, but that's
Speaker 1: the idea, right, the significant of the amount of them do,
Speaker 1: and the ones that don't literally live there, like get
Speaker 1: second houses nearby, like you have to. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: this more because this is a thing that develops. But like, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the ultimate product, is that like a significant
Speaker 1: chunk most of the powerful nobility are at Versailles forever, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the idea that Louis has, right, is he's
Speaker 1: building this palace specifically to force them to hang out
Speaker 1: with him, right, right. And when I'd read casual kind
Speaker 1: of histories, and my understanding previous to really digging into
Speaker 1: this was that this was a holdover from like France's
Speaker 1: busted old feudal government. Right, this is like a medieval
Speaker 1: holdover kind of coming into conflict with the modern world,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why we get the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: That's really not what Versailles is. Louis the fourteenth is
Speaker 1: actually kind of creating one of the first modern central
Speaker 1: governments when he establishes the palace at Versailles. Right, this
Speaker 1: is actually a modernizing thing in some ways. Rulers had
Speaker 1: always owned palaces, and those palaces were both homes and fortresses, right,
Speaker 1: so you could have a place to wade out and
Speaker 1: and can be war or an uprising. But Versailles it's
Speaker 1: not a fortress for one thing, and it's not just
Speaker 1: a home. It is an independent center of government. Versailles
Speaker 1: has more in common with Washington, d C. Than, for example,
Speaker 1: any of like the palaces and in England, right, any
Speaker 1: of like the palaces of the House of windsor right
Speaker 1: Buckingham or whatever. Versailles is less like that. It is
Speaker 1: more like d C. As in d C was a
Speaker 1: city that was created from the ground up to be
Speaker 1: a center of government. Right, Right, that's what Versailles is.
Speaker 1: And you know, in creating Versailles, Louis the fourteenth he
Speaker 1: doesn't just want a home. He wants a sprawling complex
Speaker 1: where the nobility of France will live and hang out
Speaker 1: and basically always be around him, and the all of
Speaker 1: the governing of the country will be done there. And
Speaker 1: he's doing this both because that makes things more efficient
Speaker 1: for him. You know, he's a relatively intelligent ruler. He
Speaker 1: understands that centralizing all of the people who are in
Speaker 1: charge of the country and keeping them around him makes
Speaker 1: communication a lot more efficient. But also keeping all of
Speaker 1: these people literally under the same roof allows him to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on the group that had nearly overthrown
Speaker 1: his family. Right, so we should talk for a bit
Speaker 1: about the location he picks, right, why Versailles, because there's
Speaker 1: nothing there, right, there's not a town in the area
Speaker 1: at this point. They build one, but there's not a
Speaker 1: town there. There's just an unpaved road into Paris and
Speaker 1: a hunting lodge that Louis the Fourteenth's father had used
Speaker 1: while you know, hunting and stuff. So Louis had grown
Speaker 1: up fond of the area, which is about twenty miles
Speaker 1: from Paris, because of his dad's hunting lodge, and what
Speaker 1: became the palace started with they put some gardens in
Speaker 1: next to the hunting lodge, and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: place when he's a young man, like eighteen or nineteen,
Speaker 1: Louis will go there with his friends and they'll like
Speaker 1: camp out there and have party, you know, and so
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the start. That's why he
Speaker 1: gets the iddea that like this is where I want
Speaker 1: to build my palace is because like this is he
Speaker 1: and his friends, this little burning man spot, you know. Effectively,
Speaker 1: so in March of sixteen sixty one, Cardinal Mazarin dies
Speaker 1: and Louis the fourteenth this is this is kind of
Speaker 1: what makes him independent as a ruler for the first time,
Speaker 1: at least totally. Later that year, in August, he goes
Speaker 1: to a party thrown by one of the nobles who's
Speaker 1: hoping to curry favor with the new thing king, a
Speaker 1: guy named Nicholas Fouquet. Fouquet is the Minister of Finance
Speaker 1: and he's built this massive, sprawling, elaborate palace, Vaux de Vicomte,
Speaker 1: which is like the best, probably the nicest palace in
Speaker 1: France at the time. The architecture impresses Louis. He's like, wow,
Speaker 1: this this place is really amazing. But he's also kind
Speaker 1: of pissed at Fouquet because Fouquet is trying is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Mazarin's out. This guy is now the dude to impress.
Speaker 1: I am going to like all go all out to
Speaker 1: basically try to bribe him so that he will make
Speaker 1: me his top advisor and I can basically run things.
Speaker 1: And he tries to do this by like handing out
Speaker 1: diamond tiaras and horses his party favors to his guests,
Speaker 1: like he is he is just like yeah horse really
Speaker 1: nice horses, you know, not not your not shit horses,
Speaker 1: good ship as horses, not the good stuff. Is that
Speaker 1: just promises that he's as Yeah, and like no, no,
Speaker 1: he's got tons of horses on him. Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: wonderful seth used to be so much stranger horses are
Speaker 1: a big like the king at any given points going
Speaker 1: to own like twenty five hundred horses, like personally, like
Speaker 1: that's just that's just the way it is. If you're rich,
Speaker 1: that's like the equivalent of having three nice cars.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But so this guy, ifuk, he's showing off this massive
Speaker 1: palace that like impresses even the young king, and he's
Speaker 1: handing out diamond tiaras and horses, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: this is mint is kind of a bribe to get
Speaker 1: Louie to be like, oh, this guy really knows what's up.
Speaker 1: But it just pisses off Louis, right, And it pisses
Speaker 1: off Louie because he's like, you're the Minister of finance.
Speaker 1: How much of this money you're spending is really my money?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Where did you get all of this money, Minister of Finance?
Speaker 1: Is any of it my shit that you're tossing around?
Speaker 1: Are you bribing me with my own money?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: And so he ends the night by arresting Fouquet and
Speaker 1: locking him up in a fortress. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: In her book The Son King, Nancy Mitford writes that
Speaker 1: as a result of this quote, we seldom here of
Speaker 1: other people giving parties for the king.
Speaker 3: Yeah. How long did in prison? Fool?
Speaker 4: Was it just?
Speaker 1: I think he's in there for a long years and
Speaker 1: years and years. I don't know when when that guy
Speaker 1: specifically gets you out.
Speaker 3: Because she might have spent the King's money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's with the horses. If if Louis the fourteenth
Speaker 1: doesn't like you, he will lock you in a fortress
Speaker 1: for a decade or so. Maybe that's his thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: he loves putting people in fortresses. So the king raided
Speaker 1: Fouquet's home, taking silver ornaments, tapestries, a library, and more
Speaker 1: than one thousand orange trees. This is going to be
Speaker 1: a signature of Louis the Fourteenth's reign is he fucking
Speaker 1: loves orange trees And it starts here. Now, orange trees.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to keep them healthy in the north
Speaker 1: of France.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And they were so valued that each tree lived in
Speaker 1: a pure silver pot. Like that's the planters that they
Speaker 1: use for orange trees are just made out of silvers.
Speaker 4: What what are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but there were when when Nancy Mitford
Speaker 1: wrote her book in the sixties, some of Louis the
Speaker 1: Fourteenth's orange trees were still alive. So he's pretty good
Speaker 1: at keeping these things going.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe we all need silver plum.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe we should grow everything in silver.
Speaker 1: We don't know, We don't know. You know, have your
Speaker 1: if you've got a baby, have them.
Speaker 3: It played it.
Speaker 1: Entirely in silver. See if it works.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I watched a James Bond movie that suggests
Speaker 1: that might be a bad idea. Try it either way.
Speaker 1: So he orders the construction of a palace at Versailles
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth built after this, because he's like, look
Speaker 1: this Fouquet guy, fuck him, but this palace is is
Speaker 1: pretty nice. I think I could do better. So he
Speaker 1: hires that the guys who had made Louise or Fouquet's palace,
Speaker 1: and he has them start building a palace at Versailles,
Speaker 1: with the centerpiece being his old, his dad's old hunting lodge.
Speaker 1: Right now, the resulting complex, which is going to take
Speaker 1: years to build, is massive. Among other things, there are
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty apartments, right, which is three fifty
Speaker 1: individual living areas for different nobles. Right.
Speaker 3: Items just invented dorms.
Speaker 1: He did, He doesn't invent dorms. This is and one
Speaker 1: way to look at Versailles. If you cross the Pentagon
Speaker 1: and the White House with a frat house and Versai
Speaker 1: and we work. Yes, yes, yeah, it's all of those
Speaker 1: things that once. Yes, yes, there's also banquet halls, there's
Speaker 1: dance halls. There's meeting rooms. Uh, there's even an entire
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty foot room lined entirely in mirrors,
Speaker 1: and mirrors are hard to make at this point, right,
Speaker 1: It's if you have a room lined in mirrors. It's
Speaker 1: to show off. I got fucking mirror money. I got
Speaker 1: so much mirror money. I got a room of the
Speaker 1: sons of bitches.
Speaker 3: So is there a logic behind the mirror room or
Speaker 3: is it just so everyone could see you press everybody?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so everybody can see. This is how rich the king.
Speaker 3: Is, and themselves at every corner.
Speaker 1: And they can yet see themselves in every corner. Francis
Speaker 1: Loring Paine describes in her book The Story of Versailles
Speaker 1: seventeen lofty windows are matched by as many Venetian framed mirrors.
Speaker 1: Between each window and mirror are pilasters designed by Kozuvu,
Speaker 1: Tubi and Cafarrie, reigning masters of their time. Walls are
Speaker 1: of marble, embellished with bronze gilt trophies, large Nietzsches niches
Speaker 1: contain statues in the antique style. So pretty fancy, and
Speaker 1: this is in fact a palace unlike any of the
Speaker 1: world had seen before. Louis the fourteenth, the man who
Speaker 1: would call himself the Sun King, was not a patient person,
Speaker 1: so he ordered the construction rushed and damned the cost
Speaker 1: either in money or in lives. Once he has this idea,
Speaker 1: is like, I want this operational as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: He's like the Emperor Palpatine, if the Death Star was
Speaker 1: just a place for rich people to party and be
Speaker 1: spied on. In an article for BBC History Magazine, Johnny
Speaker 1: Wilkes writes building went on from to dusk, with up
Speaker 1: to thirty six thousand people working in the gardens in
Speaker 1: dire and dangerous conditions. Injuries became a daily occurrence, and
Speaker 1: so many died that bodies would be quietly removed at
Speaker 1: night in bulk. The workers went on strike, but Louis
Speaker 1: saw Versailles as a symbol of his prestige, and therefore
Speaker 1: France's prestige. It was worth any price. When half a
Speaker 1: dozen men were crushed in an accident, one grieving mother
Speaker 1: approached Louis to request her son's body. He had her imprisoned.
Speaker 3: Okay, seems fair, seems cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, how dare she?
Speaker 3: Yeahs fucking rude.
Speaker 1: She didn't understand that this was about France's prestige, not
Speaker 1: how many people with horse guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, rude.
Speaker 1: Look, people are gonna get crushed to death.
Speaker 3: Obvious happiness. Oh my god, you get over it.
Speaker 1: You can't have a frat house Pentagon without breaking a
Speaker 1: few hundred laborers. God yeah, Jesus, give me a break.
Speaker 1: You're people are unreasonable, you know. So By May sixth,
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty two, the whole palace is still very much
Speaker 1: under construction. It would remain that way for years, but
Speaker 1: enough had been completed that Louis was able to throw
Speaker 1: a grand party and begin the process of moving in.
Speaker 1: Now this would be a year's long process. At first,
Speaker 1: Louie's like spending a day every week there, and partly
Speaker 1: because he's also traveling constantly in between like Versailles or
Speaker 1: wherever else he's staying and the front where the wars
Speaker 1: are happening, right And basically, for Louis, the war is
Speaker 1: kind of a gigwork thing, right, Like he's got his
Speaker 1: marshals who handle the full time thing. He just kind
Speaker 1: of comes in when somebody like sends him a letter
Speaker 1: being like, oh, hey, man, I think the war is
Speaker 1: about to get cool again. Maybe you should come up
Speaker 1: and check it out now, right, Yeah, Like.
Speaker 3: That's fine, Yeah, I don't want to waste time the
Speaker 3: boring parts of war.
Speaker 1: For him, it's a little like a soap opera where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't watch every episode. There's long. Some of these
Speaker 1: storylines aren't super interesting. We got like a year of
Speaker 1: this siege to get through. Go party, you know. We
Speaker 1: can't do that when looking bring me in when something
Speaker 1: cool is going on, right, Yeah, So the process of
Speaker 1: moving everybody in takes years because and this is such
Speaker 1: a this is like the the pain in the ass
Speaker 1: this creates for everyone while they're unable to live there
Speaker 1: full time. But he's having people spend as much time
Speaker 1: there as possible because every time Louis heads back to
Speaker 1: Versailles for like a night, every government minister, every high
Speaker 1: ranking noble, as well as like Loui's whole family and
Speaker 1: his coterie of mistresses have to travel back with him.
Speaker 1: It's like this massive pain in the ass, and there's
Speaker 1: not rooms for most of them. So, like Louis got
Speaker 1: even louis not living in comfort for most of this period.
Speaker 1: His rooms aren't really finished, but everyone else is like
Speaker 1: camping basically under like.
Speaker 3: In this schiling and shit in this giant, beautiful palace
Speaker 3: that should be luxurious.
Speaker 1: Yeah that should, but is just unfinished and filled with
Speaker 1: dead people. Yeah that'll happen, Yeah, that'll happen.
Speaker 3: Real estate is challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, real estate is a real, real, complicated endeavor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, the fact that this is a huge pain in
Speaker 1: the ass and that it kind of even before Versilla's finished,
Speaker 1: it is dominating the lives of a huge chunk of
Speaker 1: the nobility because they have to constantly be aware of
Speaker 1: where Louis is when he's traveling back. They have to
Speaker 1: get themselves back. They're like missing sleep because they're not
Speaker 1: able to live. Like completely disrupts all of their lives,
Speaker 1: and that's that's part of the plan. Like Louis the
Speaker 1: fourteenth is doing this intentionally. I want to read a
Speaker 1: quote from Mitford's book, quote, the king had already begun
Speaker 1: to enslave his nobility by playing on the French love
Speaker 1: of fashion. In sixteen fifty four, he gave a fate.
Speaker 1: He gave a feat which lasted from seven to thirteen May.
Speaker 1: This really caused more pain than pleasure, for the guests
Speaker 1: had nowhere to sleep, and we're aledged to doss down
Speaker 1: as best they could in local cottages and stables. So again,
Speaker 1: he's like the fact that this is a pain in
Speaker 1: the ass and the fact that he's increasingly forcing everyone.
Speaker 1: You're not just constantly obsessed with where is the king?
Speaker 1: When do I have to get back to Versailles? But
Speaker 1: you also there's these parties whenever you're there, so you're
Speaker 1: spending a lot of your free time making sure you've
Speaker 1: got outfits and like spending a lot of your money.
Speaker 1: What is it you got outfit? That's a party?
Speaker 3: So like a six day long jolly, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean some of them are shorter than that, but like
Speaker 1: it's a it's a mispace, yeah, And it's a mandatory
Speaker 1: party that you have to have an outfit for. That
Speaker 1: outfit is going to cost you thirty years salary for
Speaker 1: a laboring person, right, And so you have to be
Speaker 1: constantly like traveling, sleeping in uncomfortable conditions and spending your
Speaker 1: time and money figuring out what you're going to wear,
Speaker 1: which means you're not spending an any time thinking about rebelling, right,
Speaker 1: you're not. You have no extra attention to spend on
Speaker 1: building a base of power because you're going to and
Speaker 1: what ye dress? Yes, exactly interesting and that's it. Because
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth, his big motivation with Versailles is to
Speaker 1: make another frond impossible. Hadley Mears writes the move was
Speaker 1: designed to neutralize the power of the nobles. This it did,
Speaker 1: but it also created a hotbed of boredom and extravagance,
Speaker 1: with hundreds of aristocrats crammed together, many with nothing to
Speaker 1: do but gossip, spend money, and play.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, the amount of like tea being
Speaker 4: spilled at these events, oh yeah, to be.
Speaker 3: Well, and then gossip being created in real.
Speaker 1: Time and exactly that's going to be a major factor
Speaker 1: in what happens next, right, and we'll be talking about
Speaker 1: like what how this gossip eventually trickles out, and it does.
Speaker 1: It kind of leads to the creation Paris basically has Twitter,
Speaker 1: and this.
Speaker 3: Period gonna say, I was gonna say, this is like
Speaker 3: Perissian Twitter.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that that's kind of where things are building towards.
Speaker 3: Right, very good.
Speaker 1: And it's also you know, people are gambling here constantly.
Speaker 1: Fortunes are being won and lost. Uh you know, it's just.
Speaker 3: Yes, but fringe like people gambling away everything. Everyone's everyone's tired,
Speaker 3: everyone's exhausted and deranged, and people are like going broke
Speaker 3: and need loans from the king, which makes them more
Speaker 3: dependent on him. What's all this was intentional.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, this is part of the plane insane.
Speaker 3: I love it, Louis the.
Speaker 1: Four, but it's he's very intelligent in that, like he
Speaker 1: never faces another threat to his rule, right, Like that
Speaker 1: does not happen. Like he he locks the nobility down,
Speaker 1: the yeah they're too busy situation he has. He has,
Speaker 1: He is what VERSI is. He builds a totalitarian dictator
Speaker 1: ship just for the ruling class, where they are forced
Speaker 1: to party and gamble their whole lives andrew wk system.
Speaker 3: Yes that.
Speaker 1: Much has been written about the intricate and stifling rules
Speaker 1: of etiquette that had to be practiced at Versailles. They
Speaker 1: had their origins in you know, every medieval how every
Speaker 1: royal house in all of Europe has these complicated etiquette
Speaker 1: rules that they have to abide by. But they're not
Speaker 1: all enforced the same way, right, and they're not they're
Speaker 1: not all none of them are as intricate as they
Speaker 1: become in Versailles. Because what you take these kind of
Speaker 1: baseline rules about like oh, if you have you know, member,
Speaker 1: this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy in
Speaker 1: a room, only this guy is allowed to hand the
Speaker 1: king his shirt, right, but if that guy leaves, then
Speaker 1: the next person is allowed to hand the king his shirt.
Speaker 3: So you have to remember who who is allowed to
Speaker 3: hand Yes, yes, you know the punishment for this.
Speaker 1: It's not a punishment thing so much as it's a
Speaker 1: violation of etiquette, and thus it is offensive to everybody,
Speaker 1: and it causes like gossip, and it makes like the
Speaker 1: instead of protecting their power to tax and rule the commoners,
Speaker 1: the nobility are increasingly protecting their power to hand the
Speaker 1: king his shirt.
Speaker 3: In the morning. Fucking brilliant. It's I love it.
Speaker 1: It's so still love it. Yes, so again, every royal house,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the nobility in all of Europe
Speaker 1: have some version of this. But it gets like ten
Speaker 1: times as intense in Versailles because everyone is now living
Speaker 1: under one very large roof, right, and this means that,
Speaker 1: for one thing, nobles no longer have the same kind
Speaker 1: of lives of their own outside of court, so there's
Speaker 1: nothing going on in their lives but obsessing over perceived
Speaker 1: slights and the intricacies of social dynamics, who's snubbing, who,
Speaker 1: who is in the king's favor, et cetera. And it
Speaker 1: also means the nobility traditionally and like a feudal society.
Speaker 1: If you're the king and your nobles are your warriors, right,
Speaker 1: that's like the core of the elite of your army,
Speaker 1: in part because they have the time to train. The
Speaker 1: nobility are no longer training to fight, right they are.
Speaker 1: They are training and spending their whole youths in childhoods,
Speaker 1: learning how to be the most effective member of what
Speaker 1: is effectively a bickering high school clique. Right, Like this
Speaker 1: is long as well, so it marinates. Yes, your whole
Speaker 1: life is a high school and the king is the
Speaker 1: coolest kid in the school, so everyone is constantly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make him like them, right,
Speaker 1: instead of focusing on being good at war, you know,
Speaker 1: which is a danger to you as the king when you.
Speaker 3: Say the warriors. What does that mean though for the nobility?
Speaker 1: Well, like traditionally in Europe the army, what knights are, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like the knight like knights are nobility and
Speaker 1: they are like the core of your army in the
Speaker 1: earlier medieval period, right.
Speaker 3: Except then now we're bickering about who kind of yes,
Speaker 3: who the shit yes?
Speaker 1: And now instead of having like any real doing anything
Speaker 1: else really, all that these guys are doing a lot
Speaker 1: of these people are doing on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: Is obsessing over like the minutia of this, like basically
Speaker 1: big high school. Right.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: So for the next decade after sixteen sixty two, construction
Speaker 1: continues at a relentless pace, and as more gets built,
Speaker 1: more and more nobles live full time at Versai. It
Speaker 1: becomes the King's primary residence when he's not out engaging
Speaker 1: in his favorite hobby, going to war with the Dutch.
Speaker 1: The son King felt that Denmark was natural French territory,
Speaker 1: and he very nearly managed to make this a reality,
Speaker 1: but his capture of Amsterdam was thwarted when the Dutch
Speaker 1: opened their dikes and flooded the Lowlands. So he does
Speaker 1: get stymied in his dream of owning the Netherlands, which
Speaker 1: is very sad for all of us. You know, I
Speaker 1: would like to own the Netherlands one day. So I
Speaker 1: can understand why this is big for Louis the fourteenth.
Speaker 1: Back home, you know, he couldn't he couldn't make this work.
Speaker 1: But back in Versailles he's able to exercise ultimate control
Speaker 1: over nature. For example, the king decided he wanted a
Speaker 1: forest around Versailles. And you know the problem with forests.
Speaker 1: And you can plant a forest, anybody can plant a
Speaker 1: forest if you got enough seeds, But trees take so
Speaker 1: fucking long to grin.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, you go, bloody, wait
Speaker 3: for the thing.
Speaker 1: Huge pain in the ass, you know, huh. He's not
Speaker 1: going to do that. So rather than wait for trees
Speaker 1: to grow, he has thousands of adult trees dug up
Speaker 1: from nearby forests and all take trees, take it from
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and he plants them Midford rightes. Of those
Speaker 1: which died, about half were immediately replaced. So basically they're
Speaker 1: just planting, killed, digging up adult trees, planting them, waiting
Speaker 1: for ones to die, and then replanting them until they
Speaker 1: have a living forest.
Speaker 3: And grabbing new trees to replace the Yes, trees that
Speaker 3: you've already grabbed.
Speaker 1: Wonderful cool, you've already murdered. Yes, speaking of killing trees,
Speaker 1: you know who hates trees? Not our sponsors. We're back,
Speaker 1: We're so back. We've never been more back. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about the palace at Versailles, which has just murdered
Speaker 1: thousands of trees. The the king can have a forest
Speaker 1: so obviously for years the palace is dreadfully uncomfortable. Curtier
Speaker 1: courtiers slept wherever they could before the various apartments were finished,
Speaker 1: and the sun King was also usually like kind of
Speaker 1: roughing it too behind his back. Nobles called the palace
Speaker 1: a mistress without merit, as in like this is like
Speaker 1: the king's lady, but like she sucks. You know, none
Speaker 1: would dare say that to Lewis's face, to Louise face, though,
Speaker 1: and the dream of the palace sustained him until the
Speaker 1: first phase of construction was finished in like the sixteen seventies.
Speaker 1: This gave way almost immediately to an expansion in remodeling,
Speaker 1: but the palace was done enough that it starts attracting
Speaker 1: foreign visitors with stories of its grandeur. One like anecdote
Speaker 1: you'll hear at the time is that British people who
Speaker 1: would like go and see the court at Versailles would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, man, our king lives in a fucking slum.
Speaker 1: Basically right, like it is in short order the most
Speaker 1: famous capitol building in Europe, and it actually, like every
Speaker 1: palace after this point is influenced by Versailles. It becomes
Speaker 1: like a destination for the other crowned heads and nobles
Speaker 1: of the continent. And so it actually does. It is
Speaker 1: a hideous expense while they are building it. It consumes
Speaker 1: half of France's GDP. What yes, it is an outrageous expense,
Speaker 1: wonderfully like, it is almost an incomprehensible expense. And this
Speaker 1: enormous expense necessitated economic changes which were brought about in
Speaker 1: part by the further centralization and modernization of the friend state.
Speaker 1: Part of obviously, Versailles in and of itself is a
Speaker 1: central is centralizing the state in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it more modern. But also they have to modernize and
Speaker 1: centralize the economy more in order to afford Versailles. Louis's
Speaker 1: economic minister was a guy named Colbert, who had taught
Speaker 1: the son king math when he was a child. And
Speaker 1: Colbert hated Versailles. He thinks it's a stupid idea. But
Speaker 1: he's also really good with the money, and he's probably
Speaker 1: the only person who could have made the whole project
Speaker 1: economically viable, and for a while he does. As Mitford writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the prestige of Louis the fourteenth and the fame of
Speaker 1: Versailles mounted year by year. Other European princes and magnates
Speaker 1: wanted a Versailles of their own, down to the smallest
Speaker 1: details of its furnishings. Colbert exploited this fashion to help
Speaker 1: his exports. He erected a rigid customs barrier. Nothing was
Speaker 1: allowed to be imported that could be made in France.
Speaker 1: Factories were set up to supply the linen lace, silk glass, carpets, jewelry,
Speaker 1: inlaid furniture, and other articles of loveury that used to
Speaker 1: come from foreign lands. The finest examples of their work
Speaker 1: went to Versailles and were shown to the foreign visitors
Speaker 1: who flocked there. The chateau became a shop window, a
Speaker 1: permanent exhibition of French goods.
Speaker 3: So the economy literally centralized around a half yes, yes,
Speaker 3: and it becomes a massive part of the French economy,
Speaker 3: both in that like like.
Speaker 1: This is where we use this as a showcase for
Speaker 1: the different things like French artisans can make. And because
Speaker 1: all of the crowdheads come here, they're blown over by
Speaker 1: the palace and they're like, well, I need those kind
Speaker 1: of tables, right, I need those chairs right, and only
Speaker 1: French artisans. This is part of why France gets its
Speaker 1: reputation is having the best artisans in Europe, right is Versailles,
Speaker 1: and so luxury goods become an increasingly massive part of
Speaker 1: the French economy, and Versailles is where they're shown off,
Speaker 1: and so it is like a cees for like rich
Speaker 1: people furnishings, you know, like that is a big factor
Speaker 1: and like what Versay becomes and its role in the
Speaker 1: economy now, but also is central to the economy because
Speaker 1: of the sheer again, thirty six thousand workers at the
Speaker 1: height of this project. That's a massive deal for a
Speaker 1: country that is like France's in this period of time.
Speaker 1: And Colbert saw the sheer number of workmen the project
Speaker 1: consumed as more than the state could bear given its
Speaker 1: current birth rate. Right, Like he comes to the Ministry
Speaker 1: of the Economy, comes to the conclusion that we are
Speaker 1: not breeding enough men to continue building Versailles, and so
Speaker 1: the institution national breeding program to ensure sufficient labor for
Speaker 1: a house for the king's big fancy party house.
Speaker 3: This is so awful but also so cool. It's just
Speaker 3: like half the economy. Yeah, like all of the we
Speaker 3: have an entire thing of like housing furnishings. Yeah, look
Speaker 3: at multiple industries.
Speaker 1: It's and obviously like evil. It is also like Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth is kind of the most king that a
Speaker 1: king has ever been, Like this really.
Speaker 3: Is king it. Yeah, if you're gonna be a king, economy,
Speaker 3: create multiple industries, make everything built in one country to
Speaker 3: make your house cool, to make your house cool, and
Speaker 3: then create a bunch of bizarre social rules inside it
Speaker 3: so that everyone's freaked out.
Speaker 1: Just like, yeah, it's it's so. It's so like there
Speaker 1: are between once versa gets up and running permanently between
Speaker 1: like three thousand people is kind of like the normal
Speaker 1: level of inhabitants and up to ten thousand at times,
Speaker 1: right when like the party seasons at full swims people
Speaker 1: in that Yes, yes, it's it is massive. Now this
Speaker 1: Colbert institutes this breeding program. He exempts families with more
Speaker 1: than ten kids from taxes. He also raises age. That's nice.
Speaker 1: He also raises the age at which men and women
Speaker 1: are allowed to join the cat the church's priests and
Speaker 1: nuns because he's worried that like because they're not breeding obviously,
Speaker 1: And he forbids working men from emigrating from leaving the country. Yes,
Speaker 1: now we can come to my house, build everyone to
Speaker 1: come to my house.
Speaker 3: I need Colbert extra child, bring your boys to my house,
Speaker 3: to build my house.
Speaker 1: And for Colbert it's more like, I hate this house.
Speaker 1: It's stupid. It's dumb that the king is doing this.
Speaker 1: But the whole country will collapse if we don't keep
Speaker 1: this house going.
Speaker 3: I didn't tea so that you could build a house
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 1: Now it is hard for me to read stuff like
Speaker 1: this and not think about like Elon Musk and Palmer
Speaker 1: Lucky's obsession with birthrates, right, and they forget it's like
Speaker 1: a fairness thing. Oh, if you're not having two point
Speaker 1: one kids, you expect someone else's child to take care
Speaker 1: of you when you're old. But the reality is closer
Speaker 1: to what Colbert and Louis wanted, right. They also just
Speaker 1: want warm bodies to feed into the ravenous maw of
Speaker 1: their narcissistic death projects. They just not aren't as open
Speaker 1: about it or as good at it like they just
Speaker 1: and they'll never have louis the fact.
Speaker 3: And I think that is the thing with Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and all of these other damp fellows. They don't have
Speaker 3: the killer instinct of like a like like an old
Speaker 3: school French atrocity merchant.
Speaker 1: Yes, because they didn't. He literally fought and like warrid
Speaker 1: his way, like his whole childhood is like wars and
Speaker 1: conniving right, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no, it's just Musk is like trying
Speaker 3: to like counch every look, oh, I'm doing this for
Speaker 3: the better than in humanity. Louis just like we need
Speaker 3: more fucking children to build by party house. Go go go, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: well go what are you fucking kidding? They don't make
Speaker 3: chairs here. Fuck you. You can't leave the country until
Speaker 3: you fuck more.
Speaker 1: So, the years in which Versailla's constructed and debuted to
Speaker 1: the world are good ones for the French economy, which
Speaker 1: doubles in revenue between sixteen sixty one and sixteen seventy one. Again,
Speaker 1: Bear is good at this. This does work. However, the
Speaker 1: wealth coming as a result of Versailles is largely due
Speaker 1: to an explosion. Again and like luxury goods and work
Speaker 1: for skilled craftsmen, and so while there's on paper the
Speaker 1: economy is doing better, a huge group of the country
Speaker 1: is doing much worse, which is the peasantry. Right, The
Speaker 1: people who make their living growing food suffer, suffer tremendously.
Speaker 1: While this economic miracle is going on again. This is
Speaker 1: not similar to anything that's happened. Yeah, you know, not
Speaker 1: that it's the people growing food with us, but it
Speaker 1: is like, you know, the economy is great on paper
Speaker 1: for all these corporations, while a huge chunk of the
Speaker 1: working class is suffering. Right, it is kind of you
Speaker 1: can see it as similar to that where well, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the people who are making shit for Versaiah doing well,
Speaker 1: but like the peasant farmers are like in a disastrous state.
Speaker 1: And Colbert's fine with this. He does not give a
Speaker 1: shit about these people suffering, and neither it is Louis.
Speaker 1: They are concerned with the continued expansion of this pleasure
Speaker 1: palace and the attendant growth of the French military and navy.
Speaker 1: And those are the only priss not.
Speaker 3: Built fully yet or are they just building more of it.
Speaker 1: They're constantly building more of it and renovating it. And
Speaker 1: the only projects that are allowed to compete with Versy
Speaker 1: for manpower are the military and the navy. As Mitford writes, quote,
Speaker 1: he Colbert did little or nothing to help the French
Speaker 1: peasants through a period of agricultural depression. Indeed, low farm
Speaker 1: prices suited his policy of cheap exports. The gap between
Speaker 1: the peasantry and the rest of the population first became
Speaker 1: serious under Colbert. It was not bridged, as in England
Speaker 1: by country gentlemen. He encouraged the slave trade, and although
Speaker 1: he did insist on certain humanitarian measures, this was the
Speaker 1: only way to keep down the death rate of such
Speaker 1: valuable cattle. Worst of all, he increased the number of
Speaker 1: galleys in the French Navy from six to forty, each
Speaker 1: containing two hundred unhappy souls. Since black people were useless
Speaker 1: for manning them, they had no stamina and diet at once.
Speaker 1: He employed This was a book written a lot longer ago.
Speaker 1: He employed French criminals and Turks caught in the Barbary Wars.
Speaker 1: When the Turks were worn out, they were sold in
Speaker 1: America for what they would fetch. Young, solid frenchmen accused
Speaker 1: of capital offenses were often sent to the galleys for
Speaker 1: life instead of being executed. Minor criminals, if they were
Speaker 1: able bodied, were never released at the end of their sentences.
Speaker 1: They could only be freed if their relations could afford
Speaker 1: to buy a turk to replace them. Colbert thought that
Speaker 1: too many of his galley slaves died. The intendent of
Speaker 1: the galley swore they were well fed, but said they
Speaker 1: died of grief and boredom. So this is just a
Speaker 1: night It's really to emphasize this is a nightmare state, right, Like,
Speaker 1: while they're killing all these laborers in the palace, the
Speaker 1: whole navy is. We tried using slaves, but they all
Speaker 1: died immediately, so we brought in instead. We brought in
Speaker 1: turks that were basically slaves and like captive prisoners, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can buy your way out, which you
Speaker 1: got to find us another turk, you know, just like.
Speaker 3: This is like a side took economy and all if
Speaker 3: this again is to pretty much make sure a big
Speaker 3: house is built.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, and this is this is for the navy,
Speaker 1: but the navy is there to protect your ability to
Speaker 1: continue building the big house, right, you need a strong
Speaker 1: navy and military so no one can stop you from
Speaker 1: having this huge of course. Oh god, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind it's it's a nightmare. Uh. It is important to
Speaker 1: really emphasize the degree to which Versailles was, from the
Speaker 1: beginning a marvel of architecture and art and culture, as
Speaker 1: well as a yawning pit into which human lives were
Speaker 1: poured in order to build and maintain. That said, the
Speaker 1: plan works. The nobles don't trouble him or any other
Speaker 1: French king in his line with thoughts of thoughts of revolution. Again,
Speaker 1: beyond that, versy becomes the envy of every other king
Speaker 1: and emperor. It was, in one writer's words, the cultural
Speaker 1: heartbeat of Europe when people on the continent referred to
Speaker 1: the king. Like if people in other European states just
Speaker 1: refer generally to the king, it's often understood that they're
Speaker 1: talking about Louis the fourteenth because he is so powerful
Speaker 1: in his centralization of power, he becomes one of the
Speaker 1: most absolute monarchs the world has ever seen. One illustrative
Speaker 1: anecdote is a rhyme the son King himself composed the
Speaker 1: tat sestemois the state that's me Wow. Lyrical genius, lyrical, genius, boss,
Speaker 1: It's so funny. No ego has ever been more fevered.
Speaker 1: A whole language of etiquette and pomp is created and
Speaker 1: developed around earning and keeping the king's power. For one, So,
Speaker 1: for an example of this, he hates the idea that
Speaker 1: people go to the bathroom right. He can't stand this.
Speaker 1: He considers it a weakness. And if you well toilet,
Speaker 1: if you are, if you are, if you are traveling
Speaker 1: with this guy or hanging out with him and you
Speaker 1: need to stop to pee, if you like asked to
Speaker 1: be excused to go to the bathroom, you're instantly exiled
Speaker 1: from the cool kids crowd.
Speaker 4: It's like trying to give everybody a ut I he.
Speaker 1: Loves U t I s The man can't get enough
Speaker 1: ut I s.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: He just does whatever he wants. He's he's the king,
Speaker 1: he can do anything. Range so his his his like
Speaker 1: closest friends find themselves avoiding water or getting really good
Speaker 1: at holding it, or they have to sneak away to relieve.
Speaker 3: Themselves right outside to look around something.
Speaker 1: Man, I gotta go fuck my mistress. Now, servants some
Speaker 1: nobles have their own apartments with chamber pots, right, and
Speaker 1: so their servants will barter and sell bathroom access to
Speaker 1: people who need to go to the bathroom, who are
Speaker 1: like running away.
Speaker 5: For you've got to give me a second somewhere, right,
Speaker 5: So trained because of this, there are rumors which will
Speaker 5: really get crazy and later among later kings, and these
Speaker 5: will spread heavily among people in Paris, and it's fanned
Speaker 5: a lot by like newspapers and tracts that are printed
Speaker 5: in Denmark because there's no press freedom in France.
Speaker 1: So the newspapers that people are reading in Paris that
Speaker 1: have all of the gossip are usually printed in Denmark
Speaker 1: and then brought into Paris smuggled in the Paris they'll
Speaker 1: be sold and like the property owned by nobles who
Speaker 1: are like the idea of these papers being around for
Speaker 1: their own personal benefit and can.
Speaker 3: Keep the police away.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: So that's how a lot of this. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that later. But you know, one of the rumors
Speaker 1: that starts to spread because of how weird Louis is
Speaker 1: about people going to the bathroom is that members of
Speaker 1: the nobility are just pissing in the hallways and corners
Speaker 1: of the palace and that all of Versailles is one big,
Speaker 1: expensive bathroom, right, Like everyone's just pissing and shitting everywhere. Right.
Speaker 1: That is a rumor that's widely believed in Paris. This
Speaker 1: is an exaggeration. Mitford says, it's just outright untrue. You know,
Speaker 1: because of how many bathrooms there are in Versailles, this
Speaker 1: just wouldn't happen. I don't think Mitford's got it right either,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. It's certainly not true that it's
Speaker 1: the norm for people to piss and shit wherever they're standing.
Speaker 1: But this is a house filled with thousands of drunk
Speaker 1: people partying all of the times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so did yous sally went to the toilet, so
Speaker 3: jeremy pissing.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that is a factor. In Versailles.
Speaker 1: Every room, basically every major room has orange trees in it,
Speaker 1: like in other plants. People are definitely pissing in those pots.
Speaker 1: Like you're not gonna tell me people they are still alive,
Speaker 1: y right, And people are for sure puking in random spots, right,
Speaker 1: because again, it's a big frat house to some degree, right,
Speaker 1: So there's some amount of this that has to obviously
Speaker 1: the degree to which they talk about this being a
Speaker 1: thing in Perry, this is a massive exaggeration, but it
Speaker 1: definitely happens, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Especially if you have to surreptitiously piss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got to hide that, you're like.
Speaker 3: Just like justin Lippens, Yeah, you just.
Speaker 1: You know, hygiene was not as bad back then as
Speaker 1: people often assume among the nobility. But like people didn't
Speaker 1: bathe daily. They're generally cloaked in perfume, and between that,
Speaker 1: the pallas is constantly filled with smoke because of all
Speaker 1: of the candles and fireplaces. So the smell of this
Speaker 1: place would have been fascinating at time. Yes, right, let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. It's crazy. Not necessarily bad always,
Speaker 1: but crazy, yeah, like unfathomable to our modern noses. So
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth one of the whole world of her
Speaker 1: side revolve around him, and it did, which meant one
Speaker 1: of the most important questions for anyone to ask on
Speaker 1: a daily basis was who is the king fucking?
Speaker 3: And the king is.
Speaker 1: A notoriously horny guy. He is horny by the standards
Speaker 1: of French kings, right well, and that's hard, like French
Speaker 1: kings almost invented modern sex. Like and he is he
Speaker 1: is the fuckingest of the kings of France.
Speaker 3: Nice. One of his first mistresses.
Speaker 1: Was uh uh Louis de la Vallier, that Luis de
Speaker 1: la Valerie, right, who eventually reached a sort of and
Speaker 1: like there's a huge conflict between her and his his wife,
Speaker 1: the Queen, and one of his other mistresses, and they
Speaker 1: eventually like all sit down and talk about it in
Speaker 1: a way that feels like weirdly modern and like become
Speaker 1: cool with each other.
Speaker 4: Right, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like that actually happens here, and like they're
Speaker 1: actually kind of chill for a while about it. Progressive
Speaker 1: modern the first Yeah, I mean it is adultery is
Speaker 1: so normal in the sun King's Palace that it is
Speaker 1: kind of like that, right, Like the king's mistress is
Speaker 1: a specific named position at court and one that held
Speaker 1: quite a bit of influence. Right, Wow, this is insane house.
Speaker 3: The lady who is just the king. The mistress is
Speaker 3: like a title. You have a business.
Speaker 1: The mistress is a title and that people like gossip,
Speaker 1: like the way that we're gossiping about, like who's going
Speaker 1: to lead the FBI or whatever. People are gossip about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the king might fuck this lady next, and
Speaker 1: you know, who knows what that'll change. And it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where he has his official mistress.
Speaker 1: That is not to say that he limits himself to
Speaker 1: one mistress. As Johnny Wilkes writes, quote, it said that
Speaker 1: one day he grew so impatient waiting for a lover
Speaker 1: to undress that he turned his attention to one of
Speaker 1: the maids. Because again he's the king. You know, he's
Speaker 1: just fucking whoever he wants. He needs the fuck then
Speaker 1: and he needs to fuck then.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, because the king has the power to he one
Speaker 1: of the ways in which he'll show favor to a
Speaker 1: lady he fucks, or to just like a dude he has,
Speaker 1: like a party, he gets along with a guy one night,
Speaker 1: they have a good drunk talk or whatever. He hands
Speaker 1: out these gifts, right, and these gifts are not like
Speaker 1: sometimes he can hand out just money, but usually the
Speaker 1: gift is like a pension or the right to tax
Speaker 1: a specific area, or like you get a cut of
Speaker 1: the fish that are sold in this province, right, people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got fucked up with Louis and now I get
Speaker 1: two percent of all of the French the fish sold
Speaker 1: in Normandy, right, Like that's just what I That's what
Speaker 1: I have forever now. So there's a lot of there's
Speaker 1: a ton of money, and like being a woman who
Speaker 1: he likes and there's a ton of money, and just
Speaker 1: like being a dude that he's friends with, and so
Speaker 1: a ah, because of how much money there is in
Speaker 1: this and how important it is to be in the
Speaker 1: king's favor. An entire shadow economy springs up, among providing amulets, charms,
Speaker 1: and magical spells to curry the king's favor, and even
Speaker 1: poisons to use on rivals for his affections. This is
Speaker 1: all whole industry in France is like witchcraft to impress
Speaker 1: the king. Fuck, yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: That's so great.
Speaker 1: Nancy Mitford writes about one such purfrayor of Magic's Madame
Speaker 1: Voissin and Madame Boissin, was approached by a lady at
Speaker 1: court vying with Luis de la Valerie for the son
Speaker 1: King's attention. Right, so you know, Valerie is his mistress,
Speaker 1: and this new lady wants to become the next mistress.
Speaker 1: Her name is Madame de Montespan, and she wants to
Speaker 1: take over for Valerie, and you know she thinks that
Speaker 1: magic's the best way to do that. So she, of course,
Speaker 1: this Madame bossin lady, and I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: the book The Sun King here, she gave excellent advice
Speaker 1: to her clients and did what she could to help them,
Speaker 1: catering for little feminine desires such as larger breasts and
Speaker 1: smaller mouths. White hands and luck at cards when unwanted
Speaker 1: babies were on the way. She was very understanding. This
Speaker 1: means she provides a bort to fasciants, right if wishes concerned.
Speaker 1: In an inheritance, there were certain powders for unrequited love,
Speaker 1: various forms of magic. No doubt, she began advising Madame
Speaker 1: de Montespan by talking over the situation and who long
Speaker 1: need to be loved can have enough of such talks
Speaker 1: and such advice. But nothing happened. The king remained indifferent. Right,
Speaker 1: So she tries some of these like magics and spells,
Speaker 1: and the king doesn't want a fuck her yet, so
Speaker 1: it's decided that they should move on to like the
Speaker 1: hardcore spells, which means bringing in the devil. Right, if
Speaker 1: you want to do the powerful magic, you're that you're
Speaker 1: going to have to talk.
Speaker 3: To the devil. No consideration that the magic didn't work.
Speaker 3: It's just that you didn't use effective enough magic. You
Speaker 3: didn't ever another the devil of course, right, Yeah. The
Speaker 3: nobility believes that no magic spell can be truly effect
Speaker 3: efficacious unless Satan is involved, and this leads to a
Speaker 3: separate cottage industry, one where you've got priests who want
Speaker 3: extra money, and so these these Catholic priests will conduct
Speaker 3: underground Satanic rites in order to like do magic.
Speaker 1: For these people. Yeah, this is a terrible house. This
Speaker 1: house has its underground black magic economy now and obviously
Speaker 1: other like in Paris, there's other parts of France where
Speaker 1: this kind of underground trade exists, but it largely comes
Speaker 1: to focus around these people in Versailles, koreeing for favor
Speaker 1: right now. Again, Nancy Midford is from a different generation,
Speaker 1: and she writes about all this magic more seriously as if,
Speaker 1: like as if these priests and these witches believe literally
Speaker 1: literally in everything that they're doing. My suspicion is that
Speaker 1: a lot of these service providers are like con men
Speaker 1: and women, right They know these black masses aren't really
Speaker 1: magic spells or whatever. They just also understand that if
Speaker 1: they can create this space of altered reality for their wealthy,
Speaker 1: out of touch clientele who live in a permanent party
Speaker 1: and don't understand the real world, then they can get
Speaker 1: a lot of money out of them, right right. I
Speaker 1: think it really is much more cynical. For I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's some people who really believe that they're.
Speaker 3: Talking to just that these people didn't have a connection
Speaker 3: to the devil, like yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Unreasonable, but I you know they they know the nobility
Speaker 1: believes that. That's my interprets.
Speaker 3: And these people like sleep deprived, they think they living
Speaker 3: in the house, like they live in their minds, well
Speaker 3: already in a altered reality because they're living in this world. Well,
Speaker 3: like you can't pass or share, yes, you can't have
Speaker 3: like the wrong person can't hand the show. Of course
Speaker 3: they're open to magic. The lords don't exist.
Speaker 1: You've gotten it exactly right, which is that Versailles is
Speaker 1: a cult. And when once you get people into a cult,
Speaker 1: you you have altered their brain chemist in a way
Speaker 1: that makes them much more vulnerable to anyone selling this
Speaker 1: kind of bullshit. Right, and that's why this magic trade
Speaker 1: really perks up. And I'm going to read another quote
Speaker 1: from the Sun King. Madame Vossin knew a priest who
Speaker 1: was willing to help. He read the Gospel over Madame
Speaker 1: de Montespan's head. There was some nonsense with pigeon's hearts
Speaker 1: under a consecrated chalice, and she prayed, please let the
Speaker 1: king love me. Let Monseigneur le Dauphine that's the King's
Speaker 1: son and heir. Be my friend and made this love
Speaker 1: and this friendship last. Please make the queen sterile, Let
Speaker 1: the King leave La Valerie and never look at her again.
Speaker 1: Let the Queen be repudiated, and the king marry me.
Speaker 1: It was all rather harmless and undeniably successful. The King
Speaker 1: seemed to become aware of her for the first time.
Speaker 1: He went off to besiege Lilas in June of sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, taking her in the capacity of lady and
Speaker 1: waiting to the Queen. Luis de Valerie was not invited.
Speaker 1: In despair, she followed the royal party and caught up
Speaker 1: with it as the camp was being pitched. When she
Speaker 1: came face to face with the king, he put on
Speaker 1: a terrifying matter and said, Madame, I don't like having
Speaker 1: my hand forced. She had to go away, deeply humiliated.
Speaker 1: During this campaign, Madame de Montespin became his mistress. Her
Speaker 1: sacrilegious prayers seemed well on the way to being answered.
Speaker 1: The King loved her now, m so it worked, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good.
Speaker 3: This whole system works.
Speaker 1: This whole system works great now. Unfortunately, all of this,
Speaker 1: this whole industry of like devil Spells is going to
Speaker 1: become a problem in part two, but we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about that on Thursday. Ed you want to plug
Speaker 1: anything after this super long episode.
Speaker 3: Go to Bitter offline dot com download the podcast, subscribe
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Speaker 3: else or else.
Speaker 1: All right, everyone, we love you, dbye, some of us
Speaker 1: love you.
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