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