Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In honor of the American oligarchs trying to form their own aristocracy, Robert and Ed Zitron look back at the court of Versailles, how it was formed as a sort of frat house pentagon that broke the brains of every subsequent generation of French nobles.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Ed.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
How you doing, buddy, I'm.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Doing fantastically, love being here.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'd be doing better. But you know, we have something
sad to talk about today.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Ed.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
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

(00:51):
a hidden steadfast. Sophie, why did those men need to die?

Speaker 4 (00:57):
Why is that the cover story you gave me? I
feel like you could have done something so much cooler.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Get on the show.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Is that the I mean, I've been sent some very
fascinating messages. Is that the only reason you told people?

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I was how I just told people you'd shot it
out with the FDA and you were on the run.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
I mean I kind of wish.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, yeah, it would be more fun.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
But you know you're back, you're healing. Uh, yeah, you're
feeling feeling a little better.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Well, I mean, surgery sucks. Don't have surgery unless you
absolutely need it, as my surgery sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
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.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
The amount of times you've set me that.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Writing is so funny. ED, welcome again to the show.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
But I just have one more thing to say. Sure,
I'm so sorry for anything that happened without my supervision.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
It was fine, it was fine. I was on my
best behavior.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
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

(02:53):
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

(03:16):
here in the United States.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
I have been hearing this.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
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

(03:42):
of weeks.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
And someone who looks and sounds like both Beavis and
butt Head knows my Social Security number.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
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

(04:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
He did this.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah, I think I think I talked to that same
guy at last RNC.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Oh good. Yeah, he was also.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Trump's yeah, and He's.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Like, and what about that baron? And I'm like, sir, what.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
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

(05:09):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:53):
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

(06:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yep, yeah, yeah, on nine episodes.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, and what do you know about Versailles?

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Oh? Alarmingly little just the Treaty of Versaill and how
well that went.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
Sure, and everybody knows about you know, the garden.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
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.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yes, that is that is the borderline like basic knowledge
that everybody has.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, yeah, which is why I knew about him.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
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

(07:42):
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

(08:02):
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

(08:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
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

(09:02):
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

(09:24):
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

(09:45):
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.

(10:06):
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

(10:27):
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?

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Where is she from?

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (10:44):
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,

(11:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Don't worry, buddy, don't worry.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
I truly don't actually know. I just know that they
will have sex to each other. They all did.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
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

(12:10):
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,

(12:33):
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

(12:54):
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

(13:14):
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

(13:36):
the power, right.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
The traditionally we did it in the post.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yes, yes, and now we're doing it in the future.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah. Good stuff, great stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
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

(14:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Made by Anne.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
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

(14:42):
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

(15:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
At this point, it.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
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

(16:00):
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,

(16:21):
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

(16:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Right, suggesting is that the poorer people pay more and
the richer people have found a way around taxes somehow.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
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

(17:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
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.

(18:02):
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

(18:27):
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

(18:49):
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

(19:11):
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

(19:34):
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

(19:56):
sort of mobbed you know, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
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

(20:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
No, they do.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
There they are in this period immune to most taxes.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Right, and that's the trade off, I imagine.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:33):
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

(21:53):
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

(22:13):
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

(22:34):
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

(22:56):
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

(23:19):
of them.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
That is us.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
He's a juggler, Buddy is a juggler.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
I feel like if this was twenty twenty five that
it would have been like podcaster, where's bathrobe?

Speaker 1 (23:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Guy doing something to as well.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Oh my god, can you imagine that that would never happen.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
It brings his child at PHP to the White House.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
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

(24:31):
around by his dad, who's basically the Cardinal Mazarin.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
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

(24:55):
when you become a man.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
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?

Speaker 3 (25:05):
You have four long years to go.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
I think I think I could have governed France at thirteen.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'm busy.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
I don't pay it better than I I fucking mccrun.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
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,

(25:49):
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

(26:11):
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,

(26:31):
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

(26:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
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

(27:33):
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

(27:53):
busting down the door, basically Queen Anne and like this
ten year old kidder talking and He's like, what the fuck.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Do I do?

Speaker 1 (28:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Did it work?

Speaker 1 (28:12):
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

(28:34):
and they're like, eh, we should probably go maybe this
guy out of hand. Yeah when did he fall asleep?

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Is he gonna be up?

Speaker 1 (28:41):
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,

(29:02):
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,

(29:26):
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

(29:47):
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

(30:11):
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

(30:32):
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

(30:53):
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,

(31:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
And I just want to establish something. Yeah, all the
nobility was made to move in.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
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,

(32:09):
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

(32:30):
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

(32:52):
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,

(33:15):
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.

(33:37):
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

(33:58):
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

(34:21):
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

(34:42):
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

(35:05):
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

(35:27):
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,

(35:50):
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

(36:12):
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

(36:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
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.

(37:14):
How much of this money you're spending is really my money?

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Right?

Speaker 1 (37:20):
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?

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (37:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Yeah. How long did in prison? Fool?

Speaker 4 (37:55):
Was it just?

Speaker 1 (37:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Because she might have spent the King's money.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
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

(38:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
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.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
What what are we talking about here?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
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.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
You know, maybe we all need silver plum.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Maybe maybe we should grow everything in silver.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
We don't know, We don't know. You know, have your
if you've got a baby, have them.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
It played it.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Entirely in silver. See if it works.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
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,

(39:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Items just invented dorms.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
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

(40:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
So is there a logic behind the mirror room or
is it just so everyone could see you press everybody?

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, so everybody can see. This is how rich the king.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Is, and themselves at every corner.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
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

(41:21):
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,

(41:43):
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

(42:04):
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

(42:25):
approached Louis to request her son's body. He had her imprisoned.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Okay, seems fair, seems cool?

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, of course, how dare she?

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeahs fucking rude.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
She didn't understand that this was about France's prestige, not
how many people with horse guy.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Yeah, rude.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Look, people are gonna get crushed to death.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Obvious happiness. Oh my god, you get over it.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
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

(43:12):
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

(43:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
That's fine, Yeah, I don't want to waste time the
boring parts of war.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
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

(44:15):
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

(44:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
In this schiling and shit in this giant, beautiful palace
that should be luxurious.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah that should, but is just unfinished and filled with
dead people. Yeah that'll happen, Yeah, that'll happen.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Real estate is challenging.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, yeah, real estate is a real, real, complicated endeavor.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
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,

(45:33):
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.

(45:55):
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?

(46:17):
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?

Speaker 3 (46:31):
So like a six day long jolly, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
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

(46:54):
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

(47:17):
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.

Speaker 4 (47:34):
I was gonna say, the amount of like tea being
spilled at these events, oh yeah, to be.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Well, and then gossip being created in real.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Period gonna say, I was gonna say, this is like
Perissian Twitter.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yes, yeah, that that's kind of where things are building towards.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Right, very good.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
And it's also you know, people are gambling here constantly.
Fortunes are being won and lost. Uh you know, it's just.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Yes, yes, this is part of the plane insane.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
I love it, Louis the.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
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

(49:00):
ship just for the ruling class, where they are forced
to party and gamble their whole lives andrew wk system.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yes that.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
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

(49:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
So you have to remember who who is allowed to
hand Yes, yes, you know the punishment for this.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
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

(50:17):
king his shirt.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
In the morning. Fucking brilliant. It's I love it.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
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

(50:42):
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,

(51:02):
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

(51:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Say the warriors. What does that mean though for the nobility?

Speaker 1 (51:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
Except then now we're bickering about who kind of yes,
who the shit yes?

Speaker 1 (51:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
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,

(52:38):
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.

(53:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
I was just going to say, you go, bloody, wait
for the thing.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
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

(53:44):
just planting, killed, digging up adult trees, planting them, waiting
for ones to die, and then replanting them until they
have a living forest.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
And grabbing new trees to replace the Yes, trees that
you've already grabbed.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
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

(54:17):
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

(54:39):
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,

(55:03):
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

(55:24):
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,

(55:46):
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

(56:06):
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

(56:29):
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

(56:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
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,

(57:46):
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

(58:09):
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

(58:34):
the institution national breeding program to ensure sufficient labor for
a house for the king's big fancy party house.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
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

(59:47):
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,

(01:00:11):
now we can come to my house, build everyone to
come to my house.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
I need Colbert extra child, bring your boys to my house,
to build my house.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
I didn't tea so that you could build a house
like this.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
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

(01:00:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Yes, because they didn't. He literally fought and like warrid
his way, like his whole childhood is like wars and
conniving right, like.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
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

(01:02:10):
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

(01:02:30):
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.

(01:02:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Built fully yet or are they just building more of it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
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

(01:03:32):
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

(01:03:53):
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

(01:04:15):
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

(01:04:37):
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

(01:04:58):
got to find us another turk, you know, just like.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
This is like a side took economy and all if
this again is to pretty much make sure a big
house is built.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
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

(01:05:27):
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

(01:05:49):
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

(01:06:12):
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

(01:06:36):
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

(01:06:56):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
It's like trying to give everybody a ut I he.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Loves U t I s The man can't get enough
ut I s.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
Themselves right outside to look around something.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:07:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Keep the police away.

Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
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.

(01:08:55):
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

(01:09:18):
people partying all of the times.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, so did yous sally went to the toilet, so
jeremy pissing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
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,

(01:09:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Especially if you have to surreptitiously piss.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah, you've got to hide that, you're like.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Just like justin Lippens, Yeah, you just.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
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

(01:10:34):
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

(01:10:55):
a daily basis was who is the king fucking?

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
And the king is.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Nice. One of his first mistresses.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
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

(01:11:41):
cool with each other.

Speaker 4 (01:11:43):
Right, so.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
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

(01:12:07):
a specific named position at court and one that held
quite a bit of influence. Right, Wow, this is insane house.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
The lady who is just the king. The mistress is
like a title. You have a business.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
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

(01:12:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
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

(01:13:25):
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

(01:13:47):
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

(01:14:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
That's so great.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
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

(01:14:46):
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

(01:15:06):
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,

(01:15:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
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

(01:16:08):
underground Satanic rites in order to like do magic.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
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

(01:16:34):
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

(01:16:56):
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

(01:17:16):
think it really is much more cynical. For I'm sure
there's some people who really believe that they're.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Talking to just that these people didn't have a connection
to the devil, like yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Unreasonable, but I you know they they know the nobility
believes that. That's my interprets.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
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

(01:18:14):
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.

(01:18:36):
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

(01:18:57):
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,

(01:19:20):
it's good.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
This whole system works.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Go to Bitter offline dot com download the podcast, subscribe
to the podcast, go back, download every single episode, or
else or else.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
All right, everyone, we love you, dbye, some of us
love you.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3 (01:20:08):
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