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

Speaker 1 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 Zittron of Better Offline.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We're going to give a little moment of silence for 14 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,

Speaker 1 that's just never

Speaker 1 a safe thing to do.

Speaker 1 Also, back on the show is Sophie Lichterman, who is recovering south of the border in a hidden

Speaker 1 steadfast. Sophie, why did those men need to die?

Speaker 2 Why is that the cover story you gave me?

Speaker 1 I feel like you could have done something so much cooler.

Speaker 1 I think that's pretty cool, shooting it out with the FDA and going on the run to Mexico.

Speaker 1 Yeah, an HGH ring. Well, I didn't want to accuse you of selling hard drugs.

Speaker 2 I mean, sure.

Speaker 1 And everybody

Speaker 1 loves HGH. At least Joe Rogan loves HGH.
Sophie, maybe you could get on his show.

Speaker 2 Is that the, I mean, I've been sent some very fascinating messages.

Speaker 1 Is that the only reason reason you told people I was out?

Speaker 1 I just told people you'd shot it out with the FDA and you were on the run.

Speaker 1 I mean, I kind of wish. Yeah, yeah, it would be more fun.
But, you know, you're back. You're healing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're feeling a little better.

Speaker 2 A little, I mean, surgery sucks. Don't have surgery unless you absolutely need it is my reference.
Surgery sucks.

Speaker 1 And let's talk for a second here. Doctors are not giving out enough painkillers.
You should have gotten delotted for for what you went through. And they just gave you a little bit of codone.

Speaker 1 I'm livid on your behalf.

Speaker 2 The amount of times you sent me that

Speaker 1 in writing is so funny.

Speaker 1 Ed.

Speaker 1 Welcome again to the show.

Speaker 2 I just have one more thing to say.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry for anything that happened without my supervision. I'm so sorry.
It was fine. It was fine.
I was on my best behavior.

Speaker 1 But I'm not going to be today. I didn't even listen.
And I know that's not true.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Specifically, specifically, I wanted to talk about

Speaker 1 the culture of Versailles, the subculture of the nobility at Versailles

Speaker 1 that started in the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and led right up to the French Revolution. And I wanted to talk about this because, Ed, I'm sure you've heard a little about this.

Speaker 1 We've caught a little case of the oligarchy here in the United States. I have been hearing this.

Speaker 1 We've all been hearing this.

Speaker 1 Yes. You know,

Speaker 1 as, unless you're listening to this years after the fact and we did it, Joe, again,

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Because that's been the vibe of the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 And someone who looks and sounds like both Beavis and Butthead knows my social security number.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 The day I started typing out this episode, February 19th, 2025, President Trump made a very funny joke describing himself as a king.

Speaker 1 And this set me to thinking about the first Trump rally I attended in 2016, in which I met a British man who was a naturalized U.S.

Speaker 1 citizen, who told me that he supported a Trump dynasty ruling the United States from here on out. He wanted Trump Jr.
to take over after his dad finished his terms.

Speaker 1 And I was like, man, you are in the wrong country. You lived in the country that did that.

Speaker 1 You want to adjust.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I talked to that same

Speaker 1 at last RNC.

Speaker 1 Oh, good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He was also British. And I also looked at him like, he was like, yeah, well, I mean, there's many of them.

Speaker 1 You know, you go, Don't you know? There's plenty of Trumps for.

Speaker 2 And he's like, and what about that Baron?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, sir. What the fuck about that Baron? Sir.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He could probably hoop.

Speaker 1 You do have to give that to him. He's got at least potential.
Although I don't think he's very fast. Anyway.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And so that's why I wanted to talk about Versailles this week, right? You know, this is a case where the bastard is this system,

Speaker 1 this world

Speaker 1 of the nobility, where they were cloistered away from the rest of the country deliberately for some interesting reasons.

Speaker 1 And, like, what happened to their brains as a result of that, and kind of why it all came crashing down, right?

Speaker 1 This is not going to be, obviously, Mike Duncan's done the much more full version of like why the French Revolution happened. This is not, these aren't episodes about the French Revolution.

Speaker 1 These are specifically episodes about how the court at Versailles came into being, why,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Eight or nine episodes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what do you know about Versailles? Oh, alarmingly little. Just the Treaty of Versailles and how well that went.
That did go really well. Really?

Speaker 1 Well, there were a couple of those treaties, and they all went well.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so there's a probably the best popular culture touchstone on this recently would be that 2006 Sophia Coppola movie about Marie Antoinette.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 And everybody knows about, you know, the garden.

Speaker 1 I actually don't know about the garden.

Speaker 2 The garden of Versailles?

Speaker 1 Oh, I mean, you mean the literal garden? I thought you were talking about a movie called The Garden. No, yes, there's a nice garden in Versailles.
Yes.

Speaker 2 That is

Speaker 2 the borderline, like basic knowledge that everybody has.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, okay. Which is why I knew about it.
Yeah, nice garden, big palace.

Speaker 1 But I think that, okay, I'm glad that's what you know, because there's a lot more there.

Speaker 1 The story of Versailles is the story of, among other things, the invention of like the modern centralized administrative state,

Speaker 1 just done in kind of the craziest way imaginable.

Speaker 1 And in order to tell that story, we've got to start with a guy who is probably close to, you know, one of the contenders for like best at being a king, just on a technical level of anybody who was ever a king, Louis XIV, better known as the Sun King, because he had a very high opinion of himself.

Speaker 1 But which was somewhat justified.

Speaker 1 This is the guy who is the longest reigning king in human history. Like

Speaker 1 nobody was king for longer, probably.

Speaker 1 Um, he spends 72 years on the throne, which is nuts.

Speaker 1 Like, an objectively crazy amount of time to do any job. Powell Davis of Kings.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 I do

Speaker 1 wretched as a podcaster. He was wretched and crazy at the end.
Oh, wonderful, perfect. He's so wretched and crazy.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 His ass is rotting. That's what kills him.
It's great.

Speaker 1 He dies from his pump rot. He dies from ass rot.
Yes, Yes, he sure does. And

Speaker 1 oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 This story's got it all, baby.

Speaker 1 So Louis XIV, all of the French kings in this period are Louis, right? They will be referred to kind of casually by some historians as the Louis, right?

Speaker 1 Because they're kind of interchangeable with the exception of the Sun King in some ways, where you're just talking about like, and then this Louis and that, yeah.

Speaker 1 So Louis XIV,

Speaker 1 our boy, was born in September of 1638 to Anne of Austria and Louis XIII.

Speaker 1 His mom was shockingly old to give birth at the time. She's like middle-aged and had had four stillbirths before him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So Louis XIII 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.

Speaker 1 This is a thing in a lot of other European countries, like in many European countries, like in Russia, right?

Speaker 1 Women can reign, you know, like the queen, if things work out that way, the queen can be the regent. She can run shit, right? Right.

Speaker 1 That is not the case in France. They do not allow that in this period in France.
And Louis VIII is like, Anne should not govern after my death.

Speaker 1 And so he creates a regency council to manage things until Louis XIV is old enough to run France on his own.

Speaker 1 And part of why he does this is that Anne is not French, right? She's Anne of Austria.

Speaker 1 Now, that's also not a good description of who she was because you would expect, given that her name is Anne of Austria, you would expect her to be from Austria, right? Right. Where is she from?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Oh, Ed, of course, she's not from Austria.
She's from Spain. Obviously, you call Anne of Austria.
The Austria woman from Spain.

Speaker 1 That's what she's called.

Speaker 1 She's the queen of Navarre.

Speaker 1 She's like, the whole Austria thing in 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?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's why she's Anne of Austria, because the Habsburgs were also the House of Austria. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's so many Habsburgs. Oh, we're going to be talking about the Habsburg jaws later in this story.
Don't worry, buddy. Don't worry.

Speaker 1 There's Habsburgs all throughout the motherfucker. That makes me so happy.

Speaker 1 Does it make you Habsburg? Habsburg.

Speaker 1 Hopefully,

Speaker 1 a few times as a baby.

Speaker 1 Then, then your blood wouldn't clot.

Speaker 1 Actually, I don't think that was a Habsburg problem. That's anyway.
I truly don't actually know. I just know that they all have sex with each other.
They all did.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of people fucking their cousins in this story. That's just

Speaker 1 how royalty is.

Speaker 1 So from age four on, which is like when his dad dies, Louis XIV's earliest memories would have been a political turmoil between his mother and her native country.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This is a constant problem because you are always bringing in nobles from other houses in Europe to like marry the king.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Now, because we're talking about European nobility this week, I really need to emphasize everything that I explain about these people is going to sound ridiculous.

Speaker 1 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.
Louis is going to make it a lot crazier.

Speaker 1 But I do think it's worth kind of emphasizing that.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 That's not unique to the United States.

Speaker 1 That's just something that comes with giving small groups of people all of the power, right? But traditionally, we did it in the past. Yes, yes, and now we're doing it in the future.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 good stuff.

Speaker 1 Great stuff.

Speaker 1 So, Anne actually had gotten his mom had

Speaker 1 gotten confined to house arrest for passing military secrets to her dad at one point.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 She chooses to go for France.

Speaker 1 And this was a pragmatic move because once her husband died, her position was not really stable.

Speaker 1 Now, most of the big decisions made for France in this period are not made by Anne. They're made by a guy that Anne appoints to rule in her son's stead.
And that guy's name is Cardinal Mazarin.

Speaker 1 And he is one of these like extremely powerful.

Speaker 1 like non-royal rulers like not he's not like a king but he's kind of governing france for a period of time here um by the time the child king uh louis xi is eight or nine years old the 30 years' war, which is this war that his dad had spent his life fighting, is drawing to a close.

Speaker 1 And given the fact that it was a 30 years' war, it had been monstrously expensive and kind of a financial disaster for France.

Speaker 1 So near the end of it, Cardinal Mazarin is anxious to keep the army funded until everything is locked down about the peace treaty.

Speaker 1 And since the crown had no more money after 30 years of war, this meant that they had to institute new taxes. Now,

Speaker 1 France is a semi-feudal society at this point. It is less feudal than basically all of the rest of Europe.
In Germany, there are still serfs, right? As in, like, the common people are literally like

Speaker 1 bonded to the land. Like they're essentially a kind of slave.
They can't leave without the permission of the landowner, right?

Speaker 1 Serfs are really not much of a thing in France in the period that we're talking about. And become, they're basically going extinct, right? France has modernized to that extent.

Speaker 1 And in fact, they're kind of the country is sort of in the process of becoming less of a

Speaker 1 feudal state and more of kind of like a hybrid, like modernized semi-feudal state, right? Like you still have a nobility. The nobility are most are

Speaker 1 going in this period, are going from like literally governing directly where you've got this duke and he controls this area, to 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Now, during the 30 years' war, again, the only way that they can pay for this is by increasing taxes. And these taxes don't primarily hit the nobility.

Speaker 1 One of the nobility's privileges that they maintain is an exemption from the taxes paid by peasants and the bourgeoisie, right? Like

Speaker 1 basically, you call them the small business owners of France, right? So what you're suggesting is that the poorer people pay more and the richer people have found a way around taxes somehow?

Speaker 1 That's a big part.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And they're really not happy about that, right? Right.

Speaker 1 But the nobility get a big exemption from taxes in this period, right?

Speaker 1 One of the conflicts that's going to like increasingly be a problem up to the revolution is the bourgeoisie being like, well, why are we paying taxes and these people are exempt, right?

Speaker 1 Well, we're not thrilled about that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 to you and I, coming out of the English English tradition, parliament means like essentially a governing body, sort of like a Congress is, right?

Speaker 1 That's not really what a parliament is in France. Parliaments in France are courts,

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And this is kind of one of the ways in which the French state has started to modernize in this period, right? It's not just this duke controls this area and he takes taxes.

Speaker 1 We've got this professional legal system.

Speaker 1 right that 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?

Speaker 1 When the king wants to do stuff directly.

Speaker 1 Anyway, this causes issues because it makes the fact that the king wants these new taxes on the common people and the bourgeoisie, and the parliament has to approve them, right?

Speaker 1 You've got these parliaments and 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.

Speaker 1 They don't want to because the peasantry riots over new taxes. I was going to say not dying.
Right.

Speaker 1 And the parliament needing to approve them.

Speaker 1 It's kind of this 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.

Speaker 1 The people with the signature are probably the one.

Speaker 1 Why are the kings so insulated? Is well, is it just because they can deploy the army against the peasantry? They can deploy the army.

Speaker 1 And this is a thing that increasingly happens in this period where there's this desire to

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And they also get, they don't get taxed on the nobility. No, they do.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And kind of the issue here is the nobility are not friendly always with the crown, right? Like the nobility are both the people who govern with you, right?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So that's part of why you would want a system like this as the king, because it protects you to a degree, right? Right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Cardinal Mazarin and Anne Raposte by threatening to change the rules about how judgeships work and like make it so that you don't own your seat today.

Speaker 1 Again, in this period, being a judge is like being a subway franchise owner, right? In that it's your property and you pass it on to your kids. Right.

Speaker 1 And the rules governing this are part of something called the Paulette Tax, which came up for renewal in 1648. It's a little bit like,

Speaker 1 you could consider it a little bit like a union contract coming up. And so Mazarin and Anne are like, well, we don't have to let this work the same way.
We can take these privileges away from you.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And their anxiety to force through new tax edicts, Anne of Austria and Mazarin drove the judges of Parliament too far.

Speaker 1 On 15th January 1648, they brought the nine-year-old king to a formal session of the court called the L'It des Justice to force the judges to register an unpopular tax measure.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 On the 26th of June, acting without the Regent's support, the Parliament summoned those judges to meet in a body called the Chambre de Saint-Louis. This date marked the beginning of the Fronde.

Speaker 1 Street demonstrations, organized by Retz, showed that the judges had strong popular support. The Frondeurs focused their anger especially on Mazarin.

Speaker 1 They denounced him as a foreigner who had no respect for the laws and institutions of France, and as an intriguer who was using his influence over Anne to enrich himself and ruin the country.

Speaker 1 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, is one of them.

Speaker 1 Get his ass.

Speaker 1 He's a juggler. Bodied.

Speaker 1 Bodied as a juggler. I feel like if this was 2025, they would have been like, podcaster, where's bathrobe? Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 Cardinal Nazarin, I mean, first off, as a low Italian, I hate this kind of racism. As a judge.
As a judge, who

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 loyal to in jail.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Foreign famous rapper.
It would be really bad if we had a foreign guy doing something to our government as well.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Can you imagine that? That would never happen.
Just

Speaker 1 it is funny bringing up Musk too that he keeps bringing his like little kid into these like massive like these moments that are like going to be major political moments like sticking his child in there brings his child admin.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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 Cardinal 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 13.

Speaker 1 Of course. That's when you become a man.
Of course. That's when you're a full man and able to govern.
Perfect. So as a nine-year-old, of course not.
That would be silly. Would you possibly know?

Speaker 1 You have four long years

Speaker 1 to go through.

Speaker 1 I think I could have governed France at 13.

Speaker 1 I'm busy.

Speaker 1 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 1 I don't pay attention. It's better than AI.
Fucking Macron. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, guys, you don't get health care this year because I really went on a spending spree in Nottingham. Like,

Speaker 1 there's a lot of unpainted plastic and resin coming to my.

Speaker 1 You're a ton of pyramids, and you're just like, just like, this is why you can't, like, your power is 100 pounds an hour or whatever you're all

Speaker 1 stupid

Speaker 1 yeah but i will be happy painting but i i'll have a lot of work to do um

Speaker 1 no so they bring this nine-year-old king to this this formal session and it causes this as a result of how bad it goes you get this rebellion this is a civil war called the fronde 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

Speaker 1 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 um 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 frond, right?

Speaker 1 They sort of start out this thing, but they never they never get momentum. There's never like much popular backing.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Regular people are never like, one side is much better than the other, and they tend to overall back the crown.

Speaker 1 So the young king, Louis XIV, doesn't get uprooted. by the frond, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He and his mother have to flee the capital, Paris, for a palace in Saint-Germain, nearby.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And a mob swarms the palace to make sure that the king is still there, right? That like he's not, he hasn't left again.

Speaker 1 And they demand proof. And so they break into his bedchambers.

Speaker 1 And like, as they're like busting down the door, basically, Queen Anne and like this 10-year-old kid are talking. And he's like, what the fuck do I do?

Speaker 1 And 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 XIV just pretends to be asleep.

Speaker 1 Did it work?

Speaker 1 It does. It does work.
Again, these guys are not. This isn't like it'll be in 1789.
They're not busting into the palace because they want to kill the king.

Speaker 1 They're busting into the palace because they want to make sure he's still there. And like when he's asleep, and he's like, he's 12.
Like these people, number one, they're not like anti-monarchy.

Speaker 1 And number two, they see like a sleeping 12-year-old and they're like,

Speaker 1 we should probably go.

Speaker 1 Maybe this got out of hand. Yeah, when did he fall asleep? Is he going to be up soon?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
maybe we don't want to like fuck with this little kid who's asleep.

Speaker 1 So the fronde, this is obviously, this is traumatizing, right? Having a mob basically force their way into your bedchambers at age 12.

Speaker 1 This fucks Louis XIV up and is going to massively impact the decisions he makes as an adult and regent.

Speaker 1 But the Fronde ends with him still in power.

Speaker 1 That said, again, he's like traumatized by this, and he comes away from the whole experience with a couple of conclusions.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So he's like, as an adult, he's going to be like, I want a new seat of power, right?

Speaker 1 That's where we're going to get Versailles from. So, cut forward by about a decade or so, Louis XIV is 24 years old.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He is

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This would be the last time, this kind of period of Louis XIV's reign will be the last time for a century or so in which France is actually in the black black, as in like in a good economic condition.

Speaker 1 But right now, Louis is rolling in it.

Speaker 1 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, lock all of the nobility away from the rest of France to keep an eye on them.

Speaker 1 Right? That's where Versailles comes out of.

Speaker 1 So, speaking of a bunch of out-of-touch rich people, let's throw throw to sponsors.

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Speaker 3 This is Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

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Speaker 1 High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 1 Now, my question is, in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you going to do better than me? Say it now.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we're back.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 as like a contributing factor to the revolution.

Speaker 1 I just want to establish something. Yeah.
All the nobility was made to move in.

Speaker 1 I mean, not 100% of them, but that's the idea, right?

Speaker 1 A significant

Speaker 1 amount of them do, and the ones that don't literally live there, like get second houses nearby. Like you have to,

Speaker 1 we'll talk about this more because this is a thing that develops.

Speaker 1 But like, yes, that is, 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?

Speaker 1 Is he's building this palace specifically to force them to hang out with him, right? Right.

Speaker 1 And when I'd read casual 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Louis XIV is actually kind of creating one of the first modern central governments when he establishes the palace at Versailles, right?

Speaker 1 This is actually a modernizing thing in some ways. Rulers had always owned palaces, and those palaces were both homes and fortresses, right?

Speaker 1 So you could have a place to wait out an inconvenient 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.

Speaker 1 Versailles has more in common with Washington, D.C. than, for example, any of like the palaces in

Speaker 1 England, right? Any of like the palaces of the House of Windsor, right? Buckingham or whatever. Versailles is less like that.

Speaker 1 It is more like DC, as in DC was a city that was created from the ground up to be a center of government, right? Right. That's what Versailles is.

Speaker 1 And, you know, in creating Versailles, Louis XIV, he doesn't just want a home, he wants a sprawling complex where the nobility of France will live and

Speaker 1 hang out and basically always be around him. And 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They build one, but there's not a town there. There's just an unpaved road into Paris and a hunting lodge that Louis XIV's father had used while, you know, hunting and stuff.
Right.

Speaker 1 So Louis had grown up fond of the area, which is about 20 miles from Paris because of his dad's hunting lodge.

Speaker 1 And what became the palace started with they put some gardens in next to the hunting lodge.

Speaker 1 And it's kind of a place when he's a young man, like 18 or 19, Louis will go there with his friends and they'll like camp out there and have parties, you know?

Speaker 1 And so this is kind of like the start.

Speaker 1 That's why he gets the idea that like, this is where I want to build my palace is because like this is he and his friends' little burning man spot, you know, effectively.

Speaker 1 So in March of 1661, Cardinal Mazarin dies. And Louis XIV,

Speaker 1 this is kind kind of what makes him independent as a ruler for the first time, at least totally.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 king, a guy named Nicolas Fouquet.

Speaker 1 Fouquet is the Minister of Finance, and he's built this massive, sprawling, elaborate palace, Vaux de Vicombe, which is like the best, probably the nicest palace in France at the time.

Speaker 1 The architecture impresses Louis. He's He's like, wow, this place is really amazing.
But he's also kind of pissed at Fouquet because Fouquet is trying, is like, okay, Mazarin's out.

Speaker 1 This guy is now the dude to impress. I am going to

Speaker 1 go all out to basically try to bribe him so that he will make me his top advisor and I can basically run things.

Speaker 1 And he tries to do this by like handing out diamond tiaras and horses as party favors to his guests. Like he is, he is just like,

Speaker 1 yeah, horse, really nice horses, you know, not, not your, not shit horses, good ones. Really shit ass horses.
No, the good stuff. Is that just he promises it? He's as him on

Speaker 1 him. Like, no, no, he's got tons of horses on him.
Yeah. Just like

Speaker 1 wonderful. Society used to be so much stranger.
Horses are a big, like the king at any given point is going to own like 2,500 horses. Okay.
Virtually. Like that just, that's just the way it is.

Speaker 1 If you're rich,

Speaker 1 um, that's like the equivalent of having three nice cars, right?

Speaker 1 But so this guy, Fouquet, he's showing off this massive palace that impresses even the young king. And he's handing out diamond tiaras and horses.

Speaker 1 And it's, you know, this is meant as kind of a bribe to get Louis to be like, oh, this guy really knows what's up.

Speaker 1 But it just pisses off Louis, right? And it pisses off Louis because he's like, you're the minister of finance.

Speaker 1 How much of this money you're spending is really my money, right?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 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 1 Uh, and so he ends the night by arresting Fouquet and locking him up in a fortress.

Speaker 1 Oh, that rocks. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
In her book, The Sun King, Nancy Mitford writes that as a result of this, quote, we seldom hear of other people giving parties for the king.

Speaker 1 How long did he stay in prison for? Was it just I think he's in there for a long years and years and years. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 I don't know when that guy specifically gets because he might have spent the king's money. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So willy-nilly with the horse is if

Speaker 1 Louis XIV doesn't like you, he will lock you in a fortress for a decade or so. Maybe longer.
That's his thing. He loves putting people in fortresses.

Speaker 1 So the king raided Fouquet's home, taking silver ornaments, tapestries, a library, and more than a thousand orange trees.

Speaker 1 This is going to be a signature of Louis XIV's reign is he fucking loves orange trees. And it starts here.

Speaker 1 Now, orange trees, it's not easy to keep them healthy in the north of France.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Are just made out of silver.

Speaker 2 They're drainage holes.

Speaker 1 What are we talking about here? I don't know, but there were when

Speaker 1 Nancy Mitford wrote her book in the 60s, some of Louis XIV's orange trees were still alive. Incredible.

Speaker 1 He's pretty good at keeping these things going, you know? Maybe we all need silver pawns. Maybe we, maybe we should grow everything in silver.
We don't know. We don't know.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 have your, if you've got a baby, have them plated 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.

Speaker 1 So he orders the construction of a palace at Versailles, Louis XIV,

Speaker 1 built after this, because he's like,

Speaker 1 look, this Fouquet guy, fuck him, but this palace of his is pretty nice. I think I could do better.

Speaker 1 So he hires the guys who had made Louis's palace or Fouquet's palace, and he has them start building a palace at Versailles, with the centerpiece being his dad's old hunting lodge, right?

Speaker 1 Now, the resulting complex, which is going to take years to build, is massive.

Speaker 1 Among other things, there are 350 apartments, right? Which is 350 individual living areas for different nobles

Speaker 1 to reside in.

Speaker 1 He just invented dorms. He did.
He does 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 a week.

Speaker 1 And a WeWork. Yes.
Yes. Yeah.
It's all of those things at once. Nice.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 There's also banquet halls. There's dance halls.
There's meeting rooms.

Speaker 1 There's even an entire 240-foot room lined entirely in mirrors.

Speaker 1 And mirrors are hard to make at this point, right?

Speaker 1 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 1 So is there a logic behind the mirror room, or is it just so everyone could see impress everybody? Yeah, so everybody can see this is how rich the king is. Um,

Speaker 1 and themselves at every corner, like and them, and they can, yeah, see themselves at every corner.

Speaker 1 Frances Loring Payne describes in her book, The Story of Versailles: 17 lofty windows are matched by as many Venetian-framed mirrors.

Speaker 1 Between each window and mirror are pilasters designed by Cosivu, Tubi, and Caffary, reigning masters of their time. Walls are of marble embellished with bronze-gilt trophies.
Large

Speaker 1 niches contain statues in the antique style.

Speaker 1 So, pretty fancy.

Speaker 1 And this is, in fact, a palace unlike any the world had seen before.

Speaker 1 Louis XIV, 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.

Speaker 1 Once he has this idea, he's 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

Speaker 1 and be spied on.

Speaker 1 In an article for BBC History magazine, Johnny Wilkes writes, Building went on from dawn to dusk with up to 36,000 people working in the gardens in dire and dangerous conditions.

Speaker 1 Injuries became a daily occurrence, and so many died that bodies would be quietly removed at night in bulk.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Seems fair. Seems cool.
Yeah. Of course.
How dare she?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fucking rude. She didn't understand that this was about France's prestige.
Not too many people. Imprisoned with the fucking horse Tiara guy.
Yeah. Rude asshole.

Speaker 1 Look, people are going to get crushed to death. Obviously.
It happens. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Get over it. You can't have a frat house pentagon without breaking a few hundred laborers.
God.

Speaker 1 Jesus, give me a break.

Speaker 1 People are unreasonable, you know?

Speaker 1 So by May 6th, 1662, the whole palace is still very much under construction and would remain that way for years.

Speaker 1 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 years-long process.

Speaker 1 At first, Louis's like spending a day every week there, in part 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?

Speaker 1 And basically for Louis, the war is kind of a gig work thing, right? Like he's got his marshals who handle the full-time thing.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Like, that's fine. Yeah.
Don't want to waste your time on the boring parts of war.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We got like a year of this siege to get through. Go party, you know, we'll handle that.
At the end, when we're knocking down the fuckers, bring me, bring me in when something cool is going on, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the process of moving everybody in takes years because, and this is such a, this is like the

Speaker 1 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 Louis's whole family and his coterie of mistresses have to travel back with him.

Speaker 1 It's like this massive pain in the ass, and there's not rooms for most of them. So, like, Louis's got even Louis' not living in comfort for most of this period.

Speaker 1 His rooms aren't really finished, but everyone else is like camping basically under like in this childlike shit. In this giant, beautiful palace that should be luxurious.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that should, but is just unfinished and filled with dead people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That'll happen. Yeah, that'll happen.
Real estate is challenging. Yeah.
Yeah. Real estate is a real, real complicated endeavor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, the fact that this is a huge pain in the ass and that it kind of, even before Versailles finished, it is dominating the lives of a huge chunk of of the nobility because they have to constantly be aware of where Louis is, when he's traveling back.

Speaker 1 They have to get themselves back. They're like missing sleep because they're not able to live.

Speaker 1 It like completely disrupts all of their lives. And that's that's part of the plan.
Like Louis XIV is doing this intentionally.

Speaker 1 And I want to read a quote from Mitford's book:

Speaker 1 The king had already begun to enslave his nobility by playing on the French love of fashion. In 1654,

Speaker 1 he gave a feat, which lasted from 7 to 13 May.

Speaker 1 This really caused more pain than pleasure, for the guests had nowhere to sleep and were obliged to dos down as best they could in local cottages and stables.

Speaker 1 So again, he's like

Speaker 1 the fact that this is a pain in the ass and the fact that he's increasingly forcing everyone, you're not just

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So you're, you're spending a lot of your free time making sure you've got outfits and like spending a lot of your money making sure you've got outfit. It's a party.

Speaker 1 So like a six day long jolly. Yeah, I mean, some of them are shorter than that, but like it's a, it's in this party.
Yeah. And it's, it's a mandatory party that you have to have an outfit for.

Speaker 1 That outfit is going to cost you 30 years salary for a laboring person, right?

Speaker 1 And so you have to be constantly 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 any time thinking about rebelling, right?

Speaker 1 You're not, you have no extra attention to spend on building a base of power. Of course, you're going to and from parties and working out how you're dressed yes, exactly.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 And that's it because Louis XIV, 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.

Speaker 1 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 2 I was going to say, the amount of like tea being spilled at these events

Speaker 1 had to be

Speaker 1 new gossip being created in real time. And exactly.

Speaker 1 That's going to be a major factor in what happens next, right? And we'll be be talking about like what, how this gossip eventually trickles out. And it kind of leads to the creation.

Speaker 1 Paris basically has Twitter in this period. This is going to say, I was going to say this is like Parisian Twitter.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's kind of where things are building towards, right? Very good.

Speaker 1 And it's also, you know, people are gambling here constantly.

Speaker 1 So fortunes are being won and lost.

Speaker 1 You know, it's just

Speaker 1 CES, but French. Like, you've got fucking people gambling away.
Everything,

Speaker 1 everyone's tired. Everyone's exhausted and deranged, and people are going broke and need loans from the king, which makes them more dependent on him.
Nice.

Speaker 1 And all of this was intentional. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 This is part of the plan. It's completely insane.
I love it. Louis XIV, but he's very intelligent in that.

Speaker 1 He never faces another threat to his rule. Right.

Speaker 1 Like, that does not happen. Like,

Speaker 1 he locks the nobility down. They're too busy partying.
They can't, yeah, they're too busy going to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 He has, he has, he is, what Versailles is, he builds a totalitarian dictatorship just for the ruling class where they are forced to party and gamble their whole lives. The Andrew WK system.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 much has been written about the intricate and stifling rules of etiquette that had to be practiced at Versailles.

Speaker 1 They had their origins in, you know, every medieval house, every royal house in all of Europe has these complicated etiquette rules that they have to abide by.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Because what you, 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?

Speaker 1 But if that guy leaves, then the next person is allowed to hand the king his shirt.

Speaker 1 you have to remember who who is allowed to hand the shirt yes you know the punishment for this it's not a punishment thing so much as it it's a violation of etiquette and thus it is offensive to everybody and it causes like gossip and it makes like the the instead of protecting their 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

Speaker 1 I love it. It's so stupid.
I love it. Yes.

Speaker 1 So, again, every royal house, you know, all of the nobility and all of Europe have some version of this, but it gets like 10 times as intense in Versailles because everyone is now living under one very large roof, right?

Speaker 1 And this means that, for one thing, nobles no longer have the same kind of lives of their own outside of court.

Speaker 1 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, etc.

Speaker 1 And it also means the nobility traditionally, in like a feudal society, if you're the king and your nobles are your warriors, right?

Speaker 1 That's like the core of the elite of your army, in part because they have the time to train. The nobility are no longer training to fight, right?

Speaker 1 They are training and spending their whole youths and childhoods learning how to be the most effective member of what is effectively a bickering high school clique, right?

Speaker 1 Like, the king is years long as well, so it marinates. Yes.
Your whole life is a high school, and the king is the coolest kid in the school.

Speaker 1 So everyone is constantly trying to figure out how to make him like them, right?

Speaker 1 Instead of focusing on being good at war, you know, which is a danger to you as the king. When you say they're warriors, what does that mean, though, for the nobility?

Speaker 1 Well, like, traditionally in Europe, the lead armies what knights are, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 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 they're now all bickering about who had to

Speaker 1 the shirt. Yes.

Speaker 1 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 minutiae of this, like, basically big high school, right?

Speaker 1 I love it. So, for the next decade, after 1662, construction continues at a relentless pace.
And as more gets built, more and more nobles live full-time at Versailles.

Speaker 1 It becomes the king's primary residence when he's not out engaging in his favorite hobby, going to war with the Dutch.

Speaker 1 The Sun King felt that Denmark was natural French territory, and he very nearly managed to make this a reality.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You know, I would like to own the Netherlands one day. So I can understand

Speaker 1 why this is big for Louis XIV.

Speaker 1 Back home, you know,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the problem with forests, Ed? You can plant a forest. Anybody can plant a forest if you got enough seeds.
But trees take so fucking long to grow.

Speaker 1 I was just going to say, you got a bloody wait for the thing. Huge pain in the ass, you know?

Speaker 1 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 in a hallway.
Just take a tree from somewhere else.

Speaker 1 Just take it from somewhere else.

Speaker 1 And he plants them.

Speaker 1 Mitford writes,

Speaker 1 those which died, about half were immediately replaced. So basically, they're just planting,

Speaker 1 digging up adult trees, planting them, waiting for ones to die, and then replanting them until they have a living forest.

Speaker 1 That's in grabbing new trees to replace the trees that you've already grabbed. Wonderful.

Speaker 1 You've already murdered? Yes.

Speaker 1 Speaking of killing trees.

Speaker 1 You know who hates trees?

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Speaker 3 This is Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

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Speaker 1 High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a bold, joyful, unfiltered culture podcast coming at you every Friday.

Speaker 1 Now, my question is: in this game of mafia that we're going to play, are you going to do better than me? Say it now.

Speaker 1 Duh. Period.
I'm going to eat. You're going to do better than me.
I'm going to eat. Yes.
I literally will. Ryan will.

Speaker 1 I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out, and then one of us gets the other out because we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time and you were actually an innocent.

Speaker 1 Y'all won't even know that I'm a trainer.

Speaker 1 This is going to be delicious.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you for coming to our show.

Speaker 1 And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Speaker 1 Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 We're back. We're so back.
We've never been more back.

Speaker 1 And we're talking about the palace at Versailles, which has just murdered thousands of trees so that the king can have a forest.

Speaker 1 So obviously, for years, the palace is dreadfully uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Courtiers slept wherever they could before the various apartments were finished, and the sun king was also usually like kind of roughing it too.

Speaker 1 Behind his back, nobles called the palace a mistress without merit, as in like

Speaker 1 this is like the king's lady, but like she sucks, you know?

Speaker 1 None would dare say that to Louis's fate to Louis' face, though. And the dream of the palace sustained him until the first phase of construction was finished in like the 1670s.

Speaker 1 This gave way almost immediately to an expansion and remodeling. But the palace was done enough that it starts attracting foreign visitors with stories of its grandeur.

Speaker 1 One like anecdote you'll hear at the time is that

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Like it is, in short order, the most famous capital building in Europe. And it actually like every palace after this point is influenced influenced by Versailles.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 It is an outrageous expense. Wonderful.

Speaker 1 Like it is almost an incomprehensible expense.

Speaker 1 And this enormous expense necessitated economic changes, which were brought about in part by the further centralization and modernization of the French state.

Speaker 1 Part of, obviously, Versailles in and of itself is

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Louis' economic minister was a guy named Colbert, who had taught the Sun King math when he was a child. And Colbert hated Versailles.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 As Mitford writes, quote, the prestige of Louis XIV and the fame of Versailles mounted year by year.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He erected a rigid customs barrier. Nothing was allowed to be imported that could be made in France.

Speaker 1 Factories were set up to supply the linen, lace, silk, glass, carpets, jewelry, inlaid furniture, and other articles of luxury that used to come from foreign lands.

Speaker 1 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 1 So the economy literally centralized around a house. Yes, yes, and it becomes a massive part of the French economy.

Speaker 1 Both in that, like,

Speaker 1 like, this is where

Speaker 1 we use this as a showcase for the different things like french artisans can make and because all of the crown heads 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 as having the best artisans in europe right is versailles and so luxury goods become an increasingly massive part of the French economy.

Speaker 1 And Versailles is where they're shown off. And so it is like a CES for like rich people furnishings, you know, like that is a big factor in like what Versailles becomes and its role in the economy.

Speaker 1 Now, it also is central to the economy because of the sheer, again, 36,000 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.

Speaker 1 And Colbert saw the sheer number of workmen the project consumed as more than the state could bear, given its current birth rate, right?

Speaker 1 Like he comes, the Ministry of the Economy comes to the conclusion that we are not breeding enough men to continue building Versailles.

Speaker 1 And so he institutes a national breeding program to ensure sufficient labor.

Speaker 1 For a house.

Speaker 1 For the king's big fancy party house.

Speaker 1 This is so awful, but also so cool.

Speaker 1 It's just like half the economy. Yeah.
Like all of the, we have an entire thing of like housing furnishings. Yeah.
Like multiple industries. It's nuts and obviously like evil.

Speaker 1 It is also like Louis XIV is kind of the most king that a king has ever been.

Speaker 1 This really is kinging it about as hard as one. Yeah.
If you're going to be a king, spend half of the economy,

Speaker 1 create multiple industries, make everything built in one country to make your house cool. To make your house cool.

Speaker 1 And then create a bunch of bizarre social rules inside it so that everyone's freaked out. Just like.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, it's so, it's so like there are between, once Fersai gets up and running, permanently between like 3,000 people is kind of like the normal level of inhabitants and up to 10,000 at times, right?

Speaker 1 When like the party season's at full swing. So we're people in there.
Yes. Yes.
It's it is massive.

Speaker 1 Now, Colbert institutes this breeding program. He exempts.
families with more than 10 kids from taxes.

Speaker 1 He also raises the age. That's nice.

Speaker 1 He also raises the age at which men and women are allowed to join the Catholic Church as priests and nuns because he's worried that, like, because they're not breeding, obviously. Right.

Speaker 1 And he forbids working men from immigrating, from leaving the country. Jesus Christ.
Yes. So that's the thing.

Speaker 1 Come to my house.

Speaker 1 Build my house. Everyone has to come to my house.
I need an 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.

Speaker 1 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 teach you math

Speaker 1 so that you could build a house like this.

Speaker 1 Now, it is hard for me to read stuff like this and not think about like Elon Musk and Palmer Lucky's obsession with birth rates, right? And they frame it as like a fairness thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, if you're not having 2.1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like they just, and they'll never have Louis the Fourth. And I think that that is the thing with Elon Musk and all of these other damn fellows.
They don't have the killer instinct of like an

Speaker 1 old school French atrocity merchant. Yes, well, because they didn't, he literally fought and like warred his way.
Like his whole childhood is like wars and conniving, right? Like Louis IV

Speaker 1 is, yeah.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 It's just Musk is like trying to like couch everything. Like, oh, I'm doing this for the betterment of humanity.
Louis's just like, we need more fucking children to build my party house. Go, go, go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Go, go, go.

Speaker 1 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 So the years in which Versailles is constructed and debuted to the world are good ones for the French economy, which doubles in revenue between 1661 and 1671. Again, Colbert is good at this.

Speaker 1 This does work.

Speaker 1 However, the wealth coming as a result of Versailles is largely due to an explosion, again, in like luxury goods and work for skilled craftsmen. And so while there's on paper,

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 suffer tremendously while this economic miracle is going on. Again, this is not similar to anything that's happened recently, you know?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 It is kind of, you can see it as similar to that, where, well, yeah, like the people who are making shit for Versailles are doing well, but like.

Speaker 1 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 does Louis.

Speaker 1 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 projects.

Speaker 1 It's not built fully yet, or are they just building more of it?

Speaker 1 They're constantly building more of it and renovating it.

Speaker 1 And the only projects that are allowed to compete with Versailles for manpower are the military and the navy.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Worst of all, he increased the number of galleys in the French navy from six to forty, each containing 200 unhappy souls.

Speaker 1 Since black people were useless for manning them, they had no stamina and died at once.

Speaker 1 He employed, this was a book written a lot longer ago, he employed French criminals and Turks caught in the Barbary Wars.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Colbert thought that too many of his galley slaves died. The intendant of the galleys swore they were well fed, but said they died of grief and boredom.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And, you know, know, you can buy your way out, but you got to find us another Turk, you know?

Speaker 1 Just like there's like a side Turk economy, and all of this, again, is to pretty much make sure a big house is built. Yes.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 You need a strong Navy and military, so no one can stop you from having this huge house. Of course.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a nightmare.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That said, the plan works. The nobles don't trouble him or any other French king in his line with thoughts of revolution again.

Speaker 1 Beyond that, Versailles becomes the envy of every other king and emperor. It was, in one writer's words, the cultural heartbeat of Europe.

Speaker 1 When people on the continent referred to the king, like people in other European states just refer generally to the king, it's often understood that they're talking about Louis XIV because he is so powerful.

Speaker 1 In his centralization of power, he becomes one of the most absolute monarchs the world has ever seen.

Speaker 1 One illustrative anecdote is a rhyme the Sun King himself composed: Letat sest nois, the state, that's me.

Speaker 1 Wow, lyrical genius, lyrical genius, Louis XIV.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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...

Speaker 1 My man hates the toilet.

Speaker 1 If you are traveling with this guy or hanging out with him and you need to stop to pee, if you like ask to be excused to go to the bathroom, you're instantly exiled from the cool kids crowd.

Speaker 1 He's just like trying to give everybody a UTI.

Speaker 1 He loves UTIs.

Speaker 1 The man can't get enough UTIs.

Speaker 1 What if he needs to piss?

Speaker 1 Oh, he just does whatever he wants. He's the king.
Oh, he's pissing

Speaker 1 willy-nilly. He's the king.
He can do anything.

Speaker 2 What a strange little man.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 his closest friends find themselves avoiding water or getting really good at holding it, or they have to sneak away to relieve themselves, right?

Speaker 1 I'm just going outside to look around. I just gotta have a sneak or something, man.
I gotta go fuck my mistress.

Speaker 1 Now, servants, some nobles have their own apartments with chamber pots, right?

Speaker 1 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 someone like you got to give me a second.

Speaker 1 I got a piece somewhere, right?

Speaker 1 So strange.

Speaker 1 Because of this, there are rumors which will really get crazy

Speaker 1 among later kings. And these will spread heavily among like people in Paris.

Speaker 1 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 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 into Paris. They'll be sold at

Speaker 1 like property owned by nobles who 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 um 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?

Speaker 1 Like everyone's just pissing and shitting everywhere, right? That is a rumor that's widely believed in Paris. This is an exaggeration.

Speaker 1 Mitford says it's just outright untrue, you know, because of how many bathrooms there are in Versailles. This just wouldn't happen.

Speaker 1 I don't think Mitford's got it right either, because here's the thing.

Speaker 1 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 time.

Speaker 1 And also they're gossiping. Yeah.
So they're like, did you hear Sally went to the toilet?

Speaker 1 I saw Jeremy pissing. Now, my guy, so one of the things that is a factor in Versailles, every room, basically, every major room has orange trees in it.

Speaker 1 Like, and other plants, people are definitely pissing in those pots. Like, you're not going to tell me people.
That's why they're still alive. Yeah, they're full of French.

Speaker 1 They're just going to piss.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Obviously, Obviously, the degree to which they talk about this being a thing in Paris is a massive exaggeration, but it definitely happens, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Especially if you have to surreptitiously piss. Yeah, you've got to hide that you're just like turning around.
I'm adjusting lip hints. Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And between that, the palace is constantly filled with smoke because of all of the candles and fireplaces so the smell of this place would have been fascinating at times right let's put it that way smell crazy in there it smelled crazy not necessarily bad always but crazy yeah

Speaker 1 like unfathomable to our modern noses um

Speaker 1 so louis xevinth wanted the whole world of versailles to 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?

Speaker 1 And the king is a notoriously horny guy. He is horny by the standards of French kings, right? Quite cool.
And that's hard.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 French kings almost invented modern sex.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he is the fuckingest of the kings of France. Nice.

Speaker 1 One of his first mistresses was

Speaker 1 Louis de la Valier,

Speaker 1 Louis de la Valerie, right? Who eventually reached a sort of, and like, there's a huge conflict between her and his wife, the queen, um, and one of his other mistresses.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So talking about the boundaries and yeah, yeah, like they act that actually happens here, and like they're actually kind of chill for a while about it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Progressive, modern, the first poly group. Yeah.
I mean, it is adultery is so normalized in the Sun King's palace that it is kind of like that, right?

Speaker 1 Like the king's mistress is a specific named position at court and one that held quite a bit of influence, right?

Speaker 1 Wow. This government is insane.
You've got the piss house of the economy and the piss house. The lady who's just fucking the king.
The mistress is like a title. You have a business card.

Speaker 1 The mistress is a title.

Speaker 1 And people like gossip, like the way that we're gossiping about, like, who's going to lead the FBI or whatever, people are gossiping about, like, yeah, I think the king might fuck this lady next.

Speaker 1 And, you know, who knows what that'll change.

Speaker 1 And it's, it's one of those things where he has his official mistress.

Speaker 1 That is not to say that he limits himself to one mistress, as Johnny Wilkes writes, quote, it's said that one day he grew so impatient waiting for a lover to undress that he turned his attention to one of the maids.

Speaker 1 Because again, he's the king, you know? like

Speaker 1 he's just fucking whoever he wants. Um, he needs to fuck then, and he needs to fuck then, yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, because the king has the power to he, 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.

Speaker 1 He hands out these gifts, right?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 I got fucked up with Louis and fucking text people. Yeah, I got fucked up with Louis and now I get 2% of all of the French, the fish sold in Normandy, right?

Speaker 1 Like that's just what I, that's what I have forever now.

Speaker 1 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 in just like being a dude that he's friends with.

Speaker 1 And so a whole, 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.

Speaker 1 This is a whole industry in France is like witchcraft to impress the king. Fuck yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's so great.
Nancy Mitford writes about one such purveyor of magics, Madame Voisine.

Speaker 1 And Madame Boisine was approached by a lady at court, vying with Luis de la Valerie for the Sun King's attention, right?

Speaker 1 So, you know, Valerie is his mistress, and this new lady wants to become the next mistress. Her name is Madame de Montespan.

Speaker 1 And she wants to take over for Valerie. And, you know, she thinks that magic's the best way to do that.
So she

Speaker 1 talks to this Madame Boisine lady, and I'm going to quote from the book, The Sun King, here.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 When unwanted babies were on the way, she was very understanding. This means she provides a bore de faciance, right? If wishes concerned an inheritance, there were certain powders.

Speaker 1 For unrequited love, various forms of magic. No doubt she began advising Madame de Montespan by talking over the situation.
And who, longing to be loved, can have enough of such talks and such advice.

Speaker 1 But nothing happened. The king remained indifferent, right? So she tries some of these like magics and spells, and the king doesn't want to fuck her yet.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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 have enough of the devil.
Of course, right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The nobility believes that no magic spell can be truly efficacious unless Satan is involved.
And this leads to a separate cottage industry, one where you've got priests who want extra money.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 these Catholic priests will conduct underground satanic rites in order to like do magic for these people at Versailles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is a terrible house. This house has its underground black magic economy.

Speaker 1 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 currying for favor, right?

Speaker 1 Now, again, Nancy Mitford is from a different generation, and she writes about all this magic more seriously, as if like

Speaker 1 as if these priests and these witches believe

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 magic spells or whatever.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Like I think it really is much more cynical. I'm sure there's some people who really believe that they're talking about it.
Suggested that these people didn't have a connection to the devil?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yes, yes. It's a bit unreasonable.
But I, you they know the nobility believes that. That's my interpretation.
And these people are sleep deprived. They stink.

Speaker 1 They've been living in the party house for like years. So they're just like that.
Living in the party house. And they live in their minds.

Speaker 1 Well, they're already in an altered reality because they're living in this world where you can't piss or share. Yes.

Speaker 1 The wrong person can't hand a share. Of course, they're open to magic.
The laws of Madden don't exist.

Speaker 1 You've gotten it exactly right, which is that Versailles is a cult.

Speaker 1 And once you get people into a cult, you have altered their brain chemistry in a way that makes them much more vulnerable to anyone selling this kind of bullshit. Right.

Speaker 1 And that's why this magic trade really perks up.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to read another quote from the Sun King. Madame Voisin knew a priest who was willing to help.
He read the gospel over Madame de Montespan's head.

Speaker 1 There was some nonsense with pigeons' hearts under a consecrated chalice, and she prayed, Please let the king love me.

Speaker 1 Let Monsignor Le Dauphine, that's the the king's son and heir, be my friend, and may this love and this friendship last. Please make the queen sterile.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The king seemed to become aware of her for the first time. He went off to besiege Lillae in June of 1667, taking her in the capacity of lady in waiting to the queen.
Louise de Valerie was not invited.

Speaker 1 In despair, she followed the royal party and caught up with it as the camp was being pitched.

Speaker 1 When she came face to face with the king, he put on a terrifying manner and said, Madame, I don't like having my hand forced. She had to go away, deeply humiliated.

Speaker 1 During this campaign, Madame de Montespan became his mistress. Her sacrilegious prayer seemed well on the way to being answered.
The king loved her now.

Speaker 1 So it worked. You know? Yeah.
It's good. This whole system works.

Speaker 1 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 going to be talking about that on Thursday.

Speaker 1 Ed, you want to plug anything after this super long episode? Go to betteroffline.com, download the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, go back, download every single episode, or else

Speaker 1 or else. All right, everyone.

Speaker 1 We love you.

Speaker 1 Goodbye.

Speaker 1 Some of us love you.

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