The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Law 47: In Victory Learn When To Stop
The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril.
In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for,
and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat.
Do not allow success to go to your head.
There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning.
Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.
No single person in history has occupied a more delicate and precarious position than
the king’s mistress.
She had no real or legitimate power base to fall back on in times of trouble; she was
surrounded by packs of envious courtiers eagerly anticipating her fall from grace; and finally,
since the source of her power was usually her physical beauty, for most royal mistresses
that fall was inevitable and unpleasant.
When Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was a middle-class child of nine, she had been told by a fortune-teller
that she would someday be the king’s favorite.
This seemed an absurd dream, since the royal mistress almost always came from the aristocracy.
Jeanne nevertheless believed herself destined to seduce the king, and doing so became her
obsession.
She applied herself to the talents the king’s favorite had to have—music, dancing, acting,
horseback riding—and she excelled in every one of them.
Word quickly spread of her beauty, talent, charm, and intelligence.
Jeanne Poisson became close friends with Voltaire, Montesquieu, and other great minds of the
time, but she never lost sight of the goal she had set herself for as a girl: to capture
the heart of the king.
In 1744 Louis XV’s current mistress, the Duchesse de Chateauroux, died.
Jeanne placed herself everywhere he would be: at masked balls at Versailles, at the
opera, wherever their paths would cross, and wherever she could display her many talents.
The king succumbed to her charms, and in a ceremony at Versailles in September of 1745,
this twenty-four-year-old daughter of a middle-class banking agent was officially inaugurated as
the king’s mistress.
From now on she would be known as Madame de Pompadour.
She organized elaborate hunting parties, masked balls, and whatever else it would take to
keep the king amused and diverted outside the bedroom.
She became a patroness of the arts, and the arbiter of taste and fashion for all of France.
Her enemies at the court only grew in number with each new success, but Madame de Pompadour
thwarted them in a totally novel way for a king’s mistress: with extreme politeness.
In 1751, when Madame de Pompadour was at the height of her power, she experienced her worst
crisis.
She found it increasingly difficult to meet the king’s demands in bed.
This was usually the point at which the mistress would meet her end, struggling to maintain
her position as her beauty faded.
But Madame de Pompadour encouraged the king to set up a brothel on the grounds of Versailles.
There the middle-aged king could have liaisons with the most beautiful young girls in the
realm.
Her reign as mistress had lasted an unprecedented twenty years.
“She was regretted by all,” wrote the Duc de Croy, “for she was kindly and helpful
to everyone who approached her.”
Madame de Pompadour was aware of the temporariness of her power.
She succeeded where all others had failed because she never pressed her good fortune.
Instead of bullying the courtiers from her powerful position as the king’s mistress,
she tried to win their support.
She never revealed the slightest hint of greed or arrogance.
When she could no longer perform her physical duties as mistress, she did not fret at the
thought of someone replacing her in bed.
She simply encouraged the king to take young lovers, knowing that the younger and prettier
they were, the less of a threat they posed, since they could not compare to her in charm
and sophistication and would soon bore the monarch.
Notice how Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, aside from her origins, appeared to be perfect and
still managed not to stir up too much envy... and where there was trouble brewing she dealt
with it with extreme kindness.
Much like the generous act of gifting valuable materials, she would offer her uniquely positive
character with a genuine smile.
As always thanks for watching!