Feudalism was dying. In the age of globe-spanning colonial empires, commercial printing, and
the scientific revolution, the idea of a state held together by a myriad of personal arrangements
between ruler and nobility was beginning to show its age, and those who could not adapt
would be left behind. But history is not a straight road into the future, it is a hydra-like
network of half-worn paths mired in shade and brambles. Take, for instance, Great Britain,
where the rights and privileges of the king were so contentious as to drive the kingdom
into civil war and begin the gradual transfer of power from Sovereign to Parliament. And
then, there was the French method. [A hardstyle remix of We Like to Party blasts over the
dance floor]
[Intro]
Francoise: “Your majesty it’s 3 in the morning”
Louis: “Yes, yes, I’m very busy dear. You remember that gift card to MagellanTV
you bought me for Christmas? They added a new documentary series about the Stuart dynasty.”
Francoise: “You sure you don’t want your minister of war to take a look at that for
you?” Louis: “No, that’s just the problem. The
nobles are all watching too. I must be one step ahead of them in case they get any ideas”
Francoise: “Sounds a bit dry.” Louis: “No, never! They’ve actually done
something quite interesting, they’re tracking the story of a lesser Welsh family and laying
it in parallel, quite novel.” Francoise: “May I watch?”
Louis: “Get your own subscription! Go to Magellantv.com/Jackrackam and watch any of
their 3,000 documentaries, just leave me be! Oh James, you contemptible fool!”
Louis Louis Louis Louis. The zenith, the very face of absolute monarchy in Europe. Where
could he have gotten such a big ego?
Dr: “It’s a boy!” Anne: “This one’s alive?”
Dr: “It’s alive!” Anne: “I will call you Louis, the Gift of
God!”
Anne: “And you see, you can do whatever you like, because God chose you to be the
master of his creations. It’s your right as a king to never hear the word (whispered)
n-o.”
I’m sure it won’t go to his head. Despite what his mother would have him believe, the
king was not very popular. The aristocracy was not very happy to hear about all of this
absolute monarchy business, and the bourgeoisie was not not very happy about all the taxes
they had to pay to cover for the 30 Years War. Things got hairy.
Mazarin: “I can’t hold them back much longer!”
Angry man: “We demand to see the king!” Mazarin: “Your grace, I’m afraid there’s
no choice. The king will have to listen to what they want.”
Angry man 2: “Aww, isn’t he precious.” Angry man 3: “Move over!”
Angry man 2: “Right, sorry. Have a great night”
Anne: “You’re leaving?” Angry man 2: “Yeah it’s getting pretty
late, thanks for letting us see the king!” Angry man 3: “Aw, there he is! It’d be
a shame if we ever came back angrier than we are right now.”
Louis XIV: “Whew aw we going?” Anne: “Anywhere but Paris!”
Salesman: “Guillotines! Get your guillotines here! France just isn’t ready for you my
love”
The royal family ended up fighting two civil wars called the Frondes. I’ll be honest,
there’s a lot I don’t know about the Frondes, I’d love to revisit this time period eventually,
I think it’s really interesting how England and France both fought a civil war contesting
power between the nobility and the monarchy in the same decade and yet one led to regicide
and Cromwell, while the other seemed to be a blip
on the radar.
It was a big deal for Louis though, being chased out of his home as a child, and really
helped to cement his mindset of “Don’t trust the nobility, don’t trust the peasants,
absolute power for me”.
Louis: “Good people! Law and order has been returned to France! [pops champagne]. Now
we’re gonna need some new management around here to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
I’ve just got three little rules - auw! Number one! I expect your loyalty. Number
two - whoo! Don’t step on my groove. That means you, Fouquet, I see you, you think your
parties are better than mine you catty *****? I’ve got so much dirt on you, you can see it from
space. Number three - heehee! Don’t look at the man in the iron mask.”
Colbert: “Who?” Louis: “he’s locked away, deep in the
dungeon, he can’t show his face Colbert. It would spell doom for the House of Bourbon
if you saw his face, Colbert! The things he’s seen, the - the - if you saw, if you knew
who he really was-! Don’t ask about the man in the iron mask, Colbert!”
There’s a popular story that Louis had a twin brother who was the rightful king of
France and so he threw him into the deepest, darkest dungeon in France and locked him inside
of an iron mask so that no one could ever see his face… except the man in the iron
mask was probably a guy who wore a cloth mask a couple of times when he was being exchanged
between prisons. My favorite theory is that the warden put the mask on because he wanted
to make everyone wonder “Who’s that super important prisoner he’s got with him, wow
what a cool warden”
Louis found himself in a position not dissimilar from Ivan the Terrible of Russia, what with
the nobles and the public handing over power for the sake of stability. But where Ivan
went [Ivan grunts, beating his son to death] violent, Louis went in another direction.
Feudalism is what we in the science biz call an unstable equilibrium. See, with feudalism,
there’s really no such thing as a national army. You’re a lord, you have your own army
and your own land. But there are a thousand other lords, and if any of them teamed up
they could kill you pretty easily. So rather than spend your life playing 100-player Risk,
you cozy up to the biggest most powerful lord and ask if he’ll use his army to fight anyone
if they attack you. He says what’s in it for me and you tell him he can use your army
if you’re not using it. If you’re a lord, that’s great! If you’re
a king, that’s pretty good, you get to be king, but you still have the problem that
there are a thousand lords who each have an army. Your army might be bigger than anybody
else’s… but it’s not bigger than everybody else’s. Historically there have been many
ways of resolving this.
In England, the lords developed a class consciousness, killed the king, got into a messy civil war
and then the king came back but they stuck the course and stole the monarchy’s power
so that parliament could be in charge. If you’re Louis XIV, watching all of that happen
across the channel, that’s bad. You could do what the Chinese did and move the lords
around to a new province every so often so that they can’t build up meaningful power
bases in their hometown, but that’s kind of complicated. France isn’t that big, what
if all the lords just.. moved in with you? I’m sure they can get by ruling their lands
by proxy. But you’d need a really big house… oh wait, Versailles!
You can’t talk about Louis XIV without talking about Versailles. If the king has absolute
power, and you want to become powerful, you need the king to like you. If you need the
king to like you, you need to be close to the king. So Louis created lots of opportunities
for his nobles to get close to him. “Greetings, your majesty” “Howdy! I hope you came
ready to party because we’re going all. Night. Long! [cheers from crowd] Hey, Yvette!”
And if you really want to be close to the king, if you want 1 on 1 time alone with him,
then you need to be the guy who gets his slippers in the morning or the guy who wipes his bum
in the loo. Louis created a system where all
of the really old, powerful noble families were competing with each other for ceremonial
titles that gave them the privilege to fetch his slippers, meanwhile he started filling
all of the important jobs with minor nobles or people who weren’t nobles at all, and
who therefore owed their jobs not to their family lineage but to the king. It sounds
like Louis duped a bunch of doofuses into role-playing Mean Girls, but really: If you
were a noble, wouldn’t you want to spend all your time partying in the fanciest palace
ever built? Turns out you can make anybody happy with enough bread and circuses, sometimes
you’ve just gotta upgrade to ballrooms and caviar.
With all this new power, Louis made a bunch of new laws to create some uniformity throughout
the kingdom, and to give himself some ecclesiastical power as well. Louis’s relationship with
the Church was an interesting one. He was very into Catholicism, and yet very not into
the Pope. Any messages to the Pope had to go through him first, and any messages from
the Pope also had to go through him, because he gave himself the power to veto the Pope.
I think more than anything he just enjoyed discriminating against Protestants.
“France is a Catholic nation! If you don’t like it you can get out!”
“Message from the King” “Oh, thank you. Wait, stop! You’re not
allowed to leave either!”
He turned around his finances by taxing the aristocracy (with loopholes) as well as just
being better about how he collected taxes, and fronted a new army led by officers who
showed some degree of merit.
Would you look at that, lots of money and a big army… hmmm… yes, now all is revealed!
The true purpose of all of this! Securing his power and bolstering the economy were
great, but they were also to be employed for France’s true purpose… declaring war on
the rest of Europe! For glory! Louis is the center of France, France must be the center
of Europe!
What followed was a lifetime of warfare that accomplished… honestly very little? It began
with the Dutch. Louis once had a great relationship with the Netherlands, France had fought for
decades to secure their independence from the Habsburgs. But you see, part of the Netherlands
still belonged to Spain and Louis used a bunch of, [deep breath] y’know, royal dynastic
family tree inheritance chicanery to take part of it for himself, which was kind of
an economic affront to the Dutch Netherlands. You could argue whether or not it was better
to sabotage such an alliance for the sake of expansion, but I think that’s missing
the point. You see, when it comes to the kings of France, above any strategic considerations,
above any teaties, above any moral virtues, above even the laws of Moses, there are two
supreme and co-equal commandments: Stick it to the English, and Stick it to
the Habsburgs.
So the Netherlands makes some new allies with England and Sweden and gets ready to go to
war with France, and Louis, bless his soul, he really goes ahead with the most straightforward
possible solution.
Charles XI: “You said double-Dutch, not double-cross the Dutch!”
Louis: “It’s actually super easy, trust me”
Charles XI: “How dare you!” Louis: “All I’m asking is for you to stay
neutral. You can do that for me, can’t you?” Charles XI: “We’re both going to hell
for this. But don’t expect England to give in so easily.”
Louis: “I’ll pay you to stay out of the war”
Charles II: “Sweet, no problem” Louis: “.... I’ll pay you more if you
attack the Netherlands” Charles II: “Haha, nice”
Louis: “...and you have to become Catholic” Charles II: “Lol, ok”
Louis continued to get away with these little wars here and there, taking advantage of intentionally
vague treaties and inheritances and whatnot, all the while making enemies out of nearly
everyone in Western Europe, until he finally bit off more than he could chew. There were
a couple of succession disputes in Germany where Louis wanted to install someone on his
side, but he knew that getting involved in a war with the Holy Roman Empire would mean
war with Britain, and Spain, and the Netherlands, and Portugal, and Sweden, and like parts of
Italy, it’s nuts. But at that very moment, William of Orange was busy invading Britain
to become the new king, so Louis figured if he was quick enough, he could go in, win the
war before William and his allies had time to come help. What he hadn’t counted on
was the fact that the English were positively stoked about being invaded, they honestly
did not care if their king was British, as long as he wasn’t Catholic.
Despite the war being incredibly lopsided, France actually comes out the other end with
more territory than when it began, but at the end of the day it cost nine years of fighting
and everyone agreed:
All: “Never again!” “Never again!” “hashtag never again!”
Louis: “To peace in Europe!” All: “To peace in Europe!” “Peace in
Europe!” “We’ve finally done it!” [Charles coughs violently,]
Louis: “Spain, Spain are you all right? You look… well, worse than usual.”
Charles II: “I’m dying, Louis.” Louis: “Oh dear… your poor children”
Charles II: “There are no children, Louis.” Louis: “But that means… oh no.”
William III: “Oh no.” Leopold: “What’s the matter?”
Louis: “The next king of Spain… he’s either going to be your son… or mine.”
William: “The balance of power, Louis, the balance of power!”
Louis: “I know!” William: “There must be another option…”
Louis: “Think, darn it!” William: “I’ve got it! The Holy Roman
Emperor, he has a grandson, Joseph Ferdinand, through his daughter.”
Louis: “You want to give Spain to the Habsburgs?” William: “They’re Habsburgs already! This
is just another spinoff branch, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire will never be united.”
Louis: “I want some of their land in Italy” William: “We split the land in Italy 50/50
between you and Emperor Leopold, the rest goes to Joseph Ferdinand”
Louis: “Deal” Charles II: “Guys, I - I don’t want to
divide the empire” William: “Shut up Spain, no one asked you!”
Except then Joseph Ferdinand dies and, like, the clock is ticking.
Dr 1: “I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him!”
Dr 2: “Just keep him breathing! Peace in Europe depends on it!”
Courtiers: “Give Spain to the French!” “No, the Austrians!” “French!” “Austrians!”
Dr 3: “There’s still time for an heir! Madame you have to undress”
Maria Anna: “He’s half cadaver!” Dr 2: “It’s all right, I’ve got his
legs!”
William: “Okay okay, new plan!” Louis: “Right!”
William: “I’ve derived a formula that outlines the relative strength of every European
nation, we’ve got to get this right! “We divide all the Spanish holdings between Leopold’s
younger son, and your grandson, so neither will inherit two crowns. Archduke Charles
will receive the Spanish mainland and New World colonies…”
Louis: “He’d better take the Spanish Netherlands as well. I’ll take all the Italian holdings,
trade Lorraine for Milan… we’re still off. Aha! If I transfer Naples and Sicily
to Sardinia in exchange for Nice and Savoy… then I’ll just need one small county from
Spain proper…” William: “By Jove..."
Both: "I think we’ve done it!”
Why wasn’t Austria involved in all of this calculus? Beats me. The king of Spain, however,
still refuses to divide the empire, and his wife tips the scales in favor of giving it
all to the Austrians. Except SYKE on his deathbed he changes his mind and gives everything to
Louis’s grandson!
William: “What a relief! Now we can put our plan into motion and divide the empire
according to the treaty we signed.” [Louis looking at the Spanish crown like Bilbo
and the one ring] William: “You’re… you’re going to
divide it, right?” Voice in Louis’s head: “There’s going
to be war either way… take it, take it all… after all, what is diplomacy for…?”
Louis declares that his grandson will inherit everything. And also that his grandson can
still inherit France as well, if things shake out that way. And also France is in charge
of the Transatlantic slave trade for Spanish colonies. And also he no longer recognizes
William as the king of England. Teehee!
France goes to war with pretty much all of Western Europe again. And the way it ends
is super awkward. The allies give Louis a real whooping, and then demand that he declare
war on his grandson to get him off the Spanish throne, while they all watch, and if he doesn’t
win the war in a year then the allies are going to join the war to fight France again
instead of Spain. The only reason they stop fighting is not because France was strong
enough to enforce its claim or because the allies were strong enough to enforce their
claim… the Holy Roman Emperor just died, and now the younger son who was going to inherit
Spain is also the heir to the Habsburg monarchy and it would be super uncomfortable if he
somehow inherited both, so like yeah, totally, he was y’know, still the one true king of
Spain and his claim is super legitimate, it’s just uh, y’know, we’re not gonna fight
for him anymore. The math’s shifted, balance of power and all that.
And then Louis got gangrene and died!