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

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

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

CAUSOR MEDIA Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about terrible people. You know, we've got a great episode, a couple of episodes for you this week with Ed Zitron of Better Offline. Ed, how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing fantastically. Love being here.

I'd be doing better, but, you know, we have something sad to talk about today, Ed. We're gonna give a little moment of silence for 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, that's just never a safe thing to do. Also back on the show is Sophie Lichterman, who is recovering south of the border

in a hidden steadfast. Sophie, why did those men need to die? Why is that the cover story you gave me? I feel like you could have done something so much cooler. I think that's pretty cool, shooting it out with the FDA and going on the run to Mexico. An HGH ring? Yeah, an HGH ring.

Well, I didn't wanna like accuse you of selling hard drugs. I mean, sure. And everybody loves HGH, at least Joe Rogan loves HGH. So, maybe you could get on his show. Is that the, I mean, I've been sent some very fascinating messages. Is that the only reason you told people I was out? I just told people you'd shot it out with the FDA

and you were on the run. I mean, I kinda wish. Yeah, yeah, it would be more fun. But you know, you're back, you're healing. You're feeling a little better. A little, I mean, surgery sucks. more fun, but you know, you're back, you're healing. You're feeling a little better. A little, I mean, surgery sucks. Don't have surgery unless you absolutely need it is my recommendation.

The surgery sucks and let's talk for a second here. Doctors are not giving out enough painkillers. You should have gotten delotted for what you went through and they just gave you a little bit of codone. I'm livid on your behalf. The amount of times you've sent me that in writing is so funny. Yeah.

Yeah. Ed, welcome again to the show. Can I, I just have one more thing to say. Sure. I'm so sorry for anything that happened without my supervision. 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. But I'm not gonna be today. I didn't even listen and I know that's not true. Today we're going to get really out of pocket. You know, cause I've got a subject that I could only have brought a British guest on for. And that subject is France.

Right. Okay. Specifically, specifically, I wanted to talk about the culture of Versailles, the subculture of the nobility at Versailles that started in the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and led right up to the French Revolution. And I wanted to talk about this because,

and I'm sure you've heard a little about this, we've caught a little case of the oligarchy here in the United States recently. I have been hearing this. We've all been hearing this. Yes. Unless you're listening to this years after the fact and we did it Joe again.

Oh, too soon. You are probably listening to this on a day where you have slightly fewer rights and freedoms than you had a few days earlier, right? Yes. Because that's been the vibe of the last couple of weeks. And as someone who looks and sounds like both Beavis and Butthead knows my social security number.

Yes. The day I started typing out this episode, February 19th, 2025, President Trump made a very funny joke describing himself as a king. And this sent me to thinking about the first Trump rally I attended in 2016 in which I met a British man who was a naturalized US citizen, who told me that he supported a Trump dynasty

ruling the United States from here on out. He wanted Trump Jr. to take over after his dad finished his terms. And I was like, man, you are in the wrong country. You lived in the country that did that. Like, what are we? Why are we? Yeah. I think I do this here.

I think I talked to that same guy at last R&C. Oh, good. Yeah. He was also British. And I also looked at him like he was like, yeah, well, I mean, there's many of them, you know, you go down. There's plenty of Trump's for. Yeah. And he's like, and what about that Barron? And I'm like, sir.

What the fuck about that Barron? He could hoop. Sir. Yeah. Sir. He could probably hoop. You do have to give that to him. He's got at least potential.

Although I don't think he's very fast. Anyway. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorchi. And I'm Holly Tremorchi. And I'm Holly Frye. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching.

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Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you've got the guy in charge of your country talking about being a king, and you've got a group of the wealthiest people talking openly about ending voting rights and solidifying themselves as a permanent aristocracy, you know, you're in a situation where it's not unreasonable to start looking at other,

quote unquote, permanent aristocracies in history and what happened to them, right? And so that's why I wanted to talk about Versailles this week, right? You know, this is a case where the bastard is this system, this world of the nobility, where they were cloistered away

from the rest of the country, deliberately for some interesting reasons. And what happened to their brains as a result of that and why it all came crashing down? This is not gonna be, obviously, Mike Duncan's done the much more full version of like why the French Revolution happened. This is not, these aren't episodes

about the French Revolution. These are specifically episodes about how the court at Versailles came into being, why, how it kind of, how it deranged the people who lived there and how that aspect of things contributed to the revolution. So largely we're talking about what's wrong with French people. Yep. Yeah.

Get eight or nine episodes. Yeah. 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 good. There were a couple of thoseilles and how well that went. That did go really well. Really good. There were a couple of those treaties

and they all went well. But yeah, so there's a, probably the best popular culture touchstone on this recently would be that 2006 Sofia Coppola movie about Marie Antoinette. Sure, and everybody knows about the garden. knows about, you know, the garden. I actually don't know about the garden. The garden of Versailles.

Oh, I mean, you mean the literal, I think you're talking about a movie called The Garden. No, yes, there's a nice garden in Versailles, yes. That is the borderline, like, basic knowledge that everybody has. Yeah, yeah, okay. Which is why I knew about it. Yeah, nice garden, big palace, you know,

but I think that, okay, I'm glad that's what you know, because there's a lot more there. The story of Versailles is the story of, among other things, the invention of like the modern centralized administrative state, just done in kind of the craziest way imaginable. And in order to tell that story, we've got to start with a guy who is probably close to, you know, 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. But which was somewhat justified. This is the guy who is the longest reigning king in human history. Like nobody was king for longer, probably. He spent 72 years on the throne, which is nuts. Like an objectively crazy amount of time to do any job.

Al Davis of Kings. Mm-hmm. Just- Mm-hmm. I do think- Was he wretched and crazy at the end? That is a podcaster. He was wretched and crazy at the end. Oh, he's so wretched and crazy.

Oh my God. Wonderful. His ass is rotting. That's what kills him. It's great. Oh man. He dies from ass is rotting. That's what kills him. It's great. Oh man. He dies from ass rot. Yes, he sure does. And oh yeah.

Oh yeah. This story's got it all, baby. So Louis the 14th, all of the French kings in this period are Louis, right? They will be referred to kind of casually by some this period are Louis, right? They will be referred to kind of casually by some historians as the Louis, right? Because they're kind of interchangeable with the exception of the Sun King in some ways,

where you're just talking about like, and then this Louis and that, yeah. So Louis XIV, our boy, was born in September of 1638 to Anne of Austria and Louis VIII. His mom was shockingly old to give birth at the time. She's like middle-aged and had had four stillbirths before him. So the fact that he came out, not just alive,

but very healthy was regarded as a miracle and a good sign, right? He would grow up to be a mama's boy. So Louis VIII dies like immediately after his son is born. And he had been very clear in his last days that Anne, his wife, should not govern after his death. This is a thing in a lot of other European countries, like in many European countries, like in Russia, right?

Women can reign, you know, like the queen, if things work out that way, the queen can be the regent, she can run shit, right? Right. 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, and so he creates a regency council to manage things until Louis XIV is old enough to run France on his own.

Right. And part of why he does this is that Anne is not French, right? She's Anne of Austria. Now, that's also not a good description of who she was because you would expect, given that her name is Anne of Austria, you would expect her to be from Austria, right? Right, where is she from? Absolutely, oh Ed, of course she's not from Austria. She's from Spain.

Obviously you call Anne of Austria. The Austria of Europe? The woman from Spain. Yes. That's what we call her. She's the queen of Navarre. 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? Yeah, and that's why she's Anne of Austria, because the Habsburgs are also the house of Austria. Yes, yes. Yes, we got Habsburgs. Oh, there's so many Habsburgs.

Oh, we're gonna be talking about Habsburg jaws later in this story. Don't worry, buddy. Don't worry. There's, there's Habsburgs all throughout this motherfucker. That makes me so happy. Does it make you Habsburg? Habsburg. Hopefully not.

You need to drop me a few times as a baby to do that. Then your blood wouldn't clot. Actually, I don't think that was a Habsburg problem. Anyway. I truly don't actually know. I just know that they all have sex with each other. There's a lot of people fucking their cousins in this story. That's just how royalty is.

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. Because again, the fact that she's a Habsburg means that the French people don't trust her. They're like, well, she's obviously going to be more loyal to Spain and to Austria than she is to France. This is a constant problem because you are always

bringing in nobles from other houses in Europe to like marry the king. And there's always this kind of like, well then they can't possibly put France first, right? Right. And there had just been a war between, you know, as there is constantly in this period between France and Spain.

So there's a lot of reasons why people don't trust Anne and that's gonna have a big influence on him. Is this like distrust for his mom by the French people? Now, because we're talking about European nobility this week, I really need to emphasize everything that I say, explain about these people is going to sound ridiculous. This whole culture that has come up around the nobility

is nonsense by this period. They've just been in power for too long and the system is crazy. Louis is gonna make it a lot crazier. But I do think it's worth kind of emphasizing that. So the next time you read that our grand vizier, Elon Musk has appointed a man named Big Balls to control all of our personal tax data,

remember that people in power have always been irritating dipshits, right? That's not unique to the United States. That's just something that comes with giving small groups of people all of the power, right? That just makes them crazy. But traditionally we did it in the past. Yes, yes, and now we're doing it in the future.

Yeah. Good stuff. Great stuff. So Anne actually had gotten, his mom had gotten confined to house arrest for passing military secrets to her dad at one point. But she does this thing that is very common. When she becomes the queen regent,

she exiles a bunch of her own supporters and kind of betrays her family to run France, right? She chooses to go for France. And this was a pragmatic move because once her husband died, her position was not really stable. Now, most of the big decisions made for France in this period are not made by Anne.

They're made by Anne. They're made by a guy that Anna points to rule in her son's stead. That guy's name is Cardinal Mazarin. He is one of these extremely powerful, non-royal ruler. He's not like a king, but he's kind of governing France for a period of time here. By the time the child king, Louis XIV, is eight or nine years old, the Thirty Years War, which is this war that his dad had spent his life fighting, is drawing to a close. And given the fact that it was a Thirty Years War, it had been monstrously expensive and

kind of a financial disaster for France. So near the end of it, Cardinal Mazarin is anxious to keep the army funded until everything is locked down about the peace treaty. And since the crown had no more money after 30 years of war, this meant that they had to institute new taxes. Now France is a semi-feudal society at this point. It is less 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, bonded to the land. Like, they're essentially a kind of slave. They can't leave without the permission of the landowner, right? Serfs are really not much of a thing in France in the period that we're talking about, and they're basically going extinct. France has modernized to that extent, and in fact, the country is sort of in the process

of becoming less of a feudal state and more of a of like a hybrid, like modernized semi-feudal state, right? Like you still have a nobility. The nobility are most are 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. That's his privilege as the Duke, but he's not doing the governing. We have like professionals who are doing the actual governing in this region or whatever.

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

That's a big part, 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? But they're not nobles. These are guys who start businesses who are running trade and stuff for France. Some of them are extremely wealthy

and they are also paying taxes and they're really not happy about that, right? Right. But the nobility get a big exemption from taxes in this period, right? One of the conflicts that's going to like increasingly be a problem up to the revolution is the bourgeoisie being like, well, why are we paying taxes

and these people are exempt, right? Well, we're not thrilled about that. So this does mean that regular French people are largely being kind of brutalized by the cost of the war against the Habsburgs of Spain. The job of approving new taxes, like the king will say, I want this tax, but it has to be approved by the parliaments. Now to you and I coming out of the English tradition, parliament means like essentially

a governing body, sort of like a Congress is, right? That's not really what a parliament is in France. Parliaments in France are courts, right? They're court systems. Like the parliament of Paris is a court system in Paris. And you have a bunch of judges who are nobles, who own their seat as a judge. Like that judgeship is the personal hereditary property of a noble who is one of these members

of the parliament. The parliaments have a lot of judges and clerks and whatnot, but these are like court systems when we talk about parliaments. It is their job to approve new taxes. This is one of the ways in which the French state has started to modernize in this period. It's not just this duke controls this area and he takes taxes. We've got this professional legal system, right? That is responsible for approving these things.

And a lot of conflicts with the crown are going to be the parliament trying to protect its power, right? When the king wants to do stuff directly. Anyway, this causes issues because it makes the fact that the king wants these new taxes on the common people in the bourgeoisie and the parliament has to approve them, right? You've got these parliaments 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, they don't want to because the peasantry riots over new taxes. I was gonna say not dying. Right. And the parliament needing to approve them, it's kind of the situation the kings have developed so that like, hey, if these guys have to sign off on it too, maybe they're

the first people who get sort of mobbed, you know? Yeah. The people with the signature are probably the ones. Why are the kings so insulated as well? Is it just because they can deploy the army against the peasantry? They can deploy the army, and this is a thing that increasingly happens in this period, where there's this desire to strip the nobility of direct power, right? So just kind of a smart play.

If the nobility has to, is in this position where they're doing, you can make them do unpopular things, right? You can kind of loop them in on the shit you need to do that nobody likes to the extent that they get blamed for that. It makes it harder for them to like have their own power base, you know? And they also get, they don't get taxed on the nobility. No, they are in this period immune to most taxes, right? And that's the trade off, I imagine.

Yeah, that's part of the trade off. And kind of the issue here is, the nobility are not friendly always with the crown, right? The nobility are both the people who govern with you, right, and who are supposed to be taking your lead as the king. But whenever there's a rebellion against a king, it usually comes from the nobility in this period, right? So that's part of why you would want a system like this as the king because it protects you to a degree, right?

But it does mean that there's constant conflicts between the crown and these parliaments. And these judges resist some of the central government's new taxes. Cardinal Mazarin and Anne repost by threatening to change the rules about how judgeships work and like make it so that you don't own your seat today. Again, in this period, being a judge is like being

a subway franchise owner, right? And that hits your property and you pass it on to your kids. Right. And the rules governing this are part of something called the Paulette Tax, which came up for renewal in 1648. It's a little bit like, 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. And I'm going to read a quote from an article by the UK College of Arts and Sciences Department of History on the matter. And their anxiety to force through new tax edicts, Anne of Austria and Mazarin drove the judges of parliament too far. On 15th January, 1648, they brought the nine-year-old king to a formal session of the court called the Lit de Justis to force the judges to register an unpopular tax measure. The judges exercised their right to remonstrate or criticize the edict, starting a series of events

that culminated in a call for the judges of all the Paris courts to come together to consider reforms in the kingdom. On the 26th of June, acting without the regents' support, for the judges of all the Paris courts to come together to consider reforms in the kingdom. 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 St. Louis. This date marked the beginning of the frond. Street demonstrations, organized by Retz, showed that the judges had strong popular support. The frondeurs focused their anger especially on Mazarin.

They'd announced him as a foreigner who had no respect for the laws and institutions of France and as an intriguer who was using his influence over Anne to enrich himself and ruin the country. Paris was flooded with printed pamphlets called Mazarin Aids. Vicious personal attacks on the minister. This foreign rogue, juggler, comedian, famous robber, low Italian fellow, fit only to be hung as one of them. Get his ass. He's a juggler.

Bodied. Bodied as a juggler. I feel like if this was 2025, they would have been like, podcaster, where's bathrobe? Oh, sorry. Cardinal Nazarin, I mean, first off, as a low Italian, I hate this kind of racism. As a judge.

As a judge Man Guy doing something to our government as well. Oh my god. Can you imagine that that would never happen? Funny bringing up must to that like he keeps bringing his little kid into these massive, these moments that are going to be major political moments, like sticking his child in there. It brings his child admin.php to the White House. I think it's fun that in this,

and this does show how even our dumb system is a little less dumb than things used to be, where today the nine- nine year old child king is not the one... The nine year old is not 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...

Can the child do things yet? Or is he called the Mazarin? No, no, it's obviously, it's not this, this society isn't stupid. They would not let a young child run things. You don't get to run things until you are the mature age of 13. 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. What would you possibly know? You have four long years to go through. I think I could have governed France at 13. I'm busy. I can do it.

I would have spent the entire national budget on Warhammer miniatures, but honestly, can you tell me that's worse than what the French are doing now? I don't know. I don't pay attention. Better than AI. Fucking Macron. Yeah. Look, guys, you don't get healthcare this year because I really went on a spending spree

in Nottingham. Like, there's a lot of unpainted plastic and resin coming my way. A shit ton of tyranids and you're just like, this is why you can't, like your power is $100 pounds an hour, what, sorry, euros, good lord. You're all going to starve this year? Yeah, but I will be happy painting. But I'll have a lot of work to do.

No, so they bring this nine year old king to this 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 judges and nobles who are angry at the fact that the king is continuing to like pull, strip powers from them, or at least you'd say 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? They, they sort of start out this thing, but they never get momentum. There's never much popular backing. The common people are like, I don't really like, in part because the nobles in these parliaments are the ones who approve new taxes. Regular people are never like, one side is much better than the other, and they tend to overall back the crown. So the young King Louis XIV doesn't get uprooted by the frond, right? But there are a couple of points that come close to a disaster for him, right?

There's a shitload of riots in this period. He and his mother have to flee the capital, Paris, for a palace in St. Germain nearby. The army clashes with rioters and while they put down the riots, the next year more nobles join the insurrection and they put together an army large enough to force Mazarin to resign and flee the country temporarily.

The height of danger for young Louis comes when a rumor spreads in Paris that the king and his mother had fled the palace for a second time. And a mob swarms the palace to make sure that the king is still there, right? That like, he's not, he hasn't left again. And they demand proof.

And so they break into his bed chambers. 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? And she's like, just pretend like you're sleeping. Just-year-old kid are talking and he's like, what the fuck do I do? 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. Did it work? 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. 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 sorry, he's 12. Like these people, number one, they're not like anti-monarchy. And number two, they see like a sleeping 12 year old and they're like, we should probably go. Maybe this guy had a hint. Yeah. When did he fall asleep? Is he gonna be up soon?

Yeah, yeah, maybe we don't wanna like fuck with this little kid who's asleep. So the Frond, this is obviously, this is traumatizing, right? Having a mob basically forced their way into your bed chambers at age 12, this fucks Louis the 14th up and is going to massively impact the decisions he makes as an adult

and regent. But the frond ends with him still in power. That said, again, he's like traumatized by this and he comes away from the whole experience with a couple of conclusions. One of them is that the nobility of France are fucking out of pocket and they need to be, they have too much power and they need to be somehow corralled and stopped from building bases of power of their own. And they need to be put in a position

where the crown can keep an eye on them and make sure that they're not plotting or scheming independently from the king, right? That's one conclusion he makes. The other conclusion he makes is Paris is not a safe place. And he's got this palace at St. Germain, but he has bad memories of it. So he's like, as an adult, he's going to be like, I want a new seat of power. Right?

That's where we're going to get Versailles from. So cut forward by about a decade or so, Louis XIV is 24 years old. He is already a veteran of war in the Spanish Netherlands. So he's gone to war successfully as the monarch at this point. He's going to spend most of his time going in between palaces and the front. He is a, most of his reign, a wartime king. He had pushed France's frontiers outward and he had kind of built up a military that is France is the number one land power in Europe at this time, right? And economically the only country in Europe that is a bigger economy than France is Denmark,

because Denmark's doing a lot of overseas trading. This would be the last time, this kind of period of Louis XIV's reign will be the last time for a century or so in which France is actually in the black as in like in a good economic condition. But right now Louis is rolling in it. He's got a shitload of cash and a very powerful army and he decides to use that money to build a palace where he can number one, feel safe and number two, 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. Right? That's where Versailles comes out of.

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Listen to Crime Alert Hourly Update on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. OK, we're back. So I think when you look at casual histories of the revolution, they always talk about Versailles and the situation there, how out of touch people are, this inwardly focused ruling class who live in this palace altogether, as a contributing factor to the revolution. And it is... So I just want to establish something. All the nobility was factor to the revolution. And it is- So I just want to establish something. Yeah.

All the nobility was made to move in. I mean, not a hundred percent of them, but that's the idea, right? It's like mobility dorms. A significant amount of them do, and the ones that don't literally live there get second houses nearby. We'll talk about this more, because this is a thing that develops. But yes, that is the ultimate product, is that like a significant chunk,

most of the powerful nobility are at Versailles forever. And that's the idea that Louis has, is he's building this palace specifically to force them to hang out with him. And when I'd read casual kind of histories and my understanding previous to really digging into this was that this was a holdover from like France's busted old feudal government, right?

This is like a medieval holdover kind of coming into conflict with the modern world. And that's part of why we get the French Revolution. That's really not what Versailles is. Louis XIV is actually kind of creating one of the first modern central governments when he establishes the palace at Versailles. This is actually a modernizing thing in some ways. Rulers had always owned palaces, and those palaces were both homes and fortresses, 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. Versailles has more in common with Washington, DC than for example, any of like the palaces in England, right? Any of like the palaces in England, right?

Any of like the palaces of the House of Windsor, right? Buckingham or whatever. Versailles is less like that. It is more like 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. And 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 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. You know, he's a relatively intelligent ruler. He understands that centralizing all of the people who are in charge of the country and keeping them around him makes communication a lot more efficient, but also keeping all of these people literally under the same roof allows him to keep an eye on the group that

had nearly overthrown his family. We should talk for a bit about the location he picks. Why Versailles? Because there's nothing there. There's not a town in the area at this point. They build one, but there's not a town there. There's just an unpaved road into Paris and a hunting lodge that Louis XIV's father had used while hunting and stuff. So Louis had grown up fond of the area, which is about 20 miles from Paris because of his

dad's hunting lodge. And what became the palace started with, they put some gardens in next to the hunting lodge. And it's kind of a place when he's a young man, like 18 or 19, Louis will go there with his friends and they'll camp out there and have parties, you know? And so this is kind of like the start. That's why he gets the idea that like, this is where I wanna build my palace is because like this is he and his friends

his little Burning Man spot, you know, effectively. So in March of 1661, Cardinal Mazarin dies and Louis XIV, this is kind of what makes him independent as a ruler for the first time, at least totally. Later that year in August, he goes to a party thrown by one of the nobles who's hoping to curry favor with the new king, a guy named Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet is the minister of finance and he's built this massive, sprawling, elaborate palace, Vos de Vicombe, which is like the best, probably the nicest palace in France at the time.

The architecture impresses Louis. 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, this guy is now the dude to impress. I am going to like go all out to basically try to bribe him so that he will make me his top advisor. And I can basically run things. And he tries to do this by like handing out diamond tiaras

and horses as party favors to his guests. Like he is just like- Horses. Yeah, really nice horses, you know? Not shit horses. Good ones. Holy shit ass horses. No, the good stuff.

Is that just he promises it? He's gonna have him on him? No, he's got tons of horses on him. Yeah. Just like, wonderful. Yes. Sadly used to be so much stranger. Horses are a big, like the king at any given point is gonna own like 2,500 horses.

Okay, sure. Like personally. Like that just, that's just the way it is if you're rich. Okay. That's like the equivalent of having three nice cars. Right. But so this guy, Fuke, he's showing off this massive palace that like impresses even the young king

and he's handing out diamond tiaras and horses and it's you know this is meant as kind of a bribe to get Louis to be like oh this guy really knows what's up but it just pisses off Louis right and it pisses off Louis because he's like you're the minister of finance how much of this money you're spending is really my money, right? Like, 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?

And so he ends the night by arresting Fouquet and locking him up in a fortress. 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. How long did he stay in prison for? Was it just...

I think he was in there for a long years and years and years. Oh my god. I don't know when that guy specifically gets out. Just because he might have spent the king's money? Yeah. So willy nilly with the horses? If Louis XIV doesn't like you, he will lock you in a fortress for a decade or so. Maybe longer.

Sounds good. That's his thing. He loves putting people in fortresses. So the king raided Fouquet's home, taking silver ornaments, tapestries, a library, and more than a thousand orange trees. This is gonna be a signature of Louis XIV's reign, is he fucking loves orange trees, and it starts here. Now, orange trees, it's not easy to keep them healthy

in the north of France. And they were so valued that each tree lived in a pure silver pot. Like that's the planters that they use for orange trees are just made out of silver. Is there drainage holes? What are we talking about here? I don't know, but there were,

when Nancy Mitford wrote her book in the sixties, some of Louis XIV's orange trees were still alive. Incredible. So he's pretty good at keeping these things going, you know? Maybe we all need silver pots. Maybe we should grow everything in silver. We don't know. We don't know.

If you've got a baby, have them plated entirely in silver. See if it works. I don't know, I think I watch a James Bond movie that suggests that might be a bad idea. Try it either way. So he orders the construction of a palace at Versailles, Louis XIV, built after this, because he's like, look, this Fouquet guy, fuck him,

but this palace of his is pretty nice. I think I could do better. So he hires the guys who had made Fouquet's palace and he has them start building a palace at Versailles with the centerpiece being his dad's old hunting lodge. Now the resulting complex, which is gonna take years to build is massive. Among other things, there are 350 apartments,

which is 350 individual living areas for different nobles. Right? To reside in. He just invented dorms. 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, that's Versailles.

And a WeWork. Yes, yes, yeah. It's all of those things at once. Nice. Yes, yes. Cool. There's also banquet halls, there's dance halls, there's meeting rooms.

There's even an entire 240 foot room lined entirely in mirrors. And mirrors are hard to make at this point, right? If you have a room lined in mirrors, it's to show off, I got fucking mirror money. I got so much mirror money, I got a room of the sons of bitches. So is there a logic behind the mirror room, or is it just so everyone could see you have mirrors? Impress everybody.

Yeah, so everybody can see this is how rich the king is. And themselves at every corner. And they can see themselves at every corner. And they can see themselves at every corner. Frances Loring Payne describes in her book, The Story of Versailles, 17 lofty windows are matched by as many Venetian framed mirrors. Between each window and mirror are pilasters designed by Cosevue, Tubi, and Cafferri, reigning masters of their time. Walls are of marble embellished with bronze-gilt trophies. Large niches contain

statues in the antique style." So, pretty fancy. And this is in fact a palace unlike any the world had seen before. Louis XIV, the man who would call himself the Sun King, was not a patient person, so he ordered the construction rushed and damn the cost either in money or in lives. 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 and be spied on. 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.

Injuries became a daily occurrence and so many died that bodies would be quietly removed at night in bulk. The workers went on strike, but Louis saw Versailles as a symbol of his prestige and therefore France's prestige. It was worth any price. When half a dozen men were crushed in an accident, one grieving mother approached Louis to request her son's body. He had her imprisoned. Okay. Seems fair. Seems cool. Yeah. Of course. How dare she? It happens. Yeah. It's fucking rude.

She didn't understand that this was about France's prestige. Not how many people are getting crushed to death. Yeah, but I'm in prison with the fucking horse tiara guy. Yeah. Rude asshole. Look, people are gonna get crushed to death, obviously. It happens. Oh my god.

Get over it. You can't have a frat house pentagon without breaking a few hundred laborers. God. Yeah. Jesus. Give me a break here. People are so fucking unsy. It's just me a break here. People are unreasonable, you know? So by May 6th, 1662, the whole palace is still very much under construction and would remain that way for years.

But enough had been completed that Louis was able to throw a grand party and begin the process of moving in. Now this would be a years-long process. At first, Louis is 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? 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. He just kind of comes in when somebody like sends him a letter being like, oh, hey man, I think the war is about to get cool again.

Maybe you should come up and check it out now, right? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Don't want to waste your time on the boring parts of war. For him, it's a little like a soap opera where like, yeah, you don't watch every episode. There's long, some of these storylines aren't super interesting.

We got like a year of this siege to get through. Go party, you know, we'll handle that. But get me at the end when we're knocking down the fuckers. Bring me in when something cool's going on, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the process of moving everybody in takes years because, and this is such a, the pain in the ass this creates for everyone,

while they're unable to live there full time, but he's having people spend as much time there as possible because every time Louis heads back to Versailles for a night, every government minister, every high ranking noble, as well as Louis' whole family and his coterie of mistresses have to travel back with him. It's like this massive pain in the ass and there's not rooms for most of them. So like, even Louis's not living in comfort for most of this period, his rooms aren't really finished. But everyone else is like, camping, basically, under scaffolding and shit.

Yeah. In this giant beautiful palace that should be luxurious? Yeah, that should, but is just unfinished and filled with dead people. Yeah. That'll happen. Yeah, that'll happen. Real estate is challenging. Yeah, real estate is a real complicated endeavor.

Yeah. 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 the nobility because they have to constantly be aware of where Louis is, when he's traveling back, they have to get themselves back. They're like missing sleep because they're not able to live,

like completely disrupts all of their lives. And that's part of the plan. Like Louis XIV is doing this intentionally. Oh. I wanna read a quote from Mitford's book. the plan. Like, Louis XIV is doing this intentionally. I want to read a quote from Mitford's book. Quote, the king had already begun to enslave his nobility by playing on the French love of fashion. In 1654, he gave a feat, which lasted from 7 to 13 May.

This really caused more pain than pleasure for the guests had nowhere to sleep and were obliged to doze down as best they could in local cottages and stables." So again, he's like the fact that this is a pain in the ass and the fact that he's increasingly forcing everyone. You're not just constantly obsessed with where is the king? When do I have to get back to Versailles? But you also, there's these parties whenever you're there. So you're spending a lot of your free time making sure you've got outfits and like spending

a lot of your money making sure you've got outfits. It's a party. So like a six day long jolly. Yeah. I mean, some of them are shorter than that, but like it's a big party. Yeah. And it's a mandatory party that Yeah, and it's a mandatory party that you have to have an outfit for.

That outfit is going to cost you 30 years salary for a laboring person, right? And so you have to be constantly like traveling, sleeping in uncomfortable conditions and spending your time and money figuring out what you're going to wear, which means you're not spending any time thinking about rebelling, right?

You're not, you have no extra attention to spend on building a base of power for yourself. Because you're going to and from parties and working out how you address. Yes, exactly. Interesting. And that's it, because Louis XIV, his big motivation with Versailles

is to make another front impossible. Hadley Mears writes, The move was designed to neutralize the power of the nobles. This it did, but it also created a hotbed of boredom and extravagance, with hundreds of aristocrats crammed together, many with nothing to do but gossip, spend money, and play. I was going to say the amount of tea being spilled at these events, the gossip had to be wild. And then new gossip being created in real time.

Exactly. Wild. That's going to be a major factor in what happens next, right? And we'll be talking about how this gossip eventually trickles out, and it kind of leads to the creation. Paris basically has Twitter in this period, and it's because of Versailles. I was gonna say this is like Parisian Twitter. Yes. Yeah, that's kind of where things are building towards, right? Very good.

And it's also, you know, people are gambling here constantly. Oh, yes! So fortunes are being won and lost, you know. This is just CES, but French! Yes, yes, yes! You've got fucking people gambling away everything, 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. And all of this was intentional? Yes. Yes. Fuck yeah. This guy's completely insane, I love it. But he's very intelligent in that, like he never faces another threat to his rule, right?

Like that does not happen. Like he locks the nobility down. They're too busy partying. They can't, yeah, they're too busy going to mandatory parties. The Sloan-Spokensky situation. He has, 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 W.K. system. Yes. Beautiful. Now, much has been written about the intricate and stifling rules of etiquette that had to be practiced at Versailles. They had their origins in every medieval house, every royal house in all of Europe has these complicated etiquette rules that they have to abide by.

But they're not all enforced the same way, right? And they're not all, none of them are as intricate as they become in Versailles. Because you take these kind of baseline rules about like, oh, if you have, you know, this guy, you know, this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy in a room, only this guy is allowed to hand the king his shirt, right?

But if that guy leaves, then the next person is allowed to hand the king his shirt. So you have to remember who is allowed to hand the shirt. Yes. Yes. Do we know the punishment for this? It's not a punishment thing so much as it's a violation of etiquette and thus it is offensive to everybody and it causes like gossip and it makes like the instead of protecting their power to tax and rule the commoners, the nobility are increasingly protecting their power to

hand the king his shirt in the morning. Fucking brilliant. It's so brilliant. I love it. It's so stupid. I love it. Yes. So again, every royal house, you know, all of the nobility in all of Europe have some version of this, but it gets like 10 times as intense in Versailles because everyone is now living under one very large roof, right?

And this means that for one thing, nobles no longer have the same kind of lives of their own outside of court. So there's nothing going on in their lives, but obsessing over perceived slights and the intricacies of social dynamics, who's snubbing who, who is in the king's favor, et cetera. And it also means the nobility traditionally

in like a feudal society, if you're the king and your nobles are your warriors, right? That's like the core of the elite of your army, in part because they have the time to train. The nobility are no longer training to fight, right? They are 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? Like the king is- Right, and this 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. So everyone is constantly trying to figure out how to make him like them, right?

Instead of focusing on being good at war, which is a danger to you as the king. When you say they're warriors, what does that mean, though, for the nobility? Well, traditionally in Europe, that's what knights are, right? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, knights are nobility, and they are the core of your army in the earlier medieval period, right?

Except they're now all bickering about who handed to the shirt. Yes. And now instead of having like any real... doing anything else, really, all that these guys are doing, a lot of these people are doing on a day to day basis, is obsessing over like the minutia of this, like basically big high school, right? I love it. So for the next decade, after 1662, construction continues at a relentless pace, and as more gets built more and more nobles live full-time at Versailles. It becomes the King's primary residence when he's not out engaging in his favorite hobby, going to war with the Dutch. The Sun King felt that Denmark was natural French territory and he very nearly managed to make this a reality.

But his capture of Amsterdam was thwarted when the Dutch opened their dikes and flooded the lowlands. So he does get stymied in his dream of owning the Netherlands, which is very sad for all of us. I would like to own the Netherlands one day. So I can understand why this is big for Louis XIV. Back home, he couldn't make this work, but back in Versailles, he's able to exercise ultimate control over nature. For example, the king decided he wanted a forest around Versailles, and 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. I was just gonna say, you got a bloody wait for the thing. Huge pain in the ass, you know? He's not gonna do that. So rather than wait for trees to grow, he has thousands of adult trees dug up from nearby forests

in a whole different site. Just take a tree from somewhere else. Take it from somewhere else. And he plants them. Yeah. Mitford writes, those which died about half were immediately replaced. So basically they're just planting,

digging up adult trees, planting them, waiting for ones to die and then replanting them until they have a living forest. As in grabbing new trees to replace the trees that you've already grabbed. Wonderful, cool. That you've already murdered? Yes. Speaking of killing trees,

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, we're so back. We've never been more back. And we're talking about the palace at Versailles, which has just murdered thousands of trees so that the king can have a forest. Right. Justified.

So obviously, for years, the palace is dreadfully uncomfortable. Curtiers slept wherever they could before the various apartments were finished. And the Sun King was also usually like kind of roughing it too. Behind his back, nobles called the palace a mistress without merit, as in like This is like the king's lady, but like she sucks, you know None would dare say that to Louis's face, to Louis's face though And the dream of the palace sustained him until the first phase of construction was finished in like the 1670s 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.

One like anecdote you'll hear at the time is that British people who would like go and see the court at Versailles would be like, oh man, our King lives in a fucking slum basically. Right? Like it is in short order, the most famous Capitol building in Europe. And it actually like every palace after this point is influenced by Versailles. It becomes like a destination for the other crowned heads

and nobles of the continent. And so it actually does, it is a hideous expense. While they are building it, it consumes half of France's GDP. What? Yes. It is an outrageous expense. Wonderful. Like it is almost an incomprehensible expense. And this enormous expense necessitated economic changes, which were brought about in part by the further centralization and modernization of the French state.

Part of obviously Versailles in and of itself is centralizing the state in a way that makes it more modern, but also they have to modernize and centralize the economy more in order to afford Versailles. Louis's economic minister was a guy named Colbert, who had taught the Sun King math when he was a child. And Colbert hated Versailles. He thinks it's a stupid idea, but he's also really good with the money. And he's probably the only person who could have made the whole project economically viable.

And for a while he does, as Mitford writes, quote, the prestige of Louis XIV and the fame of Versailles mounted year by year. Other European princes and magnates wanted a Versailles of their own, quote, the prestige of Louis XIV and the fame of Versailles mounted year by year. Other European princes and magnates wanted a Versailles of their own, down to the smallest details of its furnishings. Colbert exploited this fashion to help his exports. He erected a rigid customs barrier. Nothing was allowed to be imported that could be made in France. Factories were set up to supply the linen, lace, silk, glass, carpets, jewelry, inlaid

furniture and other articles of luxury that used to come from foreign lands. The finest examples of their work went to Versailles and were shown to the foreign visitors who flocked there. The chateau became a shop window, a permanent exhibition of French goods." Hmm. So the economy literally centralized around a house. Yes. Yes.

And it becomes a massive part of the French economy. Both in that, like, this is where 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. 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. 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 is in this period of time. And Colbert saw the sheer number of workmen the project consumed as more than the state could bear

given its current birth rate, right? Like he comes, the minister of the economy comes to the conclusion that we are not breeding enough men to continue rebuilding Versailles. And so we instituted a national breeding program to ensure sufficient labor. For a house. For the king's big fancy party house! ALICE This is so awful, but also so cool.

ZACH It's nuts. ALICE It's just like, half the economy, like, all of the... we have an entire thing of housing furnishings, like, at multiple industries. ZACH It's nuts, and obviously evil. It is also, like, Louis XIV is kind of the most king that a king has ever been. MIGUEL Yeah, this really is kinging it, about as I was one. If you're gonna be a king, span half of the economy, create multiple industries, make everything built in one country, to make your house cool.

RILEY To make your house cool. MIGUEL And then create a bunch of bizarre social rules inside it, so that everyone's freaked out. make everything built in one country to make your house cool. RYON DAY CHILD To make your house cool. Yeah. ALICE Then create a bunch of bizarre social rules inside it so that everyone's freaked out. Just like... RYON DAY Yeah. It's so... Like, there are between... Once Versailles 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? When like the party season's at full swing towards... ALICE 10,000 fucking people, right? When like the party seasons at full swing.

10,000 fucking people in there. Yes, yes. It is massive. Now Colbert institutes this breeding program. He exempts families with more than 10 kids from taxes. He also raises the age. That's nice. 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 and he forbids working men from emigrating from leaving the country Yes Bring your boys to my house to build my house and for for Colbert. It's more like I hate this 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. 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 maths so that you could build a house like this. Yeah. Now it is hard for me to read stuff like this and not think about like Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey's obsession with birth rates, right? And they frame it as like a fairness thing.

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? They also just want warm bodies to feed into the ravenous maw of their narcissistic death projects. They just aren't as open about it, or as good at it. And they'll never have Louis XIV swag.

And I think that is the thing with Elon Musk and all of these other damp fellows, they don't have the killer instinct of like an old school French atrocity merchant. Yes, because they didn't, he literally fought and like, warred his way. Like his whole childhood is like wars and conniving, right? And he, like, even the 14th is- Yeah. No, no, no. It's just, Musk is like, trying to like, couch everything, like, oh, I'm doing this for the betterment of humanity. Louis is just like, we need more fucking children to build my

party house. Go, go, go. Yeah build my party house. Go, go, go. Yeah, exactly. Go, go, go. What are you fucking kidding? They don't make chairs here. Fuck you. You can't leave the country until you fuck more. So the years in which Versailles 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. This does work. Yeah. However, the wealth coming as a result of Versailles is largely due to an explosion again, in luxury goods and work for skilled craftsmen. And so while there's, on paper,

the economy's doing better, a huge group of the country is doing much worse, which is the peasantry, right? The people who make their living growing food suffer tremendously while this economic miracle is going on. Again, this is not similar to anything that's happened recently. Not that it's the people growing food with us, but it is like the economy's great on paper for all of these corporations while a huge chunk of the working class is suffering, right? It is kind of, you can see it as similar to that where, well, yeah, like the people who

are making shit for Versailles are doing well, but like the peasant farmers are in a disastrous state. And Colbert's fine with this. He does not give a shit about these people's suffering and neither does Louis. They are concerned with the continued expansion of this pleasure palace and the attendant growth of the French military and navy. And those are the only projects- It's not built fully yet, or are they just building more of it?

They're constantly building more of it and renovating it. And the only projects that are allowed to compete with Versailles for manpower are the military and the navy. As Mitford writes, quote, he Colbert did little or nothing to help the French peasants through a period of agricultural depression. Indeed, low farm prices suited his policy of cheap exports. The gap between the peasantry and the rest of the population first became serious under Colbert.

It was not bridged as in England by country gentlemen. He encouraged the slave trade and although he did insist on certain humanitarian measures, this was the only way to keep down the death rate of such valuable cattle. Worst of all, he increased the number of galleys in the French Navy from six to 40, each containing 200 unhappy souls. Since black people were useless for manning them, they had no stamina and died at once. He employed, this was a book written a lot longer ago, he employed French criminals and Turks caught in the Barbary Wars. When the Turks were worn out, they were sold in America for what they would fetch. Young solid Frenchmen accused of capital offenses were often sent to the galleys for life instead of being executed.

Minor criminals, if they were able-bodied, were never released at the end of their sentences. They could only be freed if their relations could afford to buy a Turk to replace them. Colbert thought that too many of his galley slaves died. The intendant of the galley swore they were well fed, but said they died of grief and boredom." Come on, Padme. This is just a nightmare. It's really to to emphasize, this is a nightmare state, right? While they're killing all these laborers in the palace, the whole navy is, we tried using slaves but they all died immediately, so we brought in, instead we brought in Turks that were basically slaves, and captive prisoners, and you know, you can buy your way out, but

you gotta find us another Turk, you know? Yeah, just like, there's like a side Turk economy, and all can buy your way out, but you gotta find us another Turk, you know? Mason- Yeah, just like there's a side Turk economy, and all of this again is to pretty much make sure a big house is built. Steele- Yes. Well, this is for the Navy, but the Navy is there to protect your ability to continue building the big house, right? You need a strong Navy and military so no one can stop you from having this huge house.

Mason- Of course. Oh, God. St course. Oh God. Yeah, it's a nightmare. It is important to really emphasize the degree to which Versailles was from the beginning, a marvel of architecture and art and culture, as well as a yawning pit into which human lives were poured in order to build and maintain.

That said, the plan works. The nobles don't trouble him or any other French king in his line with thoughts of revolution again. Beyond that, Versailles becomes the envy of every other king and emperor. It was, in one writer's words, the cultural heartbeat of Europe. When people on the continent referred to the king, like if people in other European states just refer generally to the king, it's 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.

And his centralization of power, he becomes one of the most absolute monarchs the world has ever seen. One illustrative anecdote is a rhyme the Sun King himself composed, The state, that's me. Wow, lyrical genius. Lyrical genius, Louis XIV. It's so funny. No ego has ever been more fevered. A whole language of etiquette and pomp is created and developed around earning and keeping the king's power. For 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- My man hates the toilet. If you are traveling with this guy or hanging out with him and you need to stop to pee, if you like asked to be excused to go to the bathroom,

you're instantly exiled from the cool kids crowd. Right? He's just like trying to give everybody a UTI. He loves UTIs. The man can't get enough UTIs. What is he doing? What are these to piss? Oh, he just does whatever he wants.

He's pissing, he's pissing willy nilly. He's the king, he can do anything. What a strange little man. So his closest friends find themselves avoiding water or getting really good at holding it, or they have to sneak away to relieve themselves, right? I'm just going outside to look around. I'm just gonna have a smoke or something, man. I gotta go fuck my mistress.

Now, servants, some nobles have their own apartments with chamber pots, right? And so their servants will barter and sell bathroom access to people who need to go to the bathroom who are like running away from saying, I'm like, you gotta give me a second. This is wild, this is undange. I gotta pee somewhere, right?

This is so strange. Because of this, there are rumors which will really get crazy among later kings, and these will spread heavily among people in Paris. And it's fanned a lot by newspapers and tracts that are printed in Denmark because there's no press freedom in France. So the newspapers that people are reading in Paris that have all of the gossip are usually printed in Denmark and then brought into Paris, smuggled into Paris.

They'll be sold at like property owned by nobles who are like the idea of these papers being around for their own personal benefit and can keep the police away, right? So that's how a lot of this, we'll talk more about that later. But 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 rumors that starts to spread because of how weird Louis is about people

going to the bathroom is that members of the nobility are just pissing in the hallways and corners of the palace and that all of Versailles is one big expensive bathroom. Right? Like everyone's just pissing and shitting everywhere. Right? That is a rumor that's widely believed in Paris. This is an exaggeration.

Mitford says it's just outright untrue, you know, because of how many bathrooms there are in Versailles, this just wouldn't happen. I don't think Mitford's got it right either, because here's the thing. It's certainly not true that it's the norm for people to piss and shit wherever they're standing, but this is a house filled with thousands of drunk people

partying all of the time. And also they're gossiping. Yeah. So they're like, did you hear Sally went to the toilet? I saw Jeremy pissing. So one of the things that is a factor in Versailles, every room basically, every major room has orange trees in it, like in other plants, people are definitely pissing in those pots. Like, you're not going to tell me people are definitely pissing in those pots.

Like, you're not gonna tell me people are- That's why they're still alive. Yeah, but they get desperate- They're full of French, and they're gonna piss. They're gonna piss, right? And people are for sure puking in random spots, right? Cause again, it's a big frat house to some degree, right?

So there's some amount of this that has- Beautiful. 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. Especially if you have to surreptitiously piss. You've got to hide that you're pissing.

You're just like turning around, adjusting lip-hents. Hygiene was not as bad back then as people often assume among the nobility, but like people didn't bathe daily. They're generally cloaked in perfume. And between that, the 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.

It smelled crazy in there. It smelled crazy. Not necessarily bad always, but crazy. Yeah. Like unfathomable to our modern noses. So Louis XIV 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? And the king is a notoriously horny guy. He is horny by the standards of French kings, right? Like, and that's hard. Like, French kings almost invented modern sex. And he is the fuckingest of the kings of France. Nice.

One of his first mistresses was kings of France. Nice. One of his first mistresses was Louise de la Valliere, Louise de la Valliere, right? Who eventually reached a sort of, and like, there's a huge conflict between her and his wife, the queen,

and one of his other mistresses. And they eventually like, all sit down and talk about it in a way that feels like weirdly modern and like become cool with each other. Right. So they're talking about le boundaries. Yeah, yeah. Like that actually happens here. And like they're actually kind of chill for a while about it. OK, 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? Like the King's mistress is a specific named position at court and one that held quite a bit of influence, right? Oh, wow. This government is insane. You've got the piss house. The piss house. The lady who's just fucking the king. The mistress is like a title. You have a business card. The mistress is a title and the 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. And you know, who knows what that'll change. And it's, it's one of those things where he has his official mistress. That is not to say that he limits himself to one mistress, as Johnny Wilkes writes,

quote, it'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. Cause again, he's the king, you know? He's just fucking whoever he wants. He needs to fuck then. And he needs to fuck then. Yeah. Now, because the king has the power to,

one of the ways in which he'll show favor to a lady he fucks or to just like a dude he has like a party, he gets along with a guy one night, they have a good drunk talk or whatever, he hands out these gifts, right? And these gifts are not like, sometimes, he can hand out just money, but usually the gift is like a pension

or the right to tax a specific area, or like you get a cut of the fish that are sold in this province, right? That's your present. I got fucked up with Louis and now I can text people. Yeah, I got fucked up with Louis and now I get 2% of all of the fish sold in Normandy, right?

That's just what I have forever now. So there's a lot of, there's a ton of money and like being a woman who he likes, and there's a ton of money and just like being a dude that he's friends with. And so a 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. This is all whole industry in France is like witchcraft to impress the King. Fuck yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. That's so great. Nancy Mitford writes about one such purfayer of magics, Madame Voisin. Madame Voisin was approached by a lady at court, vying with Louise de la Valérie for

the Sun King's attention, right? So you know, Valérie is his mistress and this new lady wants to become the next mistress. Her name is Madame de Montespan and she wants to take over for Valerie. And you know, she thinks that magic's the best way to do that. So she talks to this Madame Boisine lady. And I'm gonna quote from the book, The Sun King here.

She gave excellent advice to her clients and did what she could to help them, catering for little feminine desires, such as larger breasts and smaller mouths, white hands and lucket cards. When unwanted babies were on the way, she was very understanding. If wishes concerned in inheritance, there were certain powders. For unrequited love, various forms of magic. No doubt she began advising Madame de Montespan by talking over the situation and who, longing to be loved, can have enough of such talks and such advice. But nothing happened. The king remained indifferent." Right? So she tries some of these

like magics and spells and the king doesn't want to fuck her yet. So it's decided that they should move on to like the hardcore spells, which means bringing in the devil, right? If you want to do the powerful magic, you're gonna 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. 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.

And so these Catholic priests will conduct underground satanic rites. In order to like do magic for these people at Versailles. This is old for a house. Yeah, this is a terrible house. This house has its underground black magic economy. Now, and obviously other, like in Paris, there's other parts of France

where this kind of underground trade exists, but it largely comes to focus around these people in Versailles currying for favor, right? Now again, Nancy Mitford is from a different generation and she writes about all this magic more seriously as if these priests and these witches believe literally in everything that they're doing. My suspicion is that a lot of these service providers are like con men and women, right?

They know these black masses aren't really magic spells or whatever. They just also understand that if they can create this space of altered reality for their wealthy out of touch clientele who live in a permanent party and don't understand the real world, then they can get a lot of money out of them, right? I think it really is much more cynical from... I'm sure there's some people who really believe that they're talking to the devil. ALICE We're suggesting that these people didn't have a connection to the devil? A bit unreasonable.

RILEY Yes, yes. But, you know, they know the nobility believes that. That's my interpretation. ALICE And these people are like, sleep deprived, they stink, they've been living in the party house for like, years. So they're just like, insane. RILEY Yeah, they're living in the party house. Yeah, they're out of their minds.

ALICE Well, they're already in an altered reality. Because they're living in the party house. Yeah, they're out of their minds. Well, they're already in an altered reality. Because they're living in this world where you can't piss or shit. You can't, like, the wrong person can't hand a shirt. Of course they're open to magic. The laws of man don't exist. You've gotten it exactly right. Which is that Versailles is a cult. 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. And that's why this magic trade really perks up. 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. There was some nonsense with pigeon's hearts under a consecrated chalice, and she prayed, Please let the king love me. Let Monseigneur le Dauphine, that's the king's son and heir, be my friend, and may this love

and this friendship last. Please make the queen sterile. Let the king leave La Valerie and never look at her again. Let the queen be repudiated and the king marry me. It was all rather harmless and undeniably successful. The king seemed to become aware of her for the first time. He went off to besiege Lillet in June of 1667, taking her in the capacity of lady-in-waiting to the queen.

Louise de Valery was not invited. In despair, she followed the royal party and caught up with it as the camp was being pitched. When she came face to face with the king, he put on a terrifying matter and said, Madam, I don't like having my hand forced. She had to go away, deeply humiliated. 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. So it worked. You know? Yeah. That's good. This whole system works. I said 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. 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. Or else. All right, everyone. We love you. Kind of.

Goodbye. Some of us love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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