DEFEATING ARCHAIC OPPONENTS OF GROWTH

THE SPANISH MONARCHY
AND THE FEUDAL FRENCH NOBILITY,
OBSOLETE ADVERSARIES OF GROWTH
Like Tofanga

Spain's outside revenues allow its immobility, 
and French nobles see stronger kingship
limiting their liberties,
not braking the economic transformation
 that is undermining them

• Spain:

The slain commander 

has gone to battle in an armchair (X):

Spanish warfare retains practices 
that maintain the status quo by limiting efficiency

This and other illustrations on this page by Maurice Leloir, in Le Roy-Soleil by T. Cabu, 1931.
Leloir was known for his scholarship, and if he includes the armchair it was there.
If only there were a reference!

People jealous of this French prince's success accuse him of "showing off for having started a fight with violins. They did not know that was the custom in Spain."  

-- Voltaire, The century of Louis XIV. 

Another sign of deliberately inefficient practice?
Voltaire says nothing more.

France begins to swallow up Spain at the end of the Thirty Years' War, a change that the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse cements (in 1660) and that their grandson becoming the ruler of Spain finalizes (in 1700).

• Nobles:
Five revolts (1626-1642)
and a full-fledged civil war (1648-52) 

The count of Chalais on his way to execution (in 1626).  

Henri II de Montmorency's mother pleads unsuccessfully for his pardon (in 1632)

Marie-Louise de Montpensier orders the cannon of the Bastille fortress to be fired on the royal troops (in 1652).

Spain and the nobles
 belong to societies of an earlier kind:
That the term "quixotic"
should hark back to a Spanish personnage makes sense,
and nobles look for their models to knights,
who were capable of exploits but not of discipline.

The defeat of both adversairies heralds a century
during which the victorious, powerful monarchy
keeps capitalism under control. 

End of this short chapter.

*     *     *

  Next chapter,
V.4.
 The Sun King, anti-capitalist?