V.3. THE SUN KING, ANTI-CAPITALIST

: 5.3. The Sun King: anti-capitalist?

LOUIS XIV'S ENIGMAS: BUILDING VERSAILLES AND OUTLAWING PROTESTANTISM 

The need to contain capitalism explains them.

Louis XIV at the Siege of Douai, 1672 by Charles le Brun

The monarchy at the height of its power

• The new king taxes and spends 

• Other ways to unload funds

• The monarchy's string of palaces near Paris  

• Waterless Versailles

• The logic of pharaonic expense  

• Was outlawing Protestantism a way to bring capitalists to heel? 

• Detour: A faith specific to France

• Detour: memories of persecution and wartime rescue of Jews

• Controls on profit-seeking start to crack 

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Next,

The new king taxes and spends

THE NEW KING TAXES AND SPENDS

TAXES SKIM OFF PROFITS AND GIANT FÊTES DISPERSE IT

The king suppresses revolt: 

Allegory of the Revolt against the Stamp Tax, Brittany, 1675 by Jean-Bernard Chalette, 1676 / zoom

The Governor of Brittany, whom Louis has appointed and who collects the tax, sits on a coach the devil drives.

 

Statement at the bottom of the painting.

"Rich and poor are unjustly oppressed." 

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Giant celebrations accomplish the usual goal: destroy investible income and reinforce authority.

• Parades: 

• An equestrian ballet marks the start of Louis's reign without a Prime Minister and the birth of an heir (in 1662). The site is still called "la place du Carrousel."

The Grand Carrousel Given by Louis XIV at the Tuileries, June 5 and 6 1662 by Henri Gissey, 1662 / zoom 

The bleachers in front of the Tuileries palace seat 15,000 spectators and one of the prizes is a jewel-filled box with the king's portrait on the cover.

Maurice Leloir 

           Louis stars as himself in the mythological theme.

• The event recalls the show given for the mariage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria in 1614, which a German print to recalls much later (in 1682).

Festivity in Honor of the Royal Mariages, anonymous, first quarter 17th century / zoom

     The Triumphant Cortège in Paris Due to the Double Marriage between Spain and France / zoom

• Fetes:

• 1662: six days of festivity for 600 guests, with jewels as lottery prizes, openly dedicated to Louis' the queen and queen mother, but secretly to Louise de la Vallière.

The next page says for more about her and her successor as favorite, the Marquise de Montespan.

The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle, Third Day / zoom

Video of First Day, with the majestic, positive music of Jean-Baptiste Lully, court composer.

 

• 1668: Officially to celebrate a peace treaty giving France sites on its northern border and unofficially for the Marquise de Montespan, the fête took place on single day. 

The cost for welcoming 3000 guests was a third of Versailles's annual budget (of 1668):

Versailles publication / zoom

Description: please click.

• 1674: to mark the reconquest of Franche-Comté, giant fireworks inaugurate the Grand Canal (for the exploit of filling it with water, please click on).

 

                  Zoom

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Fireworks literally send revenues up in smoke. Subjects participate by watching from afar.

Video announcing spectacle on Louis XIV's fireworks, Versailles / zoom

Then rebuilding Versailles 
takes the place of the giant celebrations. 

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Next,

The cost of royal mistresses

OTHER WAYS TO UNLOAD FUNDS

ROYAL MISTRESSES' SPENDING HELPS CONTROL GROWTH

* They also stabilize the monarchy by distributing royal gifts to their clans and by deflecting popular hostility from the kings.

Successive favorites:

 Louise de la Vallière as Diana, 1667 / zoom; The Marquise de Montespan in the chateau given by the king, 1680 / zoom 

   

Louise de La Vallière was an exception to the ambitious, grasping royal mistresses, because she genuinely loved the king. For her story, please click here (scroll all the way down).

Françoise-Athenaïs* de Rochefort-Mortemart contributed to the éclat of the court for 15 years, until disgraced for associating with a witch: story here.

*The kind of antiquity-appearing name that sophisticated women chose to set themselves apart.

• "It's barely worthy of an opera girl," said the Marquise of a first chateau the king offered. 

     View and Perspective of Clagny Chateau, from the Garden and Swamp of Versailles, print by Antoine Aveline, no date / zoom.

• He had it torn down and built that shown above, which now only a street name recalls.

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Louis builds and demolishes works of art:  

• The grotto of Thetys, destroyed when the palace was enlarged (in 1684).

     Louis XIV in Front of the Grotto of Thetis, anonymous, 1670's / zoom

• The "Trianon* de porcelaine," decorated by earthenware ceramics (the French have heard of blue and white Chinese porcelaine, but learn to make it only later). Replaced, 1687.

*Name of the original hamlet.

Reconstitution / zoom  

Trianon Perspective Seen from the Entry by Adam Perelle, toward 1680 / zoom

Garden view, anonymous / zoom 

Replacement, 1687

Louis XV as child on visit to Grand Trianon by Jean-Baptiste Martin, 1724 / zoom

More ways of disposing of re-investible resources, strengthening power at the same time:

• Thousands of grown trees are uprooted and replanted in the Versailles park:

Zoom

• Ten thousand tulips are brought from Holland and planted at night, to surprise courtiers when they wake. 

Gone from the web.

• Priceless silks: Before Versailles, they were carried from chateau to chateau as the kings moved. But after king settles there, they are renewed twice a year.

Louis XIV visits the Gobelin tapestry establishment by Charles Le Brun 1673 / zoom;  curtain, chateau de Fontainebleau : zoom

When the marquise's pet bear destroys a the silks of a salon, Louis says nothing.

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The Hall of Mirrors replaces a terrace...

Zoom

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Versailles's association with the Sun King has encouraged modern Heads of State to stud Paris with monuments in their memory: 

Museum web site

Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac.

But they don't cost 

two billion euros* for construction, 

not counting upkeep, decor and changes.  

*116 million "livres."

Yet Louis has other palaces.

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Next,

The monarchy's string of palaces near Paris

THE MONARCHY'S STRING OF PALACES NEAR PARIS

THEY HAVE FORESTS, WATER AND TOWNS

Saint-Germain was actually two palaces. That newest, finished by Louis's grandfather Henri IV, had four leagues* of terraces to admire the spectacular view.

*"League": the distance covered in an hour's walk. The four leagues are of the great historian, Jules Michelet.

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Chateau-Vieux, a medieval castle transformed in Renaissance style by Francis I:

(Toward 1530)

View of the Old Château of Saint-Germain en Laye / At the time that Louis left Saint-Germain for Versailles (1682) / zoom

Zoom

It towers over town and river.

Zoom

View from a terrace now.

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Chateau-Neuf:

• Building begins in the 16th century, is halted by civil war, finished in the early 17th century under powerful monarchy.

Zoom

 Drawing in the archives / zoom 

Chateau-Neuf of Saint-Germain in 1637

By Israel Sylvestre / zoom

 View of Château-Neuf in the mid-17th century

  Zoom

Gardens of 1680, reconstituted 

Gone from the web.

Chateau neuf seen from the Paris bank, 17th and 18th centuries.

•  Louis XVI gives to one of his brothers with funds for renovation. When the property is confiscated during the Revolution, it is demolished, its lands rented out and its raw materials sold.

Louis XIV has the gardens redrawn (in 1680),

in the midst of planning to transfer

government and court to Versailles (in 1682).

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Next,

Waterless Versailles