0:00:06 > 0:00:08Bonjour, and welcome to Inside Versailles,
0:00:08 > 0:00:11where I think we spotted our villain, Duke of Cassel. Evil.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14- Handsome.- OK, weird, but fine.- Just me?
0:00:14 > 0:00:16And, also we've seen tragedy for the Parthenay family.
0:00:16 > 0:00:18Another scene I want to talk about though...
0:00:18 > 0:00:21It's a flashback, it's a quick scene, and we see Louis, a young
0:00:21 > 0:00:24Louis, being initiated into the ways of love by a naked older lady.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26What's going on there?
0:00:26 > 0:00:28Well, you might think this is just a fictional device,
0:00:28 > 0:00:31but that really did happen. Louis' mother, Anne of Austria,
0:00:31 > 0:00:33she wanted to control everything about him
0:00:33 > 0:00:36including his first sexual experience,
0:00:36 > 0:00:38so she chose a lady-in-waiting, Madame de Beauvais,
0:00:38 > 0:00:41chosen because she was loyal, and also because she was ugly.
0:00:41 > 0:00:44Those were two very useful things for Anne of Austria.
0:00:44 > 0:00:46But Louis was very grateful for her attentions.
0:00:46 > 0:00:49They had a few rolls in the hay, and he gave her a pension,
0:00:49 > 0:00:50he gave her a house.
0:00:50 > 0:00:53But what Anne of Austria is doing there is making sure that he
0:00:53 > 0:00:55learns about sexual initiations,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58not from a glamorous lady-in-waiting who might exploit him,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00not to fall in love with a girl of his own age,
0:01:00 > 0:01:03she wants to make him marry for political reasons,
0:01:03 > 0:01:06and take mistresses for sex, which is exactly what happened.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11So, Anne was incredibly successful about controlling her son's emotional life.
0:01:11 > 0:01:13OK, so we've got a quick insight into his childhood there,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16and actually, it's an interesting time politically,
0:01:16 > 0:01:20so we should probably start talking to our expert, Doctor Sara Barker
0:01:20 > 0:01:24about the politics of this period in history which we call the "Fronde". What is the Fronde?
0:01:24 > 0:01:28The Fronde is essentially a period of civil war that really
0:01:28 > 0:01:31rocks France to the core in the middle of the 17th century.
0:01:31 > 0:01:36It starts really as a revolt over taxes,
0:01:36 > 0:01:38always a sore point for people,
0:01:38 > 0:01:40but by that point, in the minority,
0:01:40 > 0:01:43so many people are upset with Anne, and also with Louis'
0:01:43 > 0:01:46chief minister, that it really spirals out of control.
0:01:46 > 0:01:49Everybody seems to get involved at one point or another
0:01:49 > 0:01:53and it really does shake France for five years, essentially.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56So, this word, la Fronde, it comes from the French for catapult,
0:01:56 > 0:02:00- doesn't it?- Yes, we've got barricades in the streets of Paris.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02- With catapults?- With catapults.
0:02:02 > 0:02:07We have princes getting involved, Louis' uncle gets involved,
0:02:07 > 0:02:11the nobles get involved. Entire towns go into insurrection.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15The town of Bordeaux essentially revolts up against everybody
0:02:15 > 0:02:18- and sets themselves up as an entirely separate system.- Oh, wow.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21It's really... It doesn't get more serious.
0:02:21 > 0:02:23It's the people versus the monarchy.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26It's the people, it's the nobles, it's the "parlement".
0:02:26 > 0:02:27It's absolutely everybody.
0:02:27 > 0:02:31The critical thing is that nobody manages to sort of
0:02:31 > 0:02:35ally with the different groups, so it all kind of flounders.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39Because it seems like, when you look at it, an unwinnable possibility.
0:02:39 > 0:02:41Everyone is against Anne and Mazarin,
0:02:41 > 0:02:43so how can they possibly win? And yet they do.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46And at the same time, you've got the civil war going on in England.
0:02:46 > 0:02:50- You've got that ending badly.- Yeah.
0:02:50 > 0:02:54But there's no kind of focal point for everybody to really,
0:02:54 > 0:02:56sort of, coalesce and agree on.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59So, it's a mess, but it's a mess that's unwinnable.
0:02:59 > 0:03:01So, the Fronde, it seems as if they're going to win
0:03:01 > 0:03:06and yet it collapses into recriminations and divisions.
0:03:06 > 0:03:07But what we've got here is this
0:03:07 > 0:03:09picture of Louis crushing
0:03:09 > 0:03:10the Fronde. So I think he's meant
0:03:10 > 0:03:12- to be Jupiter here. - Rather good publicity...
0:03:12 > 0:03:15Yeah, as if it's all his amazing success rather than
0:03:15 > 0:03:17the fact that they all just lost.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20- So, Louis was a pre-adolescent at this point, wasn't he?- Yeah.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Quite young, and yet here he's this God already,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26so royal propaganda, crushing the Fronde,
0:03:26 > 0:03:28- it's already working well for him. - Absolutely.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31And I think it's worth pointing out that the Fronde was
0:03:31 > 0:03:34absolutely a formative experience for Louis.
0:03:34 > 0:03:37At one point he has to flee Paris in the middle of the night
0:03:37 > 0:03:40- because things are getting too dangerous.- He's under house arrest as well.
0:03:40 > 0:03:43He's under house arrest. It's an incredibly traumatic experience for him
0:03:43 > 0:03:47and he really sees what happens when people really go against the monarchy.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50And I think it's something that stays with him
0:03:50 > 0:03:54- for the rest of his life. - It's interesting that he writes in his memoirs, doesn't he,
0:03:54 > 0:03:56"If you give power to the people, it poisons them."
0:03:56 > 0:04:00So, he doesn't think you should give the people a single bit of power.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03It completely infects his notion of democracy,
0:04:03 > 0:04:04ie, You shouldn't have it.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07Absolutely. It makes him very suspicious of what's going on in
0:04:07 > 0:04:10Paris, it makes him very suspicious of what the nobles might get up to.
0:04:10 > 0:04:12It really is something that stays with him.
0:04:12 > 0:04:15So, the paranoid Louis we see in this series owes a lot
0:04:15 > 0:04:18- to the fact of this Fronde rebellion.- Absolutely.
0:04:18 > 0:04:21So, he's had a pretty torrid time as a young man.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26And Versailles... Is that his response to not enjoying himself in Paris
0:04:26 > 0:04:29and seeing the threatened nobility, or is it just a pleasure palace?
0:04:29 > 0:04:31I think it's a little bit of both, really.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35It certainly is a place that he feels that he can control
0:04:35 > 0:04:39and that he can use the nobles as he wants to.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43I think one of the things that it's useful to remember is that he
0:04:43 > 0:04:46didn't just go to Versailles straight away.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49It was a hunting lodge, it had been used by his father,
0:04:49 > 0:04:52but there were other royal palaces that he stayed in.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55The move to Versailles as we think of Versailles is actually far
0:04:55 > 0:04:57more gradual than is perhaps depicted.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00And in this episode we've seen Louis demanding
0:05:00 > 0:05:04proof of nobility from his dukes and his counts.
0:05:04 > 0:05:05Did that happen? Is that true?
0:05:05 > 0:05:08Is he actually wielding that kind of power and saying
0:05:08 > 0:05:11"OK, prove to me that you deserve to be here."
0:05:11 > 0:05:14Or is that more of a poetical imagination in the drama?
0:05:14 > 0:05:16No, no, that did happen.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19There was a big commission in the 1660s
0:05:19 > 0:05:23and 1670s where people were expected to produce letters of nobility
0:05:23 > 0:05:26to commissioners who'd been sent out.
0:05:26 > 0:05:28It was something that his father had tried to do as well.
0:05:28 > 0:05:30Actually, a lot of it comes down to tax.
0:05:30 > 0:05:34- If you're a noble, you don't pay tax.- Ah, that's worth having.
0:05:34 > 0:05:39And there's quite a few people who'd like to be able to sidestep that.
0:05:39 > 0:05:41But also, it's a nice thing to be a noble.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43It conveys honour and grandeur.
0:05:43 > 0:05:50So there is this attempt to try and control, survey the nobility.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53It doesn't go very well. They soon realise that it's actually
0:05:53 > 0:05:55a real headache to try and organise that.
0:05:55 > 0:06:00With Cassel, we have here a very powerful man who is putting
0:06:00 > 0:06:03up resistance. Is that happing as well? I mean we've seen,
0:06:03 > 0:06:05obviously, the Parthenay family
0:06:05 > 0:06:07being brutally murdered on the roads.
0:06:07 > 0:06:10Is there a sense that there's conspiracies afoot here?
0:06:10 > 0:06:14I don't think it's quite so pronounced as we're perhaps seeing in the drama.
0:06:14 > 0:06:16So you don't see anyone stealing marble on the way to Versailles?
0:06:16 > 0:06:19Not the kind of thing I've come across, no.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22But there is a lot tension within the ranks of the nobility
0:06:22 > 0:06:25themselves, they're not just one big, homogenous mass.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29There are the great traditional nobles who've got lineages
0:06:29 > 0:06:32going back as long as your arm.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36And Louis remembers all of those, he has a great memory for the lineages.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38There are the new up and coming nobles,
0:06:38 > 0:06:41people who are making their way through service.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44And the, sort of, tensions between these two groups.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46So, we're not getting quite the sort of opposition to Louis.
0:06:46 > 0:06:49And I think, particularly after the Fronde, you know,
0:06:49 > 0:06:51Louis had essentially won the Fronde,
0:06:51 > 0:06:55certainly portrayed himself as winning the Fronde
0:06:55 > 0:06:58and I think the nobles learn a lot from that,
0:06:58 > 0:07:03that it's not so clever to try and face him outright.
0:07:03 > 0:07:07It's perhaps better to try and work within the system a little bit.
0:07:07 > 0:07:09You're never going to win, Louis versus the nobles.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12Well, thank you so much Sara, that's been completely fascinating.
0:07:12 > 0:07:14So, what an episode.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17Gripping stuff, there's been murder, there's been nobles versus
0:07:17 > 0:07:19Louis and these things are so important
0:07:19 > 0:07:20because that's pretty much the
0:07:20 > 0:07:25backbone of the entire series. Who's going to win? The nobles or Louis?
0:07:25 > 0:07:28- So, join us next week for more from Inside Versailles.- Bonsoir.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30Bonsoir.