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Bonjour! | 0:00:06 | 0:00:07 | |
Welcome to Inside Versailles, where we're going to go straight in | 0:00:07 | 0:00:09 | |
to an exciting discussion about one of my favourite subjects - power. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:13 | |
And we are joined by Dr Joanne Paul. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
And the first thing, really, we should talk about here | 0:00:16 | 0:00:19 | |
is Louis XIV - most powerful man in Europe, | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
-perhaps, or certainly that's how he wants to be seen. -Absolutely. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
-And absolutely is the word. -Yes! -He's an absolutist monarch. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
-This is the phrase we use. -Yes. -What does that mean? | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
It means that he has absolute power, as you said. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
He's the centre of all the power in France or, at least, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
as you say, wants to be seen that way - he wants to be | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
the centre of it all, really. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
Versailles is the biggest possible symbol of power, isn't it? | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
Not just because it's so expensive, but also because all these nobles, | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
who are used to living on their private country estates, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
now have to come and live under the eyes of his spies. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
Yeah, he really takes them away from their own centres of power | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
and brings them to his centre of power. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:03 | |
And bringing them all together and doing things like having | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
these court masques, which are very expensive. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:09 | |
Yeah, here we have a portrait that's commemorating a court masque, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
and you can see the entire family of Louis dressed as these sort of | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
All the portraits we've seen have got Louis in the centre but, | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
-here, he's just slightly to the side. -Yeah. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:25 | |
What's the point of this? Is it power? | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
-Well, it certainly is about power, but not necessarily Louis's. -Ah. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
This was commissioned by Philippe. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:33 | |
Louis is dressed as Apollo, as he usually is, the Sun King. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
But Philippe has given himself the role of the Morning Star who, | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
of course, heralds the sun and comes in before the sun does. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
So it is about these hierarchies of power, | 0:01:45 | 0:01:48 | |
-but this one is all about Philippe. -How does Louis make decisions? | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
Does he listen to advice or is it simply that, what he says, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
they have to put into power? | 0:01:55 | 0:01:56 | |
Louis is very, very clear about the separation of counsel and command. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:01 | |
So, at 22, when he comes in and decides he's going to rule himself, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
he very clearly tells his counsellors that I will | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
consult you, I will listen to you, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:09 | |
but I get to make the final decision, I'm the one who commands. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
And then you have this debate going on between the absolutists, | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
who think that Parlement is really just there to register | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
the King's edicts in the sense of sort of proclaiming them, | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
and then you have the constitutionalists, who think that | 0:02:22 | 0:02:24 | |
you're giving your consent, your stamp of approval, to these edicts. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
Now, of course, Louis sides with the absolutists. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
And so, what Louis attempts to do is to chip away, really, | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
at the power of the Parliament to resist his edicts. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
So they have this right of remonstrance - the right to say, | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
no, we don't like what you're saying, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:43 | |
we're not going to put our stamp of approval on it. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
And he starts to take away some of that power to the point that | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
they're not even allowed to delay when they register an edict - | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
-they have to do it right away. -Right. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:56 | |
And he also takes away their power to call the King down and | 0:02:56 | 0:03:01 | |
voice their concerns about the edicts. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:02 | |
He says, I don't really want to go down there any more. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
And so, by chipping away at this power, | 0:03:05 | 0:03:07 | |
he's really sort of saying, well, no, I have the power. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
Power cannot be divided. It has to be from one source. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
There's a great line in the episode where Philippe says, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
"You've taken your clothes off, you've shown us your frailty." | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
And that seems to me to be the crux of it - if you show your frailty, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
it could undermine this whole house of cards. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
Precisely, and he's getting that a lot from Renaissance texts | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
that emphasised reputation - that the reputation of | 0:03:30 | 0:03:34 | |
a monarch was really everything. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
And so, you could be as full of vice and frailty as you like, sort of | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
on the inside, but you had to give this great show of glory, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
this performance, this sort of court masque attitude towards things. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:49 | |
And Louis is, in fact, | 0:03:49 | 0:03:50 | |
the one who sort of invites in that close scrutiny | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
by making his home really this performance. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
It means that he has to keep up that act. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
And how much does this interest in divine power set him against | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
the religious aspects of court, because, essentially, if you're | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
saying, God speaks through me, isn't that the role of the priest? | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
Louis thinks that, within France, the kings have a right to decide | 0:04:08 | 0:04:12 | |
about the Catholic Church and the Pope doesn't actually have | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
any power to do that. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
So it is a little bit contrary to the Church, in some ways, | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
that he claims this direct divine right. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:23 | |
Which means, what, the King has been appointed by God? | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
And that the people have no right to resist him. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:28 | |
And so, if you get a bad king, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
it's actually God's punishment and you have to endure it - | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
-you can't try to overthrow the King or anything like that. -Harsh! | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
And the greatest symbol of all of Louis's power was Versailles, | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
so perhaps we should go and talk a bit more about it. | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
Absolutely. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:43 | |
When you look at Versailles, it looks so beautiful - | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
this incredible place, beautifully laid out, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
yet, to so many of the nobles in there, it was a pure prison. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
Versailles is one of his greatest tools of power as well as | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
expressions of power. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:57 | |
You can see in the gardens, for instance, | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
this great sign of man's power over nature and the sort of rationalism. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
-As you tame it. -Absolutely. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
And even the sort of untamed bits were designed to control | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
people's emotions, in certain ways. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:13 | |
And so, there was a sort of rational irrationalism going on, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
or maybe irrational rationalism, but, either way, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
it was all controlled and all designed in a specific way. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:24 | |
At this point, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:25 | |
he doesn't care about the ordinary people of Paris or wherever. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
Not really, no. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:29 | |
They make up France and he is France but, beyond that, | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
he's certainly not interested in the vox populi - | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
the voice of the people. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:37 | |
It's not important to him. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:38 | |
So, to Louis, the working classes aren't really anything more than | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
just someone for him to make money out of. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
You also see that a bit with the aristocracy - | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
that, basically, they're just there for him to make cash out of. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
I mean, every episode, they are gambling for these huge stakes. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:52 | |
Yeah, they were gambling about three times a week within Versailles, | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
and gambling was one of another ways in which Louis controls his nobles. | 0:05:55 | 0:06:01 | |
By getting them to gamble, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:02 | |
he's essentially taxing them without actually taxing them, | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
cos you can't tax the nobles in France, and raising taxes in general | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
is a sure-fire way, if you're a monarch, to lose your head. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
-Bit unpopular. -It doesn't really work. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
And he has lots of examples | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
from recent history to remind him of that. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
So, instead, he gets them to sort of tax themselves | 0:06:19 | 0:06:23 | |
while also appeasing them, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
keeping them fairly happy and keeping them in Versailles. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:28 | |
Versailles really is the seat of Louis's power. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
Joanne, that's been fascinating. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:33 | |
Thank you so much for joining us, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:34 | |
and thank you too for joining us this evening on Inside Versailles. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:38 | |
-See you next week. Bonsoir. -Bonsoir. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 |