/lit/ - Literature

>>5629070
The lack of a history board really pisses me off, I pretty much have to beg /lit/ for history recs.

>>5629070
There's a particularly good article in NLR about Louis XIV's dance

>>5629447
Thanks. I guess.

The greatest absolute monarchy that failed entirely after the next king ascended the throne because Louis XV didn't care to keep the system going properly and let royal authority crumble while he got his dick sucked and Louis XVI wanted to correct the abuses that had built up during Louis XV's reign but he gave in to popular opinion and lacked the social skills to assert his authority until it was too late.

>>5629498
weak rulers ruin nations, that's a given

but imagine what could have been

>Absolute monarchy
>A coherent and sustainable ideology at all

Parlements motherfucker

>you will be called the fun king
>you will make France the greatest absolute funarchy

I just want to have fun

>>5629516
>Absolute Monarchists
>glorious factioning
>le Roi-Soleil presents absolute monarchy as being for the people
>L'etat c'est moi!

>Parliaments
>Illiterate
>accomplish nothing of note
>doomed to violent revolution

>>5629532
>Implying the revolution was bad

>>5629540
>implying the revolution was good

>not a single history rec
C'mon /lit/ nothing?

>>5629508
>>5629516
What's funny is that Louis XVI's decision to reinstate the Paris Parlement is what resulted in most of the early reforms he created or backed not being made into law.

Restoring the Parlement was seen as a reversal of Louis XV's tyranny of banning them--but they persistently attacked XVI's early edicts calling for abolishing the corvee (aka 'hey poor peasants, you have to work without compensation on these roads that are mostly used by rich landowners and aristocracy') and creating a tax system that would be based on your wealth rather than on your social status. XVI was accused of tyranny because he... wanted to make things more equal and specifically recognized that the burden on the poor was too great.

What's a Louis to do?

>>5629549
>>5629540
>implying the revolution wasn't both

>>5629593
It was bad. It's only celebrated because France is still a republic. If the monarchy is ever restored it'll be condemned for the dark time it was in French History

>>5629588

Good place to start is The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648 - 1815 by Tim Blanning. It has a very good annotated bibliography for more serious scholarly work.

>>5629588
>>not a single history rec
I gave a recommendation to a major journal article on how Louis consolidated his power through male sexual display, and you can't even be bothered to jstor it.

>>5629603
Jesus Christ what are you 12? what kind of argument is that?

>>5629603
>governments support things that give them legitimacy and despise other form of governments
oh seriously?

>>5629616
The Republic brought no real change to French society except for the Reign of Terror. It was largely just the changing of political factions ruling over France. It couldn't even enact any lasting change on europe, it had to be subsumed into Napoleon's empire before it's values could spread.

>>5629611
Thanks very much man I'll check it out.

>>5629624
It might not of left any concrete and physical change, but it definitely transformed the political culture of Europe. It formulated the modern conception of the state, the nation and the people. Not to mention it increase the role of the people in a nation through mass participation (be it assemblies, marches and even lynchings)

A history board would be shit and you all know it.

The /pol/fags would ruin that place and so would the religitards.

>>5629663
>it definitely transformed the political culture of Europe
Only in so much that it organized all of europe against France

> It formulated the modern conception of the state, the nation and the people
Untrue

>Not to mention it increase the role of the people in a nation through mass participation
Because the peoples were completely unable to enact any change in their nation before the Revolution.

>>5629672
At least I'd get more than 1 rec per thread

>>5629673
Fuck you mate, two seconds in fucking google: http://newleftreview.org/II/3/peter-wollen-government-by-appearances

>>5629603
>what is the Bourbon Restoration

I'm not going to say I'm the biggest fan of the revolution. I have a boner for Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and have a big fancy Bourbon Restoration print tacked on my wall and I think of their executions as more or less murder.

But let's not pretend that ancien regime France as a whole wasn't fucked up unless you were part of the wealthy elite or at least part of the growing middle class. Forced labor, high taxes, horrible prison conditions, essentially no rights, lack of accessible medical care... and so on. If the French Revolution was a dark page in France's history, then the ancien regime--regardless of the personal benevolence of any particular monarchs-- was a 10-page spread.

To quote Mark Twain:

'THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

>>5629624
>Republic brought no change

I remember the aristocracy and religious class that existed after the revolution. o wait

>>5629802
>I remember the aristocracy and religious class that existed after the revolution. o wait

but French aristocracy didn't end with the revolution. Noble titles were created up through the second empire. Even Napoleon created and bestowed new hereditary noble titles on people.

>>5629498

Well that's the problem with absolutism: sooner or later you get a maniac or an idiot on the throne, and with no checks and balances the damage they can do to the country is incalculable.

>>5630206
To be fair, in the case of France, it wasn't so much "no checks or balances" causing damage (at least in the case of Louis XVI) so much as it was literally needing an absolute monarch like Louis XIV to lay down the law and have the authority and respect to force reforms regardless of the opinion of the court or Parlement.

>>5629603
>If the monarchy is ever restored

And this is the other thing: restored under who? Which faction - Bourbons? Orleanists? Bonapartists? I vote for the last, because Napoleon was a god amongst men.

>>5629712
Things would've gotten better nevertheless. France has always been the most populous and prosperous nations in Europe. As time went on, the Middle Class would grow, leading to peaceful change like that occurred for the most part in Britain.

>>5629673
>At least I'd get more than 1 rec per thread

Nah man it would be nothing but Holocaust denial, long screeds on the "War of Northern Aggression" and endless stormfag whining about how Hitler a good boy who dindu nuffin wrong. No thanks.

>>5630263
Britain did not have the same disdain for the middle class that France did, the word 'bourgeois' has connoted mediocrity since its inception. You couldn't even buy a title in France, in Britain you could.

>>5630283
That'd be if I posted on /pol/. Though given the strong right wing presence they might be the best place to go for history of the greatest monarch

>>5630297
If you want a book, one of Durant's volumes is called The Age of Louis XIV

>>5630288
>You couldn't even buy a title in France

Actually, you could! You could buy noble titles up until August 4th, 1789. However, there were still some privileges that you may not have been entitled to, which were almost excessively military posts.

>>5630263
>Things would've gotten better nevertheless

Citation needed.

>>5629549
It most definitely was.

>but muh wanting history to move backwards
>but muh ahistorical romanticism of the past even though it was objectively worse
>but bad people that deserved to be killed were killed, only the innocent peasantry are allowed to be killed ;_;
>seriously implying any king would've given one fuck about stringing you to the end of his carriage, except that it might ding the paint on the carriage somehow

>>5629603
Well it ended slavery and state religion

Was Louis XIV the ugliest historical figure to ever live? If not him then who?

>>5629590
Yeah but Louis XVI had a cunt wife who spent like 5% or something of the country's GDP on dresses and jewelry and shit while aggressively bitching about the French people and her husband in correspondences with Austrian diplomats. Also the bourgeoisie were greedy and wanted totally equal representation with the aristocracy, which they obviously weren't going to receive.

>>5630361
and yet ur mum is still a slave to my dick and worships me in the bedroom, so clearly it didn't do that good a job of it.

>you will never be called the great leader
>you will never make North Korea the greatest autocracy

>>5630389
>Yeah but Louis XVI had a cunt wife who spent like 5% or something of the country's GDP on dresses and jewelry and shit while aggressively bitching about the French people and her husband in correspondences with Austrian diplomats

The court expenditure in total was about 7-10% of the country's total spending, depending on the year. Court spending included everything from refurbishing chateaus to paying the salary of nobility with certain household positions to keeping horses/livestock fed to buying the candlesticks in palace servant's bedrooms etc etc, in addition to what most people think of as "court spending," aka buying estates and jewelry and clothes.

Marie Antoinette's total spending was about .5 to 1% of that 7-10%, and that spending included charity, household wages, household pensions, and the pensions owed to servants of the former queen that Marie Antoinette decided to continue paying. She spent a lot of money on dresses and jewelry and her personal estates, especially before she had children, but her spending wasn't a significant factor in France's finances--her fellow royals also spent far more. Louis XVI's brothers and aunts (and Louis XV's mistresses) spent more than Marie Antoinette ever did.

She didn't aggressively bitch about the people (that is, until the revolution, though she was specifically talking about people who she deemed enemies, not those she deemed simply 'misled') or her husband (except one letter from the height of her young 20s frivolity era where she calls him a "poor man" and makes a remark about how she would look silly covered in the dirt from his forge) either.

He's my great-great-great-great-great grandfather.

>>5630381
But he was cute

>it'll never be in style again for guys to wear tight stretchy stockings and cute skirts

>>5630381
>onemustimaginesisyphushappy.gif

>>5630654

>>5632700
>He doesn't follow high fashion
Check out comme des garcons m8

>>5632798
Sadly that's not only not acceptable in real life, but it's also not really the same as stockings.

>>5632691
He was a trap?

>>5632841
who knows
but he was based

>>5632850
>you'll never be captured only in idealized representations and leave as only register of your existence bloated lists of virtues and deeds that you might, tangentially, be related to.

>>5632880

>>5632885
Just checked a couple of photos of me in facebook and yeah, in none of them anyone added the power to control storms, subdued nations at my feet or greatly altered my proportions to make me look like an innocent conqueror guided by the purity of my spirit.
Why live?

>France was never (dominantly) protestant

>>5632899
Yup, pretty sad indeed

>>5632768
But it's true! And some of her spending was not really even under her control.

There were three different funds intended for the queens of France: the Queen's household fund, the privy purse of the queen, and the fund for the Wardrobe.

The Queen's household fund (which paid for the maintenance of her household--wages, candles, furniture, etc) had not been officially raised from 600,000 livres in several centuries--naturally, due to inflation, this meant that it was no longer adequate to cover everything by the 18th century. So it was supplemented by "extraordinary dispensations" However, the queen herself was not in control over the "extraordinary dispensations," but people within certain positions in her household could petition to receive dispensation to cover anything deemed necessary. This meant that the dispensations were frequently abused, and by the time Marie Antoinette became queen, the dispensations alone had raised to 2 million livres.

The privy purse of the Queen was basically what it says on the tin: the private purse used for pensions, presents, charity, and anything that wouldn't be covered by the other two funds. Marie Antoinette received 96,000 livres (the same as the previous queen) a year until she petitioned to have it raised to 200,000 because she could not afford to pay her household's pensions, on top of the old queen's household pensions which she agreed to pay. By contrast, the three daughters of Louis XV (aka the spinsters) were receiving almost 300,000 livres a year each, and they didn't have huge households to take care of.

The fund for the Wardrobe was 120,000 livres, which was completely controlled entirely by the dame d'atours or the lady of the bedchamber. The lady of the bedchamber would be the one to order fabrics, order the construction of dresses, and buy accessories such as gloves, perfumes, etc. People could petition the lady of the bedchamber for items by saying that the Queen needed this or that. Like the household fund, this was often abused because it was unchecked. In 1772, for example, it was discovered that there was somehow 170,000 additional livres spent that year for the Wardrobe--it was discovered that some of the women in the household were ordering huge quantities of fabrics, ribbons and baubles 'in the name of the queen,' which was paid out of the Wardrobe fund. But these items were never used for the household, but instead kept by the women or sold to put some extra money in their pockets.

I mean, I'm not saying she never spent ridiculous amounts of money. There was a 3 year period where she went crazy with gambling and buying expensive things and her debts had to be cleared by the king more than once. But her spending, high as it may seem, wasn't enough to impact the French finances and it was barely even a drop compared to the total spending of the court.

>>5632917
Kings and queens were pretty much scapegoats of the court for many centuries.

I guess if you're really interested, read this. It's boring as shit but hey, you're asking for it

>>5630263
No. France was inherently fucked up as a state because it completely lacked a systematically build administrative apparatus. Read something about taxation during the ancien régime and realise how fucked up they were compared to The Netherlands and England.

>>5632917
The problem that arose from the Queen's spending wasn't that she spent money--the previous Queen spent a similar amount, actually, and as it's been said other royals in the family spent far more--but that she did not behave as a French queen was expected to behave. And therefore, everything she did was suspect.

If she bought expensive bracelets, it was blasted in the press--not because a queen buying expensive bracelets was unusual, but because her behavior was more like a mistress than a queen. Traditionally it was the mistress who received the scorn of the public and the court--the queen was the mistress's saintly contrast. But Louis XVI had no mistress and all of that scorn was gradually directed at Marie Antoinette.

A French Queen was supposed to be someone who stuck to the palace, who was fashionable but still regal, and who ascribed to court etiquette.

But Marie Antoinette loved going to the opera in Paris and going to masquerade balls and horse races and hosting these elaborate parties. She wore extreme fashions at the height of the 1770s, fashions which were worn by everyone--not just the queen. She petitioned Louis XVI with politics, although she was rarely successful. But the fact that she did so at all was heinous enough--it was commonly accepted that mistresses would meddle in the affairs of the kingdom, but queens? Heavens no.

And she loathed etiquette enough to actively reduce it gradually during her reign. She didn't want to have to play cards with people simply because their rank allowed them the privilege, she didn't want people in her household because of ancient bloodlines and nothing more, she didn't want to spend hours eating in public, she didn't want to be "on stage" every waking moments. She wanted to cultivate friendships, surround herself with people she liked and admired, and have a private life... which queens of France just did not have.

>>5632975
Maybe because France and Germany had a more stable land to sustain them, meanwhile England had to deal with much less resources and southern Europe had to deal with arabs gangbanging them.
Is there any text about what could had happened if instead of France and Germany getting mad at each other for centuries they unified as a single entity?

>>5632986
But the press was also becoming more of a thing by then, much more than the previous century I'm sure. She just was the first to deal with that kind of mass media.

>it was commonly accepted that mistresses would meddle in the affairs of the kingdom
Really? That sounds pretty interesting, so it had political advantages to be a mistress? Was there anyone who did cool shit thanks to that?

>>5633009
being an island made england pretty safe from wars
later it helped usa too

>>5633009
The problem wasn't per se that France saw the german lands as rightfully theirs. The roots of the problem go back to the fact that the french kingdom in essence was build-out from a tiny area around paris, enlarged by centuries of conquest and marriage. While nominally all those territories were part of the french state, in reality there existed huge differences between the various regions ( the differences between the pays d'etats and pays d'election for instance). A well-developed singular bureaucratic system didn't exist until the revolution

>>5629712

>forced labour

they worked like 180 days a year in return for their home and the protection of their lord

>>5633025
The press was a thing in France long before Marie Antoinette, though. Madame de Pompadour was subjected to nasty press campaigns, including sexual caricatures similar to those Marie Antoinette would later be subjected to.

A mistress usually had "the ear of the king." It was traditionally understood that a mistress was someone the king loved (or at least, lusted after) and could influence whereas the queen was a political alliance who, at best, could hope for mild affection. Which is why Louis XVI's love for his wife was so unusual.

I don't know what would qualify as cool shit... I guess it depends. Madame de Pompadour was instrumental in France forcing an alliance with Austria, although you could argue that alliance resulted in France being in the losing end of the Seven Year's war.

Book recommendations on the history of European monarchs, and also on pro-monarchy books?

>>5633145
Maybe in the 1400s. The corvee was forced labour by any "able-bodied" member of the Third Estate, who would be forced to work on roads, bridges, public structures and even private estates without any compensation. They were not compensated with a "home" or "protection."

>>5629858
The aristocracy was recreated, but the privileges they had over the peasants never returned. Serfdom was essentially abolished during the French Revolution and peasants ended up owning their own land.

Rossellini's film about him is a masterpiece

>>5633153
Mh... I was thinking of small instances more than country level stuff, mistress affecting how the people lived in a good way would be "cool stuff" for me.

>>5629498
The trouble with Louis XVI is that he wanted to please everyone at the same time, which is impossible, and subsequently very little got done. He didn't want to be seen as tyrannical, he wanted to be seen as just and kind--which by all means, he personally was... but you don't get what you want by being kind. You can't reform a system that favors the aristocracy without pissing off the aristocracy. It's going to happen.

There's a perfect example of this: according to the memoirs of the comte de Maurepas, Louis XVI wanted to abolish slavery in the French colonies. How? By saving up money over a period of 10 years, abolishing slavery, and then paying the slave owners compensation for their loss so they wouldn't be upset. The plan never went into action, likely due to France's involvement in the American war, but it's a great example of his mindset.

He wanted to reform, he wanted to improve things--but he couldn't bring himself to assert the authority required by his position to just be like: "we're fucking doing this."

>>5633159
Reflections of France by de Maistre
Patriarchia by Robert Filmer.

excellent article on the french revolution here

http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/Fidelity_archives/parricide.html

>One shouldn't forget that much of what may appear positive to us today - liberality, intellectuality, humanitarianism - had all been already brought to us by the liberal, courtly absolutism, while the French Revolution which used all these words in reality did nothing more than brutally extinguish them. One is reminded of the reaction of Caffinhals, who replied to the uproar created by the defenders of Lavoisier, who cried, "You are condemning a great learned man to death," by saying, "The Revolution has no need of learned men." The good man was right; since the French Revolution only quantities, ciphers and numbers, have any value. The speech of the elite is hardly tolerated anymore.

>>5633197
Ah, okay!

Madame du Barry's first request to Louis XV was to spare the life of a count and countess who were sentenced to death for accidentally killing a soldier during a skirmish at their estate (they were being forcibly removed from their home, and the husband showed up at their gates with a rifle and told the soldiers to leave. someone fired, a fight ensued, and the man ended up dead. Since any armed action against a soldier was considered rebellion against the king, it was an automatic death sentence). he did and supposedly told her: "Madame, I am enchanted that the first favor you obtain from me should be an act of humanity."

I don't know of any other instances where their influence was used for the gain of the people, but I haven't done that much research on mistresses. Madame du Barry did do a lot for the poor after Louis XV died and she was made to retire from court. A local man described her as "aiding the unfortunate" so much in one town she lived in that there "were no longer any unfortunate" there. She was also so generous to the people of Louveciennes that they all signed a petition when she was first arrested and got her released. Granted, she was arrested again and the people who signed the petition were all questioned for anti-revolutionary activity so they declined to attempt for a release again.

Reminder than none of the really famous Enlightenment French thinkers hated absolutism.

>>5633374

And also a reminder that no great philosopher of the past ever advocated democracy, and in fact always scorned it as one of the true evils.

>>5633329
That was pretty interesting, thanks. I'll see if I get the chance to read more on the subject.

>>5633305
Funny that the article mentions things like the crimes in the Vendee.... but fails to mention that the reason the army was sent into the Vendee in the first place was because of an army of peasants seizing territories and slaughtering 500+ Republicans in Retz. Or that the National Convention explicitly forbid the killing of citizens in the Vendee, and when reports came that civilians were being killed, they dispatched members to investigate the crimes and take appropriate action. Or that they gave the people in the Vendee greater liberty to practice religion after the Royalist Vendee army was defeated, or that they set up a program to assist widows and orphans of the Vendee.

But y'know. ATHEIST SEX ORGIES OF BLOOD is much more interesting to say.

>>5633405
It's a habit in most royalist histiographies of the revolution. Point out the Carmelite nuns, or abuses in the Vendee--the skip right over torture in the ancien regime, the White Terror being 10x as violent as the Reign of Terror, etc.

Speaking of Louis

did anyone see Alan Rickman as Louis XIV in his latest movie?

Bump

>>5635566
It's not out yet m8

>yfw you will never experience the best timeline where Henri IV was not assassinated

>>5629070
>you will never make France the greatest absolute monarchy
> Not Charles XII

>>5636837
>Charles XII
What?

>le neo-reactionary maymay

>>5630381
no it was incest man

>You will never represent the apex of Civilisation.
>Your armies will never sweep all before them, ever snatching total victory from the jaws of defeat.
>You will never shield the flame of enlightenment that it could grow and illumine even the horde of raceless dregs that will one day scrabble at Europe's drying teat.

Hold me /lit/, you bunch of commie bastards.

>>5636802
It showed at TIFF

>>5630234
It's ironic that absolutism flourished so strongly in France given the historical disunity the land had. England was always a far more likely candidate

>>5630332
please
would you rather live in 1930s Russia or 1890s Russia? History is not some inevitable march towards progress, certainly not with regard to politics

>>5633229
reminds me so much of Gorbachev

>>5629109
I've had pretty good historical discussion on /tg/ before

And of course there's always /pol/

>>5638799
/pol/ would probably be best for discussing someone like Louis XIV given the strong right wing presence.

Why was he called the sun king?

>>5638928
He chose the sun as his symbol

>>5638928
cuz he was brilliant

>>5638937
And why the sun? Is there a specific reason or?

>>5638944
As a child he performed as a character representing the sun. As well he admired Apollo (God of the Sun).

>>5638950
I see
Was he a good war leader?

>>5638968
He was good in war and in peace. He lead France through the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Ausburg and the War of the Spanish Succession. Despite that he held the longest reign of any monarch in europe and was adept at seeking terms for peace.

>>5638982
But none of these are victories right?

>>5638997
They're very complex results

>tfw you will never be called Kaiser
>tfw you will never lead millions of men to their deaths under the claim of nationalism
why even live ;_;

>tfw you will never be Napoléon Bonaparte, Empereur des Français, Premier Consul and King of Italy
>tfw you will never be a military genius
>tfw you will never control half of Europe
>tfw you will never be seen as a god amongst men by some German philosophers
>tfw your name will never evoke glory and greatness
W-why? ;_;

>>5639670
>tfw trans napoleons are still oppressed

>>5639674
>this pic
Literally what?

>>5639679
Mort à la République. Vive l'empereur!

>>5639688
Vive la France, vive l'Empereur, vive la Vieille Garde!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTjqVmRMuZE

>>5639704
>House Bonaparte will never be restored to the throne of France in your life time
>House Bourbon and House Orlean will never be restored either
>The bastard republic will continue to destroy the once great nation of france

>>5639704
Viva la revolucion

>>5639736
>viva
just die, con

>>5639748
It's in Spanish mate

>>5639748
And vive la révolution

>>5639776
>speaking spanish
>in a french thread

>>5639794
>staying alive
emmanchés

>>5639748
Forgive him please, he's still young

>>5639812
u wot m8?
Tu as vu où que c'était un thread français?
Et puis t'es obligé d'être un connard?
Viva la revolucion c'est une sorte de meme, tu vois pas que l'image n'avait pas de rapport avec la France?

>>5629109
>The lack of a history board really pisses me off
What are you talking about?
We have a history board, it's /int/

>>5639850
On second thought nevermind, that faggot moot changed the subtitle from "International Culture" to just "International", fucking piece of shit.

>>5629672
Pretty much what happened with /int/

>>5633381
muhfuggin socrates

>>5639842
>Américains

>>5639854
moot ruins everything. can't even ask health questions on /fit/ that aren't directly related to fitness anymore

>>5639728
>we'll never have Louis XX on the throne

>>5640047
don't remind me

>>5640047
At least he'll never be as misunderstood at Louis XVI.

>>5629109
Churchills Biograph of Marlborough is very related

>>5640105
forgot mah pic

>>5640138
god he's so handsome best looking prince

>>5640138
>>5640047

Why does the heir to the throne of France look like a fucking mestizo? Am I missing something?

>>5641322

yah ye fookin bontz

>>5640047
i'd sit on his throne

>>5641322
Bourbon =/= always French. He's from the Spanish line of Bourbons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Alphonse,_Duke_of_Anjou#Patrilineal_descentu