The Collapse Of France's Sauciest Dynasty | Rise & Fall Of Versailles | Real Royalty

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] Louis XIV so powerful he took his name from the Sun itself so dominant he made the haughtiest aristocrats Bend to his will so insatiable that no one mistress could satisfy him for long throughout a long and turbulent life Louis sought magnificence in all things he strived for it in love in battle and in art but above all he wanted magnificence at Versailles by creating a building so spectacular it would outshine any Palace on Earth taken from intimate Memoirs and official records this is the story of how a king's Obsession created one of the wonders of the world [Music] [Music] it started in a swamp [Music] it was here in a stretch of mosquito-infested Marshland that Louis the 27 year old King of France decided to construct his new Palace near a small and unremarkable country town called Versailles his courtiers were far from impressed it was almost as though Louis had deliberately picked the worst possible site for his magnificent Palace in order to prove to the world that his will was was greater than nature [Music] Louis had a Sentimental reason for choosing their sigh it was the sight of his father's old hunting lodge and as a boy he'd played and hunted here the original Chateau of Louis father was on top of a hill [Music] problem if you wanted to turn it into a whacking great palace was that you weren't going to be building on flat land Louis was told this is not a great place for a big expansion of your father's Chateau as a monarch with absolute power Louis wasn't used to being told what to do and he didn't much like it foreign [Music] from the outset Louis was thinking big he started by hiring the greatest architect of the age Louis Laveau to transform the hunting lodge into the Palace of his dreams [Music] Louis was to devote much of his energy to his new project but he was always sure to make time for his other great passion although married to Queen Mary Therese he had numerous Affairs his current mistress was a young aristocratic Beauty called Louise de la valiere Louie's attitude towards women was one of tremendous enthusiasm he really loved women he didn't just love them for sex he loved their company he loved their conversation he loved their Elegance he loved women who were witty and refined most of all I think he loved women because they teased him they made him laugh he laughs he had a tremendous sexual appetite he would quite often if his mistress was too slow in taking her dress off have a turn with her ladies maid while he was waiting or a passing servant in in the corridor Versailles he made love the way he did everything else with enormous gusto a French King was expected to have a mistress and it sort of symbolized the virility of the nation and you know 100 years later poor Louis XVI the French were furious with him because he didn't have a mistress Louise de la valiero was Louis the poetier's first official mistress she was a lady in waiting at the court she was a guileless Charming daughter of a good family and she adored the king and it was irresistible because she convinced him great genuinely that she loved him for himself and I think this is what the young king wanted to hear I think he had a very good time Louise was very important to him he did love her they had two children together he made her a duchess but it was it was a young man's Crush rather than a profound passion whatever his feelings for Louise Louis was always careful to fulfill all of his obligations to his wife his marriage to Queen Mary Therese was politically vital it had ensured peace between France and Spain for many years and he needed to father children with her to ensure that his dynasty lived on Louis did feel a duty towards the queen he made love to her frequently and she would always have a special mask said the day afterwards and everybody would nudge each other at court because she'd look very pleased as she came into the chapel um he was attentive to her polite to her they they had children together but she simply didn't have the looks or the education or the spirit or the charm to Captivate a man like that she accepted his infidelity as did most Royal and aristocratic women at the time as being part of of marriage Louise mosquito bitten courtiers also had to accept their King for what he was like all 17th century monarchs Louis believed himself appointed directly by God I miss you because nobody could tell him what to do he was quite simply the only Power in the realm and having had this Consciousness since he was a very very small child I think it meant that he was without any arrogance or hubris um of the opinion that he was pretty much a God himself history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we've got unrivaled access to the world's leading historians with hundreds of documentaries featuring everything from Boudicca to the British royal family we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and a real royalty fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use code real royalty at checkout [Music] as a kind of living God Louis liked nothing more than being the center of everyone else's attention Louis was brought up in a theater mad age as a young man he took dancing lessons which seemed to have completely transformed his self-confidence he was actually a very accomplished dancer and he clearly enjoyed greatly taking part in these performances which were mainly in front of a court audience I think all his contemporaries were extremely impressed by him he was astonishingly handsome with his long golden hair and his almost aerobic face he was indeed god-given as his mother Alabaster called him Louis liked dressing up and not just for fun it was part of his Public Image he chose as his role model the Greek god Apollo represented in classical imagery as the sun foreign [Music] was very interested in the Sun as a symbol it's a very powerful symbol because it sheds its light everywhere it's obviously very beneficial but it's also a symbol of uh domination because all the other elements are subordinate to the sun these Innocents above everything foreign title it was one that was a piece of propaganda when he was young but like many bits of propaganda I think it became fap leveau's plans for the remodeling of Versailles were complete and ready to present to his demanding boss [Music] Louis certainly knew that what he wanted was a building which had that shock and awe effect there's absolutely no doubt that he wanted a building that would be sensational 's model was impressive but had a major flaw he planned to destroy the old hunting lodge foreign [Music] was to keep always a little Chateau of his father so that was a problem for an architect because Architects prefer to destroy everything and to build a new a new building so Luis sent the architect away and he told him I want this little Shadow preserved with the constraints [Music] with Lavo sent back to the drawing board Louis turned his attention to the landscape he wanted to expand the existing Garden adding ornamental lakes and Groves lined with dazzling fountains depict an awful sight there were no views it's hemmed in by the sides of a valley and also Versailles wasn't naturally endowed the region with the sort of trees which Louis wanted for his garden Louie's Chief Gardener was the Century's most celebrated landscape designer Andre lonot Versailles would be the greatest challenge of his career foreign King did not want to wait for his Earthly Paradise or for his trees to grow from saplings Louis XIV wanted results and he wanted them fast this was really a theme of the whole sort of project their side and the solution was to uproot mature trees from other parts of France and bring them in and a special Contraption was invented a horse-drawn Contraption which would allow these mature trees to be transported on as you can imagine these terribly bad roads from other provinces [Applause] with major new building work on hold Louis instructed levo to upgrade the interior of Versailles on his inspection tours Louis was accompanied by his Entourage including mistress Luis de la valiere but Louise now had a rival [Music] Adam [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] desperate to try and get his attention back she never really did so I think she probably suffered quite a lot I think the king could pick and choose pies are great aphrodisiac kind of crown even more so so naturally I think he picked very beautiful women foreign liked to display his power after winning a war against Spain he celebrated with a huge party in The Gardens of Versailles it was also a chance for the king to show off the woman who had now replaced Louise as his favorite mistress her name was Madame de montespawn and she was one of the most beautiful women in France foreign foreign she loved everything to do with pleasure she loved Jewels she liked marvelous clothes she liked food flowers gardening and a bubble she liked sex you see and he did too so he found the absolutely the right mid to his own teeth for him and she knew about having wonderful feasts and about having entertainments so she was exactly the kind of person Louis envisaged as being suitable same time she was so beautiful that ambassadors thought she contributed to the legend of the same King the sun King's festivities were about more than pleasure they had real political significance Louis was slowly turning his new Palace into the most important and the most fashionable seat of power in Europe the parties at valsai um they've been described as Pagan masses [Applause] fireworks rides along the canal in gondolas balls for 3 000 people under the stars plays ballets with a hundred dancers by Luli everything you could possibly imagine all at once in this tremendous circus of celebration for the king [Music] the great parties were intended to show the nobility and the rest of Europe how powerful the king of France was what wonderful artists he had what one of the musicians how Superior his court and his culture were to every other quote and culture in Europe the king's former mistress Louise eventually gave up trying to win him back after years of neglect she decided to enter a Convent leaving behind the children she'd had with Louis she felt guilt about leaving them behind because she knew that they were going to be very well treated so I don't think she felt that kind of guilt because I think her big guilt she wanted to expunge with Penance and fasting and all that in the conflict and when she finally got away I think she was much happier she became a very hard-line nun you know haircut hair shirt praying and repentance and generally ended her life more or less in the order of sanctity because Louis was spending more and more time at Versailles he decided to move his entire government there to accommodate the new officials levo suggested a brand new idea keeping the old hunting lodge but in closing it with massive new buildings on three sides the design was known as the envelope The Chateau was preserved but it was enveloped in this new building in a completely different style which looked like a palace what he also did with Laveau was to build Pavilions for his ministers now this was very important what this meant was that for the first time Versailles could function as a seat of monarchy a place from which the king could govern [Music] building the envelope was a massive task requiring thousands of workers [Music] the largest number of workers were 40 000 people at the same time it was a very dangerous place also because the the work to be done was not done in a secure way of course it was with accidents and people dying Louis was impatient to get the job done quickly work went on day and night [Music] there was no health and safety regime and the workers who were most at risk were the ones who were working high up so for instance the roofers The Carpenters we do know that there were a lot of accidents on site [Music] and there were times when the death rate the mortality rate was high and in order not to demoralize the workforce the corpses would be removed at night [Music] thank you Louise mistress Madame de montespa was already married but that didn't stop her spending most of her time with the King and he made sure she got the VIP treatment she had a suite of 20 rooms whereas the queen had to make do with 11. they were gorgeously appointed and he spent a lot of time in them they included a bathroom most unusual for the time in which apparently he and the more response spent many happy hours despite her elevated status montespawn found it hard to share Louis even with his own wife [Music] I don't think she was really jealous of the queen because after all she had everything of Louie's real love and she knew it but I think she made scenes about the other Mistresses when they came along as the years passed and I think there are some men possibly Louis among them who rather like it if a woman is jealous and shows signs of caring you know she certainly complained like mad if she felt he was strayed from what was in fact an illegitimate relationship [Music] Louis kept a close eye on the building works but one inspection visit brought a nasty surprise a mother angry at the death of her son killed on the site was waiting for him [Music] hey man we're told that she just let fly at Louis XIV his mother foreign I mean he was very surprised he said is that me has been yeah this was a courageous thing for this mother to have done because there were guards everywhere and of course as soon as she had said this she was very quickly uh hustled away for her punishment ah um [Music] lunotra's ambitious plans were finally taking shape and Louie's dream of creating the most spectacular Palace in Europe was slowly becoming a reality Louie's great Gardener his real gift was for rearranging the landscape basically and dividing it up on a grid and then you treat the units within the grid essentially as outdoor rooms and then you would bring in all sorts of other people water Engineers sculptors Architects essentially to furnish these rooms [Music] foreign [Music] Louise ministers were installed in their new apartments and the King began governing from Versailles [Music] now Louis decided he would make the palace his permanent home and insisted that leading French Nobles come and live there too hello in Italian there's no question that for Louis the nobility particularly the great Court nobility were an essential aspect of his kingship they surrounded him with Glory that status [Music] this is a state where the ultimate decider on granting favor or refusing favor is in the hands of the king if you were looking for a military command if you're looking for favors for many of your client supporters and family then the way to achieve this was by getting access to Louis and to a lesser extent by gaining access to the ministers around Louis ing all the Nobles would mean yet more building work Lewis Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert worried about the cost foreign foreign [Music] in order that he could keep an eye on them the message he wanted to give to his nobles was this you don't need to Rebel to get what you want what you have to do is come and pay your court to me foreign [Music] architect Louis Laveau died before his project was complete his replacement jul mansar had ideas of his own [Music] Masa had the great idea to have big wings each side of the envelope to make some accommodations for the princes and the court so it was a huge design and I think he had a great idea of what would be a great balance for a great king is mansar's most ambitious proposal was to build a fabulous Gallery lined with mirrors [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] however Magnificent the plans Louis experience with his Builders was a familiar one everything took much longer and cost far more than the estimates and they made a terrible mess nothing is more false than these gracious pictures of their sight it shows the stately place with everything perfect you know everybody gliding about actually it was a huge building site [Music] all of Court ladies complained about it the work went starting at 6am my dear the dust and the smell of wet plaster which got into their hair it's exactly like today exactly like what we feel on a tiny scale when our neighbors go building must have been an amazing sight I mean the first day in at that size everybody stopped jostling jostling jostling for bigger rooms and better rooms and a better position in the meantime the Lesser folk you know they were trying to get down from the attics get better rooms and always to get as near as possible to the king foreign at night there was this sort of great unrolling of mattresses all over the palace as servants and soldiers guards would um you know they'd go to sleep on the floor the lavatory Arrangements were pretty kind of basic servants would think nothing of relieving themselves in the corridors of Versailles so you have this extraordinary attention on outward appearances and magnificent clothes but alongside you have all these smells I mean you could have been in a farm yard I think many of the nobility would have resented the chaos and lack of order and doubters complained about this at length but I think one shouldn't underestimate the compulsive desire of most of the great nobility to attend at court to be around the King Louie's desire for magnificence extended to every aspect of his life especially his wardrobe he dressed in the finest cloth and expected his courtiers to do likewise foreign and when his hair began to recede he adopted the fashion for elaborate wigs half inch of lace on a cuff a gold or a silver button whether your Pearl was here on your collar or here this could mean life and death to the court his fashion was hugely important and it was a very important way for the aristocracy to distinguish themselves from The Ordinary People Louis influenced fashion to some extent when he was a young man he dressed quite flamboyantly lots of cavalier silks and laces and ribbons he was a bit on the short side so he introduced a fashion for high-heeled shoes his Mistresses perhaps were more influential on fashion Madame de montespa invented various outfits including one the Glorious disabilier which was a sort of tunic worn over trousers and she invented this because it was very easy to take off normally a Lady's dress required two women to stand behind her to undo all the strings and of course Louis was an impatient man he couldn't be bothered waiting so she invented this outfit so that he could undress her discreetly and easily in private [Music] with so many court years now craving his attention Louis kept them busy by turning his daily activities into public rituals when he gets up in the morning that's the Royal Navy with a great queue of great Nobles who hand him different articles of clothing at night it's all reversed it's the Royal cliche and he takes things off and gives them to Nobles great Nobles would quarrel with one another as to which of them had the right to hand him his shirt because it had to be the person of highest rank in the room they couldn't go off to the country on their estate and start raising armies meddling it meant that they had to stay there quarreling about whose turn it was to give the king his napkin even the king's meal times turned into a performance where the Nobles stood and watched the king eat waiting for him to speak to them one of the phenomena of Versailles was the site of leading Nobles adopting these very deferential poses this was actually a very very powerful signal that the monarchy was back in charge [Music] flattery became a way of life for instance one courtier a great no woman in his Province Louis says to him when is your wife's baby due and this nobleman says when your majesty wishes it foreign as well as accommodating thousands of courtiers and officials Versailles was also used by the king to promote France itself there was a deliberate intention to create a showcase for French manufacturers and to rival or outdo Italy above all which was the great source of taste in the 17th century the magnificence of the interior of course it was all about the Splendor of the monarchy and the Splendor of Louis XIV Louis personally loved Rich materials and fine craftsmanship but it was also a careful orchestration of Louis XIV France's claim to lead Europe in terms of taste and the Arts as building progressed Louis commissioned hundreds of paintings sculptures and other decorations many containing images of himself as the embodiment of French Glory this was no accident if you compare Louis with rulers before it is remarkable how he had professional advice so he's not presenting His Image by himself there was a whole backup team of intellectuals writers this is a real Innovation that there should be a small Committee of people who are simply working on how to present the king's image in the most grand Mana possible the great French painter Charles LeBron was recruited to the cause foreign [Music] makers liked art that presented him as a Conquering Hero drawing on figures from ancient mythology like Jupiter and his favorite Apollo the association with the images of very powerful men of the past were part of this strategy being the best king and the most powerful and most important King of the the time [Music] Louie's Public Image may have included a fair amount of 17th century hype but he was certainly a remarkable man because hunting three times a day he goes to Council meetings three times a day he's a very hard worker he makes love three times a day we must conclude the man had amazing Energies [Music] Louie's Restless Pursuit Of Glory and magnificence found expression in The Gardens of Versailles but even the king could not change the geography of a region that was critically short of running water to power the hundreds of new fountains that lenote had installed [Music] and so when the king took a stroll his gardeners had to turn the fountains on as he approached and then off again once he had walked past [Music] Ry the problem of getting supplies of fast running high pressure water would never adequately solved various attempts were made to find alternative sources from quite far away from Versailles the celebrated machine of Mali a series of vast water wheels which were intended to bring water up from the sand and deliver it to the Palace of Versailles this provided water but not enough the great and final scheme involved building a full-scale Roman-style aqueduct abandoned as being too expensive and the result of course was that the great Gardens of Si never had enough water to drive all the fountains simultaneously [Music] fortunately there was enough glass to furnish the palace's most ambitious development the result of six years intense work this was mansar and LeBron's most stunning achievement their size Hall of Mirrors [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] I think the effect of the gallery is more a dream [Music] Wonderful Life given by the mirrors and it's I think it's it's very impressive and and astonishing this eye is undoubtedly one of the great palaces [Music] Louis would have wanted us to think of the Chateau as an integrated whole not to focus on specific items where the Hall of Mirrors or the great canal and as an integrated unit it completely outshines I think almost every other Palace ever conceived or built shoes [Music] public foreign [Music] if we understand one we understand the other [Music] that his authority and maintain his position he has to do it through display Versailles an ideal theater set on which he can act out what he regards as his Royal duties Versailles from this point of view fulfills those requirements better than almost any other building That Could Be Imagined Louie's love affair with his Palace lasted longer than any of his human relationships after 14 years nine pregnancies and seven children montespa was beginning to lose her looks and her hold on the king Madame de montespan began to fall out of favor because inevitably after nine pregnancies her figure wasn't quite what it was she became rather blousy she drank too much she gambled too much she made a nuisance of herself with her tantrums and I think as happens to a lot of women the more she felt her man slipping away from her the more needy and clingy she became and the more needy and clingy she became the more she drove him away [Music] Madonna but I think Louis was also undergoing quite a significant personal transformation he was becoming much more religious Madame de montespawn was a married woman committing adultery with an unmarried woman was one thing but double adultery was sacrilege it was a tremendous Scandal and he was becoming conscious of the fact that his way of life was was really compromising the state and compromising his kingship Louis turned to a very different woman [Music] governance to his illegitimate children mantanong was Pious quiet and intelligent qualities that a middle-aged Louis had come to admire [Music] poor man in the mountain I had to do everything she had to act as a cook a plumber a gardener as well as a teacher and a nursemaid it was exhausting and she did this so well that Louis began to pay attention to her he noticed this this intelligent woman this calm presence slowly slowly Madame dementinal began to seduce the king rejected mistress montespan was distraught Ama I think it was the rise of Mantano in the first place which really riled her because she found she'd made a mistake she'd underestimated another woman was poor and a widow and innocuous and very pleasant and intelligent and she didn't sport that Louis might actually fall in love with a woman like that you know and it might be a very seductive thing to him in quite a different way from her own seductive past and I think for a couple of years at least she was extremely angry when Louie's long-suffering Queen Mary Therese died he was freed to marry again and he turned to the quiet governess she'd not only won his heart she'd convinced him she could help save his soul indeed Century mentality was very different the attention paid to Salvation dying in a state of grace so you didn't go to hell was enormous and Louis who in some ways was quite simple took this very very seriously and I think montenor persuaded him that she could help him towards his salvation as mountain or was a commoner the king could only marry her behind closed doors [Music] he did need a secret church wedding a Morgan attic wedding as they're called in the presence of clergy and Witnesses after that he's all right with God in the church he can go to communion it's all perfectly okay [Music] and it's interesting that Louis never declared the marriage because she wasn't a princess he had his own values that is he would have his private life but in public he was solitary [Music] in public Louis concentrated on running his Palace Court life at Versailles became ever more formalized I think the establishment of the full court of Versailles but he turned it into the great social political power broken Center of France yes I was exciting if you thought like a French nobleman because Louis XIV was your host you would spend the evening in the physical presence of the king of France you would be admitted to his gaming table [Music] you would be invited to dance in front of the king now for Nobles this was an enormously prestigious and enormously flattering thing keep consuming [Music] the court of Versailles could be seen as a cross perhaps between Royal Ascot and the dealing floor of a Futures exchange a combination of a very socially Elite group who already know each other and can interact with each other and at the same time a group of hardened professionals who have their own language and their own codes who know how to strike deals and to extract the best possible advantages from a particular situation [Music] Versailles was the original hotbed of Scandal the phrase with which everyone began their conversation was on D it's being said they're saying this they're saying that all day these Whispers of rumor would travel about the palace and people would send each other little bulletins by Sudan chair to report on what was going on in in the different rooms and that of course made it a tremendously claustrophobic place to live you couldn't do anything without everybody knowing about it there was this extraordinary networking Center everyone who was anyone in France was now at their side so to be excluded was disastrous for a French nobleman the worst thing that a courtyard could hear from the King was he's a man I never see people would spend literally years trying to hear one word or have a gesture from the King [Music] walk with the nobility now so dependent on him Louis could fully immerse himself in the role he was born to play he emerges as this absolutely consummate performer the whole regime at Versailles hinged on your having this extraordinarily charismatic figure who could perform in all the right ways for this enormous audience which he had assembled around him huh but Louis was only human and after years of good health he began to suffer from a serious medical problem an anal fistula and of course this was an extremely serious condition in the context of the 17th century the risk of it becoming gangrenous that the pus would seep into the rest of the body and in fact was very great indeed untreated it would almost certainly have killed the king the only way that it was likely to be cured was through invasive surgery that surgery had had a very poor success rate but Louis instructed his doctors to go ahead physician devised a new instrument especially for the operation the doctors involved in the operation practiced on a number of others who had anal fistulas beforehand but it was nonetheless still a very risky operation in the 17th century the doctors were much more likely to kill you than cure you huge effort was made at Versailles to keep the details of this secret because it was felt so likely that the king wouldn't survive that the Diplomatic repercussions of this would sweep through Europe [Music] foreign [Music] he never spoke at all imagine the pain no anesthetic foreign this extraordinary self-control he had he just gritted his teeth and conducted himself with great dignity and that night he took a council meeting extraordinary very pale this whole Sheen of sweat but he made it [Music] Louis recovered his health but other troubles were looming his Fame and success had earned him many enemies two years after his operation France began a costly war against Spain England and Sweden as the fighting dragged on some of Versailles Silva was quietly removed and melted down to pay the king's soldiers foreign Louis signed an unfavorable peace treaty conceding territory to his enemies the Sun King was finally in Decline and although he continued to make small improvements to his great palace he lost much of his enthusiasm [Music] is foreign foreign after just four years of Peace a new crisis threatened the Spanish King died leaving his Empire to Louie's grandson if Louis accepted on the boy's behalf he knew the other European powers would try to stop him but if he refused the territories would go to France's rivals in Austria he was in an impossible situation Louis was damned if he did damned if he didn't faced with an issue which concerns the honor of his dynasty is perhaps not surprising that he opts for the acceptance of the Spanish offer [Music] but inevitably therefore provokes war with the other major European powers this the most grueling war of Louie's Reign lasted for 12 years and brought France to the brink of ruin as Louis grew old and frail he fell ever more under the influence of his devout wife and now shunned the lavish amusements that had once filled his beloved Palace [Music] I think Versailles became a chilly tedious place in many respects once the mantanon got Louis into her grip it became this sort of rather dreary world where whatever the king of France was doing you could set your watch by you could look at a clock at any hour of the day and know exactly where Louis was and his whole life became this this endless choreography of etiquette and ritual with Madame de Mountain all sitting there in the corner like some sort of holy spider watching it all right yeah deposition [Music] with a comfort to Louis when he needed it the most illness took the life of many members of his family including a son and grandson and he was haunted by the legacy of his Wars I think Louis was a tragic figure in his final days I think a tragedy began with the sudden deaths of so many of his nearest and Dearest [Music] Louis had much more by his side but she said about him that sometimes he would be alone with how he chucked the doors and then he would just weep but the way things had gone I think it was a very sad old age you know outliving his descendants and having LED France into these wars which seemed so wonderful when he was winning them and became so ghastly when he wasn't aged 76 and after 72 years on the throne Louis was once again taken seriously illness [Music] no one expected Louis XIV to live as long as he did when Louis finally weakens in the last year of his life it's a result of a gangrenous infection which gradually spreads from his leg to the rest of the left side of his body even Louie's own death became a public performance foreign [Music] wasn't actually at the king's side when he died and that was not the practice by her own wish she went off to a Convent to be among ladies who would sucker her and sympathize with her and leaving him to priest and ultimately to God [Music] he died rather slowly and so she came back once I think twice to be with him again but ultimately it was time for her to go [Music] the out of the throne was a really tiny child of the little five-year-old boy and he's brought in to see his grandfather and his grandfather sort of tells you to be a good King but says I have loved War too much very sad dying words from Louis XIV certainly true foreign [Music] [Music] throughout his long Reign Louis sought to bring glory to himself and his country that lifelong devotion expressed in the extraordinary Palace he built at Versailles is the reason he's become part of the very essence of France [Music] he didn't just leave glorious monuments beautiful buildings fabulous paintings he left a sense of identity which has endured until today Louis certainly embodies I think the idea of the greatness of France he was the king and you were the subject and there was never any doubt about that he imposed his will on the world so splendidly in in every respect [Music] he wanted to impress everybody and he I think he succeeded the scale of the vision is breathtaking no one did it like Louie [Music] the world's most magnificent Palace is about to become its most notorious home to decadence on a truly Royal scale prostitution and gluttony gambling and torture and enough sex to scandalize even the French this is the story of a king who took Versailles turned it into his Palace of pleasure and brought the monarchy to the brink of collapse oh [Music] wow the waking ceremony of the Duke of arju by grace of God King Louis XV monarch of France and Navarre just an 11 year old boy advance Louis will reign for 58 years but his whole life will be lived in the shadow of another man's Glory his predecessor Louis XIV [Music] and do the 14th was an incredibly tough act to follow he is seen as the great he's the Conqueror of Europe he adds to France he's the greatest Monarch of the 17th century he was the first actor on the stage of Versailles he was the son he was Apollo the son God everything orbited around him the etiquette of the Court the day of the Court the extraordinary life lived entirely in the public gaze in his patronage of the Arts in his building projects in his personal conduct in the way he dressed the way he ate the way he looked the way he walked and the fountains in his Gardens to the silver by his bed he had established a form of etiquette with the soul view of making the whole country of France entirely focused upon his person and his power [Music] Louis XV never expected to be king but both his father and grandfather died before they could reach the throne Louis XV loses his parents and his grandparents when he's two years old brought up by people that he doesn't know very well some of whom are probably fairly terrifying as courteous he's a sickly child very early on [Music] wherever he went Louis was surrounded by the legacy of his great-grandfather the man who first built the extraordinary Palace that was his home certainly when we'd imagine Louis XV has been traumatized by the death of all his near family and is a lonely and probably slightly disturbed child in his Youth and I think this carries through the rest of his life [Music] Louis had been called the king of France since he was five but others ran the country in his name [Music] on his 12th birthday it was time for him to take his crown and his place on the world stage the coronation of Louis XV was a moment of you know great hope and expectation for the French people they had had long years of war and now the country was at peace and it had a young king in whom it was possible to to invest every conceivable hope so they could project their Ambitions and expectations for the new Reign on this young as as yet untested King but there was a shadow over Louie's inheritance cast not by an eclipse but by a mountain of debt despite all his success in war and diplomacy Louis XIV never managed to balance the books or even pay for the building of his enormous Palace is Louis XIV when he died left France it absolutely Dire Straits after a long War he of course left France something like 20 years Revenue in debt two billion lever in debt at least and this was going to be an absolutely massive problem two billion Libra that's 160 billion pounds in today's money but before he could start work on that problem there was one other thing that demanded the new King's immediate attention marriage Louis XV was more than ready to get married when he was 15 his original fiance who was the little infanter of Spain was still only five years old and since 15 year old boys loathe sweet little girls he was rather embarrassed to have her around the place also the ministers were totally Keen to get him breeding so the little infanta in her doors were packed off back to Madrid and a new wife had to be found they cast about for princesses and they eventually settled on Maria lezinskaya who wasn't the most obvious choice since her father was the deposed king of Poland and she really had no money she was 22 quite pretty although as the um the female court is disparagingly remarked her complexion had never known any other cosmetics and snow nonetheless 15 year old boys aren't really very choosy and Louis fell madly in love with her at once ah Ryan Bretta Majesty Les Royal sex lives were public property and Louise was much discussed in the corridors of Versailles if not always believed oh man no what [Music] Louis was now a husband but he had yet to truly become a ruler so he set out to copy his great-grandfather Louis XIV had begun his Reign by becoming his own prime minister so now number 15 decided to do exactly the same [Music] it would have been very simple for Louis XV to choose a prime minister which would which would have been a much better solution for him because he could have then had someone picked and appointed for the job foreign minister JavaScript he's got the sense of he has to follow in the footsteps of of his great grandfather Louis XIV and to to be a real king he has to be a new Louis XIV Louis was living just like his great-grandfather ruling as an absolute monarch enjoying the hunting in the forests around their side and soon fulfilling the first and most important of all his Royal roles fathering in the air [Music] movies [Music] the relationship between Louis XV and his wife Maria lejinska started very well really they managed to put together a relationship which over a period of 10 years certainly was quite a happy one they had a string of children and they seemed to have found a certain you know sort of emotional support in each other's company more children followed at regular intervals over the next 10 happy years eight girls and two boys foreign Louis may have enjoyed being a father but the queen after a decade of non-stop pregnancies was fed up with it all the queen began to complain that she was either pregnant in bed or being brought to bed eventually they had 10 children by the time Louis himself was 27. the queen had really had enough so she began to tell the king that he wasn't allowed to come into her bedroom on certain Saints days because she was a very Pious woman gradually the Saints day's got more frequent and the Saints themselves became increasingly obscure until finally Louis lost his temper and asked libel who was the concierge of Versailles to bring him a woman any woman Louis only had to ask and just about anything and anyone could be provided and was the king gradually got into the habit of first having dalliances with the uh Court ladies and then full-blown affairs Louis began a life of carnal Adventures that would turn him into one of History's Greatest Libertines he was a great womanizer but there was nothing unusual about that French kings were expected to be womanizers and this was seen as a sign that they were virile and were going to produce an heir and were in fact acting in an aristocratic and masculine way indeed within the aristocratic society that the king had been raised at the idea of marital Fidelity was was seen as laughable Louie's first illicit Amore was Louise Julie denell a beautiful young Aristocrat and the eldest of five equally attractive sisters what was interesting was that he then proceeded to take all the other sisters in her family as his Mistresses too and although it's slightly doubtful that he had an affair with the fourth it's probable that he did um it was rumored that um one of the sisters The Duchess who would ask her other sister to come along and give matters um a helping hand occasionally yeah in some senses it was scary I thought it was funny rather than disgraceful [Music] both Louis XIV and Louis XV had huge sexual appetites and perhaps four women were really what the bourbon blood needed Louie's affairs with his favorite sisters and his simultaneous flings with many other women produced The Inevitable consequences in the course of his Reign the king would father a whole brood of illegitimate children um we're not actually sure how many but certainly in the region of of 30 I think would be a a decent guess [Music] but as the rooms of Versailles filled up with Louie's Offspring The King's mind moved to Affairs of State he decided to copy his illustrious predecessor in another way by taking France to war foreign the decision of Louis XV to go to war in 1744 was hugely popular the this is what a king of France should do he should be seen at the head of his armies fighting and leading his troops Louie's declaration of war against France's traditional enemies of Britain and Austria made him a hero on the streets and so did his decision to lead his armies in person accompanied of course by two of the Danelle sisters but war was to bring Louis his first brush with death while he was at Mets he felt terribly ill and it was considered that he was going to die oh certainly the doctors had given up hope and back in France the population was shocked genuinely absolutely Frozen with fear that they would lose their King [Music] thank you in order as a Catholic to receive the last sacraments he had to confess and in order to confess he had to send away his mistress and renounce her Louis didn't think much of his marriage vows but like most people of his age he did believe in heaven and hell and he knew which one he wanted to avoid is the king like the least of his subjects was afraid of dying without Absolution and was afraid for the state of his Immortal soul he knew that one day he would have to face God and give an account of himself and then he would just be a man before God like any other man foreign but they refused to go completely they hung around in the town of Mets until the Bishops were obliged to send a message saying that our Lord wasn't really going to wait upon their pleasure and would they please get out and so the Danelle sisters um was dispatched the king promised that if he was saved he would dedicate the rest of his life to the well-being of religion and his subjects the king received the last right but then miraculously recovered and it's from this period that his name um biami the well-beloved dates because the people were so pleased that their young king had recovered from his illness is [Music] but Louie's new found piety didn't last long as soon as he possibly could he went back to his old ways and within a few months Madame de chateuru was back in his bed [Music] Louis the Beloved became even more popular in 1745. he was present on the battlefield as the French army crushed the austrians and the British at the Battle of fontenoy France was the dominant power in Europe once again just as she had been in the time of Louis XIV it was the perfect moment for Louis to meet the love of his life he's out hunting in the forests outside Versailles and he comes across in her carriage this very beautiful very striking young woman everyone knows he's taken by her people refer to her as the Louis xv's latest piece of game it's called jean-padour she was much more than a piece of game in fact Madame de pompadour is a rather well-connected woman with one of the key factions at the heart of power who form part of a big Financial clique what everyone says strikingly beautiful and her beauty is that really the key to her initial success she uses her beauty she uses her very considerable political Acumen to establish herself at the heart of the king's power is foreign the little queen as a child because when she was eight she had gone to see a fortune teller who had told her that the king of France would fall in love with her so she and her family were absolutely convinced that this was her destiny is she sang she danced she had a beautiful voice she was very well read marvelous conversationalist extremely Charming woman spiritual foreign [Applause] were really very much in love and at first in fact for some years their relationship was sexually passionate he found her very desirable not so much I think because she was as sexy as the dinero sisters had been but because she understood him very well she knew how to amuse him to Captivate him to charm him to divert him foreign fortunately she herself said that she was physically a cold woman she didn't really derive any pleasure from love making she didn't have the temperament for it but she tried very hard she put herself on all these sorts of ridiculous diets of you know egg yolks and red wine with gold flakes sprinkled it to try and build herself up and increase the heat of her temperament in order to satisfy Louis in bed but her maid madandosi pointed out that she would kill herself rather than please Louis by doing this and so she gave it up may have been a favorite with her lover the king but most other inhabitants of Versailles were not impressed with her the courtyard the she was bushwise they could not forgive her for being middle class it was just about acceptable for a king to have Liaisons with lower class prostitutes had always been an aristocratic woman ignoring the snobs at court pompodore used all her charm and intelligence to advance the interest of her small group of friends and do down her Rivals she was associated with a cabal a cabalic court who were constantly trying to promote the interests of such and such a general a kind of a political baggage that she carried it's children are rarely keen on their father's new girlfriend and the same was true at Versailles especially when Louie's many children saw him spending a fortune on her they felt rightly or wrongly that her presence somehow demeaned their father as a consequence of course they famously dubbed her madame mummy [ __ ] Louis children may have loathed her but their mother the queen was rather impressed she was particularly nice to the queen which poor old Mariella zinskaya was very grateful for because until Madame de pompadour arrived nobody had ever taken a notice of her at all in fact the first time she was ever sent flowers was it Madame de pompadour's instigation and although obviously the difference in their positions meant that they could be never be anything like friends the queen was heard to say if there must be a mistress better that it is this one Louis was victorious in war and Lucky in Love and it made him grow overconfident in a grand personal gesture he agreed to a peace deal with Austria one that handed back most of the territory his generals had just won for him his ministers thought it was a terrible idea and told himself this explication the piece is not a very good piece for France because France gets absolutely nothing for it except enormous debts from its participation in the war the French public having dispensed millions of Libra and lost countless men dead could not understand why their King was giving up his conquests as a result school children and fish wives were said to be running around in Paris with a line you're as stupid as the piece just as Louie's popularity began to wane his love affair with Madame Pompadour was also drawing to a close his solution was a private harim in the town of Versailles known as the Deer Park when Louis XV and Madame de pompadour ceased to have a sexual relationship Louis XV didn't really want to replace her with another mistress they got on too well for that and from now on his sexual appetite was catered For by a series of young women who were brought out from Paris teenage nymphats uneducated often they had no idea who their powerful lover was foreign [Music] virginal beautiful girls are brought in for his sexual gratification but this is developed into something altogether more salacious by the Press at this time when things had been going well Louis was forgiven even praised for indulging his Royal lust but after his hated peace treaty people saw their King's Behavior very differently there's a sort of gutter press effectively which just amplifies this makes him an absolute sexual divorcey of the worst imaginable kind the Deer Park obviously did create rumors at the time it was according to them the scene of these terrible orgies in which underage girls would be shipped in droves from Paris for Wiki Louie the 15th to enjoy and one of the worst things that was said was that Madame de pompadour acted as a sort of procuress that she would find the girls for for Louis and entice them to the Deer Park it couldn't have been less true Madame de pompadour knew about it and she accepted it as a necessity if one of them faced with a deluge of criticism Louis turned to the one person he could trust completely ironically the influence of Madame de pompadour actually increases as she stops sharing the king's bed she grew more important to him because she was his friend she was one of the few people almost the only person he could actually trust at court you have to remember the court is a place of intrigue and masks and pretense and nobody tells the truth to the king so he really needed her he he needed her in his life as his friend [Music] as the top power broker in Versailles pompadour was drawn more and more into the business of government Madame de pompadour's Excursion into politics is not something that would make a feminist proud um she was a clever woman but she really didn't understand politics [Music] very foolishly entrusted her as a go-between with the Austrian Ambassador and Madame de pompadour was so proud of herself being given this important role she took it terribly seriously was very excited and she was completely manipulated by the Ambassador a foreign was unpopular but his decision to allow Madame Pompadour to secure an actual alliance with the old enemy was downright detested certainly is in favor of an alliance with Austria so it's an absolute shock to courteous many of whom have long-term loyalties and no doubt family connections to find that France is now allied with a traditional enemy criticism of Louis and pompadour became even more lurid and it reached every corner of Versailles they would accuse her of sexual diseases they would accuse her of procuring young girls for the king they would say anything they wanted there were secret pamphlets secret poems extremely rude poems about her physique and her body poems will be left in Versailles by Court officials perhaps even members of his family [Music] foreign threatened the king with death one of the most famous of these contained the phrase wake up or stir yourselves the sons of reviac which was a a direct reference to the man who had assassinated Henry IV in 1610 and so for the first time we start to see references in these pamphlets to calls for um for the killing of the king foreign the piston foreign episode where there is a rumor and there are riots that Louis XV is having his police force kidnap children so that he can cure himself with some horrible illness by bathing in the buds of these kidnapped prison children so this is a very serious and very shocking State of Affairs foreign man diplomacy was supposed to bring peace to Europe but instead in 1756 he joined his new ally Austria in a war against Britain and Prussia it started well but Messengers were soon arriving at Versailles with bad news from the front as the the tide of War changed against the the French the Parisian public actually got into the habit of dancing in the streets to celebrate their defeats and by doing so showing how much they detested that Austrian Alliance [Music] going well for Louis or for France and public frustration with the King took a dangerous turn [Music] 87 Louis the 15th is going to his Carriage going down the steps and a certain individual called Damia rushes up [Music] thank you and then he feels blood and he says I've been hit that's the man who did it immediate immediate arrested tortured on his feet by the chancellor although uh Louis XV did not want him to be tortured um to see whether he had any accomplices and whether the knife was in fact a poisoned knife which is the great fear that they have at the time foreign as far as we can see he seems to be a nobody uh he's a Lee Harvey Oswald figure if you like but what people what makes people suspicious is that he's a nobody connected to some quite important somebody's he's worked as a servant for a number of members of the Paris Parliament people never quite certain whether he is not part of a sort of wave of hostility towards Louis XV Louis took this amateurish attempt on his life very badly although his doctors promised a full recovery he was convinced this was the end of him it's a flesh wound the mildest of cuts effectively but it has a disproportionate effect on Louis XV he goes into a very deep depression after this because he feels that you know he has become instead of the well-beloved he's become the well-hated foreign there's nothing important being touched but that's not of course the way Louis XV sees him hello foreign subjects attacking him this situation is the culmination of his lack of virtue and so he's bound to feel that it's his own fault he's bound to feel guilty and it's bound to give rise to a great deal of self questioning hearing the Grim details of the punishment planned for his would-be assassin did nothing to improve Louie's mood he's going to pay for this very very dearly and he's not merely going to be executed he's going to be put to death in the most horrible um way that can be devised by judicial cruelty is executed in the most extraordinarily gory way on the plastic in Paris so strapped down to the wheel and the excess the Executioner goes around breaking most bones in his body with an iron bar he is burnt with tongs and his flesh is knowingly pulled away from his body and it goes on and on and on but at the end of it four horses are attached to each of his Limbs and they're encouraged to sort of you know Gallop off in different directions uh pulling his body to Pieces well they do that and it's not working so the Executioner goes back and he starts hacking at various pieces so effectively he can be pulled to Pieces Damian stays alive and conscious for much of this operation he finally dies after four hours of absolute torment which is going to disgust people by its reports Louis had had nothing to do with the grisly execution but accounts of it stained his reputation right across Europe it gives the reign of Lou the 15th this incredibly ghastly sort of backward uh sort of feeling to it although his physical suffering was nothing compared to that meted out to damio Louie's mental stability was badly shaken by the affair his closest aides described him as troubled and depressed [Music] vermonic who takes being a king extremely seriously this is a big thing and all the court talk about over the next couple of years is this depression this sort of melancholic vein to uh uh Louis XV in here foreign to make matters worse the conflict with Britain was proving to be disastrous by the end of What's called the Seven Years War the French were driven out of Canada India and much of the Caribbean the British largely because of their Navy were able completely to turn the tables on France France has really lost all her pretensions to becoming to becoming a global superpower and she's lost at England basically if the world is speaking English today it is partly because of the outcome of the Seven Years War in the 18th century it was a disaster for France it was a disaster for the French monarchy [Music] for a king whose greatest Hope was to live up to the glory of his predecessor this was almost too much to bear [Music] my name is [Music] foreign thing that a king of France was supposed to do which is sometimes forgotten the lumetier was the conduct of foreign policy now he wasn't really supposed to mess around with things like the parliament internal politics that wasn't his job he was foreign policy and if you can't even get that right you're going to be hated [Music] badly shaken by the assassination attempt and widely blamed for each Fresh Military disaster Louis hid himself away at Versailles foreign the Seven Years War was undoubtedly the nadir for Louis XV he withdrew into himself and instead of doing what he'd done during the Austrian war of getting to the front and leading his troops instead he spent his time hunting and if he wasn't hunting he was with the girls in the Deer Park [Music] Louis may have lost a war but he was still the absolute ruler of France and when the criticism often became too much to bear he came up with a suitably absolutist response even the first encyclopedia in the French language one of the great intellectual achievements of the age went onto the bonfire [Music] unfortunately Louis XV was by Nature suspicious of anything that he saw as unorthodox and as a consequence he associate himself with this great outpouring of French culture and knowledge Louis was still close to Madame Pompadour who tried to change his mind at a dinner party one evening in Versailles a Duke said what is gunpowder made of and Madame de pompro sees the moment and said it's true we don't know what what gunpowder is uh what a Pity it is that your majesty and his wisdom you've you've banned the encyclopedia otherwise we could have looked in the encyclopedia and found out what gunpowder is constituted from so they sent for a copy of the ban encyclopedia which of course the king had in his private library and they spent the rest of the evening reading articles in the encyclopedia and he was of course very intrigued by this and this was supposed to be one of the reasons why he had it reinstated getting Louis to rescind the ban on the encyclopedia was to be one of Madame pompadour's last contributions to his life in 1764 she contracted tuberculosis [Music] she shifted out of Versailles and courteous record that I think as he's seeing the carriage taking out of her Versailles heeps a tear so he is upset undoubtedly by it foreign [Music] he cried because he had lost the person he trusted the most in the world and he felt very alone without her [Music] death in 1764 is followed by the death of his son the dofa in 1765 and a couple of years late in 1768 the death of his Queen Mary lashinska so this is the removal of some very important people in his life foreign the deaths of these people who are close to him in the in the mid 1760s undoubtedly has a very big impact on him emotionally the death of his closest Confidant began the worst period of Louie's life he spent days lost in introspection or deep in discussion with philosophers and astronomers foreign you can see that he did have a clear tendency and towards some sort of depression for the rest of his life he remains withdrawn somewhat depressive and obsessed with death the body coming to play the spirit party just as his courtiers were almost giving up hope for Louis he recovered his Lust For Life the reason was a new mistress nearly 40 years younger than him I'm rather fond of Madame du Berry she was as beautiful as an angel and as stupid as a basket but she made Louis very happy she was utterly utterly gorgeous I mean all the king's Mistresses were always described as ravishing but I think she was the one who truly was she was fabulously sexy [Music] foreign she was I suppose the sort of 18th century version of the tart with a heart had an instant effect on the Aging King he could think of nothing else but her she was extremely beautiful she was supposed to look like a kind of debauched angel not too bright but very good fun me foreign [Music] he's a man of 60 at this point and she has been a kept woman I wouldn't necessarily say she's been a prostitute but she certainly learned to think or two in the long periods that she spent with a certain number of particular individuals but in and I think Louis XV is delighted with the various tricks that she's learned to keep him young and so it is very good for his mental health we might say Madame dubari may have parked up the Aging Louis but that did not make her or him any more popular she was absolutely loathed everyone hated her the parisians hated her because she wasn't an aristocrat the aristocrats hated her because she was really little better than a street walker but the king adored her and he made her very happy laughs Louis XV went far too far and he was seen really as slumming it it was beneath the Dignity of a king to have these sorts of Liaisons there is no doubt that Louis XV was somebody who was seen as becoming increasingly dissolute even degenerate and who was just failing to uh to live up to the standards expected of a man who was King whatever people said about him the new relationship gave Louis the confidence to embark on a grand project to give his new Heir the future Louis XVI the greatest wedding of the century the young Louis was due to marry Marie Antoinette of Austria and Louis wanted the ceremony to take place in a brand new theater inside Versailles a project abandoned years before by Louis XIV is Louis XV felt the crown was under threat from the Palomar from different sections of society it had suffered the defeats of the Seven Years War therefore he wanted a spectacular Royal Wedding to assert the Splendor and power of the monarchy the politicians grumbled about the crippling cost of the royal wedding but Louis just kept on spending foreign towards them at other times he's very uh repressive against them but in 1770 he decides to tackle the problem in a different way he basically tries to abolish the Palomar Louie's decision to remove the one organization in France that could challenge him for Authority was a flagrant abuse of royal power the fines so this is a coup d'etat in the sense that one of the things that is absolutely key for the self-image of the French monarchy is that it is a legitimate absolute monarchy that rules according to the laws so to abolish the Law Courts themselves is a very powerful signal and a very blatant Act of Royal despotism foreign Louis believed he was acting in the best interests of France whose outdated legal system stood in the way of progressed suppose that they have foreign so he'll introduced wholesale reforms for example a free Justice also the judges themselves were now to be appointed by the crown for life and they would no longer buy their position as judge as had been the case before so for many including Voltaire this was seen as an enlightened reform unfortunately for Louis XV by silencing the parliament the king Unleashed opposition on a scale that had not been seen for Generations [Music] it was too late for Louis to play the reformer years of erotic self-indulgence along with failed Wars and bungled diplomacy had cemented his subject's opinion of him a bad king and a bad man Louis XV towards the end of his Reign is sunk in Vice and the people of Paris and the courtiers are all very well aware that he has somehow taken the path of personal pleasure and not been a very successful King his reforms are falling flat um he's got a mistress who is frankly not of courtly Rank and he's simply not kingly on top of it all on Easter Sunday 1774 uh the Abbeville they the most eloquent sermonizer at the court of Louis XV makes this devastating sermon this is really scandalous it is such a direct attack on the morality of the king that's never been witnessed at court see you on the water Minister that is Louis the 15th himself must be intensely mortified by the fact that he is not loved that he faces opposition at court and for the fact that he is so isolated within his own courtly environment if the Abe intended to wound Louis he could not have expected what happened next [Music] after this humiliating dressing down by the Abbeville at Easter Louis XV Falls ill [Music] nobody knows what's wrong with him and it takes the doctors gathered around him several days to work out what's going on they bleed him which can only weaken him to my mind and then suddenly one of the doctors sees familiar blotches and they realize that he has smallpox it is a complete bolt out of the blue small parks in the 18th century is still an absolute killer disease he had a particularly unpleasant form of it which was the black variety that changed the entire color of the face to a sort of dark copper mask and so he was completely disfigured even as he approached death Louie's enemies spread stories about his sex life it was suggested that he may have caught his smallpox from a prostitute but the whole idea of a corrupt body in of a corrupt King was very resonant and it was thought that this was a fitting punishment the outward and visible sign of an inward invisible damnation riddles his body and it produces a horrible stench as in in her organs start decaying um foreign Underneath It All he is very devout and he goes into Ultra devout mode he sends away Madame Dubai from the court in the same way that he sent away the dishes in 1744 at Matt's tea is once she had left it was possible for him to receive the last rites of the church and in his final hours he made a great effort I think to die as a Christian miss you foreign in fact he did face it the last few days with considerable courage he goes about dying like a good Christian like a good King dying in fact like Louis XIV foreign [Music] came no one seemed to care [Music] when he actually dies you can hear a stampede almost the Thunder of running feet as everybody abandons the empty chamber where he's lying the death of every King you have to have an autopsy and the King's physician offers this to those ceremonial officers and they don't want to know at all they turn their back and run rather fast clutching their uh clutching their noses as they do so and the king is sealed into an iron coffin [Music] once the news of his death was known there was great celebration there was a general sense of relief that the man who had once been Louis the well-beloved had gone the population had just lost any hope or confidence in their King and indeed I think it's fair to say they'd fallen out of love with their King [Music] it has been argued that the monarchy could never recover from the harm engendered by Louis XV he had dragged it into such disrepute that there was no recovery the abiding memory of Louis XV is a man who is morally corrupt and is unable to rise above his Melancholy to any kind of grandeur he is the least Grand of the French monarchs surely for over a century the Palace of Versailles was home to the most powerful family in Europe a place of artistic Breeze lavish entertainment mission of love affairs fair and outrageous scandals but while a lucky few danced feasted and flirted their days away the state was on the brink of collapse outside these gilded Gates millions of ordinary people were taxed to the Hilt while Rich Nobles paid virtually nothing a new King Louis XVI and his beautiful young Queen Marie Antoinette faced the biggest challenge in the history of their illustrious family bring fairness to the system and hope to their subjects or face losing their palace their crowns and their heads [Music] [Applause] in 1775 Versailles celebrated the coronation of a new king and queen Louis XV lived most of his 20 years here surrounded by courtiers and power Brokers but like his young Austrian wife Marie Antoinette he didn't feel ready to rule foreign [Music] feelings the public had High Hopes he's young he has a beautiful wife so there's everything to expect from this new and hopefully glorious reign of Louis XVI [Music] Louis XVI wants to rule in the grand manner he wants to be an absolute monarch he wants to live up to the style of Louis the great Louis XIV but interestingly he once also to rule in a way which is popular to be truly popular Louis knew that he had to govern in the interest of all his people and not just the ones he had grown up with foreign he has Ambitions to be a just and a philanthropic Monarch he calls himself Louis the philanthropic in fact one of his first decisions was so modern that it quite terrified his courtiers he had his whole family inoculated against smallpox using a procedure that was experimental and very dangerous that was something which you know raised hairs at the time and people thought oh what will happen if if he dies and I think in that way the king took the lead um he showed that he could lead with the times and move with the times and that was a promising start to the Rain Louis and Marie Antoinette seemed happy and relaxed in public but behind the smiles there was a problem with the Royal marriage a big one the marriage was in one way a disaster to say that the point of the marriage was to produce heirs who would combine the blood of the Austrian royal family and the French royal family well that wasn't going to happen because poor Louis XVI simply it couldn't wouldn't or didn't try to consummate the marriage a king and queen sex life or lack of one was an important matter of state so it didn't take long for news of Louie's failings in the bed chamber to spread around their side it's so embarrassing a situation where all the courtiers hung about the bridal chamber I mean it's inconceivable to us that they were allowed to do that and sort of more or less said how was it for you sir and nothing happened and he didn't consummate it for a long time precisely what was going on behind the bedroom door mystified the courtiers and divides historians to this day for the first seven years of the marriage there is clearly a sexual problem and certainly that either the couple do not have sex or they don't have sufficient sex or they're not sufficiently instructed in sexual matters to actually produce pregnancies and children [Music] given the legendary sexual exploits of Louis XIV and 15th it's hard to believe that number 16 was such a blushing innocent [Music] it does seem extraordinary but he wouldn't have known how to do it um but apparently he didn't but some believe it wasn't ignorance that stopped Louis from doing his Royal Duty it was illness a rare medical condition called formosis which meant that lovemaking was more pain than pleasure it's possible that Louis XVI had a malformation which needed to be corrected by minor surgery before he could have full sexual relations and at various times an operation of circumcision was discussed to correct this but in fact this was found not really to be the case luckily we have his hunting diary and I went to top experts on the subject of phimosis which is what he would have had if he needed an operation and they assured me when I showed them the hunting diary which he wrote no one who'd had an operation for motives without anesthetic could possibly have gone hunting day after day after day without going into details it's unthinkable while Louis struggled to father a child with Marie Antoinette he also had to address the problem that had blighted the final years of Louis XV Reign the poor state of the national finances he hired one of the sharpest Minds in Europe and Robert to advise him on the economy France was a society which still lived on the margins of subsistence many people still had memories of the terrible famines that had killed Millions at the end of the reign of Louis XIV foreign Minister who has a particular sense of the importance of landed wealth and the need to tax landed wealth [Music] security infamous chilgo tried to teach the king and his ministers some lessons about life outside Versailles like the price of bread Louis was interested the others not so much foreign with modernizing and adventurous policies so this is a modern forward-looking King who would hope to reform France and to help France regain its status in the world as well as the leading European power Louie's enthusiasm for reform was not shared by most of his courtiers the palace was full of powerful landed Aristocrats many of them lose his own relatives if turgo's reforms went through they would have to pay taxes like everyone else for the first time in their lives and they didn't like that idea at all Versa is becoming an increasingly isolated Little World Nobles who are living uselessly spending money relying on court pensions are utterly oblivious to the political issues in France certain taxes were not paid by the nobility notably the tie poll tax simply wasn't paid by anyone now Louis XVI thought this was wrong and aim to end it [Music] foreign its members like most of Louis's own governing Council were outraged by his ideas opposition to turgo's reforms came from within the council very conservative men who felt that the sorts of things that turgo was proposing threatened the traditional structure of society in which Nobles and clergy held a privileged position relative to the rest of society and so he had if you will stirred up The Hornet's Nest of vested interest [Music] Queen Mary Antoinette loved to dance and gamble in the most fashionable Parisian salons where she heard all the gossip against turkoff is foreign [Music] one of the most powerful opponents of Reform was the king's own brother the con de Provence known in court simply as masseur he clung to the traditional order of French society three Estates under the king the clergy the nobility and the rest with only the rest paying taxes [Music] the gossip in Paris combined with the strong vocal opposition inside Versailles began to undermine Louie's faith in Togo and reform Louis XVI must not have known which way to turn because the economists are divided and fundamentally the issue of the is the French State and whether it will survive very momentous decisions for a young man to take [Music] he looked initially as if he was going to stand firm however his confidence was undermined Louis XVI lacked the willingness to support him to The Bitter End s [Music] despite his promises of support Louis eventually dismissed the man he'd recruited to save the French economy is he's famously said to have remarked Monsieur turgo wants to be me I don't want him to be me and for that reason the minister was disgraced [Music] explicitly n foreign look weak and indecisive labels that would stick [Music] but Louis did have something to celebrate after eight years of marriage he and Marie Antoinette finally managed to start a family first a daughter and then an heir to the throne the birth of her second child the Dover was enormously important she produced a son she'd fulfilled her Duty and that was tremendously important and boasted her and the King was extremely pleased huge celebrations it was seen as a miracle this little baby really was seen as a savior he was the boy he was going to save France the bells rang in Paris The Fountains flowed with wine the today almost sung I mean nothing was negated [Music] foreign [Music] foreign Louis enjoyed being a father and for a while began to enjoy being King [Music] [Applause] but the responsibilities of government weighed upon him every day especially the urgent need to fill the national Treasury Louie's next attempt to do so arrived at Versailles in the shape of jacquesnecker one of the wealthiest men in Europe is an enormously Rich genevan Banker States like Francis which you know is having financial problems finds it terrifically advantageous because it means that he places his personal credit to the benefit of the state he's seen initially as a sort of Miracle Man because by establishing confidence Financial confidence the state can boom foreign France's old enemy England was struggling with an armed rebellion in its American colonies a rebellion that Louis wanted to support the France since the defeats of the Seven Years War had been desperate to get revenge on England Louis XVI would like nothing more than to attack the old enemy but on the other hand there's a problem if they do that are they not supporting insurgents and indeed insurgents many of whom were Republicans and avowed Republicans at that and so it's difficult and so to begin with the they take a kind of a middle course approved the aid but insisted that everything was done in secret using a certain amount of covert skullduggery weapons and arms are sent off to help the Americans fight off the British attempt to reconquer the rebellious colonies all this assistance to America cost the French government a fortune money it simply did not have Louis turned to his new Finance Minister aneker arranged Emergency Loans from his banking friends the world's first Democratic Revolution was being financed by one of the least democratic nations in Europe a fact that troubled Louis himself foreign [Music] Louis investment in the American Revolution seemed to pay off when the rebels scored their first great victory at the Battle of Saratoga he decided that the moment had come to support America publicly and go to war with Britain [Music] he threw a huge party at Versailles to welcome one of the men who drafted America's Declaration of Independence Benjamin Franklin and the Nobles of Versailles didn't care that Franklin was a Democrat who did not believe in the rule of kings and princes what appealed to them was the chance to do down a country they hated so much that they wore its image on their backsides I love Franklin um because he was a sued like they were they dressed up as shepherd s is he dressed up as a fur trapper memes when Benjamin Franklin arrived in France he was an absolute celebrity there was a real sort of frenzy really a Franklin Mania almost as everybody wants to be seen with the great man foreign had already borrowed up to the hilt and was now struggling to get a grip on Royal spending [Music] war is increasingly expensive and the French political system is not set up to impose taxes on the people who are best able to pay them so the fundamental problem of the French state is how do you tax the rich [Music] foreign after several years in government had had pretty much exhausted the possibility of borrowing he was aware that it was necessary to raise taxes gratification published plans to get rid of the unnecessary but lucrative jobs enjoyed by the courtiers at Versailles but even the suggestion of reigning in the Privileges of the Nobles set off a familiar argument Pepsi [Music] Louis promised to back Necker all the way just as he had with turgor ithm position foreign foreign [Music] to be strong this time but once again he began to dither me foreign [Music] was not a decisive Man by Nature he was a decent man he was controlled more by his ministers than previous Kings had been but then he was facing a different situation despite his wife's advice Louis decided that NECA had to go the second attempt to confront the French nobility had ended just like the first one in complete failure foreign [Music] when the British finally gave up fighting in America and recognized the new country's Independence it looked like Louis had achieved a famous victory but even as Versailles celebrated his courtiers were Whispering that France was not getting what it expected from a war it had financed on borrowed money is Louis had hoped for an economic Boost from the war but the Americans had other ideas the Americans preferred to continue to trade with England so France actually ended up spending an awful lot of money on a war from which he got very little tangible benefit [Music] it says the first gunshot will drive the state to bankruptcy well he's wrong but it's only Wrong by a few years because the impact of that war on French finances is absolutely terrible foreign [Music] successor was Charles Alexandra de Calon who proposed a new idea he told Louis that to boost the French economy he should spend even more [Music] foreign these very serious problems financial problems of the state to to Breaking Point Marie Antoinette had given the French people an heir to the throne but as an Austrian Outsider she had never been very popular now as the financial crisis deepened ordinary people came to see her not as their Queen but as a symbol of the selfishness of the aristocratic Elite it's a truism of history when there's economic stress people look round for who to blame and it was all too easy to blame the Austria letrician and that she had an extravagant court and the country people were starving and she was having parties and giving balls so that that's really what caused the major downturn in her reputation there is a stream of salacious pamphlets which come out about Marian Antoinette in the 1770s and 1780s the sorts of things that they'd say that she has a very wild sex life frustrated in her relations with the King she has sexual relations with his brothers she's the new messalina she's the new sort of sexually wild person I've called and this is dragging the monarchy down too foreign was that Mary Antoinette had an affair with Carlo who was the the court allmana and he then passed venereal disease onto every woman in the court that that's the sort of thing that went around it was very gross the gross the better they make anything that people may put up with today look absolutely Mild they are so gross they are really lewd with detail and illustrations one of the points The Saturdays made in their pamphlets was that Maria Antoinette had it off with her brother-in-law the comp datoire you know you take a story like she's having it off with her brother-in-law and then how do you prove she's not that was the trouble so everybody liked to believe it King who is a very nice man was very upset by it Louis himself was also a victim of the pamphleteers foreign foreign from everything that he read Louis assumed that the whole country now despised him but a visit to Normandy to inspect a new Port brought a pleasant surprise [Music] for the rest of his career he virtually never goes out of the area around Paris it's almost the only time he sees the rest of his country and what it shows is he is incredibly popular there's a sort of popularity which he is utterly unsuspecting of and he even ends up cheering and clapping himself in the excitement he was much applauded in Normandy and it is said that as he was getting back to Versailles he said I know I'm getting nearer to Versailles because chairs are much weaker as soon as he returned to his court Louis faced another crisis Finance Minister kalon decided that his spend spend spend formula had been wrong after all now he called for cuts and new taxes for the nobility the same advice that his ill-fated predecessors had given and sure enough the Nobles organize themselves to resist taxation all over again 87 and 1788 will be characterized by a state that's desperate for financial reform to get out of the situation of bankruptcy which is staring it in the face Louis believed that kalon's medicine could save France but doubted if the patient would ever be prepared to swallow it is and it's going to be absolutely vital that Louis XVI for once in his life follows through and supports his minister in order to make sure that these plans are accepted because there is no plan B foreign the Assembly of notables included all the most powerful figures in Louis realm they had the authority to see that kalon's reforms became the law of the land able Collins reforms will be introduced to them they will give it their endorsement thus showing a degree of almost National support and the king would go on Happily of course it doesn't happen like that the Assembly of notables turns into an absolute bear Garden an absolute dog fight what Kalam was doing was asking an assembly of privileged people to vote away their own privileges in other words asking turkeys to vote early for Christmas and so inevitably they rejected it King realizes that kalon has failed to to persuade the political Elite to go down his route he he gets sacked the ideas which he proposes are withdrawn so it's a pretty unmitigated disaster kalon was the third finance minister to Fall From Grace after trying to make the rich pay more tax and the third that Louis had supported only to sack [Music] trapped between economic disaster and the implacable opponents of change all around him the king couldn't cope anymore he suffered a mental breakdown stumbling around his Palace rambling about the visions that tormented him surely [Music] oh my God just as his grandfather Lou the 15th was subject to Melancholia and depression Louis the 16th seems to enter into a period of really quite deep depression the failure of the Assembly of notables seems to have affected Louis xvi's very badly that they thought this is unable to manage the court and to manage the political situation in a way that he has to do as a king because he is at the Pinnacle of a system which is itself in crisis in some respects from this moment it lost the control this was a key moment where his ability to actually be a king and dominate the political agenda was put under question [Music] Momo this videos foreign exhibits the qualities that have gone down the Louis of History you know tearful luxurious reliant on Mario Antoinette kindly indecisive all that and there are lapses of reason which are very unfortunate for the people who have to be with him [Music] foreign state was hardly improved when somebody sneaked into his private chamber and left him an unwelcome gift a portrait of the execution of England's King Charles the first [Music] Louis XVI was dominated by the life of Charles the first who was his direct ancestor he knew bit by bit line by line what happened to Charles and so people were able to scare him by moving a portrait of the king into his private Apartments but Louis you had a very sort of mechanical kind of mind he said if I avoid the mistakes that Charles made I won't be executed he said Charles was executed because he levied war on his own subjects I'm not going to do that Louis recovered composure and tried one last time to change the way his kingdom was taxed and governed [Music] he called an unprecedented meeting of all three Estates the nobility the clergy and the Third Estate who represented the mass of the Common People miss you [Music] in August 1788 the treasury was Bare the government was forced to summon an Estates General it really was a last throw of a dice despite their huge numerical superiority the votes of the Third Estate only counted the same as those of the nobility and the clergy you will always have a situation where the two votes of the so-called privileged orders that is the nobility and the clergy representing maybe less than half a million people will always outweigh the wishes of the 27 and a half million people at the Third Estate so straight away you've got a political deadlock as soon as the Estate General meet and getting out of that deadlock will be what happens over the summer of 1789 that triggers the revolution a difficult time grew even worse for Louis and Marie Antoinette with the death of their eldest son the young heir to the throne is quite a big psychological shock actually the king is met by a tremendous amount of support from the nobility psychologically it draws the king and his nobility closer together in a way it was a crucial moment Louie's sudden shift in sympathy back to the Nobles meant that their enemies the representatives of the Third Estate decided he was never going to help them [Music] King is increasingly finding it difficult to distance himself from his Nobles and their interests that's that's the world he moves in this is Versailles all about being surrounded by by Nobles he's hardly ever met his own subjects outside of out of that context um so he's swaying towards supporting the Nobles and Marian Antoinette certainly is swaying towards them [Music] [Music] with negotiations at the Estates General still hopelessly bogged down the Third Estate sent a group to Versailles to ask for Louie's help foreign he refused to meet them it was the final straw the Third Estate takes matters into its own hands and declares itself the National Assembly and this is absolutely critical because it's the first time in modern European history that a representative body has claimed power in the state based on a democratic principle that it represents 80 percent of the French people it was a genuinely radical revolutionary moment because they were saying they were not going to disperse until France had been given a constitution [Music] illegal that deliver US national [Applause] [Music] faced with the crumbling of the structure of the old Estates General Louis XVI decided finally that he would resort to force as a result he began to call in troops and to assemble troops around Paris the whole business was botched the parisians panicked by rapidly Rising food prices decided to defend themselves as a result they attacked the Bastille to get the powder foreign Louis was woken in the middle of the night with the news that his people had finally taken up arms against the authorities Louis the 16th had a choice [Music] he could have tried to face down the people of Paris and the National Assembly by Force of Arms in other words he could have risked Civil War if there is one thing that is clear about Louis XVI is that he refused to take that path he would not fight or raise his standard against his own people he knew his English History he knew what had happened to Charles the first he had no intention of repeating it Louis may not have wanted to go to war with his own people but many of them now wanted to go to war with him three months after the fall of the Bastille a group of angry parisians marched on Versailles itself the rioters vowed to kill the one person they blamed for all their troubles the symbol of the hated Rich Marie Antoinette there's no doubt that some elements of this Crown had very bloodthirsty thoughts in their mind Marie Antoinette has become a figure of absolute hatred for the population of Paris at this point [Music] Mario Torres was a main target because she's been the main target for many years now she was considered that the person really was giving poor advice to Louis XVI who had been at the origin of fiscal crisis because of her lavish expenses one reason the crowd hated Marie Antoinette was because of a phrase she was said to have uttered when told that the poor had no bread kilmourge De La Brioche let them eat cake Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake and she never could have said it she was brought up in the philanthropic Court of Austria where her mother Maria Theresa sort of told them to go around giving soup and bread to Oat women in Farmer's cottages and it was inconceivable she would have given the brioche to she was much more like the late Princess Diana you know she would have performed a gesture like that so she could never have said it whoever said what or when the revolutionaries were after the Queen's blood and was soon breaking down the palace Gates [Music] they broke him in the early morning and they tried to to claim uh in the room of Marian Antoinette one of her bodyguards is killed actually defending the entrance to her chamber in the palace and massacred there and then Marie Antoinette only escapes by a rapid exit into the king's chamber it is a very very dangerous moment for the royal family there was no doubt they must have been terrified [Applause] and the king and the Queen and their children go out onto the balcony to show themselves in a sense to show that they're prisoners and are not fleeing foreign [Music] moment for the king the queen and their children because the crowd is fearsome they're not used to coming into contact with people like this [Music] the entire Royal Family surrendered itself to the Revolutionary crowd and agreed to be taken as prisoners to Paris none of them would ever see Versailles again [Music] they were taken back as the baker the baker's wife and the baker's son in reference to the Grain and bread crisis that had triggered this but it's fair to say that after the 6th of October the king and the royal family were prisoners of the revolution Louis had tried and failed to change his kingdom now he would pay the price [Music] both he and Mary Antoinette would die Under the Blade of the guillotine [Music] for over a hundred years Versailles stood for the power and Prestige of the bourbon Dynasty but it also stood for a society that was fundamentally unfair and corrupt romantic but royally divorced glittering but grotesquely unequal magnificent but profoundly immoral a society whose time was up

Channel: Real Royalty

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Length: 165min 54sec (9954 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022