So, this video spiraled. This video quickly devolved
into a hellish tornado of, like, historical misinformation buried
under historical misinformation buried under historical misinformation, and an adventure of me having to
dig through that to find the truth. And I'm taking you all with me. I have no desire to live in the Middle Ages, as interesting as I think they are,
but I think that most can agree that a pretty favorable job to have,
if you did need to live back then, was that of the court jester, or the King's fool. Seems like a sweet gig, right? You get paid to live in nice
digs, wear a silly outfit, jingle around the castle
miserably, and can say pretty much anything you want, at almost anyone's
expense, with considerable immunity. At least, that's what it seems like, right? For centuries, court fools were
hailed much like celebrities. Their jokes were repeated through court, sent into the streets like early sound bite memes. So much so that many of these famous
jesters grew into larger than life legends, beyond any power or comedy
they ever had in real life. They were essentially often
transformed into characters. I mean, that was kind of their job anyway, right? To be a character. But there's a lot of complex
issue that follow this, and few jesters of history are as good
an example as the legendary Triboulet. Triboulet was a jester in
the court of King Francois I of France, and he's famous for good reason. Odds are you've seen stories of his schemes,
floating around online in meme format. On one occasion, a furious nobleman
threatened to kill him for some insult, to which Francois said that
Triboulet need not worry, for he would behead anyone who kills
him no more than 15 minutes after. To which Triboulet quickly rebuffed, "Couldn't you just behead him 15 minutes before?" Another example of Triboulet's quick-wittedness, and likely the one you've heard, was a time when Triboulet went too far and couldn't help but smack that King's ass. When the king demanded an explanation,
threatening to have him executed, Triboulet said, "I'm sorry, my
King. I mistook you for the Queen." Now regardless of whether or not Francois
owned a justifiably queenly dumpy, this was unacceptable, as unlike most, insulting the Queen was out of the question. So this explanation did not help. However, thinking on how loyally this
jester had served him for many years, Francois offered him the chance to decide his preferred method of being
executed, and the ever-so-witty Triboulet replied, "My King, I
would like to die of old age." This did lighten the mood,
and Francois granted his wish. He was banished from the court,
but he did indeed die of old age. What a legend, right? But that's exactly the problem. These tales have been repeated for centuries, often by highly reliable scholars
and historians, but are they true? Who really was Triboulet, a guy with basically no information to
his biography within easy reach online. And did he really truly slap
King Francois, the First Ass? Come learn with me! But first, this video has literally
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investigating Triboulet. [music: mysterious plucking of strings] If you google Triboulet, of three
things you are absolutely certain. First is that he was a court
fool, to probably King Francois I. Second, he slapped the King's ass. And three, I was deeply and
irrevocably in love with hi- So of course, I started with his Wikipedia page, and lo and behold, there's the famous story. Interesting. There is indeed a citation or two, but the second one connects to a
Thoughtnova article with no citations. Most sources online that cite
this story will link back to this All That's Interesting article,
which when you actually click on the source in this section, goes
back to f-----g Commonplace Fun Facts, which has no sources cited. You may notice the links here,
it -- the source is itself. Uh. I don't know about you. but like,
random fun fact article sites aren't exactly my idea of the
bastion of reliable information. Back to that first citation, it's a
book by Leonie Frieda on Francois I. This is a pretty good place
to start, so I grabbed my library card, borrowed the
book from Hoopla, and, well. It's this specific chapter; chapter six: A
New King of France; where the story appears. Here's the problem, if I move my cursor, there is no citation footnote right here. And then if you go into the end of the book, where the citations are, there's just nothing. So like, where? Where? Where did this come from? Now, this is a book on Francois I, not Triboulet, and this is the jester's only
mention in the whole book, so obviously, it wasn't
Freida's research priority. Back to square one. I poked around the bibliography for this chapter, and continued my journey, which led me to a few new books that Freida did cite, none of which were any help whatsoever. Okay, back to square zero. The Wikipedia page also cites
a couple of other things, one being this archived Historia page from 2008, which was deleted sometime in
2016 for God knows what reason. The other is an actually helpful book, The History of Court Fools by
Dr. Doran, published in 1858. Now, for obvious reasons
I've talked about many times, you have got to take Victorian
history books with the grain of salt, because a ton of these authors
didn't double-check their sources, or they straight up made shit up. Put a bookmark in that thought,
we'll run into that later. So Dr. Doran actually cites a pretty
significant book in Triboulet history here, Les Deux Fous by Jacob the
Bibliophile, which was the pen name of 19th century journalist Paul LaCroix, who over the last few weeks
has become my mortal enemy. Luckily, Dr. Doran is pretty
critical of Les Deux Fous, acknowledging that it's mostly
fiction, and for good reason, because I went and found Les
Deux Fous, published in 1830, and [stifled laugh of the enraged]
oh, boy. In his introduction, Paul
LaCroix says, essentially, that his historical fiction novel
- yes, that's what this is - is soooo good that some may
consider it to be non-fiction. A historical chronicle. I made sure to confirm this
with the help of my friend, Claire Mead, who actually is fluent in French. Oh, boy. Now Victorian writers being
pompous asses like this is nothing new to me, so I wasn't shocked at all. I wish I had that kind of confidence, though. "My fiction writing is soooo good,
I'm basically writing true history." Now it's not really LaCroix's
fault that some people confused his book for
non-fiction, because in this era, I think it would be really easy to. For centuries until literally
fairly recently, and even now, some historians do this
really annoying thing where they fabricate conversations and biographies that no one could possibly know happened. So it was really common to read a history book, and just assume that these conversations happened, and must have been like, written down somewhere, and not really think much of it. And that's how we've ended
up with so many fake quotes attributed to historical figures, and
that's what we're battling with Triboulet. So Les Deux Fous has proven
to be one of the issues here, but nowhere in that book is there any
mention of the ass slapping story. Who started that story? Where did it come from? Every book I read going down the
trail repeated the same like, three to five stories about Triboulet. They usually repeated the
stories of him spurring a horse, or this story about a farting horse, or the story of him asking the king
to behead someone 15 minutes before, or the story of his writing the
king's name in the book of fools. But no one - no one! - mentioned
Triboulet slapping the king's ass. And who the hell would pass that story out? Speaking of the king though, which
king did Triboulet even serve? Because apparently we aren't sure of that, either. So let's get two key things
straight here, before we move on. If you're unfamiliar with French royal history, You've got King Louis XII, who
ruled from 1498 until 1515, and then after him came Francois I, who served from 1515 until his death in 1547. We know for a fact that he
died during Louis' reign and he was very much beloved,
due to a funerary epitaph written by Jean Marot, which reads, Long time after, my lord and master, Louis the twelfth, had me put in this place, Cut to the quick, so that the name lasts, Of the truest fool that Nature ever created." Nouvelles Récréations, by
Bonaventure des Périers from 1565, mentions in the 1850s reprint
that Triboulet had a brother, who was named Nicholas, who he
got a job as a cook in the palace. Is it possible that Triboulet's
name isn't even Nicholas Ferrial, as it says on his Wikipedia page, and somebody got him and his brother
mixed up? It seems that way. Les Deux Fous does indeed get them mixed up, as he says, "Triboulet was a great
baker or butcher to the crown," but we know there was indeed
a Triboulet serving Francois due to papers from his court listing
Nicholas de Ferrial, brother of Triboulet, and Francois Bourcier, governor of Triboulet. As well as the fact that a
Triboulet was indeed present with the King during the
Italian expedition of 1515, which is the setting for many
wild Triboulet anecdotes. The only logical conclusion is that
there were at least two Triboulets, and the second one had a brother named Nicholas. Joly, and Montaiglon and de
Rothschild; the authors of two actually solid books on
Triboulet in the Victorian era, are all in agreement by the 1860s to '70s that Triboulet must have died by 1514, or generally, before the
reign of Francois I at all. And therefore, pretty much anything
that Bonaventure de Périers and LaCroix attribute to him is not correct. This is based off of the
Epitaph of Triboulet the First that I read earlier, which cites the year 1509. None of the writers who
lived during Triboulet's time ever mentioned him serving King Francois I. The first time this is mentioned is decades later, in 1565, in Nouvelles Récréations,
by Bonaventure des Périers. Which first tells the story of the farting horse, and then Triboulet beating up
an officiant in the church. One day while Triboulet was in front of the king, constantly chatting and showing off his nonsense, his horse let out six or eight farts,
and this angered Triboulet to no end. And so he immediately got off his horse, put the saddle on his back, and said to the king, "Cousin, today you gave me
the worst horse that ever was. He's a drunk; after he's drunk
his fill, all he does is fart. By God! he'll go on foot. Ha! ha!
he farted in front of the king." which is insane because des Périers died in 1543, so was this added posthumously? Bonaventure des Périers was
a satirist, he wrote satire. So, Novel Pastimes and Merry
Tales, which is where a lot of these stories are coming
from, is a collection of fables. And he's very open about it, too,
because I just opened tale number 92, and he literally says, "since
Triboulet was well thought of in the best companies, and his
foolishness has a place in this book, it seemed a good idea to give him as a companion one of the best fed jokers," blah blah blah. He's very open about how this is fiction. It's funny to me that the two Victorian scholars who are picking apart what's
true or not about Triboulet, attest the fact that none of this stuff
that des Périers is saying is true, to the fact that these events took
place after the real Triboulet died, and not to the fact that
it's literally openly satire, which I feel like is more
damning than the other thing. So at this point, it's looking
like pretty much nothing in that Wikipedia article is remotely true. And it's blowing my mind that
Bonaventure des Périers died, and then whoever republished his work decided to co-opt his voice to include random
misinformation about Triboulet. Here's the thing, though. That that happened? Actually
isn't that shocking, honestly. Because as soon as Triboulet died, the name became a common nickname for any jester. In fact, there was at least one
Triboulet before, well, Triboulet. Actually, there were even dogs owned by Charles IX named Shelly, Mugette, and Triboulet. This could be attested to
the fact that the origins of the name Triboulet have a
number of possible sources, one being the word tribo, or trepan, the tool used in
trepanning, an old medical procedure where a hole is drilled into the skull to cure a number of things, namely insanity. There is also the old French word tribule, meaning tormented or trampled. So the name Triboulet, in all likelihood, is a pun reference to him being a mad man. By all trustworthy accounts, Triboulet had physical disabilities as well as mental ones, so this is also a reason why
so much confusion cropped up. It's entirely possible that
multiple Triboulets existed, and their stories, many of
which are already fictional, are getting mixed up with each
other, like a big Triboulet salad. We know for a fact that René of Anjou had a jester named Triboulet, for instance,
but it's hardly the same man, given that René was alive from 1409 to 1480, and our Triboulet was born around the 1480s or so. It wasn't until, purely on accident. in the midst of trying to find a free copy of Novel Pastimes and Merry Tales by des Périers, I finally stumbled across a
really great paper by somebody just as pissed about this subject
as I am in the modern era. Not just the two dudes from the Victorian era. Guillaume Berthon, who is firmly
of the educated opinion that, rather than the main Triboulet being one guy who served both Francois I and Louis, that it was two Triboulets, one king each, who have gotten merged over the years. I think we can settle that mystery, but it doesn't really help the rest, because there's another big issue here. A lot of these Triboulet stories
aren't even unique to Triboulet. One of the main stories attributed to him, the one where he spurs on a
horse that he can't control, is copied directly from a pre-existing
Italian satirical story by Ariosto, which seems to be at least partially copied from yet another story from the 12th century, in the Ipomedon of Hue de Rotelande. A huge number of Triboulet
stories have been traced back to older Italian stories, which Aristide Joly makes note of in La vraye
histoire de Triboulet, 1867. It is to him that we attribute,
the better to engrave them in the future, the anonymous pranks; to make French, the pranks
borrowed from Italian storytellers. Hold on. "How... to... pronounce... Pog-" [electronic music plays] "Poggy." "Poggy." That does not sound right. "Pog." Pog? "Pog." Pahg. [laughter] "Pog. Pog. Pog. Pog. Pog. Pog. Pog." Pog. oh my God, now I'm sweating. "A story by Boccaccio or Pogge has only good favor on this side of the mountains
and only obtains letters of naturalization there on
the condition that Triboulet takes on their story. It becomes more obvious when there are no citations" To add even more fuel to the idea that Triboulet became more of a character than historical figure, is that he is used in all
number of fictional stories, the most famous being Victor Hugo's
Le Roi s'amuse, written in 1843. In this story, Hugo makes
Triboulet more sympathetic and wise, and even gives him a daughter. A few knuckle-headed historians read this story, and took it as fact,
reporting in their biographies that Triboulet actually did have a daughter. He did not. An even earlier one was
Francis I: A Historical Drama, written by actress Fanny Kemble in 1832. Predating Hugo's work, and
pre-dating Kemble's story, is an 1807 comedy written by Madame Olymple. In fact, literally as soon as
Triboulet was dead in the ground, people started writing plays, novels,
and operas, with him as a character. King of early cinema himself, Georges Méliès, even made a film about
Francis and Triboulet in 1907. Triboulet as a multi-use fictional
character persists until modern day, too. He was even included as a side character in the 2002 Jean Rollin movie, Fiancée of Dracula, which is a place I honestly was not
expecting to encounter him, but okay. How are we holding up? I know this is kind of a
lot of info, so let's recap. Triboulet the alleged ass slapper was actually three court jesters in the 15 to 16th centuries, serving three different kings. But what was our main Triboulet? The one serving Louis XII, actually like? Well, a lot about his backstory was made up, but here's what we know, based on the accounts of people who knew him in life. Triboulet, who had one brother named Nicholas, was born in Blois, France, where he spent his early years on the streets
begging or playing bagpipes for money. This is because Triboulet was
physically disabled and neurodivergent. according to Jean Marot in his Description
du Voyage de Venise in the 1530s, Triboulet had, "a small forehead and
big eyes, a big nose and a wide back... he was as wise at thirty as
he was the day he was born." LaCroix takes the liberty to
expand on his description, "His flat and hollow chest, his bowed back, his short and twisted legs,
his long and hanging arms, amused the ladies, who contemplated him as if he had been a monkey or a paroquet." Yeugh. Another author gives us an idea of his dress: "His dress was not less eccentric than his person. In accordance with his secret occupation of purveyor of pleasures to the King, he adopted the colors of the reigning mistress, and dressed in something of the fashion of his master. His justaucorps was of
striped blue and white silk, fitting so tightly as to
render his bodily deformity more conspicuous, and to excite more readily the laughter of all who looked
upon him for the first time. On his back, thighs, and cap,
were emblazed the royal arms, and from his girdle of gilt leather hung the symbols of his office - a club,
a wooden sword, and a bagpipe." So according to recent legend, apparently, one day Triboulet slashed
the jerkin of a page boy, and the page's friends punished him
by nailing him to a post by the ear, to which Francis I took pity on him, gave him a governor - that is, a keeper - and
made him his personal royal fool. But this story doesn't hold
up because the earliest telling of it comes from
des Périers 'Merry Tales,' where it was Caillette, not
Triboulet, who was nailed to the post, Caillette being Triboulet's co-worker, basically. They had kind of a rivalry going on. Like, you're seeing this right?
Uh, I'm not, like, hallucinating? We actually have no idea how either Triboulet came into the service of either king, but one thing is certain.
The real Triboulets were, as I discussed earlier, essentially
kept as novelty entertainers because of their disabilities,
which the court found humorous. Because they, like many other
court fools, were disabled, they were able to get away with
cracking these sharp jokes, because people didn't take them as seriously. And this is where the long
story of Triboulet begins to become a little uncomfortable. The role of mad men in medieval entertainment is extremely storied and complex. I mean, the French word
'fou' literally translates to madman, crazy, insane, lunatic, et cetera. Early jesters were essentially theater performers. They did a wide variety of
tricks like juggling, skits, singing tales, puppetry, miming, playing
instruments, circus acts and more. A typical court fool could
engage in all or none of these. By the end of the 16th century,
and especially the 17th century, the court fool became a specifically
costumed role of theater. His archetypes and tropes were already well known, and famous names like Triboulet
would be used as titles. But many jesters from the 15th to 16th centuries were differently abled folks, especially people with various forms of dwarfism. Although their role as often
the confidants of royalty gives the idea that these
jesters were highly respected, that's not a hundred percent the case. They were viewed as exotic,
and often treated as pets. It's extremely disturbing. So it's interesting to see
how Triboulet, a person who was famously disabled in numerous ways, starts off being written about in horrible,
disrespectful, and insulting ways, and once he becomes a tool character in fiction, he's transformed at once into a sneaky,
wise, and intelligent character, rather than the exaggerated caricature that earlier writers made him out to be. Happening concurrently, many later jesters were not disabled or neurodivergent at all, but rather theatrical actors playing the role of
a disabled and neurodivergent person, in order to entertain, because that's what
was expected of jesters by that point. Were they perceived as anything "normal," they wouldn't be afforded
such immunity for their jokes. It was precisely because they
were seen as foolish and mad that many jesters were able to make these jabs at the court, and still keep their heads. But that still answers the
great unanswered question: where? Where did the ass-slapping story come from? Who started it? I know by now that it's not true, but who did it? Who's the culprit? I'm losing my mind. I decided to pick apart this story piece by piece. Any and all searching in
books, databases, articles, anything for any mention
of Triboulet slapping ass, brought up nothing but internet memes
and Reddit posts from the last decade. I think France was a mistake. So I moved on to the last half of the story, where Triboulet asks to die of old age, and this one actually got me somewhere. First I found it mentioned in a book called Tales of the Jesters by Robert
Hill, published in 1934. I've read some really, really bad
history books in the 20s and 30s, so if this is the source, I wouldn't be shocked. Alas, it's a rare book and not available online, so I hauled my ass out of my apartment over to one of the coolest places in Chicago, the Newbury library on West Walton Street, which houses rare books and manuscripts, and they've got this book. So I sat there flipping through, page by page, finally finding the mention I was hoping for, but there's no sign of ass slapping. Nay not even a wee ass tap. No, nothing. And of course, since this is an
old book, there's no citations. Back to the drawing board. I continued searching for the specific phrase that Triboulet uses in French, which is this, and I finally found the source. You're never gonna guess
where this shit came from. Go ahead, guess. Yeah, it's a f-----g "history" book from 1852. The Victorians strike again! And yet, and yet. No mention of ass slapping. Flames! Flames! On the side of my face! It's right here. And then up here. This is the phrase that
everyone says that he says. But down here, in French, it doesn't
say he slapped anybody's ass. At this point, I really thought
that I might hit a dead end. Like, seriously, is there
actually no answer? For real? Am I going to have to give up? By this point it was almost
2 A.M., literally last night, and I was honestly starting
to get kind of pissed off, and that's when it hit me. The answer was literally in
front of me the whole time. Where is the only two
significant places I've ever seen this story reported, with ass slapping included? Wikipedia and Reddit. I needed to go back to the
source, back to where I started. I used custom date search tools and found one of the earliest mentions
of Triboulet slapping ass on Reddit to this comment, on
a post from eight years ago. No sources. But upon digging into Reddit further, I started noticing these comments alluding to some sort of drama that had taken
place. Some tomfoolery, even. Someone out there apparently
edited Triboulet's Wikipedia page, if this commenter is to be trusted, at least. Why didn't I think to check
the Wikipedia edit history? And so, here we are, back at good ol' Wikipedia, and lo and behold, the ass slapping
story was added in mid-2007 by an unnamed user whose IP
address I'm covering here. And when I went to see what
other edits this person had made, there was only one, to the Assassin's Creed page. Hey, I think this person likes ass. [music: funerary organ dirge] I'm not saying that an Assassin's Creed fan is inherently not qualified to teach history. As far as gamers go, Ass Creed fans are probably the most likely to be history
nerds in the first place. But I mean, well... This is, I'm 99% certain, the
first mention of Triboulet slapping ass coming from a
random uncited edit to Wikipedia from an anonymous gamer
then perpetuated on Reddit. An actual citation that isn't f-----g Thoughtnova wasn't added until years later when Leonie Freida included the story in her book on Francis I. And Freida didn't cite her source, either. The odds of her having simply heard this story from the very Wikipedia page that
her book is used as a source on, creating a weird circle, is extremely high. I think it's safe to conclude,
as devastated as I am, that Triboulet never slapped the king's ass. He was not banished from the kingdom. He was not nailed to a post by his ear. And he probably didn't do most of
those other silly stories, either. Both of the real Triboulets probably were
hilarious in real life, of their own merit. But it's hard to say how much of the amusement people found in them was just raw ableism. So, um, where does this even leave us? Well, I guess the thing is,
is it actually hurting anyone believe that Triboulet slapped the king's ass? No. I mean it's f-----g hilarious. It was one of my favorite history
stories, before I ruined my own fun. But the issue is sometimes these historical memes and over the top stories are actually harmful. In Julie d'Aubigny's case,
they were used to defame her, and it wasn't until recently that the
stories were seen as cool and badass. For others, fake quotes can alter
the way we view their life stories, or overshadow real things that they accomplished. And in general, I think that
situations like this are a testament not only to how easy it is to spread historical misinformation online, and people unquestioningly believing it, but also to just how difficult
it is to debunk these things when there's centuries and
centuries of shit to dig through, in another language, no less. I had time and interest to do
this, because this is my job, but who the f--k else does? I went into this video thinking
that I'd be able to tell you these silly stories, and then be done. Easy video in the books. And honestly, I probably could have, and most of you wouldn't think anything of it. But the fact is, that would be dishonest. I noticed that something
was fishy about this story, and I can't in good conscience
serve you information when I have a sinking feeling that there's nothing but lies backing it up. So I've dragged you with me on this journey through the annals of history, a process that isn't pretty or fun most of the time. You've gotten a peek behind
the curtain at my madness, every time I make a video. I hope you've enjoyed learning with me. I think I've really learned a
lot about who Triboulet wasn't. We may never know who he truly was. That history is lost to time. So until next time, wash thy hands, wear thy mask, and don't forget to update your book of fools. [music: ♪ electronic baroque piano outro ♪]
