Winner, Loser, Scapegoat
Analysing history, one can notice that certain patterns keep repeating themselves over and over again in the same sequence over the course of time. A while ago I wrote about lifecycle of countries, how they are born, grown, reach peak, then grow stagnant and stale on top, then decline and finally die over the course of time that is approximately 9 to 10 longer than human life.
This time around I will write about different, but related cycle, that I dubbed Winner, Loser, Scapegoat. First stage, the Winner, is where someone one way or another discovers a certain winning formula and successfully applies it to achieve a lot. Second Stage, the Loser, is where successor or successors, confident in effectiveness of the formula, continue to apply it until they literary lose everything. Followed by, the Scapegoat, where at the bottom of the barrel someone is put in charge of the unfixable mess only to become a scapegoat for its ultimate failure.
To being with a history of France. Its easier to understand because here each stage is represented by exactly one monarch. They are in this order Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, even numbered sequentially.
Louis XIV the Winner
Nowadays Louis XIV, the Sun King, is mostly remembered for two things, building a luxurious Versailles Palace and saying "etat, c'est moi" which means "I am the state". He is symbol of autocratic absolutist rule, monarchial excess, lucury and priviledge. Looking at him now its easy to think that royal life is easy and you will be very lucky to be born one. That is misleading however and even downright incorrect if you look at his life closer.
Louis XIV reign begun when he still was a child. At the time France was literary tearing itself apart in a seamlessly never-ending civil war over religion and other things. However he managed to turn things around.
Historians write a lot about absolutism or efforts of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin as well as his mother Anne of Austria, even though French prosperity not only continued but only grew in even after they were gone. Historians however fail to notice the real source of Louis XIV success and power, money, that was the real foundation for his absolutist rule. Read my separate article about it.
Louis XIV and his associates and advisers build a system that turned France from unmitigated dumpster fire into a pre-eminent power in Europe, similar to what USA is today. Foundations to this system were money that came from two main sources, Medici Bank controlled by famous Medici family of Tuscan Grand Dukes, who first became bankers before they they became rulers of first Florentine Republic and later transformed it into a Grand Duchy.
If you ever wonder, the Austrians, French major geopolitical rival also had wealthy bankers backing them. Bankers are the secret sauce of success.
However money by themselves is no guarantee of success as was later shown buy Louis XIV successor, Louis XV. Money has to be invested property to produce even more money. The biggest source of money back in the days were silver mines in Spanish New World, that made Spain a a wealthiest nation in Europe, something Louis XIV managed to usurp from them by the end of his reign. To get a share of that wealth Louis XIV invested heavily in piracy, yes piracy. French colony of Tortuga would provide pirates all across the Caribbean with a safe heaven to restock supplies, repair ships and hire crew all in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they plundered. Read more in my article about piracy. Some pirates, or corsairs to be precise, made big plundering Spanish, some failed but the biggest winner of it all was French Crown who organized the whole thing.
Then there was war. Louis XIV loved war and, just like famous Carolus Rex, personally led his troops in battle. Unlike Carolus Rex, Louis XIV is not known ingenious tactical exploits and victories against all odds. There is nothing to interest military historians in a crashing defeat of Bishopric og Strasbourg by combined force of Prussian and French armies.
However what Louis XIV lacked in tactical genius he compensated with strategic proveness. His approach was simple, fight countries that has money and no army, brilliantly simple and supremely effective. Luckily for him Holy Roman Empire on French eastern borders had a few countries just like that. Holy Roman Emperor who lost a lot of authority due to Peace of Westphalia, was no longer willing to protect these little states and France took full advantage of that fact. Before Peace of Westphalia, during 30 Years War, France actually spent a lot of money to make sure Emperor loses the war. A investment they managed to recoup in the wars that followed.
Finally to avoid wars dragging out and waste money, Louis XIV would use his money to hire proven professionals. During 30 Years War French at various point supported Danes, Swedes, Prussians and Saxons against The Emperor. That war left France with a list of trusted contacts who knew how to fight and win. Swedes and Prussians together with Swiss mercenaries became the spearheads of French aggression. French alliance with them kept French domination over Europe.
Thanks to that Louis XIV managed to make war profitable and made money every time he went to war. At a pinnacle of his military career he went for the biggest jackpot of them all, the entire Spanish Crown, including their silver producing colonies no less. With some compromises here and there he managed to win it for his grandson and died just a couple of years later.
All of the above made Louis XIV very powerful but also fabulously wealthy, he used that wealth to build Palace of Versailles and many other things. He invited nobles to live with him in Versailles to keep an eye on them and make sure they do not rebel, solving the Fronde problem of his youth.
All in all at the end of Louis XIV reign France had it all, unlimited power, ridiculous amounts of wealth, fame, clot culture, powerful allies and best armies out there. It would be inconceivable to think that a successor to Louis XIV would somehow manage to lose it all and make France an even worse dumpster fire than it was before Louis XIV, yet Louis XV managed just that.
Louis XV, the Loser
Louis XV is known as Le Bien-Aime, the beloved. That is because it was his successor Louis XVI who had to face the consequence of his predecessor's years of misrule. To contemporaries and even some historians Louis XV was the beloved one.
To be fair contemporaries had all the reasons to love Louis XV. He not only lived the dream life in the world his predecessor created. He enjoyed the wealth and shared it and the lifestyle it provided with the court around him. Its under him that French court could really reap the rewards of the efforts of Louis XIV.
Among other things Louis indulged himself in romance with women, Madame de Pompadour (actual person even if such a name sound like a frivolous invention of a romance writer) was one of his extrametrical love interests, possibly a reason for his moniker 'beloved'. People both loved and hated him for that. Women loved him for his virility meanwhile men like Frederick the Great snidely quipped that his greyhounds are his 'Madame the Pompadour'.
Louis XV lived life of excess and because of that historians like to negatively compare him to his predecessor, blaming it all on him. Such differences were superficial however, daily life of Louis XV maybe differed from that of his Louis XIV, but when it came to governance and important things Louis XV did just as Louis XIV did. Just like the Sun King, Louis XV had his own cardinals as chief ministers, who in turn placed capable people in charge of different affairs of the state. However, where Richelieu and Mazarin succeeded, Fleury did not. That raises the question why? Were mistakes made and who made them?
Mistakes were certainly made, particularly in form of alliance with Austria against Prussia. However the biggest issue was not in these mistakes. Louis XIV made mistakes too and recovered from them, why Louis XV could not do the same? The answer is the fact that reality around him has changed so much. Because of that doing all the same things his predecessor did, yielded Louis XV completely different result.
So what did changed? Actually all of it, pretty much everything that build fortune for Louis XIV suddenly and rather abruptly ended for his successor. However everyone, not just Louis XV, was too rich and indulgent in their enjoyment of the wealth to notice the problem until it was too late.
To begin with Golden Age of Piracy, through which Louis XIV made a lot of money to finance nearly all he was famous for, came to and end and it was entirely Louis XIV own doing. War of Spanish succession resulted in French Bourbons taking Spanish throne from their rival Habsburgs, a great success and pinnacle of Louis XIV great war efforts and at the same time foundation for all future ills that befell France in the coming 17th century.
When Habsburgs ruled Spain, France supported Tortuga corsairs in their plunder of Spanish Treasure fleet, because stealing from rivals was all good and no drawbacks. However when a grandson of a French king took Spanish throne, that suddenly became a problem. Tortuga Piracy suddenly became stealing from relatives and potentially weakening their grip on Spanish crown. Habsburgs have not given up on regaining Spain one day so help new Bourbon Spanish King, his French grand dad closed corsair shop on Tortuga. Corsairs did not took well to this change at all. They moved to Bahamas and continued their plunder just as before, but this time without paying French crown any tax on what they plunder and now also targeting French own shipping. Several decades of joint naval effort was needed to finally put them down, that cost a lot of money and naval lives.
End of Golden Age of Piracy was a big financial loss for French Crown. It was also very ungrateful towards people who helped build all this French prosperity, as ungrateful as Putin's regime is towards businessmen of 90s who helped build Russia he now rules. However the worst thing was of course loss of revenue corsairs used to bring into treasury. However value of Spanish Crown outweigh these considerations in the eyes of French court. Back then they had other sources of revenue, like Medici money and financial expertise and war for wealthy Low Countries Provinces in Holy Roman Empire.
Out of these two sources, Medici dynasty died out in mid 18th century and even if cadet branch of bourbons inherited their Grand Duchy of Tuscany, by that time Grand Duchy was bankrupt and could no longer support France financially.
Finally there was war, that used to pay. Here they fucked up eventually. It worked until it did not. Diplomatic revolution led to France having to fight an "army with a country" and no money instead of a country with money and no army. Not to mention France used to be allied to Prussians so they should have known better how good these solders are.
Nowadays in retrospect it is easy to say it was a mistake but back then it did not look so bad. On the other hand the alliance did outnumbered Prussians significantly, Prussians were good soldiers but it was always a secondary power and client state of France, how well it could fair against its former master? France was promised Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) in exchange for helping Austrians with Silesia, a financially and territorially sound deal. Overall it was not too far fetched to expect a fast victory, that somehow always slipped away further and further but somehow was always within striking distance to keep chasing it. Fate was playing tricks with France.
7 years of that could not have led to anything good and it did not, money was spent and nothing was gained as a result. They did not won, Austria did not regained Silesia so it refused to hand over Austrian Netherlands too. France wasted money, lost territories in India and Americas and gained nothing but debt.
As you can see, Louis XV was not as bad as they make him out to be, but luck was not on his side. All ingredients of success that dependent on him were still there, he did the same things his predecessor did, but results were not the same. Why? Because reality have changed and methods that worked in the past, stopped working in the new evolved conditions.
Louis XVI, The Scapegoat
By the time Louis XVI have taken over, things already looked grim. Half of original French Louisiana and lucrative Indian outposts were lost by his 'beloved' predecessor. France was loosing money. What did he do about it, the same thing The Sun King would have done, went to war. The result, like The Sun King, Louis XIV, Louis XVI won. Unlike the former however he failed to capitalise on it due to sheer misfortune and that bankrupted his government, he ended up being guillotined during French Revolution.
[continue later]
