In Which I talk about Louis the Well Beloved and the wasteful French Revolution

Good morning, dear friend, reader of this post! How are you today? Happy Wednesday, and I wish you the best! As for me, I am okay. I have been having issues with writing on the blog, as I have my seasons. Some are more productive than others. Sometimes I write more, draw less… sometimes the opposite. Other moments I prefer to play games, and so it goes. Maybe you will understand… Of course, I would rather write more often than not, but as this is a hobby, I prefer to keep it casual. I always preferred that way. Just to keep a conversation with you, my friend, dear reader. Some days I have to scrap the process, though, because I find myself too whiny… which I don’t like much. I know it is good to have a venue for my lamentations, but I don’t want to abuse of your good will.

I am reading the biography of king Louis 15th of France. I am pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a competent and good king, capable and for many years well beloved by his people, because he was good about his choices of ministry, and the good policies of the first years of his realm, focused on free trade, interchange of goods and the modernisation of France’s roads and methods of transportation, caused a great economic boom that would make the country for one more century the center of the civilized world. It was on this moment that Rococo emerged, the beautiful and gracious style that celebrated sophistication, craftsmanship and civilization. All its arabesques required great technique finesse, that France at that time was nurturing to the extreme. A huge new wave of artists and carpenters and sculptors and decorators would come to form and also serve the prospering middle classes and the nobles, that would intertwine in Paris and Versailles. There were crisis and moments of great difficulty, and the worst of times are yet to come, I haven’t reached the 7 years war and its consequences yet, on the book, but I have a better context on the austrian-franco alliance signed by Louis. A secret project carried out by him, his friend, former mistress and ally, Madame la Duchesse de Pompadour. I am eager to read more and to talk more about this. But, on the whole, this book, by Olivier Bernier, does much to reframe the former king, perceived very wrongly by many as the cause of the french Revolution. No, and when you read and research more about this, with the monarchist bias as well, a bias that has been much neglected and that deserves consideration and even promotion, you see that the whole thing did not need to happen, in the first place. Nor was it a movement of “the masses” against an “oppressive regime”. There is no such thing as “the masses” for starters. There were struggling farmers in France at the time, specially due to bad weather moments (terribly cold winters come to mind), but on the whole, not only was him and his successor populars amongst the countryside poor folk, but the whole institution still had a fairly good prestige, and was also not oppressive as some would argue. It should not be a controversial position, that apart from the great financial issues of the country (that were caused specially by the seven years war), France was still in a very strong position in the continent, that the soon to be republican winds almost destroyed. Olivier deserves credit for this nicely written book, and I am happy I got access to it. What else is there to be said? Probably more, I haven’t finished the book, but overall, Louis 15th deserves more credit than he gets, for leading his country on another golden age, another Siecle Francaise, when French culture spread even further in Europe and beyond, that only in the last years of the 18th century would start to be defied by the great musicians of Vienna and the great barons of Britain.

Now, that is a post I am happy to have written, as it has a good amount of everything: from my routine, to a bit of information. It is presented, yes, on the monarchist bias, but it deserves consideration and to be taken seriously. One hundred times enough of the revolutionary bias, the monster that kept spreading chaos and horror throughout the world even to this day.

Thank you for reading and for being here, dear friend! I appreciate you veritably, and I wish you much joy throughout the rest of this week. We shall meet again real soon, hopefully by the weekend. Cheers and farewell for now.