January 26, 2011 • 34 mins
Madame de Pompadour was born in Paris in 1721, and eventually became the mistress of King Louis XV. In this episode, Deblina and Sarah describe Madame de Pompadour's rise to power. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm debling a chalk reporting And
a while back we got a letter from Sam also
known as Sam Tonight. It was one of my favorite
(00:22):
letters ever we've got an email to and both were
begging for an episode on the quote fabulous Madame du Pompadour,
and she was pretty fabulous. I mean, we can come
out and say that right at the beginning of the podcast.
She is, of course the famous mistress of Louis, and
she was a patron of the arts, builder of many chateau,
(00:45):
friend of Voltaire, a champion of the French porcelain industry,
and she was considered by many people at least to
be an arbitrator of taste in France, much as Louis was.
As we discussed in our previous episode, Madame da Pompadour
also had some less fabulous aspects about her as well,
(01:05):
including her reputation for disastrous diplomacy, overspending and spy fueled paranoia. Yeah,
and the first thing I looked at when I started
looking into Madame da Pompadour for this episode where all
of these reviews of an art show that took place
a few years back, and the reviews we're pretty critical
(01:27):
of the show, or most of them were, at least,
and um, it seemed to be that a lot of
them found the show short changed her, you know, sort
of didn't consider her much of a patron at all,
just a lady who liked to buy stuff. Um, And
I thought it was interesting that people were so opinionated
(01:47):
about this woman, this mistress who lived and died hundreds
of years ago. And it made me go into this
whole thing realizing that this was gonna She's gonna be
a hard person to nail down exactly what she was
like and what her characters like. And uh, I certainly
I don't think I was able to nail her down.
(02:08):
But you know, we're going to try to take a
look at this incredibly famous woman from a few different perspectives,
not just one. Yeah, we're gonna look at her life,
I guess, in from a panoramic point of view, but excellent,
still trying to siphon it down a little bit for
you so that you can get a little slice of
who she is and who was she She was born
(02:29):
Jean Antoinette Plissant on December in Paris, and her family
was in a kind of uniquely mobile class at that time.
They were bourgeois but connected and influential at the same time,
but they were a little bit tainted by scandal. Yeah.
So her father was a finance speculator, and he worked
for one of the party brothers who were bankers and
(02:53):
behind the scenes speculators who have been called quote the
black holes in the History of the eighteenth century by
Christine Pevett al Grant's book on Madame de Pompadour, which
I think that is a very creepy and interesting description
of somebody black hole. Um. So, nobody's entirely sure how
far their dealings reached, but they were quite extensive. And
(03:17):
while the rest of Paris was being ruined by all
these bad tips and speculations, it was a time for
when a lot of people's fortunes were vanished overnight and
they ended up in jail. Through all of that, the
Poissan family mostly stayed above water until sevent when young
Jean Antoinette's father participated in a speculating scheme that led
(03:39):
to famine in Paris. He didn't come out of that
well at all. Yeah, that's where things start to get
a little bit sketchy as far as he's concerned. He
has to flee the country, but his employer, the third
Perry brother, was though he was initially sent to the
best deal, he's released quickly. On the other hand, though
Poissant still has to stay in exile for ten years
(04:00):
after that. And I find a little suspicious that no
one ever took care of this. Yeah, that the head
hancho gets out of jail so quickly, yet the employee
is banished for so long. So that's a little mysterious
what was going on there. But there was more suspicion
and scandal going on. Jean Antoinette's mother was a young
(04:20):
beauty and also a serial adulteress. And while several men
besides Poisson could have fathered young Jean Antoinette, the most
likely candidate is Charles and then Normande to him, and
he was a colleague of her father's and why he's
sort of considered the number one prospect for being her
(04:42):
biological father is that he showed tremendous interest in the
young girl and her mother and her brother. While Poisson,
the legal father was in exile, so a father figure
of sorts. Definitely a father figure and a protector for
the family. So by age five, jean Antoinette is already
known as Rennette to her family, which means little queen.
(05:03):
I think we've mentioned that before in another podcast too.
And for stability, she was sent to a convent where
her father's cousin and mother sister could look after her.
And that was a nice time for her. It was
a lot more yeah, as you said, stable, but also
happy and loving and relaxing. It was considered a high
point in her life. Then by age nine, she's ready
(05:24):
to emerge though and start her finishing so to speak.
She takes singing lessons, declamation lessons, She learns harpsichord, reading, embroidery, writing,
carriage driving, all the things that would make a girl
a good wife. Yeah, they're aiming high with young jean Antoinette,
but her mother also wants to know what her daughter's
(05:45):
destiny is going to be, and so the very first
thing the mother does when she reclaims jean Antoinette from
the convent is to take her to a Paris fortune
teller named Madame Lebonne who tells the girl that she'll
someday be the mistress of lou And uh prediction. Yeah,
quite the prediction. We know this because in Madame de
(06:06):
Pompadour's will she leaves six livres to the fortune teller
for this accurate prediction. Um, and it is pretty important
in her early life and in her later life. It
lays the seed of ambition in both the mother and
the daughter, even though success seems pretty much impossible at
(06:27):
this point. So now seems like a good time to
say a little about Louis the fifteenth, since he's mentioned
here as a possible prospect for our main character. When
Jean Antoinette was getting her fortune read in Paris, Louis
was twenty years old at the time and handsome, already
father of five and pretty faithful at that point to
his wife, the Queen Marie. He lived mostly at Versailles,
(06:50):
and though he was pleasure loving, he was extremely shy.
So unlike his great grandfather Louis the fourteenth, who we
discussed in the last Bourbon episode, and he established we
discussed how he established all these public rituals at court,
his great grandson Louis the fift felt very uncomfortable performing
these rituals UM so big difference there, he tried to
(07:12):
escape them when he could. UM. But his early life
had also been racked by one tragedy after another, and
it made him kind of morose and sometimes deeply deeply depressed.
His mother, father, and elder brother had all died in
one fell swoop of smallpox UM, and then his great
grandfather had died soon after that, making this five year
(07:36):
old orphaned boy king. And of course he had been
brought up with the full responsibilities of being king without
a family to fall back on and his To make
things even worse, his uncle and his regent had died
when Louie was still in his teen So you know,
in his very early youth he had experienced a lot
of tragedy and it really shaped the man he became.
(07:59):
UM By his mid twenties, though with all of these
kids had by his life, he had started taking mistresses weirdly,
though at least to the court, he seemed to always
choose his mistresses from one family. He started with one
sister and then moved on to the next sister, and
then on to the third sister. I got to agree
(08:21):
with the court there that seems a little weird, a
little bit weird, definitely. Um. People were sort of disturbed
that one family seemed to have a monopoly on this
official mistress title. Um. But when the third of these
sisters died, Louis was really distraught, and everybody at court
was wondering, well, who's he going to choose? He needs
(08:43):
a new mistress once he gets over this one. Um.
There were still a few more sisters in that family,
so a lot of people were just thinking, well, move
on to the next one. And then some people were
offering up their own candidates. Yeah, everybody had a candidate
to console the king. It was a potentially influential and um,
a position that could make the girl and her family
(09:06):
quite a bit of money. So that brings the story
back around to Jean Antoinette, who in the meantime has
grown up pretty well. She's eighteen, lovely, talented, but she
has some problems with her eligibility for one thing, her
shady mother and father who's back at this point, her
vague social position, and her tiny dowry that she has
(09:26):
to offer. So all these things combined to kind of
make her a sort of sketchy prospect. But when it
comes down to it, This girl whose friends with the
likes of Voltaire, needs to be married if she's going
to become a star of Parisian society like she wants
to be. Yeah. So fortunately her benefactor and father figure
tone Him has a prospect in mind, his own nephew,
(09:48):
Charles Guillaume Lenman. And it's interesting, and this is sort
of again where the suspicion falls on Um Jean Antoinette's
true paternity. But her benefactor has disinherited all of his
other heirs for this nephew in particular, who he wants
to set up with the young lady Um. So it
(10:11):
seems like he's putting all of his eggs in one basket.
He wants to give his fortune in his estate to
his nephew and his nephew's wife. So the young couple's
wedding present is the estate of Etiol and they soon
have a son who dies, and then a daughter, Alexandrine.
But there's something else that's interesting and convenient for ambitious
(10:34):
young Jean Antoinette now Madame d'etiole. Every August, the king
and the court stay nearby and go hunting. So you
have the king in the neighborhood. Very convenient, very convenient. Indeed,
So we don't actually know when the relationship between Jean
Antoinette and the king begin, whether it's at Etiole or later.
(10:58):
But what we do know is on February there's a
mask ball in honor of the Dauphin's wedding. The King
comes to this ball dressed as a You tree, and
Madame Diatoll comes dressed as Diana, and the reportedly seen
chatting hanging about together. Yeah, and there's actually um an
(11:20):
engraving made of this meeting, and I advise you to
look it up if you can, because the You tree
costume is pretty ridiculous. It's like, it looks like it's
about a ten foot high topiary and there are several
You trees, so they're all wandering around um and we
can presume that one of them is the King underneath
(11:41):
it all. I feel like you should know which one. Yeah,
it's a it's any special You tree. It's a really
tiny print, so maybe it's clear which one is the king,
but I guess he was. He was shy. He's trying
to trying to hide out the wallflower. But this is
where the relationship definitely starts going full speed because soon
(12:02):
after Madame de Deol is installed at Versailles in this
tiny set of rooms in the attic, and by the
time her husband returns from business he's been conveniently out
of the country this whole time. He gets the news
that he'll need to separate from his wife and he faints.
It's um, it's shocking news from he had no inkling
(12:22):
that the king would run off with his wife. So
a few months later, Louis is ready to make Madame
de Til his official mistress, but at first she has
to be presented at court, and for that she needs
a little bit of preparation. So first off, she needs
a title. The title of Pompadour happens to be free,
so that once negotiated for her, and she also spends
(12:43):
a summer at her estate coached by the abbey did
Bernie on manners, and she's also coached by Voltaire on literature,
which I think it would be pretty awesome too. Sounds
like a fun summer to be these tutorials. Um yeah,
but she needs some more finishing. Essentially, she's had wishing
to be a bourgeois wife, but um it takes kind
(13:04):
of a higher level to be presented at Versailles. But
finally she becomes the Marquise de Pompadeu and is presented
at court and shy Louie is terribly embarrassed by this. Obviously,
like everything at Versailles, extremely formal spectacle, but young Jean
Antoinette really distinguishes herself by um, you know, carrying herself well,
(13:29):
not tripping while she has to walk backwards and perform
all these tricks, and most notably, behaving extremely respectfully to
the Queen because louise former mistress hadn't treated the Queen
very well. And I think Madame de Pompadeu realized almost
immediately that she would try to, if not get in
(13:51):
the Queen's good graces, at least be kind to her,
because it helped Louie sort of unload some of his
guilty had about cheating on his wife, and it hopefully
helped make things a little easier for him and his family.
And just from her point of view, she seemed to
need all the help she could get from the simple
reason that many of the courtiers were scandalized by their relationship.
(14:13):
One noted that she was excessively common, a bourgeois out
of her place, who will displace all the world if
one cannot manage to displace her. The Daufin called her
mama put, which is a pretty nasty thing to say
to somebody. Um, if you are a young person listening,
you might want to cover your ears. But it means
(14:34):
horror mama, essentially horror mommy. So um, not a nice
thing at all for the defend to be calling her um.
But we should point out to why people are so
scandalized that she's of the wrong class. She's moving into
the title of official mistress, which is something that a
(14:54):
noble woman should occupy. Of course, the king is going
to have mistresses of all classes, but they're not going
to occupy this prominent place at court. That's what has
people so upset. It's their own um nieces and daughters
and sisters who should be occupying this position, not this upstart.
So because of this, most people think that she'll be
(15:16):
short lived at Versailles, but Papa Dour has different plans. Yeah,
she figures out Louis's personality very quickly. Um. He's initially
very attracted to her, but she works from the start
and making him um need her for for other things too,
for his entertainment, for his day to day life. Um,
to keep him from succumbing to his depression. He needs
(15:39):
to be entertained. Um. But he also likes his privacy,
his life away from all the court ritual. Um. Just
a note on his private rooms, which are kind of
amazing sounding in their complexity. Uh. They included libraries and
dining rooms, a wood workshop, a distillery where he made perfume, rooms,
(16:00):
a kitchen where he baked up little pastries, all these
terraces with bird cages and even a chicken coop. And
Pampadour's attic rooms were right above these, and she even
had a personal elevator lift essentially called a flying chair
to to get to them without hiking up the stairs. Um.
But she knows that she can create an escape world
(16:24):
for him in these private rooms, the place where he
can be himself, and she does just that. She throws
parties in the rooms that have exclusive guestless. She stages
plays with her in the starring roles, of course, and
the two they do all kinds of things together there um,
besides the obvious, I guess. They study botany, and they
(16:44):
garden together. They work on architectural plans together, and they
do this along with her brother, the director of the
King's buildings. Yeah. Eventually, this close working group of three
planned the Ecola Militaire, the place Louis comes, which is
today the Place de la Concorde, but teach Trianon and
Chateau de Bellevue which is no longer existing. But uh,
(17:07):
in addition to a lot of other chateau and um
little retreats and pavilions and such. They definitely share a
love of architecture, and consequently Louis comes to rely on
her for his social life, for his stability. Um, she
completes him. So her plan is kind of working out here.
(17:28):
But after about five years or so and at least
two miscarriages possibly a gynecological condition, the romance between the
two of them has pretty much petered out. Yeah, and
that part has always been a little difficult for Madame
d pompadour Um. Supposedly, to put her in the mood,
she would eat a diet of celery, vanilla and truffles. Um.
(17:50):
So yeah, they're their romance has been fizzling. Um. But
by seventeen fifty, the court gossip is that the King
and his official mistress haven't been sleeping together for about
a year. So with this news, pompadour haters are pretty
happy about it, and Pompadour herself decides that she needs
to do something. She needs to really dig in and
(18:12):
and find a different way. She likes this life and
she likes the power. So to crush the gossipers, she
makes a public declaration of her friendship with Louie by
commissioning a statue of her, not as Venus or Diana
as she'd done in the past, but as an allegorical friendship. Yeah,
and conveniently, seventeen fifty one, which follows the commissioning of
(18:35):
this statue is Holy year in France, which would be
a perfect time for Louis to repent and take the
sacrament at Easter, and maybe at least Madame de Pompadour
is hoping still get to keep her around because now
they are no longer sleeping together. That's kind of ridiculous,
she really thought that would happen, But um, you know,
(18:56):
it's a plan, and the public declaration of friendship is
something to let everybody know I'm still here. You can
gossip all you want, but I'm still important to the king. Um.
It's a perilous road though in her position is with
the royal friend is really unstable, obviously, just as the
position of um mistress earlier was unstable. It's pretty topsy turvy. Yeah.
(19:22):
Louie ends up making her a duchess, which is the
highest honor he can bestow at her at that time,
but then he seems about to throw her over for
a new lady of the court. Pompadour still holds on though,
She's still hanging on for dear life, and eventually she
and the king they work out a deal. He'll have
other mistresses, but they'll be extremely young girls, uneducated and
(19:44):
with absolutely no position at court. Yeah, so they're not
going to be a direct competition to her. Louis kind
of gets in trouble for some of this later. Parisians
and the rest of France aren't really that into his
little chateau full of teenagers he keeps. But um, we
could talk about that more later. Um. The thing is, though,
(20:06):
even though Pompadour has declared that her life from now
on will be quote perpetual combat, she really has become
indispensable to Louis, and I think he knew that too, Um,
but her direct influence over him is kind of another
point of contention, and that's something that Um was mentioned
in some of those reviews I talked about earlier. A
(20:28):
lot of the post revolutionary historians made her out to
be the puppet master to the weak minded bourbon king Um,
but in all actuality, she was probably more of a
go between for a man who was intensely uncomfortable dealing
with people who he didn't know very well. He had
trouble communicating with strangers, where she was quite good at
(20:50):
it and he was comfortable around her. Um. She became
a woman to see for your favors, promotions, privileges, all
that sort of thing. In Versely, if you didn't see
her or didn't pay her court night, find yourself on
her bad side. She was also a spy master of sorts,
though she had made a deal with the head of
(21:12):
Paris Police so that she could be privy to any
information that they had in any threats that happened to
be around. She placed agents at all levels in the
cabinet noir of the public Post, and this is the
department that will steam open mail and read it and
find out everything that's going on, So, yeah, it's sort
of interesting to Louie would get excerpts from this steamed
(21:35):
open mail, and he treated it sort of as fine gossip,
like all the weird stuff people write to each other
when they think it's secret. But Madame de Pompadour took
it a little more seriously than that, and it's quite
possible that eventually she became better informed on the secrets
of the mail than Louie himself. She could be pretty obsessive.
She was quite concerned for her life at many points,
(21:59):
and while she was commissioning new portraits of herself as
a patron of the arts and learning, she was also
pursuing those who were accused of liabel against her, and
pursuing them quite vigorously. Some spent decades in the bastille,
so she wasn't one to trifle with. No, definitely didn't
want to mess with her. But her broadening range of
(22:19):
involvements didn't mean that she couldn't stop being a charming
companion to the king either. The best example of this
probably comes in seventeen fifty four, when her ten year
old daughter Alexandrine or Faun Faun, dies suddenly. Only days later,
Pompadour's father dies, and to make matters even worse, one
of Louise mistresses gives birth to a girl. Yeah, and
the way she handles this uh drew note from observers.
(22:44):
She only took a few days of seclusion. She took
about a week of private dinners with the king, and
then she had to get back to it. There was
commentary from a duke about six weeks after the death
of her daughter, and he wrote quote, I saw her
for the first time since the death of her daughter,
a terrible blow from which I thought she would be devastated,
But as too much grief would have done harm to
(23:06):
her looks and perhaps even weakened her position at court,
I found her neither change nor downcast. And by one
of those miracles at the court which are frequent of
this kind, I found her no less dashing nor affecting
any more serious air. And yet she has been deeply shaken,
and she was an all likelihood as unhappy inside as
(23:27):
she seemed happy without. So that's a sad, sad picture
of this woman, whom, though she has achieved great things
by now still has to play a part. She can't
she can't take time off for herself. Yeah, it is sad,
but in a lot of ways it serves her well.
This ability to act, to put on a public face.
(23:49):
It allows her to keep her position and gain even
more influence at court. So on February eighth, seventeen fifty six,
she's named Lady in waiting to the Queen. This is
the most prestigious position at court, although Pompadour gets the
honors without having to really do all the duties. Yeah,
we have to imagine it would be a little awkward
for the Queen too. I think Pompadour herself has to
(24:11):
inform her because Louis has chickened out that yes, I'll
be your Lady in waiting. So again here she refurbishes
her image. She wears a proper lace cap, she has
in your Vegetarian Diet, and there are portraits of her
depicture at a tapestry frame instead of a rouge pot.
At this point, that's where people would come and see
(24:32):
her while she's working on her tap street and much
were matronly than putting on rouge, although people at court
did notice that she did not discontinue her use of rouge.
If you see any pictures of her, that's quite apparent, um,
But it seemed like at this point she was untouchable.
She was thirty five, maybe at her happiest um, but
(24:54):
she was also nearing um, nearing the decision that led
to her ben wild downfall. Trouble was brewing in Europe,
and back in the seventeen forties, Frederick the second, the
Great of Prussia took the province of Silesia from the
Austrian habsburgs surprise, surprise, Austrians wanted it back. But the
(25:14):
real trouble came when several long held alliances switched um.
Prussia and France had traditionally been friends, Austrian France had
traditionally been enemies, so France thought that it had a
pretty solid Franco Prussian alliance going on. When suddenly, in
the seventeen fifties, and it was quite sudden, Frederick the
(25:36):
second announced that he had signed a treaty with Great Britain.
So France was cold shouldered by Prussia, and in response,
France allied itself with Austria. And this is something that
was called the Diplomatic Revolution, and surprisingly, Madame de Pompure
played a major role in this upheaval. Since the Austrian
(25:57):
Chancellor had approached her to be the intermediary between Maria
Tress of Austria and Louis. So she's in politics for
real this time, not just dealing with the appointments and
that sort of thing, but being approached by the by
the Chancellor. Yeah, she becomes very vested in this alliance
with Austria and in the Seven Years War that comes
(26:19):
out of it. And you guys, you and Katie I
think talked about the Seven Years War during a series
on Catherine the Great, So if you need a little
more information about that, it can be kind of confusing,
definitely the Three Petticoats, yep, go back and find out
what that is. Of course, because of her sort of
spurious social position, a lot of people still don't take
her seriously, but Voltaire still calls her Prime Minister because
(26:41):
of her great influence at this time, and that's that
turns out to be unfortunate for her that people do
associate her with this treaty and with this war because
the war goes poorly, especially for France. Uh. Their armies
are crushed on the continent by Frederick and they for
huge colonial losses of colonial possessions in India, North America
(27:05):
to Britain, and probably worse of all, the treasury is
drained and we all know what's coming up just a
few years down the line here. Um, having a drained treasury,
huge populace, and an unpopular king is bad news for
Madame de Pompadour, the kind of always unpopular mistress. She's
(27:28):
blamed for the country's misfortunes and uh, it gets pretty violent.
She's threatened with pamphlets and cruel letters and verses, and
she is kind of crushed by it all. She relinquishes
a lot of her political responsibilities, but still she does
not retire. She she talks about it, but it's almost
coy how she how she talks about retiring. Um, it
(27:50):
seems pretty clear that she fully intends to stay at Versailles. Uh,
stay on at court. And she sincerely believes that Louis
needs her. And I think that's an important thing to
remember through all of her diplomatic intrigues. Um, she thinks
that she can't quit, She can't leave because Louis needs
her and France needs her. Yeah, but she is down
(28:14):
about all this. She's melancholy and also increasingly ill and
on Palm Sunday, April seventeen sixty four, she dies at
age forty three, probably of lung cancer, and this is
kind of really sad. On top of that, her body
was immediately removed from Versailles. The Duchess di Prolong observed
(28:36):
the scene, and she said, I saw two men carrying
a stretcher. When they approached, I saw that it was
the body of a woman covered only with a sheet
so short that the shape of the head, the breasts,
the stomach, and the legs were clearly distinct. It was
the body of that poor woman, who, according to the
strict law that no one dead could remain in the chateau,
was being taken shale. So yeah, definitely, she's already broken
(29:01):
a rule by dying in Versailles. Since she's not a
member of the royal family, she's got to be whisked
away before death taints the the palace. So the King's
doctor Senac breaks the news to him and Louie, who
has been with this woman for nearly twenty years. Response quote,
only I Senac know the extent of my loss. Um.
(29:24):
Not long before Madame de Pomdour's death, she's said to
have told Louis a pre new la deluge, which means
after us, the deluge. Um. It's a quote that's often
attributed to Louis, and it's a little I was a
little surprised to see it attributed so many places to
(29:44):
both UM. I don't know if Louis appropriated it or
misattributed often UM with Louise often listed as a premoi
le deluge, but uh, I think it is an appropriate
quote to end her episode It on Madame de Pompadour. UM,
but also a good way to keep this series going
(30:05):
with nice set up. Definitely a nice set up. So
possibly next in the series the Deluge itself. I kind
of like episodes that are like on the brink of disaster.
But you can see at the end of Pompadour's life
all of these pieces falling apart, unpopular King, unpopular mistress,
(30:28):
broke country, and some really really unhappy people. UM. So
they're prepped for revolution definitely, And I guess that brings
us to listener meal. So this message is from Robert
in St. Louis, and he wrote quote, I'm a history
fanatic and I'm glad I found your podcast earlier this week.
(30:49):
I have a negative thing to say, and a positive
first the negative to get it out of the way.
In the twelve fifteen episode on gladiator graveyards, one of
you said, quote, you're mad to it like prison barracks,
But that's not how it is at all. They were
owned by private citizens. Even though the gladiators had no
personal rights, they were pretty well taken care of because
(31:10):
they were a major investment end quote. Based on the
context throughout the episode, it sounded as if you were
implying that the whole slavery gladiator situation wasn't so bad,
which seems like an odd point to be making. Apply
the above quote to slavery in the nineteenth century in
America and you'll see why. I thought it was odd,
possibly offensive to some. So I'm sure we're in no
(31:32):
danger of offending descendants of ancient Rome and maybe picking
up straws. And I thought the episode as a whole
was very good. Now onto the positive. In the twelve
twenty episode five Historical Fine, I found it very amusing
that ancients apparently did not want to go to the
trouble of husking, winnowing nil and grain when it came
to helping your people, not starve but alcohol. You bet
(31:54):
hilarious bit of irony there, Thanks and keep it up. Um. So,
in case anybody else that we were saying it wasn't
bad to be a gladiator, we think it would be
bad to be eaten by a lion or stabbed through
the ribs. Even if you were said this hardy vegan
diet and had your bones set and we're well taken
(32:14):
care of. Indeed, we do not condone those activities. No,
not at all, um. But I think to be more specific,
what we're trying to say is, well, gladiators are often considered,
at least in movies, prisoners immediately tossed into the ring.
Why bother feeding to immediately to be eaten or killed
(32:35):
immediately to the death. We wanted to make the point
that because they were investments, their standard of life was
fairly high, at least until they got to the ring.
They are still slaves. They are still probably ultimately eaten
by lions, which is going to be blue anyway you
cut it. It probably wouldn't be the position you would
(32:56):
want to be in in society or life's aspiration, right,
But they got good medical care, they were given meals,
So I think that was the only point we were
trying to make, definitely not that it was something glorious. Yeah.
Um so I hope that clears it up a little bit,
Robert and anybody else who misunderstood us there, um, and
(33:16):
thank you for the email, and um we'll try to
we'll try to keep up the hilarious bits of irony
to um. So, if you have any other messages you
want to send us any email, you can find us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter at Miston History, and we have a
Facebook fan page, all excellent ways to send us your
(33:39):
gladiatorial queries. Um. And we also have some more French
Revolution articles. Yeah. If you want a little preview to
what we're gonna be talking about in upcoming Bourbon episodes,
you can check out how the French Revolution Worked by
visiting our homepage and typing in French Revolution at www
dot how stuff works dot com mh For more on
(34:03):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes, m
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm debling a chalk reporting And
a while back we got a letter from Sam also
known as Sam Tonight. It was one of my favorite
(00:22):
letters ever we've got an email to and both were
begging for an episode on the quote fabulous Madame du Pompadour,
and she was pretty fabulous. I mean, we can come
out and say that right at the beginning of the podcast.
She is, of course the famous mistress of Louis, and
she was a patron of the arts, builder of many chateau,
(00:45):
friend of Voltaire, a champion of the French porcelain industry,
and she was considered by many people at least to
be an arbitrator of taste in France, much as Louis was.
As we discussed in our previous episode, Madame da Pompadour
also had some less fabulous aspects about her as well,
(01:05):
including her reputation for disastrous diplomacy, overspending and spy fueled paranoia. Yeah,
and the first thing I looked at when I started
looking into Madame da Pompadour for this episode where all
of these reviews of an art show that took place
a few years back, and the reviews we're pretty critical
(01:27):
of the show, or most of them were, at least,
and um, it seemed to be that a lot of
them found the show short changed her, you know, sort
of didn't consider her much of a patron at all,
just a lady who liked to buy stuff. Um, And
I thought it was interesting that people were so opinionated
(01:47):
about this woman, this mistress who lived and died hundreds
of years ago. And it made me go into this
whole thing realizing that this was gonna She's gonna be
a hard person to nail down exactly what she was
like and what her characters like. And uh, I certainly
I don't think I was able to nail her down.
(02:08):
But you know, we're going to try to take a
look at this incredibly famous woman from a few different perspectives,
not just one. Yeah, we're gonna look at her life,
I guess, in from a panoramic point of view, but excellent,
still trying to siphon it down a little bit for
you so that you can get a little slice of
who she is and who was she She was born
(02:29):
Jean Antoinette Plissant on December in Paris, and her family
was in a kind of uniquely mobile class at that time.
They were bourgeois but connected and influential at the same time,
but they were a little bit tainted by scandal. Yeah.
So her father was a finance speculator, and he worked
for one of the party brothers who were bankers and
(02:53):
behind the scenes speculators who have been called quote the
black holes in the History of the eighteenth century by
Christine Pevett al Grant's book on Madame de Pompadour, which
I think that is a very creepy and interesting description
of somebody black hole. Um. So, nobody's entirely sure how
far their dealings reached, but they were quite extensive. And
(03:17):
while the rest of Paris was being ruined by all
these bad tips and speculations, it was a time for
when a lot of people's fortunes were vanished overnight and
they ended up in jail. Through all of that, the
Poissan family mostly stayed above water until sevent when young
Jean Antoinette's father participated in a speculating scheme that led
(03:39):
to famine in Paris. He didn't come out of that
well at all. Yeah, that's where things start to get
a little bit sketchy as far as he's concerned. He
has to flee the country, but his employer, the third
Perry brother, was though he was initially sent to the
best deal, he's released quickly. On the other hand, though
Poissant still has to stay in exile for ten years
(04:00):
after that. And I find a little suspicious that no
one ever took care of this. Yeah, that the head
hancho gets out of jail so quickly, yet the employee
is banished for so long. So that's a little mysterious
what was going on there. But there was more suspicion
and scandal going on. Jean Antoinette's mother was a young
(04:20):
beauty and also a serial adulteress. And while several men
besides Poisson could have fathered young Jean Antoinette, the most
likely candidate is Charles and then Normande to him, and
he was a colleague of her father's and why he's
sort of considered the number one prospect for being her
(04:42):
biological father is that he showed tremendous interest in the
young girl and her mother and her brother. While Poisson,
the legal father was in exile, so a father figure
of sorts. Definitely a father figure and a protector for
the family. So by age five, jean Antoinette is already
known as Rennette to her family, which means little queen.
(05:03):
I think we've mentioned that before in another podcast too.
And for stability, she was sent to a convent where
her father's cousin and mother sister could look after her.
And that was a nice time for her. It was
a lot more yeah, as you said, stable, but also
happy and loving and relaxing. It was considered a high
point in her life. Then by age nine, she's ready
(05:24):
to emerge though and start her finishing so to speak.
She takes singing lessons, declamation lessons, She learns harpsichord, reading, embroidery, writing,
carriage driving, all the things that would make a girl
a good wife. Yeah, they're aiming high with young jean Antoinette,
but her mother also wants to know what her daughter's
(05:45):
destiny is going to be, and so the very first
thing the mother does when she reclaims jean Antoinette from
the convent is to take her to a Paris fortune
teller named Madame Lebonne who tells the girl that she'll
someday be the mistress of lou And uh prediction. Yeah,
quite the prediction. We know this because in Madame de
(06:06):
Pompadour's will she leaves six livres to the fortune teller
for this accurate prediction. Um, and it is pretty important
in her early life and in her later life. It
lays the seed of ambition in both the mother and
the daughter, even though success seems pretty much impossible at
(06:27):
this point. So now seems like a good time to
say a little about Louis the fifteenth, since he's mentioned
here as a possible prospect for our main character. When
Jean Antoinette was getting her fortune read in Paris, Louis
was twenty years old at the time and handsome, already
father of five and pretty faithful at that point to
his wife, the Queen Marie. He lived mostly at Versailles,
(06:50):
and though he was pleasure loving, he was extremely shy.
So unlike his great grandfather Louis the fourteenth, who we
discussed in the last Bourbon episode, and he established we
discussed how he established all these public rituals at court,
his great grandson Louis the fift felt very uncomfortable performing
these rituals UM so big difference there, he tried to
(07:12):
escape them when he could. UM. But his early life
had also been racked by one tragedy after another, and
it made him kind of morose and sometimes deeply deeply depressed.
His mother, father, and elder brother had all died in
one fell swoop of smallpox UM, and then his great
grandfather had died soon after that, making this five year
(07:36):
old orphaned boy king. And of course he had been
brought up with the full responsibilities of being king without
a family to fall back on and his To make
things even worse, his uncle and his regent had died
when Louie was still in his teen So you know,
in his very early youth he had experienced a lot
of tragedy and it really shaped the man he became.
(07:59):
UM By his mid twenties, though with all of these
kids had by his life, he had started taking mistresses weirdly,
though at least to the court, he seemed to always
choose his mistresses from one family. He started with one
sister and then moved on to the next sister, and
then on to the third sister. I got to agree
(08:21):
with the court there that seems a little weird, a
little bit weird, definitely. Um. People were sort of disturbed
that one family seemed to have a monopoly on this
official mistress title. Um. But when the third of these
sisters died, Louis was really distraught, and everybody at court
was wondering, well, who's he going to choose? He needs
(08:43):
a new mistress once he gets over this one. Um.
There were still a few more sisters in that family,
so a lot of people were just thinking, well, move
on to the next one. And then some people were
offering up their own candidates. Yeah, everybody had a candidate
to console the king. It was a potentially influential and um,
a position that could make the girl and her family
(09:06):
quite a bit of money. So that brings the story
back around to Jean Antoinette, who in the meantime has
grown up pretty well. She's eighteen, lovely, talented, but she
has some problems with her eligibility for one thing, her
shady mother and father who's back at this point, her
vague social position, and her tiny dowry that she has
(09:26):
to offer. So all these things combined to kind of
make her a sort of sketchy prospect. But when it
comes down to it, This girl whose friends with the
likes of Voltaire, needs to be married if she's going
to become a star of Parisian society like she wants
to be. Yeah. So fortunately her benefactor and father figure
tone Him has a prospect in mind, his own nephew,
(09:48):
Charles Guillaume Lenman. And it's interesting, and this is sort
of again where the suspicion falls on Um Jean Antoinette's
true paternity. But her benefactor has disinherited all of his
other heirs for this nephew in particular, who he wants
to set up with the young lady Um. So it
(10:11):
seems like he's putting all of his eggs in one basket.
He wants to give his fortune in his estate to
his nephew and his nephew's wife. So the young couple's
wedding present is the estate of Etiol and they soon
have a son who dies, and then a daughter, Alexandrine.
But there's something else that's interesting and convenient for ambitious
(10:34):
young Jean Antoinette now Madame d'etiole. Every August, the king
and the court stay nearby and go hunting. So you
have the king in the neighborhood. Very convenient, very convenient. Indeed,
So we don't actually know when the relationship between Jean
Antoinette and the king begin, whether it's at Etiole or later.
(10:58):
But what we do know is on February there's a
mask ball in honor of the Dauphin's wedding. The King
comes to this ball dressed as a You tree, and
Madame Diatoll comes dressed as Diana, and the reportedly seen
chatting hanging about together. Yeah, and there's actually um an
(11:20):
engraving made of this meeting, and I advise you to
look it up if you can, because the You tree
costume is pretty ridiculous. It's like, it looks like it's
about a ten foot high topiary and there are several
You trees, so they're all wandering around um and we
can presume that one of them is the King underneath
(11:41):
it all. I feel like you should know which one. Yeah,
it's a it's any special You tree. It's a really
tiny print, so maybe it's clear which one is the king,
but I guess he was. He was shy. He's trying
to trying to hide out the wallflower. But this is
where the relationship definitely starts going full speed because soon
(12:02):
after Madame de Deol is installed at Versailles in this
tiny set of rooms in the attic, and by the
time her husband returns from business he's been conveniently out
of the country this whole time. He gets the news
that he'll need to separate from his wife and he faints.
It's um, it's shocking news from he had no inkling
(12:22):
that the king would run off with his wife. So
a few months later, Louis is ready to make Madame
de Til his official mistress, but at first she has
to be presented at court, and for that she needs
a little bit of preparation. So first off, she needs
a title. The title of Pompadour happens to be free,
so that once negotiated for her, and she also spends
(12:43):
a summer at her estate coached by the abbey did
Bernie on manners, and she's also coached by Voltaire on literature,
which I think it would be pretty awesome too. Sounds
like a fun summer to be these tutorials. Um yeah,
but she needs some more finishing. Essentially, she's had wishing
to be a bourgeois wife, but um it takes kind
(13:04):
of a higher level to be presented at Versailles. But
finally she becomes the Marquise de Pompadeu and is presented
at court and shy Louie is terribly embarrassed by this. Obviously,
like everything at Versailles, extremely formal spectacle, but young Jean
Antoinette really distinguishes herself by um, you know, carrying herself well,
(13:29):
not tripping while she has to walk backwards and perform
all these tricks, and most notably, behaving extremely respectfully to
the Queen because louise former mistress hadn't treated the Queen
very well. And I think Madame de Pompadeu realized almost
immediately that she would try to, if not get in
(13:51):
the Queen's good graces, at least be kind to her,
because it helped Louie sort of unload some of his
guilty had about cheating on his wife, and it hopefully
helped make things a little easier for him and his family.
And just from her point of view, she seemed to
need all the help she could get from the simple
reason that many of the courtiers were scandalized by their relationship.
(14:13):
One noted that she was excessively common, a bourgeois out
of her place, who will displace all the world if
one cannot manage to displace her. The Daufin called her
mama put, which is a pretty nasty thing to say
to somebody. Um, if you are a young person listening,
you might want to cover your ears. But it means
(14:34):
horror mama, essentially horror mommy. So um, not a nice
thing at all for the defend to be calling her um.
But we should point out to why people are so
scandalized that she's of the wrong class. She's moving into
the title of official mistress, which is something that a
(14:54):
noble woman should occupy. Of course, the king is going
to have mistresses of all classes, but they're not going
to occupy this prominent place at court. That's what has
people so upset. It's their own um nieces and daughters
and sisters who should be occupying this position, not this upstart.
So because of this, most people think that she'll be
(15:16):
short lived at Versailles, but Papa Dour has different plans. Yeah,
she figures out Louis's personality very quickly. Um. He's initially
very attracted to her, but she works from the start
and making him um need her for for other things too,
for his entertainment, for his day to day life. Um,
to keep him from succumbing to his depression. He needs
(15:39):
to be entertained. Um. But he also likes his privacy,
his life away from all the court ritual. Um. Just
a note on his private rooms, which are kind of
amazing sounding in their complexity. Uh. They included libraries and
dining rooms, a wood workshop, a distillery where he made perfume, rooms,
(16:00):
a kitchen where he baked up little pastries, all these
terraces with bird cages and even a chicken coop. And
Pampadour's attic rooms were right above these, and she even
had a personal elevator lift essentially called a flying chair
to to get to them without hiking up the stairs. Um.
But she knows that she can create an escape world
(16:24):
for him in these private rooms, the place where he
can be himself, and she does just that. She throws
parties in the rooms that have exclusive guestless. She stages
plays with her in the starring roles, of course, and
the two they do all kinds of things together there um,
besides the obvious, I guess. They study botany, and they
(16:44):
garden together. They work on architectural plans together, and they
do this along with her brother, the director of the
King's buildings. Yeah. Eventually, this close working group of three
planned the Ecola Militaire, the place Louis comes, which is
today the Place de la Concorde, but teach Trianon and
Chateau de Bellevue which is no longer existing. But uh,
(17:07):
in addition to a lot of other chateau and um
little retreats and pavilions and such. They definitely share a
love of architecture, and consequently Louis comes to rely on
her for his social life, for his stability. Um, she
completes him. So her plan is kind of working out here.
(17:28):
But after about five years or so and at least
two miscarriages possibly a gynecological condition, the romance between the
two of them has pretty much petered out. Yeah, and
that part has always been a little difficult for Madame
d pompadour Um. Supposedly, to put her in the mood,
she would eat a diet of celery, vanilla and truffles. Um.
(17:50):
So yeah, they're their romance has been fizzling. Um. But
by seventeen fifty, the court gossip is that the King
and his official mistress haven't been sleeping together for about
a year. So with this news, pompadour haters are pretty
happy about it, and Pompadour herself decides that she needs
to do something. She needs to really dig in and
(18:12):
and find a different way. She likes this life and
she likes the power. So to crush the gossipers, she
makes a public declaration of her friendship with Louie by
commissioning a statue of her, not as Venus or Diana
as she'd done in the past, but as an allegorical friendship. Yeah,
and conveniently, seventeen fifty one, which follows the commissioning of
(18:35):
this statue is Holy year in France, which would be
a perfect time for Louis to repent and take the
sacrament at Easter, and maybe at least Madame de Pompadour
is hoping still get to keep her around because now
they are no longer sleeping together. That's kind of ridiculous,
she really thought that would happen, But um, you know,
(18:56):
it's a plan, and the public declaration of friendship is
something to let everybody know I'm still here. You can
gossip all you want, but I'm still important to the king. Um.
It's a perilous road though in her position is with
the royal friend is really unstable, obviously, just as the
position of um mistress earlier was unstable. It's pretty topsy turvy. Yeah.
(19:22):
Louie ends up making her a duchess, which is the
highest honor he can bestow at her at that time,
but then he seems about to throw her over for
a new lady of the court. Pompadour still holds on though,
She's still hanging on for dear life, and eventually she
and the king they work out a deal. He'll have
other mistresses, but they'll be extremely young girls, uneducated and
(19:44):
with absolutely no position at court. Yeah, so they're not
going to be a direct competition to her. Louis kind
of gets in trouble for some of this later. Parisians
and the rest of France aren't really that into his
little chateau full of teenagers he keeps. But um, we
could talk about that more later. Um. The thing is, though,
(20:06):
even though Pompadour has declared that her life from now
on will be quote perpetual combat, she really has become
indispensable to Louis, and I think he knew that too, Um,
but her direct influence over him is kind of another
point of contention, and that's something that Um was mentioned
in some of those reviews I talked about earlier. A
(20:28):
lot of the post revolutionary historians made her out to
be the puppet master to the weak minded bourbon king Um,
but in all actuality, she was probably more of a
go between for a man who was intensely uncomfortable dealing
with people who he didn't know very well. He had
trouble communicating with strangers, where she was quite good at
(20:50):
it and he was comfortable around her. Um. She became
a woman to see for your favors, promotions, privileges, all
that sort of thing. In Versely, if you didn't see
her or didn't pay her court night, find yourself on
her bad side. She was also a spy master of sorts,
though she had made a deal with the head of
(21:12):
Paris Police so that she could be privy to any
information that they had in any threats that happened to
be around. She placed agents at all levels in the
cabinet noir of the public Post, and this is the
department that will steam open mail and read it and
find out everything that's going on, So, yeah, it's sort
of interesting to Louie would get excerpts from this steamed
(21:35):
open mail, and he treated it sort of as fine gossip,
like all the weird stuff people write to each other
when they think it's secret. But Madame de Pompadour took
it a little more seriously than that, and it's quite
possible that eventually she became better informed on the secrets
of the mail than Louie himself. She could be pretty obsessive.
She was quite concerned for her life at many points,
(21:59):
and while she was commissioning new portraits of herself as
a patron of the arts and learning, she was also
pursuing those who were accused of liabel against her, and
pursuing them quite vigorously. Some spent decades in the bastille,
so she wasn't one to trifle with. No, definitely didn't
want to mess with her. But her broadening range of
(22:19):
involvements didn't mean that she couldn't stop being a charming
companion to the king either. The best example of this
probably comes in seventeen fifty four, when her ten year
old daughter Alexandrine or Faun Faun, dies suddenly. Only days later,
Pompadour's father dies, and to make matters even worse, one
of Louise mistresses gives birth to a girl. Yeah, and
the way she handles this uh drew note from observers.
(22:44):
She only took a few days of seclusion. She took
about a week of private dinners with the king, and
then she had to get back to it. There was
commentary from a duke about six weeks after the death
of her daughter, and he wrote quote, I saw her
for the first time since the death of her daughter,
a terrible blow from which I thought she would be devastated,
But as too much grief would have done harm to
(23:06):
her looks and perhaps even weakened her position at court,
I found her neither change nor downcast. And by one
of those miracles at the court which are frequent of
this kind, I found her no less dashing nor affecting
any more serious air. And yet she has been deeply shaken,
and she was an all likelihood as unhappy inside as
(23:27):
she seemed happy without. So that's a sad, sad picture
of this woman, whom, though she has achieved great things
by now still has to play a part. She can't
she can't take time off for herself. Yeah, it is sad,
but in a lot of ways it serves her well.
This ability to act, to put on a public face.
(23:49):
It allows her to keep her position and gain even
more influence at court. So on February eighth, seventeen fifty six,
she's named Lady in waiting to the Queen. This is
the most prestigious position at court, although Pompadour gets the
honors without having to really do all the duties. Yeah,
we have to imagine it would be a little awkward
for the Queen too. I think Pompadour herself has to
(24:11):
inform her because Louis has chickened out that yes, I'll
be your Lady in waiting. So again here she refurbishes
her image. She wears a proper lace cap, she has
in your Vegetarian Diet, and there are portraits of her
depicture at a tapestry frame instead of a rouge pot.
At this point, that's where people would come and see
(24:32):
her while she's working on her tap street and much
were matronly than putting on rouge, although people at court
did notice that she did not discontinue her use of rouge.
If you see any pictures of her, that's quite apparent, um,
But it seemed like at this point she was untouchable.
She was thirty five, maybe at her happiest um, but
(24:54):
she was also nearing um, nearing the decision that led
to her ben wild downfall. Trouble was brewing in Europe,
and back in the seventeen forties, Frederick the second, the
Great of Prussia took the province of Silesia from the
Austrian habsburgs surprise, surprise, Austrians wanted it back. But the
(25:14):
real trouble came when several long held alliances switched um.
Prussia and France had traditionally been friends, Austrian France had
traditionally been enemies, so France thought that it had a
pretty solid Franco Prussian alliance going on. When suddenly, in
the seventeen fifties, and it was quite sudden, Frederick the
(25:36):
second announced that he had signed a treaty with Great Britain.
So France was cold shouldered by Prussia, and in response,
France allied itself with Austria. And this is something that
was called the Diplomatic Revolution, and surprisingly, Madame de Pompure
played a major role in this upheaval. Since the Austrian
(25:57):
Chancellor had approached her to be the intermediary between Maria
Tress of Austria and Louis. So she's in politics for
real this time, not just dealing with the appointments and
that sort of thing, but being approached by the by
the Chancellor. Yeah, she becomes very vested in this alliance
with Austria and in the Seven Years War that comes
(26:19):
out of it. And you guys, you and Katie I
think talked about the Seven Years War during a series
on Catherine the Great, So if you need a little
more information about that, it can be kind of confusing,
definitely the Three Petticoats, yep, go back and find out
what that is. Of course, because of her sort of
spurious social position, a lot of people still don't take
her seriously, but Voltaire still calls her Prime Minister because
(26:41):
of her great influence at this time, and that's that
turns out to be unfortunate for her that people do
associate her with this treaty and with this war because
the war goes poorly, especially for France. Uh. Their armies
are crushed on the continent by Frederick and they for
huge colonial losses of colonial possessions in India, North America
(27:05):
to Britain, and probably worse of all, the treasury is
drained and we all know what's coming up just a
few years down the line here. Um, having a drained treasury,
huge populace, and an unpopular king is bad news for
Madame de Pompadour, the kind of always unpopular mistress. She's
(27:28):
blamed for the country's misfortunes and uh, it gets pretty violent.
She's threatened with pamphlets and cruel letters and verses, and
she is kind of crushed by it all. She relinquishes
a lot of her political responsibilities, but still she does
not retire. She she talks about it, but it's almost
coy how she how she talks about retiring. Um, it
(27:50):
seems pretty clear that she fully intends to stay at Versailles. Uh,
stay on at court. And she sincerely believes that Louis
needs her. And I think that's an important thing to
remember through all of her diplomatic intrigues. Um, she thinks
that she can't quit, She can't leave because Louis needs
her and France needs her. Yeah, but she is down
(28:14):
about all this. She's melancholy and also increasingly ill and
on Palm Sunday, April seventeen sixty four, she dies at
age forty three, probably of lung cancer, and this is
kind of really sad. On top of that, her body
was immediately removed from Versailles. The Duchess di Prolong observed
(28:36):
the scene, and she said, I saw two men carrying
a stretcher. When they approached, I saw that it was
the body of a woman covered only with a sheet
so short that the shape of the head, the breasts,
the stomach, and the legs were clearly distinct. It was
the body of that poor woman, who, according to the
strict law that no one dead could remain in the chateau,
was being taken shale. So yeah, definitely, she's already broken
(29:01):
a rule by dying in Versailles. Since she's not a
member of the royal family, she's got to be whisked
away before death taints the the palace. So the King's
doctor Senac breaks the news to him and Louie, who
has been with this woman for nearly twenty years. Response quote,
only I Senac know the extent of my loss. Um.
(29:24):
Not long before Madame de Pomdour's death, she's said to
have told Louis a pre new la deluge, which means
after us, the deluge. Um. It's a quote that's often
attributed to Louis, and it's a little I was a
little surprised to see it attributed so many places to
(29:44):
both UM. I don't know if Louis appropriated it or
misattributed often UM with Louise often listed as a premoi
le deluge, but uh, I think it is an appropriate
quote to end her episode It on Madame de Pompadour. UM,
but also a good way to keep this series going
(30:05):
with nice set up. Definitely a nice set up. So
possibly next in the series the Deluge itself. I kind
of like episodes that are like on the brink of disaster.
But you can see at the end of Pompadour's life
all of these pieces falling apart, unpopular King, unpopular mistress,
(30:28):
broke country, and some really really unhappy people. UM. So
they're prepped for revolution definitely, And I guess that brings
us to listener meal. So this message is from Robert
in St. Louis, and he wrote quote, I'm a history
fanatic and I'm glad I found your podcast earlier this week.
(30:49):
I have a negative thing to say, and a positive
first the negative to get it out of the way.
In the twelve fifteen episode on gladiator graveyards, one of
you said, quote, you're mad to it like prison barracks,
But that's not how it is at all. They were
owned by private citizens. Even though the gladiators had no
personal rights, they were pretty well taken care of because
(31:10):
they were a major investment end quote. Based on the
context throughout the episode, it sounded as if you were
implying that the whole slavery gladiator situation wasn't so bad,
which seems like an odd point to be making. Apply
the above quote to slavery in the nineteenth century in
America and you'll see why. I thought it was odd,
possibly offensive to some. So I'm sure we're in no
(31:32):
danger of offending descendants of ancient Rome and maybe picking
up straws. And I thought the episode as a whole
was very good. Now onto the positive. In the twelve
twenty episode five Historical Fine, I found it very amusing
that ancients apparently did not want to go to the
trouble of husking, winnowing nil and grain when it came
to helping your people, not starve but alcohol. You bet
(31:54):
hilarious bit of irony there, Thanks and keep it up. Um. So,
in case anybody else that we were saying it wasn't
bad to be a gladiator, we think it would be
bad to be eaten by a lion or stabbed through
the ribs. Even if you were said this hardy vegan
diet and had your bones set and we're well taken
(32:14):
care of. Indeed, we do not condone those activities. No,
not at all, um. But I think to be more specific,
what we're trying to say is, well, gladiators are often considered,
at least in movies, prisoners immediately tossed into the ring.
Why bother feeding to immediately to be eaten or killed
(32:35):
immediately to the death. We wanted to make the point
that because they were investments, their standard of life was
fairly high, at least until they got to the ring.
They are still slaves. They are still probably ultimately eaten
by lions, which is going to be blue anyway you
cut it. It probably wouldn't be the position you would
(32:56):
want to be in in society or life's aspiration, right,
But they got good medical care, they were given meals,
So I think that was the only point we were
trying to make, definitely not that it was something glorious. Yeah.
Um so I hope that clears it up a little bit,
Robert and anybody else who misunderstood us there, um, and
(33:16):
thank you for the email, and um we'll try to
we'll try to keep up the hilarious bits of irony
to um. So, if you have any other messages you
want to send us any email, you can find us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter at Miston History, and we have a
Facebook fan page, all excellent ways to send us your
(33:39):
gladiatorial queries. Um. And we also have some more French
Revolution articles. Yeah. If you want a little preview to
what we're gonna be talking about in upcoming Bourbon episodes,
you can check out how the French Revolution Worked by
visiting our homepage and typing in French Revolution at www
dot how stuff works dot com mh For more on
(34:03):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download
it today on iTunes, m
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