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Empress Josephine was such an icon in the 1800s. Yes, Marie Antoinette set the tone for French fashion, but in terms of character and being a boss woman, Josephine set the stage.

Like Napoleon, she too was almost not born a French citizen. Born on an island called Martinique, part of the Caribbean islands, Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie spent most of her childhood on her mother’s plantation in Martinique, living a peaceful and isolated life. But her father, a minor French aristocrat, was not a fan of this isolation and insisted that she get educated in France. In 1773, she moved to France and married a man she adored, Alexandre. She had 2 children with him, but she was not happy during this marriage. Her husband neglected her and she was afraid of socializing because of her worry that Alexandre would be embarrassed.

Josephine also struggled to adjust to French society as it was so heavily influenced by the Enlightenment at the time, and she was a simple girl from an isolated, farm-based society. Eventually, she was too stressed to continue living with her husband, so she separated from him and went to live in a convent. There, she learnt the ways of an upper-class French woman. She learnt how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, and basically got lessons in French Woman 101. Against all odds, she rose up in class as she left the convent and lived her best life. Until the French Revolution.

Josephine was under constant threat during the revolution because of her aristocratic background. During Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, she was arrested and imprisoned for 3 months, and released from prison exactly one day before her scheduled execution. After some more time, Josephine met Napoleon Bonaparte, who would become her husband and emperor of France. It is said that when Josephine first met Napoleon, she was not interested in him, but he was obsessed with her. There is even evidence of letters that he sent her confessing his love to her, many of which would be considered extremely creepy today. But over time, the two fell in love, and Josephine helped Napoleon gain the throne of France.

But once Josephine took on the role of the empress, she faced a new wave of challenges. After a few years, Napoleon divorced Josephine and both of their mental health faltered.  Napoleon no longer had his trusted advisor’s guidance and she no longer had his love. Both of them still loved each other, but circumstances did not allow them to stay together because of the increasing pressure from the public on Josephine to produce an heir. They truly died miserable deaths.

Josephine faced challenge after challenge in her lifetime, but each time she persevered and fought through the rejections and the neglect and the overall struggle. She is one of those people that honestly isn’t known by enough people. I feel like her life story should be told for ages to come and she should be placed on the same pedestal as Napoleon, because she was the reason he became who he did. There is now a statue of her, beheaded, in Martinique because of her and Napoleon’s reinstatement of slavery in France. 

Napoleon Bonaparte took control of France from the hands of the Directoire in 1799. Although a dictator, he was little like his preceding monarchs. Much more stable and empathetic, he was very much conceding to the desires of his subjects. His life, however, is interesting to learn about, since his father was actually a member of a noble Italian family. He was born in Corsica, which had been taken from the Italians by the French just one year before his birth. Basically, Napoleon was almost not a French citizen! And yet he became one of the most influential leaders of the 19th century.

Napoleon was also not from the richest family. Though he was technically a part of the nobility, he was not the most wealthy. He was also not the most physically intimidating guy, with average height and stature. But he spent most of his time learning French and then graduating from military school, eventually becoming a lieutenant. His experience in the military is what led him to become the eventual dictator of France.

Another interesting fact is that a lot of what Napoleon achieved, he only achieved because of his future wife Josephine. It was only after he met her that he gained the influence he needed to enter the Directoire and become the general; it was only because of her advice that he decided to overthrow the Directoire and take over the country. She was the reason he became who he did, which officially proves the statement “Behind every successful man is a woman” true in my books.

Anyway, Napoleon’s focus on learning about the military in his school years led to his military achievements during his reign as monarch. France was almost its biggest size in history and Napoleon (and Josephine) was the reason for that. After a horrific revolution, France got a leader who could bring the country to such military power and influence around the world that he was literally exiled for it.

Nearing the end of his reign, Napoleon began to get very tired and started making bad decisions. There are reports of him not acting like himself. What really caused his downfall, though, was that one of his mistresses got pregnant, and, as a result, he was forced to separate from Josephine in fear of what his subjects might say. After that, his mental health truly suffered, as she had provided him with a lot of support. Eventually, he was exiled by international powers for tipping the balance of power in Europe in France’s favor. He returned for 100 days to rule France again, but he was exiled again. Honestly, I feel like Napoleon did accomplish a lot, even just in France, and he had a lot of potential. He definitely took advantage of it but I think that at the end, his greed got the best of him and he died a tragic death.

The French Directoire was the government that took over France after the execution of Maximilien Robespierre in 1794. It was an attempt at some sort of stability after the disasters that had occurred in the last…well, century. The Directoire basically consisted of a bicameral legislature, with 500 people in the Council of Five Hundred, 250 delegates in the Council of Ancients, and 5 Directors. In theory, this type of government was supposed to be significantly less corrupt than the preceding dictatorships, as it would allow for a congregation of people to make decisions instead of a reigning monarch.

Some of the accomplishments of the Directoire are that it created les grandes écoles, which was a more elite set of higher education establishments, past the simple French public universities. The Directoire also centralized the French economy, which gave it stability that it lost during the 1700s, especially after the destruction of the French Revolution. Finally, with Napoleon Bonaparte as its general, the Directoire also achieved international military feats that had been placed on hold as France dealt with its own internal issues.

But the Directoire failed anyway, for a multitude of reasons. One of these reasons is that though the Directoire could make decisions for the country, it had no surefire way of implementing them. The Directoire was essentially powerful with no real power. Another problem that made it even more difficult for it to implement its laws and regulations was that the Directoire received little to no funding.

Nevertheless, I feel like the Directoire, as a reaction to the horrible dictatorship of Robespierre, was predestined to fail and collapse. Part of this is definitely hindsight bias because we know now that Napoleon took over France, but at the same time, the way the Directoire was designed was for immediate relief from chaos and not for long-term stability. A lack of ability to enforce laws was an issue that Louis XVI faced, and he was executed for it. A lack of money was something that the majority of people in France felt for their whole lives, and with the debt of France, this was only going to continue. The Directoire truly was only a transition from something chaotic to something a little more stable. It was a way for people to feel like they had some power in preventing a revolution from occurring. Again, they were wrong, there was another revolution about 40 years later, but for the time being, the revolution was to be prevented. The purpose of the Directoire was to ensure a smooth transition to democracy, but what it became was a transition to a stronger and better dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Robespierre is, by far, my favorite person to analyze from the French Revolution. His reign over France, from 1793 (after the execution of Louis XVI in January) to July of 1794, is known as the Reign of Terror, and with reason. Robespierre was brutal in his treatment of those who didn’t believe in the three ideals of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. His extreme views about the spirit of Revolution and what it meant for him and his own rise to power were what made him such a memorable ruler (not in a good way though).

Robespierre was not one to back down from what he believed in. He held a deep-rooted hatred for members of the aristocracy at the time, which encompasses French sentiment pretty well, but he was extreme. France was in extreme chaos after the execution of Louis XVI and the fall of the monarchy, and Robespierre saw this as his opportunity to create stability by creating a new government. He climbed his way up from the Committee of Public Safety to the Committee of General Security, and eventually became reigning dictator of what he thought was post-revolutionary France.

A lot of information about how Robespierre treated his people and how much he truly condemned the aristocracy and noble-people of France can be found in a biography written about Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, called the Rose of Martinique. But I will get more into her story in a later post.

Robespierre was also obsessed with the American Revolution. He is known to have executed almost anyone who didn’t support the revolution in the United States. During his reign, he and his followers arrested around 300,000 people for opposing the Revolution, 10,000 of whom died in prison and 17,000 of whom were officially guillotined. In 1794, laws passed under Robespierre took away the people’s right to trial and legal assistance, which only increased their likelihood of being executed.

What is interesting, though, is that Robespierre’s main political strategy in his attempt to gain power was to play on the fact that France needed stability to fight international wars and deter international conflict, not the revolution. Of course, once he did gain power, he fully supported the revolution, probably a little too much, but that’s not how he gained it. Also, some of his ideals were not so bad. He was vehemently against slavery and truly wanted the best for the bourgeoisie, but in this case, I don’t think that his “good morals” can make up for the amount of destruction he invigorated. All in all, I think we should just all be glad that Robespierre’s attempts to create a calendar and religion based on himself and his ideals failed.

It’s interesting how much people during the 1700s truly hated Marie Antoinette for her lavish and luxurious lifestyle. They hated how much money she spent on her clothes, her jewelry, and her food. Marie Antoinette was the symbol for the excess of the monarchy, and was eventually beheaded by the order of the Revolutionary tribunal 9 months after her husband. But what is the evidence behind her extravagance? And how much of this evidence is true?

It is true that the Queen of France spent large sums of money indulging on her own lifestyle. But, like Louis XVI, many of the reasons she spent so much money were for her to be able to escape from the clutches of royal life. For one, her marriage was difficult. Marie Antoinette was a child of the Habsburgs, and when she was a child, her mother Maria Theresa promised Marie’s hand in marriage to Louis as a way to strengthen the alliance between Austria and France. She and Louis did not get along well, and this strained and caused tension in their relationship. On top of that, Marie also struggles with the duties of a queen, as is expected. She really struggled with being both a wife and a queen. But she eventually found an escape. Upon her marriage, Louis XVI had gifted Marie a small chateau on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, called the Petit Trianon. Here, Marie built her own small fake village known as the Hameau. She spent much of her time and money on this village. People were frustrated with this because while they had no food to eat and nothing to drink, Marie Antoinette was living the most luxurious life, playing dress-up with her maids and building fake buildings for her own satisfaction.

One of the most interesting factors of the Hameau was the two milk rooms in it. Marie Antoinette liked to dress up like a milkmaid, and in the Hameau, she had two milk rooms built: the pleasure dairy and the functional preparation dairy. While both had the same interior and exterior layouts, the pleasure dairy was made with marble and looked more extravagant. In the functional preparation room, Marie and her maids would fabricate milk products, which would then be brought to the pleasure room for tasting. But she was not the only French royal to indulge in dairy products; doing so had become a French tradition which began with Catherine de Medici in the mid-1500s, meaning that though Marie’s milk room became the most well-known, it was not the first time it had been made and it was not going to be the last, had she not been executed. She cannot be held fully responsible for this aspect of her reign.

Many rumors also spread about what the queen did and did not believe. Rumor has it that when Marie was told that the peasants of France were starving and had no bread to eat, she said, “Let them eat cake!” However, this rumor is likely just that: a rumor. The quote actually first appears in Confessions, a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where a noblewoman said the quote. The book was written in 1766, when Marie was just 11 years old, making it very unlikely that she was the one to say it.

Overall, there are a lot of misconceptions about Marie Antoinette’s lifestyle, whether they are about her reasons for acting the way she did or generally false information. Once again, like I mentioned in my previous post about Louis XVI, whether or not she deserved to be executed is up to you to decide, but blaming Marie for all of France’s financial issues seems unreasonable because even though she became a symbol of extravagance, she was not at fault for the false accusations made against her.

Louis XVI was arguably one of the most incompetent people to ever have ruled France. He was unable to take care of his country the way his ancestors did, especially Louis XIV (who I talked about in my last post). Rulers in history are often times defined by their personality. Louis XVI’s personality simply did not fit for a country that was already falling apart and one that had grown so big under a monarchy that a weak ruler would simply fail. But was this really his fault? There were many reasons that Louis XVI failed as a ruler, and though his actions led to the French Revolution, those reasons might not have been entirely his fault.

Louis XVI’s biggest weaknesses were communication and interaction, which led to problems that triggered the French Revolution. For one, he wasn’t raised as a king. His older brother, who died at the age of 9, was the true heir, so his brother was taught the skills he needed to be a king. Louis XVI’s focus was on the arts and humanities, like most kings, but his parents didn’t focus on him enough. He grew up shy and timid, and was not properly coached on social skills and interaction. So when the time came, he was incapable of interacting with his ministers and was extremely indecisive as a king, which threw France into a world of revolution.

But was this really his fault? Some psychologists have diagnosed Louis with clinical depression. As a child, Louis loved locksmithing, and he picked it up as a hobby. But when the stress of ruling was on his plate, he couldn’t handle it, because he wasn’t raised to be able to preside over an empire. He didn’t make the best financial decisions for the country, and was also incapable of executing them. And as things got worse and worse, he got more and more stressed, he escaped more and more into locksmithing and doing other things that were his distractions. He used these as coping methods for his stress and as a result, the French Revolution got even worse than it was when it began. Eventually, the people of the country became completely fed up with Louis’ incompetence, and the people of France, the proletariat, guillotined him for treason.

So, two of the reasons that Louis XVI did not succeed in his rule over France was because he was not raised to be a king and he likely had a serious case of clinical depression. There were reasons for his incompetence, but in the end, it’s up to you to decide whether he deserved to be executed for treason.

The Sun King was definitely significant to French history, but did his light really reflect the state of France during his reign?

Louis XIV was the king of France from 1643 to 1715. he was probably one of the worst rulers of France (not the worst, but we’ll get to that character later). I’ve always questioned why he was the way he was, and why he did what he did. I mean, the guy was greedy to the point where his entire country suffered under his reign. His policies were the reason the French Revolution began 74 years later.

98% of France was in the proletariat class, or the lowest economic class, during Louis XIV’s reign, while the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the upper-most class, made up the remaining 2%. You would think that a ruler would consider that a majority of his country is suffering. But his absolutism led him to believe that he was allowed to tax his people insane amounts and use it for his own personal benefit. There have been accounts of people picking up bread from the streets, running behind carts carrying wine, and drinking what dripped from them or fell onto the ground, just so that they could have something to eat or drink. He spent between 2 and 3 billion dollars in today’s money on building the Palace of Versailles, the gardens of which took 40 years to perfect.

But knowing that the wrongly titled Sun King hurt France to the point of no return is not why I am writing this blog. I want to analyse why he did this. Was he just evil? Just to play devil’s advocate, some possible reasons he was like this was because a) he needed to assert and keep his power, and b) he was brought up living this lifestyle and didn’t know any better.

During the age of absolute monarchies, people believed in an idea known as divine right; that God gave the power to rule a country to a certain person, and their heir was to be the next ruler. Louis needed to accept this power from his father and assert it. Like many other monarchs and dictators, he chose to do this by making his people helpless and inciting fear in them. He chose to keep his power by appeasing the bourgeoisie and nobility with his money and policies. The longer he did this, the longer he would keep his power. Obviously, this backfired later on, but for the time being, it worked. He needed to keep his power, and that was how he chose to do it.

Louis XIV was also born into royalty, which means that he grew up believing he could do anything he wants, and he grew up with riches and a lifestyle where he didn’t ever have to worry about not getting what he wanted. So that was the lifestyle he lived when he grew older, and those were the ways in which he spent his money.

Most will agree that Louis XIV was a horrible king and should not have been able to enforce his policies, do what he did, or even just be king in the first place, much less for how long he ruled. But the disagreement arises when we discuss why he did what he did, and although I completely agree that he was terrible, these are just some of my theories as to why he became the person that he did.