Throughout Europe, nations made sweeping social changes, driven the demands of war,  the ideas of Absolutism and the growing belief in reason and improvement. This is the age of many of the great names of European history – Louis the Sun King, Peter the Great. It saw the ending of Spanish  hegemony- and start of the French. And so – here it is, in this episode, a whistle stop tour of monarchs, mayhem, and madness.

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Transcript

Last week, we spoke about the growth of the ideas of Reason, and rationalism, and all across Europe it seemed that this should be applied to government as much as any area of life. So as well as the Age of Reason, and the Age of Enlightenment, the second half of the 17th century, and the 18th century in particular will have a further tag – the Age of Absolutism. As you can see, this is also the Age of Ages.

Now, what we are going to do in this episode, then, is look at the political history of Europe for a while, and a theme will be how these new ideas of rationalising government under an Absolutist banner goes for all these places. The headline though is – well, it’s complicated. A bit like the idea that calling Cromwell a dictator is just wildly anachronistic, the idea that a 17th and 18th century state could arrogate all power to one central figure, an Absolutist Dictator sort of thing, is also simply not physically possible at the time. Every government was to some degree a compromise, a partnership between monarch and subjects.

Secondly, there is no one universal template across Europe; if you were daft enough to attempt to mark the various kingdoms on a sliding scale of absoluteness, it would be a wide scale, with The Netherlands somewhere down the bottom end, and maybe, I don’t know, Russia under Peter I up at the top. And before we go on, another continuing theme we have already talked about in the 17th and even 16th century; the huge influence that generating the money for war has on the operation and design of the state – the fiscal military state as goes the jargon.

 

We are going to centre all of this around France and Louis XIV. Because as you know, this is not only the Age of Ages, it’s the Age of Louis XIV. France dominates Europe; well dominates might over state it a bit, but is at least the outstanding nation, to which intellectuals and rulers look, and try to emulate. It is the largest and richest; it has 20 million souls, 4 times that of England and Wales for example. Its economy is therefore the largest.

What is just as interesting though, is how that translates to wealth per person, which in a sense is critical to ordinary people.

Angus Maddison seems to be the leading writer on this, and his work taken on by the Maddison project, and probably presents a reasonable picture of relative positions. This suggests, that people in the Netherlands were fabulously wealthy on average, when compared to everywhere else in the world, and I mean world, not just Europe.

Then, there’s a peloton of nations behind – Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Britain – not the French. It is interesting to see how far down the list of GDP per Capita are the outstandingly sophisticated countries like India and China – though of course there was no one India at this stage, and no one Italy, and Northern Italy or Bengal for example would compare very differently. So look it’s very flawed data, but the key point about  18th century France which will become painfully relevant in 1789,  is that the outward display of the elite does not translate automatically to the lives of the average woman in the street. I feel I am stating the obvious, and if so, sorry.

But nonetheless, in absolute terms, France’s economy was the biggest, she had the most resources, and the leaders who had a genius for exploiting that, and making France the envy of Europe in so many ways. It was to Louis XIV that other monarchs in Austria, Russia, Prussia, Spain and Italy would look, and try and emulate. It was to the cultural and intellectual world of France that they would look – the King’s musician Jean Bapiste Lully, the Comedie Francaise, the glories of Versailles, so on a so forth. And in more practical terms, the drive to exploit their country more effectively for war – promoting trade, mercantilism, education, administration – marshalled by absolutist and centralised government.

Louis was born in 1638 and will reign for a stonking 72 years; but it was a rocky start, because when he was just 5 years old, his father died. Now His father had been served by one of the most talented of French royal servants – Cardinal Richelieu. He died in 1642, but after that Louis’ during his minority was served by another of France’s most talented of ministers Cardinal Mazarin who took over. A couple of things to say about Louis’s predecessor and his own minority. Firstly, Richelieu’s tenure as chief minister for his father, Louis XIII, set the foundation on which his son, Louis Le Grand Roi, built the nature of his rule.  And secondly, during Louis’ minority from 1643 to 1648, he saw a vision of what might happen if royal control faltered. The nobility took the opportunity of his minority to rebel, to try and turn the clock back, recover their independence – the great rebellion known as the Fronde. On the way they were joined by a peasantry who were often desperately poor, see above, and the result was chaos, and at times Louis and the royal family were forced to flee the mobs in Paris for their lives. The memory would never leave louis, and from that time on, he hated Paris, and was determined never again to lose control. So when Mazarin died in 1661 he immediately declared his minority at an end and took the reigns of power in his own hands.

Louis wasn’t a tall man, but he was good looking and had a powerful physique, he was a good horseman, and described as a trencherman; a word I haven’t used for decades – a healthy appetite shall we say, he could put away the pies and pints. He was energetic, determined and self confident, well aware of his powers and not afraid to use them. He was clever; the splendour of his court and the fabulous balls, the hunts, the fetes and fireworks were not because he was a slobby roue – another word I haven’t used for a while – but well aware that absolute power, majesty and sacral kingship was a performance, the audience needed to be dazzled and awe struck – to distract them from the pain. He could be magnanimous and generous – he could be mean and petty if he didn’t like you. He had learned the arts of intrigue from the master, Mazarin, who had brought him through the Fronde by playing off noble faction against noble faction.

He was also something of a sexual athlete; I don’t know if he compared notes with Charles II, who is his contemporary for a while and of course has the same reputation and who loved and emulated his court. We don’t know exactly how many mistresses Louis had I don’t suppose, though there were four high profile ones,  and they were open about all their goings on, nothing was kept discretely out of view to save anyone’s blushes. Which means in particular, hisd Spanish wife and queen Maria Theresa – who was often left humiliated and isolated. I suspect Charles II was guilty of picking up a few tricks, as well as wigs and stuff. Queen Maria Theresa would die in 1683, and leave Louis to it, and he reportedly remarked

This is the first trouble she has ever given me”

Though I have to think that does have the feel of one of those much repeated myths

Anyway, we are supposed to be talking about La Gloire not les affaires sordide. Richelieu had established the basis of royal power. One was a mechanism to bypassing the mass of regional jurisdictions; France always was way less centralised than England, with a mosaic of local parlements. Richelieu took all of that out of the equation, with a system of Intendant – royal administrators and agents who, under Louis, would come to have almost viceregal powers in tax collecting, military recruitment and local government, and who reported directly to the crown. Alongside them, Louis bult a vast army of 50,000 royal officials and administrators; a dead weight on the wealth of the country, riddled with venality and corruption.

Meanwhile Louis made absolutely sure, no pun intended, absolutely sure there was no central place where opposition could find expression. He relentlessly bullied the Parlement of Paris, which had a formal role to approve laws but was rendered powerless; and he never once called the Estates General, which might have acted like an English parliament. And anyway, the three estates were hopelessly divided. The First Estate, the Clergy was wildly diverse, from vastly wealthy Bishops living in palaces, to dirt poor local cures. Furthermore, they were shorn of any real power; the Gallicism we talked about last time, meant there was little ecclesiastical challenge to royal authority, which controlled all appointments to significant church positions, and patronage. Opposing the king was  a very poor career move.

The second estate of the nobility had been tamed by the Fronde and would become even more subservient under Louis. And the third estate – everybody else was again wildly diverse with no sense of corporate identity. The largest element of them by far were the peasantry. In brief, the peasantry were triple taxed, by church, lord and state – made even worse by the fact that both church and nobility were exempt from tax, a huge disadvantage to state finances that not even Louis was able to change, absolutist or no absolutist. The peasantry lived on the edge of starvation, there were multiple famines and multiple riots and revolts. To these, the response was brutal repression at the hands of the army.

I mentioned that absolutism was inevitably a compromise, and the nobility was a case in point. Richelieu had started the process of turning creating a nobility dedicated solely to the service of the state, partly by creating a new breed of aristocrat, to bypass the old nobility with their local power bases. The noblesse de Robe as they became called, were appointed solely by the crown not by hereditary right. Thus they were tied into the success of the Monarchy which was the only basis of their wealth.

Their entrapment was one of the reasons Louis built the super famous palace of Versailles, and by 1682, he had moved out there permanently. It was vast, magnificent, absolute royal power and cultural superiority made stone, integral to the mystique and awe of monarchy. Princes all over Europe  gasped and emulated it – not only the big boys like Prussia, Austria and Russia, but petty princelings wherever thy might be.

But it was also a cold hearted machine, a hard headed act of policy. For one, it took him out of the reach of the mobs and factions of Paris, whose teeth he had seen during the Fronde. And it brought his nobility under his direct control into a false, controlled world. Most would have come to court to jostle to gain favour and patronage. Before, housed in their own apartments in Paris they had freedom to come and go. In Versailles, they were permanently trapped. Nobles vied with each other to carry out tasks associated with the physical needs of the monarch – bringing in breakfast, handing napkins, emptying the royal chamber-pot, desperate to gain some access to the font of all power and wealth – the King. And the living costs for the nobility were enormous too, and tied them still further to their royal master.

Louis sought to eradicate any alternative centres of power. That was already achieved with the Catholic church; but that left the Huguenots. Maybe one million of them had their independent rights assured by the Edict of Nates, and their own regional centres. A state within a state, as Louis saw it, a possible centre of resistance which must be broken for the sake of absolute uniformity. For 20 years, Louis restricted himself to persecution of Huguenots, which in itself was pretty brutal; one tactic were the so called Missionary Dragoons. These were soldiers billeted on Protestant households with the right to steal, abuse and terrorise the defenceless inhabitants until they converted. But in 1685, Louis went the whole hog, and in the Edict of Fontainebleu, revoked the Edict of Nantes, outlawed protestants, closed their churches and removed priests from their positions. Nor were they officially allowed to leave; in the theories of the 17th century, it was the size of population that defined a nation’s strength, and the Huguenots were often skilled, especially well represented in crafts and trades such as silk manufacture and other textiles. So wherever possible they were forced to convert. There may have been a million Huguenots in 1685, by the end of the reign numbers were tiny – though in some areas in the along the Rhine resistance continued for 30 years; the guerilla war of the Camisard carried on from 1702-1710. But about 200,000 did escape to Protestant countries – about 50,000 to England I think. Louis’ actions created distrust, anger and fear all over northern Europe. But within France, it was applauded by the nobility and clergy, and end to a division and weakness.

On a more positive note, Louis was also the greatest patron of the arts within Europe, very much part of the age of reason. The Academie Francaise produced their great Dictionary in 1694, the academie des Sciences was established in 1666, the Academie de Musique in 1669; the Comedie Francaise in 1680. Royal patronage dominated the French cultural scene, such as the so called ‘king’s Four Friends in French literature – Boileau, Moliere, Racine and La Fontaine.

Louis recognised the growth of trade underpinned everything; if you can’t tax your richest people, and the peasant are already at their wits end, then customs and excise is your best bet to  maintain the lifestyle to which you’d like to stay accustomed, to pursue the occupation of kings – la Gloire.

L’etat c’est moi, Louis famously said, I am the state. Everything must begin and end with the crown at the heart of everything. We have seen that central direction with colonisation, church, administration, tax, culture and patronage. The same would be true of trade, the economy and finance.

In this Louis’ Finance minister Jean Baptiste Colbert is almost as famous as his master.

 

Colbert created the Controle General, by which all other Financial institutions were supervised. He produced a mass of regulation covering all aspects of economic activity – the Textiles Code for example set standards for raw materials, thread count, dyes, and finishes, and employed inspectors to ensure compliance. He invested in vast manufacturies. A rash of trading companies were established to develop international trade. The theory at the heart of Colbert’s philosophy was that France’s wealth could only be increased by external trade, and that trade was a wart against other nations, like any other – mercantilism, a zero sum game;  if I get yours, I don’t get mine.

A famous quote by Louis – along with L’etat c’est moi, of course – was the phrase

S’aggrandir est las plus digne et le plus agreable occupation des souverain

Basically bigging the glory of the monarchy is the best occupation for a king. In addition to the culture and the trade and the power and the wealth – the most important was international reputation power and security. Which mean the liberal use of diplomacy, and its handmaiden – war.

And Louis got involved in a lot of war, and I mean  – a lot. The French Navy was overhauled and massively increased – Colbert created a register of all seamen in France who were eligible to be called up at a moment’s notice, but also increased the size of the Navy from 30 ships of the line to 107, determined to compete with the Dutch and English Navies. But it was the army, and the land borders that were the focus. The old right of the nobility to recruit from their localities was dumped, all was to be run centrally by the crown now, no local loyalties thank you. There is a theme emerging here do you think? New regiments were formed, a new, professional officers corps was promoted on merit; massive arsenals and barracks built alongside naval centres at Toulon and Brest, and a string of fortresses designed and built by the master of the art, Vauban. And the army was enormous – up to 400,000 men, and the philosophy was reflected in its motto: Nec pluribus impar – a match for many. This war machine was supported by the most complete and professional diplomatic service Europe had ever seen.

Louis’ involvement in constant war has caused some folks to see him as the first in a series of military tyrants who have tried to conquer Europe by force; but even despite his remarkably aggressive foreign policy, that doesn’t really stack up. You might say that he was following the policy of extending France to what the French saw as their natural frontiers, but even that isn’t a very clearly reflected in his war. There were genuine fears driving Louis as well as La Gloire – security, a fear of encirclement by the Hapsburgs – surrounded as he was by Spain, Austria, Germany and the Spanish Netherlands.

So here’s a quick summary of Louis’ wars a quick breeze through death and destruction. You might notice the old theme of French Vs Hapsburgs; so traditional rivalry or genuine fear of encirclement? Who knows. Anyway, in 1667 he exploited a dynastic claim to Brabant in the low countries and invaded the Spanish Netherlands; it inspired an alliance of the Dutch, the Swedes and English; and was a win for Louis, capturing 12 fortresses from the Spanish. From this point forward William of Orange in the Netherlands is on high alert.

Next up, the long, 7 year Franco Dutch war of 1672-9 – so you can see why William has got ants in the proverbials now. This war included a third round of the Anglo Dutch war, inspired by Charles II’s secret peace treaty with Louis in 1670. Charles’ record against the Dutch compared to Cromwell’s was embarrassing, including the super embarrassing raid on Chatham docks. For the Dutch, our period was essentially one of survival against French attacks, and a desire to concentrate on the trading and colonisation that made the Netherlands in 17th century so enormously rich, as Amsterdam became Europe’s trading centre and swelled to 200,000 people.

Louis’ diplomatic service kept Sweden on his side as well as Britain through the period, though they couldn’t stop the Spanish joining on the Dutch side. But this long, hard, expensive war saw more gains for Louis, torn from the Spanish; and it was becoming increasingly clear that Spain’s days of great power status were done.

There were a few years off while Louis tried the legal approach next, making legal claims to various small territories, called the War of Reunions. There were a stunning 160 of such annexation claims.  The timing was good, because the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I and his empire were preoccupied with the approaching threat from the East, from the Ottomans, and so it went very well for France’s diplomatic and legal assault with many successful annexations – including making Strasbourg and Luxembourg French.

The next war the Nine Years War, 1689 to 1697. By this time, William of Orange was William III of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. A consequence was the start of British involvement in the endless squabbles of Europe. William had organised the League of Augsburg, between the Dutch, Imperial and Spanish Hapsburgs, and the Brits – specifically to stop French expansionism. Fat chance of that Mate, Louis went straight for the Spanish Netherlands, and the Rhine Palatinate and for 9 long years they slugged it out, vast armies of up to 100,000 strong, about half the size of the Glastonbury festival. They got essentially nowhere; except Louis had to cough up most of those Reunion territories – except Strasbourg, critically, the key to the Alsace, to which the French have always had a penchant.

Horribly enough, when the Peace of Ryswick was signed in 1697, everyone knew darned well is was only a truce. Because there was an elephant in the room, and that elephant was called Charles II of Spain. Who didn’t have an heir.

In 1701 he duly died, leaving all his vast tracts of land to a Bourbon, Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV. Well we couldn’t have that could we, so Archduke Charles of Austria staked his claim and guess what? We’re off again at it, hammer and tongs, the War of Spanish Succession which is an absolute monster, set off when Louis occupied the Belgian fortresses just in case. This war went on for 12 years, 1701-1713, and is one of those which can claim to be the first world war. I remember this one a bit because back in the day when I was young and the world was simple and straightforward, I could glory in fact that England at last had a decent general, the victories of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy – Blenheim, Ramilles, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. Now of course I realise that war is hell, no one is a winner, we mustn’t glorify war blah blah blah and all that. And Of course Malplaquet was a viciously phyrric  victory where the allies lost 22,000 men to the French 11,000, causing the Marechal du Villars to remark to Louis

One more victory like that for your enemies, sire, and they will all be finished’

Which brings us to the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713 and 1714. The French fell well short of what they had wanted but still came away with the Franche Comte and Alsace, which is pretty darn good; and Phillippe remained on the Spanish throne, though the French and Spanish crowns were forbidden to ever combine. The Dutch were knackered, but retained their border fortresses and therefore security. Spain’s empire was split up, with Austria taking Belgium and the kingdom of Naples. It’s all a bit like a game of risk isn’t it? There’s a brilliant Fry and Laurie sketch on a similar vain – I’ll post a link on the website.

Anyway the real winners were the little guys; Savoy and the House of Brandenburg Prussia, who were confirmed as proper kings. And Britain – Britain was confirmed as the monarch of the seas…it won the asiento, the right to carry Spanish colonial trade, including supplying them with 5,000 enslaved Africans every year, let it be remembered,

It was meant that an extraordinary place joined the British family, which is still with us, the Rock, Gibraltar. And while I’m on it, hello Mandy! And so sorry about Brexit. Also Newfoundland joined the club. Suddenly Great Britain was a thing. Leading diplomatic power broker and principal opponent to French supremacy.

I mean – Phew. A general point about all of this is the importance of the fiscal military state, a core feature of European monarchies now, forced to strain every sinew and design their state apparatus towards squeezing enough money from their people to pay for these viciously expensive wars. The impact was severe on all economies, but none more than the French. Behind the glittering façade of Versailles, the glories of French culture, education and intellectual achievements were a mass of ordinary French peasants gaining little benefit from any of it, living a life of increasing deprivation. The long procession of provincial revolt continues – Bearn in 1664, the Vivrais in 1670, Bordeaux in 1674, Brittany in 1675, Languedoc 1703-9, Cahors 1709. In 1692-1693, it is estimated there were 1.3 million deaths,  and in a second famine in 1709-1710, 300,000 more.[1] By the time of Louis’ death in 1715, French government income was 69m livres, expenditure was 132 million livres. Mr Wilkins Micawber would like a word. One historian described the French state and society as entering into ‘a long wasting disease’.

That brings me to the end of Louis XIV and the major western European conflicts. What do we think of Louis XIV, the Sun king, whose glitter has blinded the world for centuries? I do not know, but it might have been better if he’d followed maybe his own words at the end of his life for his heir,

Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects

Bit late now mate.

 

 

Place gap here: 29:25

 

 

Now, let me take you to the Walls of Vienna in July 1683. As we fly over the city walls you will notice something a little odd – about 150,000 soldiers, tents, guns, the sounding of horns the roaring of guns. Kara Mustafa Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire had come to destroy the mighty capital of the Imperial Hapsburgs, to finish this, once and for all. And the possible saviour of Vienna, Jan Sobieski the King of Poland, who had fought the Ottomans to a standstill before, was nowhere to be seen.

The Ottomans of course had been the talk of the 16th century town with the most advanced military and naval forces and logistics, head and soldiers (ha ha) above their western opponents. But the years since had not been kind to the Ottomans. They still possessed one of the world’s 2 largest cities – both Beijing and Istanbul were reckoned to be 700,000 people strong.  But not much else had gone well. The Sultans had for some time been locked away deep in the Topkapi Palace, with no contact with ordinary people, and no experience of managing anything more than getting out of bed, putting their socks on, and following the various torturous protocols. Well, not sure about the socks. There was no recognised inheritance law, there we a lot of potential heirs, and so every succession was followed by a vicious bloodletting.

The Empire was effectively run by the Grand Viziers, but politics was heavily influenced by the army – specifically by the Jannissaries, the infamous corps of enslaved soldiers, who had put the current Albanian Grand Vizier in power. The empire was frozen in time; there had been little or no reform with laws that hindered the expansion of towns and cities and enforced elite privileges, little economic growth. Ottoman military techniques had been surpassed by most western powers. The Krupulu family, represented by the Pasha, were for the first time attempting some reform, and they had a plan to distract the Jannisaries from interfering. Send ‘em out to fight. In 1681-2 they claimed Hungary to be part of the empire, and it was this claim which brought them in 1683 before the walls of Vienna.

In September 1683, after 3 longs months of siege, there was little food remaining in the city. The Viennese garrison had been really been ready for any of this, there were breaches in the walls, and were now desperate. Disaster, defeat, humiliation and quietly possibly death, was staring at them from the abyss. Where was their saviour, the scourge of the Ottomans? Where was Jan Sobieski?

Well, as it happens King Jan Sobieski was praying. He was praying in a chapel at the Heights of Kahlenberg in the Vienna Woods. And on 12th his force of about 65,000, so roughly half the size of the Ottoman army, began to attack against Ottoman forces. From the heights of Kahlenberg, Sobieski watched the battle until in mid afternoon on the 12th, he turned to the pride of Poland – the famous winged Hussars. And he ordered them to charge straight at the centre of the Ottoman camp. It was a slaughter, there was panic, and the Ottoman retreat began, and as Sobieski wrote to his wife

They left behind a mass of innocent Austrian people, particularly women; but they butchered as many as they could

The Ottomans left 80,000 dead outside the walls. This is not the end of warfare between the Imperial Hapsburgs and Ottomans; but it is most definitely the start of the long Ottoman decline, and with the rise of Russia sees the start of the Eastern Question.  Sadly, although Sobieski was declared Saviour of Western Civilisation by the Pope and other leaders – it was to do him or Poland little good.

To get to that, let me first take you to Ukraine, and to the town of Poltava in July 1709. Besieging the city was an army of 30,000 Swedes, commanded by the young, 27th year old military genius, Charles XII. But Charles is badly wounded, and his army is wounded too, in their battle against the Russian Emperor Peter I. They have been weakened by the brutal winter of 1708-1709, when it was recorded that birds fell dead frozen from the sky. Charles’ reign had been full of brilliant victories, trouncing Peter at the Battle of Narva in 1700. He had then taken the war to Russia’s ally, Augustus II of Saxony-Poland.

Therein lies the start of the sad story of the kingdom of Poland Lithuania. Jan Sobieski’s dramatic appearance had demonstrated that the Republic still had strength and vigour. But despite that it was no longer the place it had once been. In the 16th century it had been a beacon of the most unusual levels of religious toleration. That was now gone, Poland was a staunchly, and fiercely uniform Catholic state. Noble landowners throughout eastern Europe had gone the opposite direction to Western Europe, and instead of increasing economic freedoms and trade, had re-introduced serfdom, passed laws that hindered the growth of cities or the development of new forms of production. They had fiercely maintained their own freedom from taxation, and their own political privileges. So, after Vienna in 1683, with little effective central authority Lithuania had descended into civil war; Sobieski had actually been weakened by his outing to Vienna and sidelined in resulting the Holy League. In 1697 he failed to secure the election of his son to succeed to the throne, when he died by the Polish parliament. One cause was Russian bribery, which delivered the throne to Augustus of Saxony. The Saxon period of Polish kings, from 1697 to 1763 is thought to be a nadir of Polish history; alongside it, from 1645 to 1785, existed Ukraine, an independent Cossack state, though very much under the eye of Tsarist Russia.  By the end of the century Ukraine would have ceased to exist as an independent state, swallowed by Russia, and Poland also deleted, partitioned up between its voracious neighbours.

So, in his campaign against August of Saxony the Swedish king Charles XII seemed to be have won. But Russia was an even greater opponent; and in 1709, at Poltava, Russia’s emperor Peter approached with an army more than twice the size  of his own. Would Charles XII’s military genius save him this time?

Nipping back in time, like Christopher Nolan film on speed, I would like to share an anecdote. There am I, maybe 16 years old, playing tennis with the some of my friends parents; they had a regular 4, and I’d been asked to stand in. Despite my obviously superior talent and, frankly good looks, I was put to the sword, but took it in good part, mainly because one of the dads had a daughter my age, but whatever, and afterwards one of the Dads came up to me with a pretty compliment that he’d been impressed, because how you deal with defeat is more important than how you deal with victory. Well, at the time I hadn’t heard of If by Rudyard Kipling, and I simply thought ‘you pompous old git’, but I guess it’s true, and Peter I of Russia, or Peter the Great as he’s more commonly known, he reacted to the disaster of Narva in 1700 with absolute maniac energy. An energy that will take him to the walls of Poltava in 1709.

The story of Peter the Great is comparable in magnitude to that of the Sun king – and he started in a very different place, in a vast but ramshackle nation, and a purely regional power at the time. He would change all that. He is an extraordinary figure – an absolute beanpole, 6 feet 8 inches tall, a mass of energy. And a bit odd, if not weird; one historian described him as a moral monster, from his vast club he called the Sobor of Fools and Jesters, which was a sort of ramped up version of the English Hell-fire club, so blasphemous that many in the Orthodox church considered Peter to be the Anti Christ, utterly and wildly debauched.  At the other end of the scale he was callously brutal and careless of human life. He ordered and oversaw the savage torture of the Streltsy rebels in 1698 which included men stretched until they were pulled to bits. The numbers who died building his imitation of Versailles, St Petersburg, range from 30,000 to 200,000. You may not be surprised to learn that Putin admires Peter the Great. There’s a thing.

Narva was part of the Great Northern War, which lasted from 1700 to 1721, and once again war was the engine of this Absolutist state as well. Peter was from the start determined that Muscovy would rival the glories of the Sun King’s France, and take its seat at the table of the great. He visited western Europe in 1696-8 when he was in his twenties, taking notes on everything, apparently travelling incognito through the streets of London to study ship building. 6 foot 8, followed by a cloud of courtiers. Incognito? I don’t think so. He had three priorities after Narva – to westernise, westernise, westernise.  Oh, and organise, organise, organise. Soi that’s 6.

Peter sought, like Richelieu and Louis, to make the nobility subordinated to service of the state. As Richlieu had done, he enlarged the nobility bringing new families into a structured table of ranks, organised around military, civil and legal roles, with a hierarchy that gave status according to the level of service you gave to the state. The nobility were subject to public floggings if they evaded service or education; I don’t think even Louis could have made that happen. Regulation went down to the detail of daily lives of all his subjects; famously Peter the Great ordered men, women, and children above the level of peasant to adopt western dress, including “hats, jacket, and underwear’; men were to shave off their beards.

The administrative structure of the state was changed to ensure the supremacy of the Tsar; the old Duma was replaced by a Council of State picked by a piece of pickled Peter, Russia divided up into Provinces, a new municipal government, the central administration divided up into colleges, each overseeing different areas of state administration, and he introduced reforms into many areas of society – trade, industry, science, education literature and the arts. In common with other rulers, he understood the importance of commerce, giving tax breaks to merchants and artisans, funding mining and metallurgy plants, establishing an engineering college. Even the church was brought into the Tsar’s control; the patriarch was abolished and the church controlled by a state appointed Holy Synod.

And a key statute was that of 1701, a regulated the system of political police. This really was the control of every aspect of the lives of Russians everywhere.

But something was missing. Peter had no grand, modern city with the finest architecture, and a grand palace that would make Versailles look like a shepherd’s hut. And so from 1703 in marshland, drained with a network of canals was built a New, Imperial city which. With typical self-effacement, Peter named after a great Russia hero everyone could look up to. Namely – himself. And in St Petersburg he built that Shepherd’s Hut, his own version of Versailles – the Winter Palace. And then built it again because it wasn’t good enough. In all this building Peter followed his westernising star – he rejected Byzantine and Russian baroque style in favour of the New Neo Classical. So many people died to achieve it, that Russians gave it another name – the City of Bones.

So, back to where we started then – Poltava. When Peter had attacked Narva in 1701, he had an army of over 30,000 which the Swedish army little more than 10,000. But the Muscovite army was a ragbag thing, which regularly disappeared in winter from desertion, and cost the state up to 96% of its income. At Narva it had faced a professional modern army, and had no advantage but numbers. The result was predictable; a third of the Russians lost their lives in the battle, the army disintegrated and its thought a similar number froze to death in the November ice.

In 1709 at Poltava Charles met  a very different army, the emerging result of the growing programme of reforms; by Peter’s death, his army would be 300,000 strong which could compete with any in Europe. This time Charles was defeated, he and fled, Peter erected tents for a victory supper, very publicly toasted the captured Swedish generals for their loyalty to Charles – while the rank and file Swedish soldiers were sent to work and die in Siberia. Charles XII spent 5 years in exile with the Ottomans, before managing to return to Sweden. He carried on his favourite hobby of war, because that’s what you did back then, and died in the frozen winter on the border with Norway. They still have his preserved head with a massive bullet hole in a suspicious position; it could well be that he was assassinated.

Charles’ defeat ended an era in Scandinavia; in Sweden there was a reaction against absolutism for a while, and a diet of 4 estates ruled, with factions called hats and caps and the active involvement of the peasantry, which all sounds fascinating. In Denmark-Norway, a procession of 4 Absolutist kings settled down to implementing enlightened reforms, oddly without feeling any need to march all over Europe hitting people, which does sound nice, and a model for the rest of us; though Denmark did have colonies in the West Indies and had an involvement in the slave trade, transporting an estimated 100,000 people. I learn that King Christian abolished the slave trade before Britain, with a 1792 declaration enacted in 1803, so there’s a thing. But really that’s for another time, and but I fully realise I am not doing Scandinavian history justice. I formally apologise, but plead time and space.

Well, what are we to think of all that? For me, the late 17th Century, and the 18th century are absolutely mind bending. Such contrasts, such drama, such brutality, and the stories of Louis and Peter rather typify it. Both were brilliant, extraordinary people, who achieved brilliant, extraordinary things with a singleness and clarity of purpose that boggles, ladies and gentlemen, it boggles. Your heard it here – I am boggled. Many of those artistic and cultural achievements that are still with us, but what staggering brutality and carelessness of human life.

But then the same applies to the whole age. The growth of rationality, the development of richer life experience for many, expansion of the arts, trade, opportunity, education, human knowledge and understanding, a period that begins to transform human experience. You know what I mean. But at the same time, Louis and Peter are very much not alone in their brutality and cruelty, and in society at a daily level; if I am required to, for example we might talk about stuff like cock-fighting, bear baiting. And of course from the engine of this early enlightenment, England, the industrialisation of enslavement of the most brutal kind, and war, war, war. I mean it’s extraordinary isn’t it? Strikes me that having from 1964 to 2025 at time of writing, life in Europe has been by the standards of history, the most golden of ages.

It’s an odd place to finish, but what the heck, that’s the one I have chosen, and next time it’s back to blighty and to Charlie two. It will effectively the start of series 9, and so will talk about a few of the main themes of the scope of that series, 1660 to 1715, and will be called Restoration, Revolution and the English Enlightenment.

[1] https://www.scilit.com/publications/7fc543b27d95a33db632af959a012342