Louis XV also spent a great deal of money on women. Brothers Goncourt compiled a list of gifts and royal donations given just to Madame de Pompadour. It is an impressive account. The difference between mistresses and lovers in this case is also subtle and difficult to explain. What both rulers had in common was that they were loved and admired by their people to whom these excesses of debauchery were acceptable, in part because a great amount of royal subjects profited by them.
Did history turn all the way around and come back to its point of origin? Despite all appearances, it is not only a provocative statement. The tragic fate of marquis Donatien Alfons de Sade(10-01)—a provocateur, libertine, and a very good writer, is proof enough. Born …show more content…
Many historians give him a proud title of “Paris’s annalist” and view him as balanced and objectively informative. Why did he miss the truth in this case? Let us repeat: this seasoned expert in French customs thought that in 1768, a real situation like that had no place in raising public emotions. Something far more serious must have happened. But what? He reached for the tabloids of the day, which reasoned the same way as he did. That type of press tended to add the most unbelievable details. He compared the reports in major titles and then the issue became—how many corpses were there? The soon-to-be-coined word “sadism” became justified.
Marquis de Sade got out of that trial without much damage, just some monetary compensation for Rose Keller to drop the charges and two months in jail. The drama for the de Sade was that he became a symbol. We are in a transition period. Everyone knew that this was about the libertine sex practices. Therefore, de Sade did not come back to his family castle La Coste as a humiliated man. He still enjoyed a reputation, which was not any worse than Prince Richelieu’s (Louis Francois Armand de Richelieu, …show more content…
On the surface, it should have been even philosophically closer to libertinism, but true revolutions are not guided by philosophical doctrines but by the principles of opposition to the previous ideologies. The royal court of Louis XVI despised potatoes and planted them only to admire the flowers (!), so the revolution automatically started promoting potatoes and ordered their planting for consumption. The same was with the sexual life. Was it loose during the Bourbon reign? In the new Republic, it had to be disciplined and restrained. Georges Danton (1759–1794), who was made into a legend of the revolution, suffered a loss—his wife passed away. Four months later, he married a sixteen-year-old Louise Gely and remained a 100 percent monogamist. Adored by women, young and handsome Antoine Saint-Just became a target of the prosecution, but in the end, he could not be tied to any erotic scandal. Jean Paul Marat probably was a sexual deviant, as his enemies claimed, but it must have been an “illness,” so they left him be. Maximilien Robespierre(10-02) was a beacon of virtues. Camille Desmoulins was devoted to his Lucille, who went under the guillotine right after
Did history turn all the way around and come back to its point of origin? Despite all appearances, it is not only a provocative statement. The tragic fate of marquis Donatien Alfons de Sade(10-01)—a provocateur, libertine, and a very good writer, is proof enough. Born …show more content…
Many historians give him a proud title of “Paris’s annalist” and view him as balanced and objectively informative. Why did he miss the truth in this case? Let us repeat: this seasoned expert in French customs thought that in 1768, a real situation like that had no place in raising public emotions. Something far more serious must have happened. But what? He reached for the tabloids of the day, which reasoned the same way as he did. That type of press tended to add the most unbelievable details. He compared the reports in major titles and then the issue became—how many corpses were there? The soon-to-be-coined word “sadism” became justified.
Marquis de Sade got out of that trial without much damage, just some monetary compensation for Rose Keller to drop the charges and two months in jail. The drama for the de Sade was that he became a symbol. We are in a transition period. Everyone knew that this was about the libertine sex practices. Therefore, de Sade did not come back to his family castle La Coste as a humiliated man. He still enjoyed a reputation, which was not any worse than Prince Richelieu’s (Louis Francois Armand de Richelieu, …show more content…
On the surface, it should have been even philosophically closer to libertinism, but true revolutions are not guided by philosophical doctrines but by the principles of opposition to the previous ideologies. The royal court of Louis XVI despised potatoes and planted them only to admire the flowers (!), so the revolution automatically started promoting potatoes and ordered their planting for consumption. The same was with the sexual life. Was it loose during the Bourbon reign? In the new Republic, it had to be disciplined and restrained. Georges Danton (1759–1794), who was made into a legend of the revolution, suffered a loss—his wife passed away. Four months later, he married a sixteen-year-old Louise Gely and remained a 100 percent monogamist. Adored by women, young and handsome Antoine Saint-Just became a target of the prosecution, but in the end, he could not be tied to any erotic scandal. Jean Paul Marat probably was a sexual deviant, as his enemies claimed, but it must have been an “illness,” so they left him be. Maximilien Robespierre(10-02) was a beacon of virtues. Camille Desmoulins was devoted to his Lucille, who went under the guillotine right after