From ugly toes to the King's napkin

The royal palace at Versailles, built by Louis XIV in the second half of the seven­teenth century, stands as the main monument of the monarchy of the old regime. Its oldest part, the facade facing the town, still dominates its surroundings and must have been even more impressive in the seventeenth century, when the rest of the area was uninhabited.

This impression is further confirmed by the building itself and the courtly cere­monials taking place there. The ground plan of the palace essentially corresponds to that of a noble house in town (hotel), with two main wings, one for the husband and one for the wife, and a court in the middle, only enormously extended.⁹¹ Life at court was minutely regulated by ceremonies, starting when the king got up in the morning (lever) and the greatest nobles in the country stood at attention in order to dress him, one after the other solemnly helping him with the various garments, and ended at night with a similar ceremony of undressing (coucher). The king’s meals were ritualized in the same way. It was an honour to be invited to watch the king eat, a greater one to be spoken to by the king during the meal and an even greater to be allowed to serve him food or eat with him. In addition, the king’s afternoon trip in the garden, audiences, entertainment and other events were solemnly regulated. Strict rules about rank determined the relationship between the members of the court, although the king might all the time show his favour or lack of it to individuals depending on their merit.

These people are gravely mistaken who imagine that all this is mere ceremony. The people over whom we rule, unable to see the bottom of things, usually judge by what they see from the outside, and most often it is by precedence and rank that they measure their respect and obedience. As it is important to the public to be governed only by a single one, it also matters to it that the person performing this function should be so elevated above the others, that no-one can be confused or compared with him; and one cannot, without doing harm to the whole body of the state, deprive its head of the least mark of superiority distinguishing him from the limbs.⁹³

In his history of the kings of Norway, the Icelandic saga writer Snorri Sturluson (1179—1241) includes an anecdote about the national saint of the country, King Olav Haraldsson or St. Olav (king 1015—30). One morning the king is lying awake in his bed, while his men are asleep around him. The sun has just risen and the room is in full daylight. The king notices that one of the men, called Thorarin, has stuck one of his feet outside the bed. Then the other men in the room wake up:

The king said to Thorarin, ‘I have been awake for a while, and I have seen a sight which seems to me worth seeing, and that is, a man’s foot so ugly that I don’t think there is an uglier one here in this town.’ And he called on the others to look at it and see whether they thought so too. And all who looked at it agreed that this was the case.

Thorarin understood what it was they talked about and said, ‘There are few things so unusual that their likes cannot be found, and that is most likely to be true here too.’

This discussion then leads to a bet between the king and Thorarin as to whether or not there can be found an equally ugly foot, the winner having the right to demand a favour from the loser.

‘Look here, sire, at my other foot. That is so much uglier for lacking a toe. I have won.’

The king replied, ‘The first foot is the uglier because there are five hideous toes on it, whilst this one has only four. So it is I who has the right to ask a favour of you.’⁹⁴

It is hard to imagine a greater difference from Louis XIV’s court at Versailles than this episode. Here we find a very small distance between the king and his men. They are sleeping in the same room and there is a playful tone between them. At the same time, there is an element of competition, in which the king has to show that he is not only their lord by birth but is able to gain their respect through his personal qualities, in this case, humour and argumentative skills. The king is also only to a limited extent able to command these men. He has to reward and respect them; if not, they may leave him for another lord. Early thirteenth-century Norway was a relatively new kingdom, and besides, other sources show that the relationship between the king and his men was less democratic than this episode implies. Nevertheless, the story can be regarded as a kind of starting-point for a development that led to the court of Versailles, from simplicity to complexity and from the king as the leader in virtue of his personal qualities to the celebration of the royal office rather than the king in person.

In tracing this development, we first have to consider geography: from the tra­velling king to the stationary king. Personal contact with the aristocracy was essential in the seventeenth century as well as before but in the earlier period, this contact mostly meant that the king had to travel. The kings’ travel pattern has been extensively studied in Germany, where royal government largely consisted in combined meetings and festivities in its various parts, often according to established patterns, celebrating particular holidays in particular places.⁹⁵

On their travels, Louis’ predecessors might stay in the palaces of their noble subjects or in monasteries or at episcopal sees, but they also had various palaces in different parts of the country.

Not only the aristocracy but also ordinary people must at least have seen the king fairly often during his many travels, at least people in towns. In addition, his portrait was on coins and seals and his letters to particular communities were read in the churches and meeting-places. In times of crisis, kings might appeal directly to his subjects. In 1302, when a defeat against Flanders came in addition to Philip IV’s conflict with the pope, he stimulated propaganda directed at the common people, prayers throughout the country and a general appeal to his subjects’ love of their country and for their financial aid to its salvation. An anonymous sermon from this period celebrates the sacred character of the kingdom of France, its noble and saintly king, and urges the people to fight and die for their fatherland.⁹⁷

The gradual development of capitals from the thirteenth century did not put an end to the king’s travels. Capitals were mainly the residences of the royal admin­istration, rather than the king in person. England is the main example. Already in the eleventh century, under William the Conqueror, royal revenues were larger than in most other countries and were subject to close supervision, as can be seen from the famous Domesday Book, listing the king’s resources all over the country: the number of households and the taxes and rents due from them.

Although Louis XIV occasionally still travelled, he did so far less than his pre­decessors, so by this time, the royal residence in or near the capital had become the main centre of the court. The same happened in most other countries. The reason is clearly increased political centralization, at least partly resulting from increased royal power, although not necessarily at the cost of the nobility. This development is also expressed in the change of rituals and ceremonials.

With the introduction of dynastic succession, the king was distinguished from his people by his birth.

The unction and coronation were regarded as a sacrament in the early Middle Ages. From the Investiture Contest onwards, its status was somewhat reduced; it was no longer a sacrament, and the Church insisted on a clearer difference between the royal and the priestly office. Nevertheless, this did not really change the sacred status of the king.⁹⁸ The allusions to the kings of the Old Testament remained in the liturgy and were also emphasized in the mirrors for princes and other texts dealing with monarchy, as well as in the churches. The Sainte Cha- pelle in Paris, built by Louis IX to house a costly relic, Christ’s crown of thorns, and officially consecrated in 1248, is almost wholly in glass, decorated with paintings from the Old and the New Testament, in which the kings have a central place.⁹⁹ The Old Testament kings also figure prominently in the Cathe­dral of Reims, the coronation church. The kings of the Old Testament were the rulers of the people of God and were clearly superior to the priests, which led the popes to emphasize the difference between the Old and the New Testament, while kings tended to point to the continuity between the two epochs. The king was the most Christian king, the protector of the Church, the clerics and the people of his realm which he ruled on God’s behalf.

A royal coronation was normally celebrated in a great cathedral and performed by the leading prelate of the country. There were processions and festivities, lead­ing prelates and nobles arrived with numerous followers and all inhabitants of the town participated and were entertained in various ways. At the coronation of the Emperor Matthias in Frankfurt in 1612, the coronator, the Archbishop of Mainz, arrived with 257 followers; at the coronation of Joseph II in 1764, the number had increased to over 9 00.¹⁰⁰ All the electors were of course present at the coronation of a German emperor, together with a large number of followers, in addition to many other distinguished people.

Compared to Louis XIV’s courtly rituals, however, the coronation had the dis­advantage that it only happened once in a king’s reign, although he occasionally wore the crown also after the coronation. Nevertheless, he was distinguished in several other ways. He was met in solemn procession when he entered a town, and as kings travelled frequently, this happened often. Joyeuse entree’ (joyful entrance) became a usual term for such occasions; an important privilege for the Duchy of Brabant (1356) is referred to by this term. The ceremonials and rituals used to receive the king when he arrived in a town became increasingly more complex during the later Middle Ages, thus anticipating much of the ceremonials at Ver­sailles. Royal weddings and funerals were great occasions, performed with elaborate ceremonial and festivities.¹⁰¹ These ceremonies, as well as king’s visits, also became more exclusive; the common people were increasingly kept at a distance from the king and the courtiers surrounding him.

Most importantly, the English and French kings had healing powers. On regular occasions, the king performed a healing ceremony by laying his hands on people who suffered from scrofula, a disease related to tuberculosis, which, however, often heals spontaneously. Such healing ceremonies are mentioned for the first time in the eleventh century but they seem to have become a permanent institution only from the mid-thirteenth century, the reigns respectively of St Louis of France and Henry III of England. They continued until the 1820s in France.¹⁰² In the eight­eenth century, however, there were sceptical voices, including, of course, Voltaire. Pointing out that one of Louis XIV’s mistresses, Madame de Soubise, had died from scrofula, Voltaire wrote to Frederick II that he had lost confidence in the king’s healing power, as the woman in question ‘must have been very well touched’ by the king.¹⁰³ In contrast to France, the healing ceremonies ceased in England in the late seventeenth century, when the Calvinist William III abolished them. Apart from some attempts by Queen Anne, they were not taken up again.¹⁰⁴ On the contrary, the Hannoverians deliberately proclaimed their belief in modern science in opposi­tion to the Stuart’s superstitious adherence to the power of healing. At the initiative of Queen Caroline (1683—1737), married to George II, the princesses were vacci­nated against smallpox, which introduced this procedure in Britain.¹⁰⁵

Thus, from early on, the king was regarded as different from other humans and treated with particular respect. Rituals of different kinds were also frequent, but they did not to the same extent as the later ones emphasize the distance between the king and his surroundings. They were also less prominent in daily life at court. Before around 1300, oriental visitors to European courts would be struck by the simplicity there. Thietmar of Merseburg comments that the German nobles resen­ted Otto III’s practice of eating at a table elevated from that of the rest of his guests, a practice he had imitated from Roman palaces.¹⁰⁶

The changes from around 1300 onwards show some of the features that were further developed by Louis XIV. The number of courtiers as well as the expenses at court increased, as did the luxury and ceremonials.¹⁰⁷ The seating order at meals, the composition of menus and the price of fabric the various members of the court were allowed to use were regulated. The influence probably came from Byzantine and Muslim courts, first apparently to Sicily and later to other European courts. In the early fifteenth century, the Burgundian court was the most lavish as well as the most strictly regulated, partly because this was a very wealthy area with easy access to fine cloth and other luxuries, partly because of the need for the duke to gather the nobles around him to keep together his divided lands. Burgundian impulses came to Spain through Charles V’s succession to the Spanish throne in 1516, although Charles in the beginning preferred a simpler court etiquette, in accor­dance with Castilian traditions. However, he later changed his attitude and for­mally introduced the Burgundian etiquette. Prince Philip of Spain, the later Philip II, dined in public for the first time according to the ceremonials laid down by the Dukes of Burgundy on Assumption Day, 15 August 1548.¹⁰⁸ This led to a dou­bling of the number of higher court officials to 200. Although the new ceremonials met with a series of protests in Spain, they remained in force as long as the Habs­burgs ruled the country. With the political importance of Spain and the Habsburg Empire in the following period, Spanish etiquette influenced other countries as well, including France under Louis XIV.

The ceremonial novelties introduced by Louis XIV were, first, the minute reg­ulation of daily life; all the activities the king had in common with other human beings were ritualized in a way that all the time made him unique. Thus, the royal majesty was present in full, not only when the king received his crown, led his army in the field or presided over assemblies and government meetings but all the time from when he woke up in the morning until he went to bed at night. The court at Versailles forms the climax of the increasing pomp and ceremonials of the royal courts since the fourteenth century. As the same time, the religious character of the court was continued and developed. Ecclesiastical holidays largely regulated life at court, particularly in Catholic countries. The cult of the king’s person assumed religious overtones. His meals were celebrated in a way asso­ciated with the Eucharist. It was a great privilege to hand the king his napkin at the meal, which, after he had touched it, was treated as a relic. Despite the greater simplicity of religious rituals, courtly ceremonials developed in a similar way in Protestant countries. The festivities, performances of music and poetry and hunting expeditions, and the ceremonies they involved, also combined social events with occasions of political importance. Not least, they gave the king an impression of the people he might use for important offices.

This development seems to manifest the total victory of the king over any form of opposition, as expressed most clearly by Norbert Elias, who regards the courtly culture as a decisive step towards the civilization of European society, by suppres­sing the spontaneous passions of medieval people through strict discipline.¹⁰⁹ The violent and quarrelsome nobles changed into polite courtiers and loyal servants of the absolute king. Versailles became a golden cage where the French nobility competed for royal favour, expressed in pensions and empty titles, while the real government was run by non-nobles. There is some truth in this description. Never before had the personal contact between the king and the high nobility been so close, and the king’s intention in this was clearly to prevent opposition from this class and avoid internal struggles within in it, as had recently taken place during his own minority. However, such pacification would not have succeeded unless the nobility also retained its privileges and political power. Although Louis excluded the old nobility from ministerial posts — these were held by members of the ‘new’ nobility, ennobled by the king (‘noblesse de robe’) — the old nobility monopolized positions in the army and the diplomacy. Under Louis’ successors, some of them also held important ministerial posts. The price the king paid for abolishing the formal assemblies that had earlier limited his power was to share it with individual nobles, admittedly with a certain freedom in deciding whom to favour. Louis did succeed in centralizing France and above all in preventing the internal conflicts that had often occurred in the previous period but he never developed the kind of absolute rule to be found in, for instance, China or the Ottoman Empire.

In addition to making Versailles his permanent or almost permanent residence, Louis also made it the main residence of the French nobility. Earlier, the members of the nobility had mostly lived in their own palaces, which, of course, still existed, but were less in use. Now, they had to spend much of their time at Versailles if they wanted positions or favours. About those who tried to make a career without doing so, the king would just say: ‘I don’t know him.’ When the court was fully established at Versailles, it numbered around 20,000 people, with 1,000 nobles and 4,000 servants living in the palace itself and another 4,000 nobles and their servants living in the town. Living at Versailles also made the nobility financially dependent on the king. Madame de Maintenon, Louis’ mistress, estimated the cost of living there at 12,000 livres per year, a sum only a small minority of the nobles could afford. However, Louis paid great sums in pensions and sinecures; in 1683, the expenses for this purpose amounted to 1.4 million livres or 1.2 per cent of total government expenditure.¹¹⁰

King Philip II had practised similar principles as Louis XIV in Spain in the pre­vious century, where the etiquette was also very strict and partly a source of inspiration for Louis. However, Versailles is far from being a direct copy of Escor­ial. Escorial is a combination of monastery and palace, where the monastery forms the centre of the building. Although Versailles also had a chapel and religious cer­emonies played an important part, the royal bed-chamber forms the centre of the building, thus emphasizing its exclusively royal character. Nor did Escorial become the Spanish kings’ main residence in the same way as Versailles. In addition, the Spanish kings seem to have formed the centre of their kingdoms through their absence rather than their presence. The royal apartments at Escorial were isolated from the rest of the palace and too small for any great gathering of people. The Spanish king also appeared more rarely in public. In particular, Philip II is often depicted as ruling through papers rather than direct contact with his subjects,¹¹¹ although he travelled quite a lot, perhaps as much as ten out of the forty-two years of his reign.¹¹² Although Louis XIV was also seen more rarely by his ordinary subjects than his predecessors had been, he still appeared in public and it was also possible for ordinary, well-dressed people to visit the palace of Versailles. More­over, the whole point in the elaborate ceremonial of Versailles was the royal pre­sence, which was able to reward as well as to punish the courtiers with simple gestures. The French court ceremonial was both more elaborate and psychologi­cally more skilful than its Spanish counterpart.

Fortunately for Louis’ courtiers, the atmosphere at Versailles was also more cheerful than at Escorial, with music, dance, balls, fireworks, theatre performances and love affairs, in which the king himself in his younger days was also engaged. This was the golden age of French drama and literature in general and the king was an eager audience. He enjoyed Moliere’s comedies, defending him against the accusations of blasphemy that were directed against him after Tartuffe and laughing at Le Malade Imaginaire, despite suspicions that he might himself be a target. He rewarded artists of various kind and deliberately worked to make France a centre of artistic creativity. Later in his reign, when his health deteriorated and he became more religious as well as affected by the many defeats and the financial crisis during the War of the Spanish Succession, the atmosphere became more sombre.

The month of April in the Duke of Berry’s Book of Hours (Les tres riches heures du Duc de Berry) from around 1400 shows a hunting-party of young men and women.¹¹³ It is a hot day, as is evident from the people swimming in the river nearby, but the hunters are fully dressed in elegant, colourful clothes. They are five all together; one man and one woman on each horse, while a third horse only carries one woman. The hunters as well as a servant on foot, guiding them, carry falcons; otherwise, they have no arms. The painting shows hunting as the typical aristocratic entertainment. The use of falcons was also a fine art, cultivated by aristocratic con­noisseurs; the falcons needed much training as did also their users, as described in great detail in the classical work on the topic ascribed to the Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1212—50), On the Art of Hunting with Falcons. ¹¹⁴ In the Middle Ages, the use of falcons or hawks for hunting birds and smaller animals was very popular and these birds were bought at high prices or were costly gifts for kings or nobles; thus the king of Norway often sent falcons as gifts to the kings of England or France. Hunting had of course been a royal and aristocratic sport from far back in history. In the Middle Ages, the king’s travels were often determined by attractive areas for hunting rather than by political reasons. In England, one-fifth of the country was the king’s hunting-ground where special laws applied and poachers were severely pun­ished. Surprisingly much forest still remains around Paris because it was the king’s hunting-ground; nowadays, the president enjoys some of the same privileges. In intensely cultivated and densely populated parts of Europe, including most of France, hunting was strictly reserved for the nobility, whereas in mountainous or thinly populated areas, it was still allowed for peasants and ordinary people. As indicated by the painting, hunting was not only about killing animals but also about entertainment and display in the countryside and formed a good occasion for young men and women to meet — women were usually present at hunting-parties. Hunting was also a means for the king to meet the members of the nobility.

The splendour of the Duke of Berry’s hunting-parties was not necessarily sur­passed by those of Louis XIV 250 years later, but their size and formality certainly were. One of Louis’ reasons for building his main residence outside Paris in an area surrounded by forest was the opportunity to practise this royal entertainment par excellence. Louis XIV and his successors hunted between one-third and half the days of the year.¹¹⁵ With the advent of firearms, birds became less popular and even­tually, Louis XVI closed down the hawking establishment. Anyway, the most important game during all three reigns was the stag. Like anything else at Versailles, this chase was highly ritualized. A number of professional hunters and their dogs localized and pursued the stag and brought it within sight of the hunting-party who were able to follow from horseback or even in carriages on hunting roads cut in the forest. Hunting was thus an important part of life at the court of Versailles and evidently, it was a great privilege for the courtiers to be invited to a hunting­party with the king.

In addition to making the court into a kind of theatre where everything circled around the king, Louis also celebrated his own glory and that of France through paintings, coins, medals, statues and various kinds of panegyrics to his subjects as well as to other countries. The famous portrait by Rigaud shows how he wanted to appear to his surroundings and the general public. It was painted around 1700, when Louis was in his early sixties — he was born in 1638. The face is that of an elderly man; in contrast to the Emperor Augustus, he is not eternally youthful. The expression is blank, as usual in royal portraits in this and the previous period; such as Titian’s of Charles V and Philip II. However, the legs are elegant and youthful, an allusion to the young Louis’ skill at dancing. The royal insignia have no pro­minent position. There is no crown, the sword is just to be seen, half covered by the large coronation robe, and he uses the sceptre like an ordinary cane, possibly alluding to Van Dyke’s informal portrait of Charles I. These features depict Louis as the first gentleman of the kingdom rather than the Lord’s anointed wearing the traditional insignia. However, the great robe with the French lilies and the Roman column in the background suggests the French state, whose first servant Louis is.¹¹⁶

As Louis’ own comment indicates, the pomp and ceremonials were not simply vanity but an instrument in the government of the kingdom. To what extent Louis himself enjoyed the respect paid to him and to what extent he regarded the rituals as purely instrumental are difficult to know, but there is no doubt that he was a clever psychologist and in addition a hard-working ruler, despite all the time he spent on ceremonies. He had regular meetings with his leading ministers who formed a per­manent group around the king, similar to a modern cabinet, for which it was also a model. According to the Duke of Saint-Simon, Louis only went against the advice of the majority of his ministers six times in the course of forty-five years. As no minutes from government meetings were kept, we do not know if this is true, but at least it indicates that despite the quasi-divine atmosphere surrounding the king, there was open discussion in the council and that the king might be contradicted.

In dealing with his ministers, Louis seems to have adhered to Richelieu’s advice to his father:

I will dwell a bit on the bad effects which result from the remarks of those who speak too loosely about their subjects. The blows from a sword are easily healed. But it is not the same with blows of the tongue, especially if they be from the tongue of the king, whose authority renders the pain almost without remedy unless it be provided by the king himself... a great king should never insult his subordinates since they too are relatively weak.¹¹⁷

As illustrated by the subtle ways of showing royal approval or discontent, Louis had no need of harsh words to convey his opinion of subordinates. When the Duke of Saint-Simon resigned from the army, Louis first went out of his way to distinguish him during the coucher and then ignored him completely for three years.¹¹⁸ ‘If Hell is to be the denial of the face of God, Heaven in Louis XIV’s France was proximity to the king.’¹¹⁹ It must also be added that Louis not only impressed through his ceremonials; he was actually an impressive personality. Even one of his greatest critics, the Duke of Saint-Simon, had to admit:

Louis XIV was made for a brilliant court. In the midst of other men, his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand mien, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of his person, distinguished him till his death.¹²⁰

Mostly, however, he seems to have treated his ministers and generals with great consideration. When intendants, ministers or officers fell in disgrace, they were almost never punished in any other way than by being dismissed from their office. Even dismissal was rare, largely because courtiers tended to belong to prominent families whom the king did not want to offend. As usual, it was not particularly dangerous to hold high office in Europe during the old regime, in contrast to other parts of the world. In this respect, Louis XIV’s court forms the rule and, as we shall see, that of Henry VIII of England forms the exception. By contrast, various additions to the death penalty in the list from 1670 were applied to leaders of peasant rebellions.

Another means for kings to link the nobility more closely to themselves was the introduction of the chivalric orders. The earliest is the Order of the Sash, instituted by King Alfonso XI of Castile in 1330. The English Order of the Garter was instituted by Edward III, probably in 1348, while King John of France instituted the Order of the Star in 1351—52. The Order of the Golden Fleece, instituted by Duke Philip of Burgundy in 1430, became one of the most prestigious, as it was led by the Habsburgs, who are shown on portraits with its symbol around their necks. Originally, the orders were corporations with a largely military purpose, similar to the real military orders, like the Templars, the Teutonic Order and the Spanish Order of Calatrava. They aimed at linking the aristocracy more closely to the king and serving him in war. Some of these orders still exist, but mainly serve as medals for high-ranking persons or people who have distinguished themselves in some way. However, the members of the Order of the Garter still have their stalls in the chapel of Windsor where they gather on 15 June every year for religious service, lunch and the inauguration of new members.

The increasing size of the courts and the elaborate ceremonials are to be found in most European monarchies of the period. Thus, we find a significant increase in the imperial court in Vienna from the late seventeenth century onwards.¹²¹ In the seventeenth century, Louis XIV’s Versailles also became a model for other rulers, such as Schonbrunn outside Vienna, Caserta outside Naples and a number of palaces in the German principalities. What these rulers imitated was the idea of a palace outside the capital and the luxury and ceremonials of Versailles, not the style, which was rather influenced by Italian palaces. By contrast, Louis XIV was more successful in exporting French language and literature than architecture.¹²² While French had earlier competed with Latin, Italian and Spanish, it became established as the main international language during Louis’ reign.¹²³

From the early eighteenth century, England became a great power and the most important rival of France. Although the ceremonial at the English court followed the common European pattern, there was no equivalent to Versailles in Eng­land.¹²⁴ In 1698, the Duke of Saint-Simon described the main residence, White­hall, as the largest and ugliest building in Europe. Actually, very little had been built by the monarchy since the reign of Henry VIII. In 1698, Whitehall was destroyed by fire and in the following period, the king’s main residence was usually Kensington Palace — a tiny building compared to Versailles — in addition to Hampton Court, which was also extended in the Baroque style. The present main residence, Buckingham Palace, was bought by King George III in 1761 and later restored several times.

The lack of great building projects is a consequence of the reduced importance of the court as the main political centre of the realm, which in turn was connected to the first two Hanoverian kings’ lack of interest in their English realm. Both George I (1714-27) and George II (1727-60) preferred Hanover to England and stayed there as often as they could. By contrast, Queen Caroline (1683-1727), married to George II, was beautiful as well as cultured and intelligent. She became very popular and played an important part in English cultural life. Neither of the two kings mastered the English language very well and neither was a particularly impressive personality. The third Hanoverian, George III (1760-1820), George II’s grandson, was different, familiar with English language and culture and identifying thoroughly with his English realm. Although his attempts to control English poli­tics were not very successful, he adopted an English-style monarchy and kept little distance from his subjects. However, the relative decline of the court also has to do with the general development of English politics. Parliament became increasingly important during the seventeenth century and the organization of the government led by the prime minister from the early eighteenth century resulted in a further development in the same direction.

The difference between the English and the French monarchy is also expressed in the two central fields of hunting and gardening. Hunting for stags was practised only a few places in England; the landscape was used so intensively for agriculture or pasture that in most places there were no deer left; to hunt for them, one had to go to Scotland. Instead, fox hunting became very popular. Although this game could not be used for food — ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’, as Oscar Wilde expressed it - a good excuse was that the fox ate chickens and other useful animals. Whereas fox-hunting was recently, until it was abolished, considered spe­cifically aristocratic, it had a more popular character in the eighteenth century and was very different from the strictly formalized hunting at the French court. In a similar way, the English garden that developed from the early eighteenth century onwards is very different from a French one. Although an English garden may well be equally artificial, it is arranged so as to look natural, without symmetry, with flowers growing in various places apparently without any strict plan and, above all, with enormous oaks, beeches and other trees stretching their branches over the lawns. To eighteenth-century Englishmen, their gardens formed a symbol of their liberty in contrast to French symmetry and centralization.¹²⁵

In tracing the development of the medieval and early modern state, the main focus among social scientists and until recently also among historians, has been on the purely administrative development which seems most relevant from a modern point of view. Including the court and ceremonials increases the difference from modern conditions. The development of the state is not only an expression of the need to regulate society and carry out functions that are necessary for the popula­tion but also aims at linking local elites to the central government around the king.

Nor were the pomp and ceremonials at court purely instrumental; they were also an expression of the wish of the king and his surroundings for pleasure and enter­tainment and to show off their wealth and glory. Together with more frequent and costly warfare, however, it also became an increasing problem for the state finances and for the relationship between the elite and the common people, as will be dis­cussed later.

Common to all European courts, from early medieval Norway to Louis XIV’s Versailles, is their close links to the elites of the country. The nobles were supposed to spend some time at court, at least to have a personal relationship to the king. Younger members of noble families usually spent some years at court as pages and ladies-in-waiting and members of the lower aristocracy might seek the royal court in the hope of patronage and social advancement. Louis XIV linked the high nobility more closely to the king than before but the personal connection between the king and the nobility had been there all the time.

This composition of the court seems so obvious to students of European history that we forget how rare it is in a global context. A typical oriental court had no close connection to local elites. It consisted of eunuchs, slaves or people who for some reason or other had received the ruler’s favour and been promoted. In short, a proper oriental court was supposed to consist of people whom the ruler could ‘promote without jealousy and destroy without fear of revenge’. Although this was not always the case in practice, the distance between the ruler and the local elites was significantly greater in China or the Ottoman Empire than in Europe. China had a competent bureaucracy, recruited through strict examinations but the top bureaucrats did not belong to the inner circle around the emperor; only eunuchs and the imperial family had access to the inner palace where the emperor resided. The Ottoman court was supposed to consist of slaves and foreigners, while Turks were in principle excluded. Although exceptions were made in practice, there was no close connection with the local elites. By contrast, the European court is the expression of the ruler’s need to establish relationships to the leading members of society, which is also expressed in the development of the administration and political institutions.¹²⁶ Admittedly, some rulers managed with very simple courts, such as Charles XII of Sweden and Frederick William I of Prussia, to some extent also his successors. Prussia became a great military power largely because of the kings’ austerity. Apparently, the Prussian kings also managed to integrate the nobility in the state without a lavish court. However, Prussia was a small and poor country surrounded by enemies, which may have made it easier for the king to mobilize its nobility. In a large and composite country like France, the court seems to have been an important instrument for the king’s power.

The emergence of a courtly culture and a permanent or almost permanent royal residence linked the nobility more closely to the king but removed him from the common people. This was partly compensated for by other means. The royal bureaucracy had increased its control of local society. The king’s portrait was still on coins and seals, in addition to the fact that his statue might be present in some towns, notably the capital. Still, the Church had a tighter local network but after the Reformation, this network was controlled by the king in Protestant countries and was under a stronger influence from him in Catholic ones as well. New media could be exploited by the king to influence his subjects, such as the printing-press with newspapers and pamphlets and the woodcuts and prints which allowed pic­tures to be reproduced easily in many copies. Louis XIV was very skilful in the use of these media, directed to his subjects as well as to foreign audiences.¹²⁷