II.5.2. EVERYTHING AIDS THE OVERCLASS

PAGE INSPIRED BY THE OLD REGIME AND THE REVOLUTON BY ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE, 1856.

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Nobles...

• Lead a hierarchy thought willed by God. 

•  Valor in battle is the quintessential value, reserved to nobles alone.

• Hold the main positions in the State, the Church and especially the army. 

 

• Are exempted from most taxes.

• Control sales taxes and tolls, which are inherited or grants from the king. 

 

• Monopolize hunting big animals, fight duels only between themselves, may alone purchase the most luxurious wares (which explains the site of the modern garment center: Please click).

• Have identifying liveries for servants, a coat of arms, a reserved pew at church and often a name whose prefix "de" indicates nobility (it is still considered a joli nom, "pretty name").

• Are ceremoniously decapitated and buried if condemned of crime, while bodies of ignominiously hanged commoners remain on the gallows until they decompose.

  Executions of a noble (zoom) and a commoner (zoom).

• Own gibbets. The gibbets themselves show rank by the number of beams from which to hang the condemned (two to eight, the king having nine). The corpse of the highest-born (commoner) victims hang from the top.

• May lead popular revolts because of their prestige and because they are trained to fight. Royals legitimize rebellions by heading them.

• Are magnified in the arts by mythology and allegory, as the next page shows.  

• The French word for "bad" — villain — originally meant "peasant," and we still say "noble" and "ignoble."

Enriched commoners may use their revenues to purchase a title, acquire land to which a title is attached or marry their daughters to lords seeking dowries. Such practices slow capitalism's rise.

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The valet Figaro's famous question to his noble master,

"What have you done for all that wealth? 

You took the trouble to be born! Whereas I..."

 shows that at the end of the 18th century

 that belief was changing.

--  The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais, 1778

So was the economy.   

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Detour: In our society of advanced capitalism...

• Everything is monetized. Competition rather than solidarity is at the heart of our culture, "success" means financial success, we are consumers rather than citizens and may even see ourselves as "brands." Ads glamorize isolation and irrationality. 

Châtelet crossroad in central Paris, June 2022

The blank background represents an outside world with which there is no contact. No reason is given for buying a product, what it is or even what the brand is: Its logo is enough.

Elitist, individualistic ways of viewing

 Paris and the past 

are part of that mentality.

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Next,

II.5.3.

 Allegory, nobles' weapon vs. rising capitalists