History of the Louvre

Louvre, 17th Century

 It was at the Louvre in 1623 during Carnival that Prince Charles first saw Louis XIII's youngest sister Henrietta Maria, dancing in a masque. From Art and Object:

Though it’s now known for its renowned art collection, the Louvre began its life as a fortress in the 12th century designed to protect what was then the western edge of Paris. Built by Philip II, the medieval fortress featured a 98-foot tall keep and a moat. It was used to defend the city until Paris grew and other defensive structures were built on the new outskirts of the city in the 14th century. 

In the 16th century, however, Francis I demolished the original fortress and rebuilt the Louvre as a Renaissance-style royal residence. It continued to house the royal family until 1682 when Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles.

Part of the medieval structure can still be seen today in the Louvre’s Salle Basse, built in the 13th century.

 In addition to building the renaissance palace, Francis I was an avid art collector. The art he amassed in the 16th century still makes up a core piece of the museum’s collection today, including works by Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as the museum’s most famous painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. (Read more.)

Henri IV lying in state at Louvre

Henri IV built the Grand Galerie at the Louvre. From Open Editions:

Louis XIII continued the tradition established by his father. In August1612, when the Duke of Pastrana was given an audience in the Petite Galerie, he entered the king’s apartment from the salle des gardes and walked through the antechamber and bedchamber, which were decorated by members of the court disposed by rank in a crescendo that terminated in the gallery. The gallery itself had been set up as a throne room, with Louis XIII and Maria de’ Medici seated side-by-side on an elevated platform at the far end of the room, looking out on the river Seine. Behind them, the ladies of the court stood on stands shaped as “those of a theatre,” while the pages of the king’s and queen’s bedchambers stood behind barriers placed along the sides of the room.19 Along with the members of the royal family, large numbers of courtiers attended such ceremonies, as reported by Camillo Guidi in September 1618:

Monsieur de Bonneuil […] led me to His Majesty, whom I met midway down the gallery as he was coming towards me […] The audience was long and favorable […] and one might say that the whole court and nobility was there.20

(Read more.)

Some impressions of Louis XIII. From The Secret Lives of Royals, Aristocrats and Commoners:

Louis XIII was short, ungainly, and---until disease attacked him---inclined to corpulence. He was not beautiful, although Sully, who had served the royal house so faithfully, professed to admire the boy's regular features. His nose was too large, his head out of proportion to his body, his chin projected, his lover lip was unpleasantly thickened, and his mouth was usually half-open. Owing to the awkward formation of his palate he was compelled to speak little and slowly to avoid a trying stammer. He suffered from chronic gout, and it is almost certain that he had at least one epileptic fit. His teeth were decayed, and he was a continual invalid through persistent dyspepsia. Most of these physical defects may be traced in his family history. Many of them he bequeathed to his sons. Philip inherited his undersized stature as well as his brown hair and swarthy skin. In profile Louis XIV challenged comparison with the ancestral Bourbons, and was in more ways than one a true grandson of Henri IV. (Read more.)

 And his brother Gaston, HERE.

Purchase My Queen, My Love, HERE.
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Dear Olympic Athletes...Stop The Shameful Trash Talk

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

Please remember, you have been chosen to represent the United States in a SPORT, not in political commentary, while you are at the Olympics. You have been given all kinds of swag, publicity, money, support, travel, housing, food etc. all bankrolled by the people of the United States either through donations, support of sport governing bodies, and yes, taxes that supported the arenas and areas you practiced in. And, indirectly, yes, taxes supported your opportunities.

I was once heavily involved in the sport of gymnastics as a coach, a judge and a national volunteer chairman. I saw how hard so many people worked to get teams to Olympic venues; people who had their Olympic dreams shattered and would never see the glory of competition in the Olympic arena.

But you do.

When you are done at the Olympics, whether you win or not, you will carry that honor with you for the rest of your life. It will always be attached to your name, and it will likely open doors for you that will be closed to others.

When you are finished competing on our dime and representing us, you can say what you want and be as political as you want. At that point, it becomes about YOU not us.

But, while you are wearing OUR flag, OUR colors, OUR uniform on the international stage, you need to remember the HONOR you have been given. You were NOT entitled to it but we allowed you to have it. So, when you speak about our country, how about if you HONOR us instead of disparaging us? Keep your personal opinions about anything other than your sport to yourself. (Read more.)

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The Myth of Stolen Land and the Erasure of Indigenous Agency

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

By the time Spanish missionaries and soldiers established a sustained presence in California in the late 18th century, indigenous California had already been transformed by forces internal to the continent. Disease, resource pressure, and intertribal conflict had reduced populations and altered political structures. Spain claimed California as a colonial possession, governed it for just over half a century, and integrated it into a broader imperial system. When Mexico gained independence, it inherited Spanish sovereignty. California then passed from Mexico to the US in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a treaty negotiated between two recognized states following a declared war, and ratified under the international law of the era.

One can condemn the war. Many did, even at the time. But condemnation does not erase the legal fact of transfer. Mexico ceded California in exchange for $15M and the assumption of $3.25M in debt. That is not theft in any coherent legal sense. It is state succession, a mechanism by which sovereignty has changed hands throughout recorded history.

At this point, critics often shift the argument. The land may have passed legally between colonial powers, they say, but it was never theirs to give. It belonged to the tribes. This objection deserves careful treatment, because it raises the hardest questions.

The US government itself recognized these questions. In the early 1850s, federal negotiators entered into treaties with California tribes, treaties that involved the cession of land in exchange for reservations, goods, livestock, and federal recognition. These agreements were not symbolic gestures. They were attempts, however flawed, to regularize sovereignty through consent rather than extermination. Some treaties were shamefully mishandled, delayed, or ignored by Congress. That failure remains a stain. But the existence of the treaties matters. It shows that tribal leaders were not treated merely as obstacles to be cleared, but as parties capable of bargaining, choosing, and surviving.

To insist that these agreements were meaningless because tribes were too weak to consent is to deny indigenous agency altogether. It implies that native leaders were incapable of understanding tradeoffs, incapable of acting strategically, and incapable of making binding decisions for their people. That view is not morally enlightened. It is condescending.

The moral record of the US in California is mixed, and often dark. Violence, displacement, and broken promises occurred. None of that is in dispute. But moral wrongdoing does not automatically negate sovereignty. If it did, nearly every nation on earth would be illegitimate. Borders everywhere are the product of conquest, negotiation, succession, and compromise. To single out California as uniquely stolen is to apply a standard that no historical society could meet. (Read more.)

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On the Waterfront (1954)

  

From Word on Fire:

The film became the definitive work of “actors’ director” Elia Kazan, inspiring countless artists, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who called Kazan “a master of a new kind of psychological and behavioral faith in acting.” Marlon Brando’s powerful, complex, and vulnerable performance as Terry Malloy set the standard for acting in the generations to come, with Kazan concluding, “If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don’t know what it is.”

As On the Waterfront was included in the Vatican’s 1995 Alcuni film importanti list, here are some of the Catholic themes woven throughout the film. 

Elia Kazan (1909–2003) was a Greek-American filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, and actor, described by Stanley Kubrick as “without question, the best director we have in America, and capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses.” Kazan started his career in acting and was an early adherent to the new “method acting” school under the direction of Lee Strasberg. From the outset, Kazan had a particular attraction to stories exploring personal and social issues, including racial prejudice, domestic violence, and union corruption: “I don’t move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme.”

He acted in a few films but found acclaim for his directorial work at the helm of classics like Gentlemen’s Agreement, Pinky, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront. Kazan and the young Marlon Brando first worked together on the Broadway adaptation—and subsequent film adaptation—of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, the story of Blanche DuBois who leaves her wealth to live in the working-class apartment of sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley (Marlon Brando).

Brando later wrote: 

I have worked with many movie directors. . . . Kazan was the best actors’ director by far of any I’ve worked for . . . the only one who ever really stimulated me, got into a part with me and virtually acted it with me. . . . He was an arch-manipulator of actors’ feelings, and he was extraordinarily talented; perhaps we will never see his like again. 

After the success of Streetcar, Kazan and Brando collaborated again on Viva Zapata! before embarking on their most ambitious project to date, On the Waterfront. The film was inspired by the 1948 New York Sun article series “Crime on the Waterfront” by Malcolm Johnson, which outlined corruption on the New Jersey waterfront. (Read more.)

 

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HUGE WIN on Deportation

 From Tierney's Real News:

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the Trump administration’s policy of detaining illegals arrested in the interior of the United States without a bond hearing to challenge the detention, effectively allowing mandatory detention. Illegals can now be detained for longer periods without release on bond and mass deported quickly....For over thirty years, when ICE arrested illegal aliens living inside the country - not on the border, but in places like Minneapolis or Milwaukee - those detainees could slow deportation down to glacial speed by requesting a “bond hearing” to argue for their release on bail.

Nobody really knew why; it was just how things were done. Norms and customs.

But the Trump Administration took a fresh look at the statute and said, hey, wait a minute, the law says people “seeking admission” to the United States don’t get bond hearings. It just says “shall detain.” Shall.

It also says that, if you’re here illegally, you’re still considered to be ‘seeking admission’— you just skipped the line.

In other words, a person who never bothered to apply for citizenship doesn’t magically get more rights than someone who at least tried.

So, the Trump administration took it to court and the Fifth Circuit agreed, 2-1.

Judge Edith Jones essentially ruled that thirty years of doing it wrong doesn’t automatically make it right.

The decision might sound technical, but the practical implications were huge.

NOW, if an alien crossed illegally and ICE finds them - wherever they are - they’re done. They won’t walk American streets freely again unless they win in their removal proceeding (which is highly unlikely).

In the meantime, they must stay in detention. They can’t go home to get their things. They are simply done, and the longer they fight, the longer they remain in detention.

Their choice now is to either agree to deportation, or cool it in detention while their lawyers waste time on futile filings. Then they get deported anyway when they lose. (Read more.)

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The West Must Restore Christendom to Survive

 From TFP:

Dom Bertrand’s lineage reads like a panorama of some of Europe’s most prominent monarchs. Besides all the Portuguese royals, his family tree includes Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, Charlemagne and Charles V of Spain. He is especially proud to descend from canonized saints, including Saint Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, Saint Nuno of Saint Mary, Saint Vladimir the Great and Saint Louis IX of France.

In 1807, as Napoleon conquered vast portions of Europe, Portugal found itself under imminent threat. To outmaneuver the French, the Prince Regent of Portugal, Dom João VI—also a direct ancestor of Dom Bertrand—transferred the capital of the sprawling, four-continent Portuguese Empire to Brazil in 1808. The move ensured the monarchy’s survival and ushered in a new era in the Americas.

From that moment on, Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese Empire, with the city of Rio de Janeiro as its capital. The arrival of the Portuguese court transformed Brazil, which, until then, had been a colony with no national unity beyond its geography and was composed of nearly autonomous provinces. The country’s cohesion as a nation grew stronger, leading to a notable period of progress in which libraries, schools, industries and urban development initiatives, among other advancements, flourished.

In 1822, Dom João VI’s son, Dom Pedro I, proclaimed Brazil’s independence, turning it into a new and thriving empire itself with one of the world’s most powerful navies, the first long-distance submarine telegraph cable connecting South America to Europe, the world’s first modern postal systems, one of the highest literacy growth rates in the Western Hemisphere, and the biggest industrial park in Latin America. (Read more.)

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The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

February 8 is the anniversary of the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587. The Queen of Scots, having been unjustly imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England for twenty years, was beheaded after a sham trial. According to an eye-witness account:

Then she, being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and crossing themselves prayed in Latin. She, turning herself to them, embracing them, said these words in French, 'Ne crie vous, j'ay prome pour vous', and so crossing and kissing them, bad them pray for her and rejoice and not weep, for that now they should see an end of all their mistress's troubles.

Then she, with a smiling countenance, turning to her men servants, as Melvin and the rest, standing upon a bench nigh the scaffold, who sometime weeping, sometime crying out aloud, and continually crossing themselves, prayed in Latin, crossing them with her hand bade them farewell, and wishing them to pray for her even until the last hour.

This done, one of the women have a Corpus Christi cloth lapped up three-corner-ways, kissing it, put it over the Queen of Scots' face, and pinned it fast to the caule of her head. Then the two women departed from her, and she kneeling down upon the cushion most resolutely, and without any token or fear of death, she spake aloud this Psalm in Latin, In Te Domine confido, non confundar in eternam, etc. Then, groping for the block, she laid down her head, putting her chin over the block with both her hands, which, holding there still, had been cut off had they not been espied. Then lying upon the block most quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, In manus tuas, Domine, etc., three or four times. Then she, lying very still upon the block, one of the executioners holding her slightly with one of his hands, she endured two strokes of the other executioner with an axe, she making very small noise or none at all, and not stirring any part of her from the place where she lay: and so the executioner cut off her head, saving one little gristle, which being cut asunder, he lift up her head to the view of all the assembly and bade God save the Queen. Then, her dress of lawn [i.e. wig] from off her head, it appeared as grey as one of threescore and ten years old, polled very short, her face in a moment being so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and a down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.

There is a great deal of similarity between Mary of Scotland and her descendant, Marie-Antoinette. Both possessed immense beauty, charm, and joie de vivre, along with the ability of inspiring either great love or great hatred. Both are icons of romance and passion, when, in all probability, they had very little actual romance or passion in their personal lives, especially when compared to the sorrows they had to bear. Mary and her first husband, Francis II of France, seemed to have a deep and genuine affection for each other, in spite of the fact that he was afflicted with health problems (like many of the Valois.) Her other two husbands, however, were total and complete wretches, who made Mary's life a living hell. Antonia Fraser, in her stellar biography of Mary, conjectures that the Scottish queen fell in love with her cousin Darnley, before she found out what he was. Other biographers, such as Alison Weir and John Guy, believe that she married Darnley not out of love but to solidify her claim to the English throne, since Henry Stewart was also an heir. At any rate, Darnley was abusive in every way, and unfaithful. He plotted against her, threatening to declare her child illegitimate, telling the Pope and the King of France that she was a bad Catholic, while participating in the murder of her secretary David Rizzio before her eyes. (I might have been tempted to put gun powder under his bed, too.) However, there is overwhelming proof that Mary had nothing to do with Darnley's death, as Fraser, Guy, and Weir all describe in detail. I would especially recommend Alison Weir's excellent Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley, in which the events of Kirk o'Field are retraced with precision, exonerating Mary beyond all doubt. Weir shows how Mary was planning to reconcile with Darnley and live with him again, for their son's sake, when the Scottish lords had Darnley strangled, before blowing up his house. As for the marriage with Bothwell, all three biographers mentioned above believe that Mary was kidnapped and raped by him; when she discovered that she was pregnant she assented to a wedding. There was no great romance. She later tried to have the marriage annulled. 

 

 Mary should have returned to France after the defeat at Carberry Hill and her subsequent escape from her initial captivity. In France, she had lands as Dowager Queen, and her grandmother was still alive. Instead, she chose England and throwing herself upon Elizabeth's mercy. Big mistake. But I think she did not want to be too far from her infant son James, with whom she hoped to be reunited, as only a mother can hope. Mary, like Marie-Antoinette, is often dismissed as being stupid. She did make some imprudent choices, that's for certain. John Guy's biography carefully offers proofs that, in spite of everything, Mary often showed herself to be an astute politician, who successfully played her enemies against each other, avoiding some potential disasters early in her rule. The fact that her personal reign lasted as long as it did, in the turbulent era of the Scottish Reformation, when she was surrounded by those who believed she was Jezebel just because she was Catholic, is remarkable. She would have had to have been more ruthless and cruel, less merciful and tolerant, to have been a successful monarch in that particular time and place. Her abdication, and many of the disastrous decisions she made in those fateful months, happened when she was recovering from assault and a miscarriage/stillbirth. She was obviously going through some kind of breakdown. Almost half of Mary's life was spent as a prisoner, separated from her only surviving child, who was taught to despise his mother as a harlot. When accused of plotting Elizabeth's murder, forged letters were used against her, and she was deprived of counsel. As she declared at her trial:

I do not recognize the laws of England nor do I understand them, as I have often asserted. I am alone without counsel or anyone to speak on my behalf. My papers and notes have been taken from me, so that I am destitute of all aid, taken at a disadvantage.

Before her execution, Mary was told that her life would be the death of the Protestant religion, but her death would be its life. The ultimate reason for her demise was the fact that she was a Catholic queen. With that in mind, she approached the scaffold.

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How George Soros Built the Empire Without Ever Taking the Throne

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

There is a comfortable way to think about political influence in a democracy. Candidates make arguments. Voters choose. The winners pass laws. The losers regroup. Money matters, of course, but in the familiar way, it buys ads, staff, and the occasional glossy mailer. On this picture, a billionaire donor is a loud person with a megaphone. He can amplify a message, but he cannot rewrite the terms of the conversation.

George Soros does not fit that picture. The best way to understand him is not as a rich man with opinions, and not as a philanthropist with a large heart, but as a strategist of systems. He has not merely pushed particular policies. He has built an infrastructure designed to decide, in advance, which policies are even thinkable, which institutions are trusted, which officials are promoted, and which forms of social disorder are excused as “the work of justice.” This is not ordinary politics. It is meta politics.

Start with a simple distinction. There is influence over outcomes, and there is influence over the mechanisms that generate outcomes. The first is visible. It shows up in campaigns, headlines, and election night returns. The second is often invisible. It lives in the training programs, the grant pipelines, the professional associations, the litigation shops, the media “watchdogs,” the academic credentialing, the philanthropic laundries, and the low salience offices that quietly control enforcement. The second kind of influence is vastly more durable. It survives a news cycle, an election, and sometimes an entire generation.

Soros has invested, for decades, in that second kind of influence. He does not need to “control” the world in a literal, comic book sense. A man can be a puppet master without pulling every string. He needs only to fund the stage, hire the lighting crew, select the scripts, and ensure that the critics all review the same play. At that point, the actors and audience can congratulate themselves on their freedom while walking through corridors that have been built for them. (Read more.)

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The Medieval Powerhouse That Was the Kingdom of Bohemia

 From The Collector:

In the 13th century, Emperor Frederick II and his allies were determined to control as much of the Mediterranean as possible. Additionally, the empire faced internal chaos during the Great Interregnum after Frederick’s death. As a result, the Bohemians were  emboldened to take as much territory from their neighbors as possible. They hoped to build a buffer zone between their territory and the Mongols invading from the east. In 1241, King Wenceslaus I, Ottokar I’s son, repelled a Mongol attack on Bohemia, ensuring the kingdom’s security.

Wenceslaus’s son, Ottokar II, became king in 1253 and ruled until his death in 1278. He had clashed with his father, even trying to overthrow him in a revolt that failed. As a result of his marriage to Emperor Frederick’s sister Margaret, he became the Duke of Austria, adding this territory to the Bohemian kingdom. Ottokar II was a warrior king who vowed to expand Bohemia’s borders, earning himself the nickname “The Iron and Golden King.” He even sent expeditions to the Baltic Sea, defeating the Old Prussians and establishing a settlement called Královec, now known as Kaliningrad. At the height of his rule, Bohemian territory stretched from Austria to the Adriatic Sea.

However, King Rudolf I, a member of the Habsburg family who prevailed in the Great Interregnum, began to seize Ottokar II’s possessions. He seized much of the territory in Austria conquered by Ottokar and destroyed his army at the Battle of the Marchfield. However, this did not end the Bohemians’ power. Kings Wenceslaus II and III extended their power to Poland and Hungary, setting up the kingdom for its Golden Age in the 14th century. (Read more.)

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