| JUL 18, 2025 |
The closest historic analogy to what’s happening in Trump’s Washington is the court of Louis XIV, which brimmed with competitive sycophancy and insider deals. As the Duke de Saint Simon noted in his memoir, written in the 1730s:
“His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises. There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. That was the only way to approach him; if he ever took a liking to a man it was invariably due to some lucky stroke of flattery in the first instance, and to indefatigable perseverance in the same line afterwards.”
But flattery could go only so far. During the French Revolution, Louis XIV’s tomb was desecrated and his remains scattered.