ICYMI, new episode!

A fascinating and compelling portrait (the podcast not the doodle 🍐) Looking forward to more great episodes!

can't be denied philipon got his ass

How do you do, Fellow Citoyens?

King Louis-Philippe I was conscientious and hard-working. So it's a little unfortunate — but extremely funny — that the defining image of him became a caricature drawing his jowly face as a pear. Find out more in my latest episode! thesiecle.com/episode48/

NEW EPISODE: After the July Revolution of 1830, France has a new king. And Louis-Philippe wants everyone to know he's not like a regular king, he's a cool king. thesiecle.com/episode48/

Surprise! @jeanettepatrick.bsky.social and I have teamed up with @lynnprobbins.bsky.social and @patricklong.bsky.social at Primary Source Media to bring you Revolutions in Retrospect, a podcast that explores the histories of the revolutions that remade the Atlantic world.

Folks might want to set aside half an hour of listening time on Thursday. No reason in particular…

LLMs have tons of accuracy issues but I must note as an expert that 19th Century *human* historians were also very capable of confidently hallucinating “facts,” extrapolating wild nonsense based on a single misunderstanding.

I encounter more DNS errors trying to visit Gallica than any other site on the Internet…

“Soult was no more a party politician than [Marshal Étienne] Gérard, yet he was a strong believer in discipline and order, and this he imposed [as War Minister] with an efficiency he had not always shown on the battlefield.” — Hugh Collingham

Pretty good haul for a neighborhood used bookstore!

To my listeners for whom English is a 2nd language, YouTube is strongly encouraging me to turn on "automatic dubbing" for The Siècle, in which their AI will produce translated dubs in other languages. My first instinct is "hell no" but I'm willing to be persuaded — do any of you like this feature?

A long thread worth reading if you can stop scrolling. You will see how much history rhymes. Quite astonishingly so, actually.

Can anyone suggest any good sources (ideally at least *somewhat* specialized, not zoomed-out pop-histories) I could cite to discuss the limited constitutional role British monarchs played circa 1830 (so I can contrast it to Louis-Philippe's conception of his role)?

Are any of my followers historians specializing in the American Revolution?

In December 1976, thieves broke into the Louvre. An alarm prevented them from staying long, but they made off with a priceless artifact: a diamond-studded sword made for the 1825 coronation of King Charles X. (It is still missing.)

The Doctrinaire leader Pierre Paul Royer-Collard was once asked whether he had called his erstwhile disciple François Guizot an "austere intriguer." "I did not say austere," Royer-Collard replied.

My great bane: 19th Century memoirs that weren't published until the 1950s and so are not public domain.

It is that most glorious of days: *I* am off work, but the child’s day care is still open. So all day for writing!

"Both Thiers and Guizot claimed that Louis-Philippe preferred himself to the other: the truth is probably that the King was more at ease with the former and had more respect for the latter, and was able to convince both that this was a preference." — Hugh Collingham, "The July Monarchy"

Good news, everyone! My new friend is about to make The Siècle "top ranking in its own category and top ranking in all the categories" and I'm going to be a top podcaster in the world and earn a lot of money.

I asked whether Polignac thought he was receiving divine visions, or if he was just incompetent. One listener suggests another interpretation: What if Polignac was getting real visions but was just too stupid to follow them? 😂

"Jules has seen the Holy Virgin again last night. She ordered him to persevere, and promised that all would end well." All did NOT end well for Jules de Polignac. But is it true he was seeing visions of the Virgin Mary? Find out in a NEW EPISODE:

Merry Sièclemas!

Are you on Instagram? I'm trying to expand The Siècle's social media reach there — a like on the latest reel would be a great way to help boost us in the algorithm: www.instagram.com/p/DPJ9dzpCb2W/

Coming Monday morning to your feeds: this guy.

“He was no tyrant, but a strongly principled mediocrity.” — Historian Hugh Collingham on Charles X

A helpful breakdown from @askhistorians.bsky.social of the value of primary and secondary sources in public history. Someone who doesn't use primary sources may be merely repeating. But not using secondary sources means you miss expert insight & debate. Both are key!

Suggestions for translating this? "La main de Dieu roule les siècles devant lui, mais sa sagesse préside au mouvement qu'il leur imprime." I have: "The hand of God rolls the centuries before him, but his wisdom guides the movement he gives them" but welcome improvements.

Doing a little background reading on 19th Century apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and it once again turns out to pay to stay up to date with @histphilosophy.bsky.social:

Episode 15: "The Miracle Child" The shocking assassination of the Duc de Berry swings France to the right. New laws suspend habeas corpus, censor the press, & give extra seats in parliament to wealthy royalists. With protests in the streets, opposition leaders debate how far they'll go to resist.

You can tell The Siècle is authentic human work because an AI would have reached the Franco-Prussian War by now. 😂

Most of what I do with is pure popular history — telling a historical story, based primarily on secondary sources with a dash of primary sources for extra details or flavor. But every now & then sources fall short & I have to do serious textual analysis to sort stuff out, and it's VERY satisfying.

Les Peuples Libres de la Terre du Milieu may be in trouble.

Fans of The Siècle might want to give this a listen to learn about the woman who was friend to the future King Charles X and mother of Charles's prime minister Jules de Polignac.

I’ve just started Episode 24 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It's July 1830, and in France, it's time for The Purge. Hear more in Episode 47: The July Settlement: thesiecle.com/episode47/

NEW EPISODE: Congratulations, you won a revolution. Now what? The winners of France's July Revolution grapple with the aftermath, like how you get the deposed king out of the country, how much to amend the constitution — and what to do with all the bodies. It's Episode 47: The July Settlement.

Merry Sièclemas!

Now deep into @thesiecle.com , The Siècle, Episode 22 rn. Strong recommend. I have found it highly relevant to our own moment here in the US, too. It’s my commute listen, in fact, even displacing Argentine sports radio, which has been a reliable escapism vehicle recently.

President Bonaparte is such a great alt history idea

Today the Siècle @thesiecle.com gets a double prop. I’m on Episode 4. The first is the geographic review of France (Episode 3) which was deftly packed with abundant information, all delivered in engaging fashion. And now Ep 4 references @rlspang.bsky.social ‘s work and recommends her book on…

In honor of Robert Todd Lincoln’s birthday, here’s a preview clip of a fun quiz from our Lincoln episode—“Who Said it: Abe Lincoln, or a Scholastic Book Fair Poster?” Listen to our Lincoln episode here on 🍎🍏podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

Thank you for following my live-posting of France's 1830 July Revolution! For the rest of the story, and more detail and context about everything I shared, be sure to listen to The Siècle! In this thread, some notes about sourcing:

People in the past didn't know what would happen next. WE don't know what happens next. This very detailed "live posting" of France's 3-day "July Revolution" (1830) is great proof of this. Go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. (See too Colin Jones's book on the ninth of thermidor).

It's really cool that I can just load a free website and find out what time sunrise and sunset was on a particular day ~200 years ago:

The violent aftermath of Marmont's retreat continues to unfold in Paris. Volunteers protect the priceless art in the Louvre, but the Tuileries Palace wine cellar is thoroughly pillaged, which puts many of the "heroes of July" on the sidelines for the rest of the day. #julyrevlive

On Thursday, July 29, 1830, the hunters became the hunted. For two days, King Charles's army had hurled itself against the people of Paris. Now, exhausted, the soldiers hunkered down in the royal palace. On the streets, Parisians gathered menacingly. #julyrevlive