Interesting comments below about the clash between Muslim and Progressive values, but need I point out that it is completely off-topic? The whole thrust of this post (and, more generally, the series) is that religion was _not_ a fundamental cause of the (misnamed) Wars of Religion. If you need further proof, just consider how easily most Protestant leaders switched to Catholicism, when it suited their pragmatic goals. Henry of Navarre switched twice. "Paris is worth a mass", indeed.
I did not expect people to react so heatedly to my answer, sorry about that. I'm actually not even a progressive at all. I just wanted to highlight how even in contemporary France the religious topic is used by politicians to agitate crowds and reach their political goals.
They indeed could switch tomorrow to any other discourse if it helped them stay in power or gain power.
What major leader other than Henri IV switched to Catholicism?
Were the many thousand he died (and murdered) in the name of religion only motivated by practical material benefits? Even when Henri converted, 120 members of the Catholic League chose banishment from the capital rather than accepting someone they viewed as a Protestant.
The Protestant reformation led to armed conflicts all over Europe. Was everyone suffering from a Structural-Demographic crisis?
If religion is out of the question when we talk about these issues, then I understand that what the Germans did to the Jews in World War II must be interpreted as intra-elite competition. Am I right?
Thanks for this article. Indeed I learned a lot about the history of France from your books, which although being French, I did not know.
It would be great if you could some day write about the current situation in France. It's not per se a war of religion, but the role anti Muslim rethoric takes in current French politics has been incredible for decades. I do not know of another country where debates can be has heated about where women could be allowed to wear hijab or not. In France for eg mothers who want to help teachers on a school event are not allowed to wear hijab, nor girls at school, they are not even allowed to wear anything ressemling a Muslim dress at school. Some years ago there was a huge debate about burkinees on the beach, and they were forbidden too. There seems to be a sort of obsession in France about what Muslim women can wear or not, very disproportionate, because women should be able to wear what they please.
In short, French politics seems obsessed with religion, which is strange in a country where probably almost half of the population is actually atheist...
“Women should be able to wear what they please, which is why I support a culture which forces women to cover their faces and withdraw from the public sphere under threat of rape or even murder.”
Twenty-first-century progressives truly are beyond parody.
Not all muslim women cover their faces and not all muslim women cover their heads. In fact you can see that in Muslim countries themselves, usually after a revolutionary islamist phase, mannerisms relax (takes times) and people move on and go about their daily lives.
It's funny how progressives from the 1960s onwards were adamant that women should be liberated from Christianity. While the same ‘progressives’ and their successors now fully side with a Muslim patriarchy which harbours ideas about women that make the 1960s Western Christian male overlords look like a bunch of wimps.
But, if bothered by French antics, do come to the Netherlands: not only are Muslim women's bodies well covered and veiled, non Muslim women living in areas with large Muslim (men) populations also take ever more care to not be too ‘provocative) dressed when they go out.
Isn’t that great? The progressive revolution ending in a renewed public decency. Of women of course. Policed by young Muslim volunteers…’Any whores around?’
Still, even for progressive newspapers - we have four but they’re basically the same - it is impossible to ignore harassment, intimidation, spitting at and touching of women. And however much they wished it was ‘a white thing’...it’s not. (Disappointing to some, no doubt, as they would lust over the media opportunities of highly mobile young toxic white males out there on the streets harassing women).
No, it’s a male Muslim immigrant thing. But these poor progressives don’t allow each other to say that. So they use progressive slang to veil the discussion, like ‘boys on scooters’, or 'young men on fat bikes’.
EVERYBODY knows what that means, and we have understood the various progressive descriptions since the 1980s (That’s when I started playing football in an Amsterdam park with a whole bunch of ethnicities. All were great apart from the Moroccans (Turks would not allow non Turks to join their games) who managed to turn almost every game in an angry, f***** up event.
Since their honor is easily offended, you know - My mother, a former teacher and admin, experienced first hand in the 1980s how groups of Moroccan and Turkish (another society of honourable men) fathers, brothers, uncles and nephews (say hello to the tribe) would come to school to beat up teachers who had had to guts to expel someone’s son for bad behavior. This was widespread behaviour but no one in the - highly progressive - education sector ever went public).
Moroccan boys and men have dominated this new treatment of non Muslim women as soon as they began to arrive in numbers in the 1970s. Dutch women were approached with pick up lines like ‘Hey, wanna fuck?’ Since western women are loose f*** machines as we all know. (In the late 70s and early 80s progressive papers still wrote about such things).
Today, by the age of 18, 40% of Dutch/Moroccan boys will have been ‘in contact’ with the police…They have progressed from just street crime to organised crime - They have a thing for spectacular violence: AK47s and high explosives. I guess, despite all the piety and decency demanded from Muslim and non Muslim women, Scarface is a bigger treat to them than the Quaran…
Their sex crime rate is 3 x higher (Germany 6 x but they have many more Syrians). Speaking of Syrians, when Syrian ‘refugees’ in camps in Turkey are informed by Dutch officials about Dutch equality of the sexes, lgbt culture, same sex activities for boys and girls at school etc, i.e. when they are informed about Dutch progressive culture, decimals of potential ‘refugees’ choose to not apply for asylum in the Netherlands.
You may find it comforting to know that basically the entire Dutch establishment has veiled its language when ‘discussing’ the Muslim immigrant ‘thing’. Though they prefer to not discuss it at all as it is a ‘right wing topic’ - Nothing is more convenient to them than the existence of some - any - right wing party critical of immigration. Since that allows you to block all discussions.
Street crime has been a verboten topic for progressives since young Moroccan men began to rob old working class Dutch women in the 1980s. Decent progressive people simply don’t speak about such things. Perhaps they’re comforted by the knowledge that most crime takes place in working class areas? But I do believe they missed an opportunity: after all the robbers showed an awful lack of diversity of victims.
But there never was any necessity to talk about it. Progressives live in different neighbourhoods, they work in gov, education, ngos and management or are self employed, their kids go to different schools (the only Muslim pupils their kids are going to meet are cute and nice middle class kids just like theirs).
And so we keep moving towards ‘progressive’ modernity: Muslim cops can wear scarfs, while white cops work hard to showcase their transition towards the veiled world and proudly share their taking part in Iftars on social media - including Muslim cops praying in uniform. (But, if you’re a Jew living in one of the big cities, you may want to be careful wearing Jew-identifying headwear. Just saying…).
We can also provide you with single sex swimming. Demanded by Muslims ‘Otherwise my husband won't let me go’. And then progressives always give in. To the husband that is. Since the 1990s young males voluntarily patrol public swimming pools to protect girls and women from insult, intimidation and physical harassment by Moroccan boys and young men (So i guess what we have here is one group of young Moroccan men ‘integrating’ to protect girls and women from the disgust and contempt that their brothers have for non-Muslim women. I’m not sure if we should call this a success).
If you find holocaust-education a bit too much for sensitive young souls you may enjoy our country even more since in most schools with muslim pupils, teaching about Dutch Jews’ fate during WW2 is verboten. Not officially, it’s just that the class becomes unruly and aggressive when Jews become the topic.
Believe it or not but Dutch ‘intellectuals’ (incomparable to those of the 60,70,80 and 90s), in their quest to proclaim their progressive credentials and keep as much distance as possible from the right wing populist Geert Wilders, already years ago, decided that Dutch Moroccans ‘Are the new Jews’. (The most ardent populizer of this statement is a Dutch Jew).
I.e: a new holocaust is lying in wait and this time it’s going to be…And you’re going to be guilty of that. Unless you side with us, shut up about how society is changing and vote for decent, middle class progressive people who are strategically blind, deaf and mute.
Houellebecq saw it well decades ago. He only didn’t know that Dutch progressives and centrists are bigger doormats than the French.
I end this as loud Sikh religious singing echoes through my neighborhood as they have their annual march through town. For some reason, and like with many other immigrant groups, we don’t have to invent veiled language for them…
I seem to recall Bernadette Devlin wrote a book about the troubles in Ireland with the same thesis - - that the religious conflict was merely the surface manifestation. (She has written several books, at this distance I can no longer remember which title it was.)
Seems to me talk about religion and religious motives should remember....When most people go to a church, in a society with essentially no newspapers, the church is mass media. And control of the church is roughly equivalent to today's ownership/censorship of mass media..
The role of the church which was also a feudal landlord raises issues about who gets the administrative positions in churches, who pays the tithes and rents and privileges, who collects them and where they get sent, especially when dissidents aim to expropriate church lands.
Also, things like the number of holidays (versus working days,) pilgrimages, the occasional sumptuary customs (or even laws,) diet, marriage and inheritance, the liberties and privileges and immunities of clergy, all make the religious motives in reformation hard to distinguish from economic ones. If a church festival coincided with a trade fair, is this religious or economic?
On a more speculative note, the role of religious identity as a marker of nationality in an era with so many roots of modern nations is a provocative question, in my opinion.
Frankly, I'm confused by this: "The French Kingdom in the sixteenth century was an overwhelmingly agrarian state and agricultural productivity couldn’t keep up with such massive population growth. As a result, food prices exploded". The vast majority of the population were peasants and therefore produced food for themselves. I don't think there is any evidence of a dramatic change in the proportion of urban to rural populations.
I agree, blaming it on population increase looks shoddy unless he is going to show a larger N cross country analysis that population increase = conflict, which I don’t think exists. In 16th century France you have stating you in the face the drastic increase in direct land taxes paid by peasants, and what do you know, the provinces that leaned Protestant just happened to be places where nobles were also required to pay land taxes on newer-acquired lands (in other provinces they were exempt). I don’t believe he can make a reasonable case that this is due to population when it seems very obvious that the overproduction of elites resulted in increased state spending which required a dramatic increase in tax farming which spilled over into an unequal treatment of some nobility vs others who are then rebelled against what they perceived as a corrupt system by turning Protestant.
As an aside, I’m very familiar with pre-modern farming techniques and food production and whenever someone says that landed peasants couldn’t feed themselves, they don’t know what they are talking about. The difficulty is in growing enough of a cash crop to earn specie to meet state-imposed financial obligations, or in land use restrictions imposed by the state. Left alone, the average peasant family in a moderately supportive agricultural peasant community had no problem feeding themselves. Your comment about urban vs rural population makes me think you also understand this.
Above: “stating you in the face” = “staring”. Good God in heaven autocorrect just tried to “correct” that again…
From what I understand, France at the time had enough land to farm for the population of the time. As for Normandy, I believe that the rise in food prices could have been caused by exporting food to the neighboring Low Countries where urban growth was occurring at this time.
As for the overproduction of elites, I don't yet understand the connection between it and the rise in government spending. Let's look at it in dynamics. Western European elites in the Middle Ages lived on their estates and did not require any public spending. Then kings started to change the order and impose taxes and payments for service in the army and bureaucracy. But in principle, the elite could continue to live on their estates. In itself, the overproduction of elites does not necessarily have to cause an increase in government spending. Another thing is that overproduction of elites can cause problems if the population stays the same or shrinks so that there are fewer peasants to feed every nobleman. Or I'm just not seeing the connection here. I would appreciate it if you could explain this point to me.
As for state spending, I think the answer lies in Italy's wars with Spain, which Turchin writes about in the second part of the post, The French Wars of Religion II. I believe that the French were unlucky because the Spanish began bringing in large amounts of silver and gold from the Americas, and the French state had no chance at that time in competing with the Spanish state in terms of monetary expenditures.
The claim about an increase in "dueling" among elites is problematic. The paragraph that begins with "After 1560..." cites statistics but does not cite a credible source.
Instead, it employs the vague expressions "it was believed..." and "it is said..." Why should anyone accept these numbers?
This is a blog and I am allowed more latitude. I cite the sources in my formal (academic) writings. In any case, the difference between the first half and the second half of the sixteenth century in the frequency of duels was three orders of magnitude. It's hard to miss.
At 46.20: Chat answers a question on behavioral finance. When asked for its sources, Chat admits it made them up...
Food supplies and prices...The EU and member state elites keep pushing for agricultural reform: less fertilizer, less pesticides (i.e. less production) while 10% of EU farm lands have to be given 'back' to nature...(EU 'nature' is almost entirely man-made just like the epic African savannas and American plains are cocreated by humans' herding, hunting and burning).
Food prices are going up and likely will keep rising.
While wages, or perhaps better, working class wages have been kept in check by generous immigration.
Buying a home for regular people anywhere but in the middle of nowhere is getting very hard because the money which has been slushing around since the gfc ends up in housing. (1/3 of Barcelona's housing stock is used for short term rentals).
Rents also exploded. Because of gfc-financial largesse, tourism (many European cities doubled down on tourism after the gfc. Adding up immigration to tourism and the boom in foreign students I - living in a 19th century former working class neighborhood - now find myself living in a foreign country), immigration, digital nomads, the education boom (almost 100.000 students in a city of 900.000 with lackluster building since the 70s), and because of expats (who typically are not hired for their psychology- media- environmental- or law degrees. Rather for their mathematics, physics, AI or engineering qualifications).
The elites pet peeve the energy 'transition' (and energy taxation) is driving up energy prices. While gov’s subsidize solar panels and EV’s for the middle class, and guarantee sell back prices for excess electricity - which destabilizes the elec grid so it is often - though paid for - not used. The upcoming 15 years 200 B is going to be spent on making the grid renewables ready. Regardless, expect blackouts.
And when the normies increasingly vote for the right that is, according to the left and center, NOT an expression of their changing material existence (although the left in particular - still - likes to apply the materialist explanation for the behaviours of all but white incumbent voters. I guess there is some privilege there too…Though by now it is not uncommon for immigrant voters to also vote for populists because of cheap labor competition).
But their choice is not a sound one derived from their interests. No, these poor dumb souls have been misled by the misinformation created by right wing piped pipers (for some reason, and only according to the left, these types do not exist in progressives-land), populists and/or foreign actors (remember, the West is NEVER a foreign actor. For we have nothing but good intentions).
The only thing that fundamentally changed after all those centuries is that you can’t call them dumb in the open anymore.
But when a pro farmers protest party won the local elections in the Netherlands early 2024 progressive media types - lawyers, economists, actresses - publicly stated ‘If this is democracy we need a little less of it’...
And when the populist party won the national elections in the fall that year apparently the end of the world was near.
Now summer is up and we can prepare for another world-ending round of climate doom. If necessary fueled by replacing air-temperatures with surface-temperatures which generally are 10C higher. As happened during Europe’s 2023 Cerberus heatwave.
And no effing journalist or pundit noticed. Or perhaps better, dared to publicly notice it.
Just came across your work before diving into writing an article about the US "Cold" Civil War for my HogueProphecy Reports, You were on Deep Dive with Daniel Davis. I've ordered your book. I am know for my bestselling books on subjects of Prophecy, Nostradamus, Papal Prophecies and future trends. At the moment I'm translating and interpreting Nostradamus' Almanacs (1550-1567). What prompted him to write his almanacs and his famous "Les Propheties" (The Prophecies) that are so well known up to this day, where his great and prescient concerns that the civil wars were coming to France. In his first surviving writings, he set down his concerns as far back as 1549. Convinced by 1553 that civil war was coming. He began warning at length about it in early 1556 (pub. in the 1557 almanac). But even before that he had written about the king's tournament accident in Century 1 Quatrain 35 that would cause France's fracture, set down in 1554, published by royal approval in August of 1555. As Catherine de Medici instructed the offices of royal copyrights to send her any new books on themes of the Occult, she perhaps ended up the first "fan" of Nostradamus. She got Henry II to summon him to court for an audience about it. I have all of this documented in my biography--the first full-bio yet published--on Nostradamus, entitled: "Nostradamus: A Life and Myth" (Thorsons/Element Books a Div. of HarperCollins, London.) I'm looking forward to diving into your work. You are definitely onto something about the hidden tensions listed causing the FRWs. Not least of which, was the Little Ice Age further undermining agricultural yields. Nostradamus Almanacs from 1560 through 1567 makes some surprisingly accurate forecasts as per the surviving meteorlogical records I've studied. Sincere Regards, John Hogue
Fascinating! So Nostradamus saw the beginning of the 17th c. crisis in France. Interestingly, Leviathan of Hobbs was inspired by the 17th century crisis in England.
If you mean the Huguenot uprisings of the 1620s, yes. An interesting parallel to Hobb's Leviathan. Rabellais's “Leviathan and Pereguel” comes to mind. Also that Nostradamus was studying medicine circa 1529 in Montpellier at the same time Rabellais was there studying medicine, albeit the latter getting on in years. There’s no clear record whether they ever met. I think possibly the weather in the 17th century was the worst of the Little Ice Age, under which were the Hundred Year’s War in the Netherlands and Belgium and the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War. The Turks trying one last stab at Vienna. In the Nostradamus field everybody’s an expert before they begin the work—that is why the subject is mosty a target of derision for all of its rampant amateurism and projection. But it takes at least 20 years of study to get your bearings and it also requires a deep and detailed knowledge of the last 7.4 centuries. I’m over a half-century into it. Most of Nostradamus is open to interpretation, but some of these verses and presages aren’t, so it would seem—hundreds of them. Case in point, since we’re talking about the 17th century. I’m working on my “last word” on Nostradamus’ prophecies Here is a updated draft Presage in Verse.
Presage 2
La mer Tyrrhene, l’Occean par la garde,
Du grand Neptun & ses tridents soldats:
Prouence seure par la main du grand Tende,
Plus Mars Narbon1 l’heroiq de Vilars.
The Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ocean for the defense,
Of the great Neptune and his trident soldiers:
Provence secure because of the hand of the great Tende,
More Mars [at] Narbonne the heroic de Villars.
1Latin Narbo Martius, founder of Narbonne.
Here, Stewart Robb makes the best argument for a few of the presage quatrains that predict events far beyond the seer’s times. He cites this one for Marshal de Villars, Comte de Tende, whose name and title are written outright. De Villars was one of Louis XIV’s most trusted and valiant generals. (Some historians, like Pierre Goubert, would add that he was also one of the most vainglorious and contentious generals in Louis’ monarchy.) Let us examine and expand upon the point Robb describes in his compelling line-by-line breakdown of the presage.
The Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ocean for the defense, the great Neptune and his trident soldiers.
This is a reference to an English fleet lurking somewhere in the waters encircled by Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and the west coast of Italy. The classical reference to Britannia, goddess of the ancient Britons, clearly indicates that the soldiers are English seafarers. She holds a trident symbolizing her rule of the oceans. By the first decade of the eighteenth century the English were well on their way to becoming the monarch of the seven seas. Robb shows that the connection between the English and de Villars is evidenced in the marshal’s own memoirs, in an account of his suppressing a Camisard peasant religious revolt in the Cevennes (1702-1705). He writes, “The rebels had a respite because I was obliged to repair to the coast, which seemed menaced by a squadron of 45 vessels of the line which the English had brought into the Mediterranean. I was warned in time and took measures, so that neither the officers that landed nor those sent by the Duke of Savoy could enter the country.”
"Provence secure because of the hand of the great Tende."
De Villars returned to pacify the revolt in the Cevennes. Louis XIV rewarded the general for this and for other victories against the English and Dutch by appointing him governor or Provence in 1712.
"More Mars Narbonne the heroic de Villars."
Nostradamus uses the classical name for Narbonne, Narbo Martius, and its environs to describe the Protestant peasant revolt of the Cevennes. Although Robb is correct about de Villar’s instigating successful negotiations with the rebellion’s leader Jean Cavalier, he overlooks a deeper double pun for more Mars (war) for Narbonne. The peace terms Cavalier had accepted were rejected by the Camisards and the rebellion dragged on into 1705. More War had also come from a papal bull of Pope Clement XI excoriating the Camisards. The bull urged Catholic peasants and de Villar’s soldiers to show little clemency to the Huguenots. They razed over 450 Huguenot villages, burning and slaughtering most of the inhabitants. In the end de Villars, heroic as he was on the battlefields of the War of the Spanish Succession, was less than a hero in his treatment of Protestant civilians in the Cevennes. Still, de Villars is considered the last of the great military leaders of the French monarchy.
***
My final word on Nostradamus will be released in four volumes (750 pages each) starting at the end of each year of 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2031. It will truly be the complete prophecies, every word.
Thank you for your taking time to reading this. Sincerely, John Hogue
<i>The Three Musketeers</i> is a title known even in the Anglophone world. Was also written by Alexandre Dumas and takes place around 1629 under Louis XIII during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and the wars between the king and the rebellious nobility, and involves Richelieu (also known in Anglophone world). This fits into both patterns, the favorited booklist and the battles between elites.
Three Musketeers take place at the very end of the wars of religion. Queen Margo and books that followed - Le Dame de Monsoreu and The Forty Five - take place at the beginning.
Interesting comments below about the clash between Muslim and Progressive values, but need I point out that it is completely off-topic? The whole thrust of this post (and, more generally, the series) is that religion was _not_ a fundamental cause of the (misnamed) Wars of Religion. If you need further proof, just consider how easily most Protestant leaders switched to Catholicism, when it suited their pragmatic goals. Henry of Navarre switched twice. "Paris is worth a mass", indeed.
I did not expect people to react so heatedly to my answer, sorry about that. I'm actually not even a progressive at all. I just wanted to highlight how even in contemporary France the religious topic is used by politicians to agitate crowds and reach their political goals.
They indeed could switch tomorrow to any other discourse if it helped them stay in power or gain power.
Which raised serious questions about the elite conversions to Christianity, starting with the Romans
What major leader other than Henri IV switched to Catholicism?
Were the many thousand he died (and murdered) in the name of religion only motivated by practical material benefits? Even when Henri converted, 120 members of the Catholic League chose banishment from the capital rather than accepting someone they viewed as a Protestant.
The Protestant reformation led to armed conflicts all over Europe. Was everyone suffering from a Structural-Demographic crisis?
Yes. I will provide details over the next year.
The structural-demographic issues you raise are an important insight, but it is not everything. "To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail".
If religion is out of the question when we talk about these issues, then I understand that what the Germans did to the Jews in World War II must be interpreted as intra-elite competition. Am I right?
Yes. National socialist elites vs communist elites. Nothing to do with religion as both sides were practical atheists.
Thanks for this article. Indeed I learned a lot about the history of France from your books, which although being French, I did not know.
It would be great if you could some day write about the current situation in France. It's not per se a war of religion, but the role anti Muslim rethoric takes in current French politics has been incredible for decades. I do not know of another country where debates can be has heated about where women could be allowed to wear hijab or not. In France for eg mothers who want to help teachers on a school event are not allowed to wear hijab, nor girls at school, they are not even allowed to wear anything ressemling a Muslim dress at school. Some years ago there was a huge debate about burkinees on the beach, and they were forbidden too. There seems to be a sort of obsession in France about what Muslim women can wear or not, very disproportionate, because women should be able to wear what they please.
In short, French politics seems obsessed with religion, which is strange in a country where probably almost half of the population is actually atheist...
“Women should be able to wear what they please, which is why I support a culture which forces women to cover their faces and withdraw from the public sphere under threat of rape or even murder.”
Twenty-first-century progressives truly are beyond parody.
Not all muslim women cover their faces and not all muslim women cover their heads. In fact you can see that in Muslim countries themselves, usually after a revolutionary islamist phase, mannerisms relax (takes times) and people move on and go about their daily lives.
It's funny how progressives from the 1960s onwards were adamant that women should be liberated from Christianity. While the same ‘progressives’ and their successors now fully side with a Muslim patriarchy which harbours ideas about women that make the 1960s Western Christian male overlords look like a bunch of wimps.
But, if bothered by French antics, do come to the Netherlands: not only are Muslim women's bodies well covered and veiled, non Muslim women living in areas with large Muslim (men) populations also take ever more care to not be too ‘provocative) dressed when they go out.
Isn’t that great? The progressive revolution ending in a renewed public decency. Of women of course. Policed by young Muslim volunteers…’Any whores around?’
Still, even for progressive newspapers - we have four but they’re basically the same - it is impossible to ignore harassment, intimidation, spitting at and touching of women. And however much they wished it was ‘a white thing’...it’s not. (Disappointing to some, no doubt, as they would lust over the media opportunities of highly mobile young toxic white males out there on the streets harassing women).
No, it’s a male Muslim immigrant thing. But these poor progressives don’t allow each other to say that. So they use progressive slang to veil the discussion, like ‘boys on scooters’, or 'young men on fat bikes’.
EVERYBODY knows what that means, and we have understood the various progressive descriptions since the 1980s (That’s when I started playing football in an Amsterdam park with a whole bunch of ethnicities. All were great apart from the Moroccans (Turks would not allow non Turks to join their games) who managed to turn almost every game in an angry, f***** up event.
Since their honor is easily offended, you know - My mother, a former teacher and admin, experienced first hand in the 1980s how groups of Moroccan and Turkish (another society of honourable men) fathers, brothers, uncles and nephews (say hello to the tribe) would come to school to beat up teachers who had had to guts to expel someone’s son for bad behavior. This was widespread behaviour but no one in the - highly progressive - education sector ever went public).
Moroccan boys and men have dominated this new treatment of non Muslim women as soon as they began to arrive in numbers in the 1970s. Dutch women were approached with pick up lines like ‘Hey, wanna fuck?’ Since western women are loose f*** machines as we all know. (In the late 70s and early 80s progressive papers still wrote about such things).
Today, by the age of 18, 40% of Dutch/Moroccan boys will have been ‘in contact’ with the police…They have progressed from just street crime to organised crime - They have a thing for spectacular violence: AK47s and high explosives. I guess, despite all the piety and decency demanded from Muslim and non Muslim women, Scarface is a bigger treat to them than the Quaran…
Their sex crime rate is 3 x higher (Germany 6 x but they have many more Syrians). Speaking of Syrians, when Syrian ‘refugees’ in camps in Turkey are informed by Dutch officials about Dutch equality of the sexes, lgbt culture, same sex activities for boys and girls at school etc, i.e. when they are informed about Dutch progressive culture, decimals of potential ‘refugees’ choose to not apply for asylum in the Netherlands.
You may find it comforting to know that basically the entire Dutch establishment has veiled its language when ‘discussing’ the Muslim immigrant ‘thing’. Though they prefer to not discuss it at all as it is a ‘right wing topic’ - Nothing is more convenient to them than the existence of some - any - right wing party critical of immigration. Since that allows you to block all discussions.
Street crime has been a verboten topic for progressives since young Moroccan men began to rob old working class Dutch women in the 1980s. Decent progressive people simply don’t speak about such things. Perhaps they’re comforted by the knowledge that most crime takes place in working class areas? But I do believe they missed an opportunity: after all the robbers showed an awful lack of diversity of victims.
But there never was any necessity to talk about it. Progressives live in different neighbourhoods, they work in gov, education, ngos and management or are self employed, their kids go to different schools (the only Muslim pupils their kids are going to meet are cute and nice middle class kids just like theirs).
And so we keep moving towards ‘progressive’ modernity: Muslim cops can wear scarfs, while white cops work hard to showcase their transition towards the veiled world and proudly share their taking part in Iftars on social media - including Muslim cops praying in uniform. (But, if you’re a Jew living in one of the big cities, you may want to be careful wearing Jew-identifying headwear. Just saying…).
We can also provide you with single sex swimming. Demanded by Muslims ‘Otherwise my husband won't let me go’. And then progressives always give in. To the husband that is. Since the 1990s young males voluntarily patrol public swimming pools to protect girls and women from insult, intimidation and physical harassment by Moroccan boys and young men (So i guess what we have here is one group of young Moroccan men ‘integrating’ to protect girls and women from the disgust and contempt that their brothers have for non-Muslim women. I’m not sure if we should call this a success).
If you find holocaust-education a bit too much for sensitive young souls you may enjoy our country even more since in most schools with muslim pupils, teaching about Dutch Jews’ fate during WW2 is verboten. Not officially, it’s just that the class becomes unruly and aggressive when Jews become the topic.
Believe it or not but Dutch ‘intellectuals’ (incomparable to those of the 60,70,80 and 90s), in their quest to proclaim their progressive credentials and keep as much distance as possible from the right wing populist Geert Wilders, already years ago, decided that Dutch Moroccans ‘Are the new Jews’. (The most ardent populizer of this statement is a Dutch Jew).
I.e: a new holocaust is lying in wait and this time it’s going to be…And you’re going to be guilty of that. Unless you side with us, shut up about how society is changing and vote for decent, middle class progressive people who are strategically blind, deaf and mute.
Houellebecq saw it well decades ago. He only didn’t know that Dutch progressives and centrists are bigger doormats than the French.
I end this as loud Sikh religious singing echoes through my neighborhood as they have their annual march through town. For some reason, and like with many other immigrant groups, we don’t have to invent veiled language for them…
I seem to recall Bernadette Devlin wrote a book about the troubles in Ireland with the same thesis - - that the religious conflict was merely the surface manifestation. (She has written several books, at this distance I can no longer remember which title it was.)
Seems to me talk about religion and religious motives should remember....When most people go to a church, in a society with essentially no newspapers, the church is mass media. And control of the church is roughly equivalent to today's ownership/censorship of mass media..
The role of the church which was also a feudal landlord raises issues about who gets the administrative positions in churches, who pays the tithes and rents and privileges, who collects them and where they get sent, especially when dissidents aim to expropriate church lands.
Also, things like the number of holidays (versus working days,) pilgrimages, the occasional sumptuary customs (or even laws,) diet, marriage and inheritance, the liberties and privileges and immunities of clergy, all make the religious motives in reformation hard to distinguish from economic ones. If a church festival coincided with a trade fair, is this religious or economic?
On a more speculative note, the role of religious identity as a marker of nationality in an era with so many roots of modern nations is a provocative question, in my opinion.
Frankly, I'm confused by this: "The French Kingdom in the sixteenth century was an overwhelmingly agrarian state and agricultural productivity couldn’t keep up with such massive population growth. As a result, food prices exploded". The vast majority of the population were peasants and therefore produced food for themselves. I don't think there is any evidence of a dramatic change in the proportion of urban to rural populations.
I agree, blaming it on population increase looks shoddy unless he is going to show a larger N cross country analysis that population increase = conflict, which I don’t think exists. In 16th century France you have stating you in the face the drastic increase in direct land taxes paid by peasants, and what do you know, the provinces that leaned Protestant just happened to be places where nobles were also required to pay land taxes on newer-acquired lands (in other provinces they were exempt). I don’t believe he can make a reasonable case that this is due to population when it seems very obvious that the overproduction of elites resulted in increased state spending which required a dramatic increase in tax farming which spilled over into an unequal treatment of some nobility vs others who are then rebelled against what they perceived as a corrupt system by turning Protestant.
As an aside, I’m very familiar with pre-modern farming techniques and food production and whenever someone says that landed peasants couldn’t feed themselves, they don’t know what they are talking about. The difficulty is in growing enough of a cash crop to earn specie to meet state-imposed financial obligations, or in land use restrictions imposed by the state. Left alone, the average peasant family in a moderately supportive agricultural peasant community had no problem feeding themselves. Your comment about urban vs rural population makes me think you also understand this.
Above: “stating you in the face” = “staring”. Good God in heaven autocorrect just tried to “correct” that again…
From what I understand, France at the time had enough land to farm for the population of the time. As for Normandy, I believe that the rise in food prices could have been caused by exporting food to the neighboring Low Countries where urban growth was occurring at this time.
As for the overproduction of elites, I don't yet understand the connection between it and the rise in government spending. Let's look at it in dynamics. Western European elites in the Middle Ages lived on their estates and did not require any public spending. Then kings started to change the order and impose taxes and payments for service in the army and bureaucracy. But in principle, the elite could continue to live on their estates. In itself, the overproduction of elites does not necessarily have to cause an increase in government spending. Another thing is that overproduction of elites can cause problems if the population stays the same or shrinks so that there are fewer peasants to feed every nobleman. Or I'm just not seeing the connection here. I would appreciate it if you could explain this point to me.
As for state spending, I think the answer lies in Italy's wars with Spain, which Turchin writes about in the second part of the post, The French Wars of Religion II. I believe that the French were unlucky because the Spanish began bringing in large amounts of silver and gold from the Americas, and the French state had no chance at that time in competing with the Spanish state in terms of monetary expenditures.
The claim about an increase in "dueling" among elites is problematic. The paragraph that begins with "After 1560..." cites statistics but does not cite a credible source.
Instead, it employs the vague expressions "it was believed..." and "it is said..." Why should anyone accept these numbers?
This is a blog and I am allowed more latitude. I cite the sources in my formal (academic) writings. In any case, the difference between the first half and the second half of the sixteenth century in the frequency of duels was three orders of magnitude. It's hard to miss.
About asking ChatGPT: ChatGPT should be renamed ChitChatGPT.
The Truth About Tariffs | Cullen Roche
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN2K4q0krjc
At 46.20: Chat answers a question on behavioral finance. When asked for its sources, Chat admits it made them up...
Food supplies and prices...The EU and member state elites keep pushing for agricultural reform: less fertilizer, less pesticides (i.e. less production) while 10% of EU farm lands have to be given 'back' to nature...(EU 'nature' is almost entirely man-made just like the epic African savannas and American plains are cocreated by humans' herding, hunting and burning).
Food prices are going up and likely will keep rising.
While wages, or perhaps better, working class wages have been kept in check by generous immigration.
Buying a home for regular people anywhere but in the middle of nowhere is getting very hard because the money which has been slushing around since the gfc ends up in housing. (1/3 of Barcelona's housing stock is used for short term rentals).
Rents also exploded. Because of gfc-financial largesse, tourism (many European cities doubled down on tourism after the gfc. Adding up immigration to tourism and the boom in foreign students I - living in a 19th century former working class neighborhood - now find myself living in a foreign country), immigration, digital nomads, the education boom (almost 100.000 students in a city of 900.000 with lackluster building since the 70s), and because of expats (who typically are not hired for their psychology- media- environmental- or law degrees. Rather for their mathematics, physics, AI or engineering qualifications).
The elites pet peeve the energy 'transition' (and energy taxation) is driving up energy prices. While gov’s subsidize solar panels and EV’s for the middle class, and guarantee sell back prices for excess electricity - which destabilizes the elec grid so it is often - though paid for - not used. The upcoming 15 years 200 B is going to be spent on making the grid renewables ready. Regardless, expect blackouts.
And when the normies increasingly vote for the right that is, according to the left and center, NOT an expression of their changing material existence (although the left in particular - still - likes to apply the materialist explanation for the behaviours of all but white incumbent voters. I guess there is some privilege there too…Though by now it is not uncommon for immigrant voters to also vote for populists because of cheap labor competition).
But their choice is not a sound one derived from their interests. No, these poor dumb souls have been misled by the misinformation created by right wing piped pipers (for some reason, and only according to the left, these types do not exist in progressives-land), populists and/or foreign actors (remember, the West is NEVER a foreign actor. For we have nothing but good intentions).
The only thing that fundamentally changed after all those centuries is that you can’t call them dumb in the open anymore.
But when a pro farmers protest party won the local elections in the Netherlands early 2024 progressive media types - lawyers, economists, actresses - publicly stated ‘If this is democracy we need a little less of it’...
And when the populist party won the national elections in the fall that year apparently the end of the world was near.
Now summer is up and we can prepare for another world-ending round of climate doom. If necessary fueled by replacing air-temperatures with surface-temperatures which generally are 10C higher. As happened during Europe’s 2023 Cerberus heatwave.
And no effing journalist or pundit noticed. Or perhaps better, dared to publicly notice it.
Just came across your work before diving into writing an article about the US "Cold" Civil War for my HogueProphecy Reports, You were on Deep Dive with Daniel Davis. I've ordered your book. I am know for my bestselling books on subjects of Prophecy, Nostradamus, Papal Prophecies and future trends. At the moment I'm translating and interpreting Nostradamus' Almanacs (1550-1567). What prompted him to write his almanacs and his famous "Les Propheties" (The Prophecies) that are so well known up to this day, where his great and prescient concerns that the civil wars were coming to France. In his first surviving writings, he set down his concerns as far back as 1549. Convinced by 1553 that civil war was coming. He began warning at length about it in early 1556 (pub. in the 1557 almanac). But even before that he had written about the king's tournament accident in Century 1 Quatrain 35 that would cause France's fracture, set down in 1554, published by royal approval in August of 1555. As Catherine de Medici instructed the offices of royal copyrights to send her any new books on themes of the Occult, she perhaps ended up the first "fan" of Nostradamus. She got Henry II to summon him to court for an audience about it. I have all of this documented in my biography--the first full-bio yet published--on Nostradamus, entitled: "Nostradamus: A Life and Myth" (Thorsons/Element Books a Div. of HarperCollins, London.) I'm looking forward to diving into your work. You are definitely onto something about the hidden tensions listed causing the FRWs. Not least of which, was the Little Ice Age further undermining agricultural yields. Nostradamus Almanacs from 1560 through 1567 makes some surprisingly accurate forecasts as per the surviving meteorlogical records I've studied. Sincere Regards, John Hogue
Fascinating! So Nostradamus saw the beginning of the 17th c. crisis in France. Interestingly, Leviathan of Hobbs was inspired by the 17th century crisis in England.
If you mean the Huguenot uprisings of the 1620s, yes. An interesting parallel to Hobb's Leviathan. Rabellais's “Leviathan and Pereguel” comes to mind. Also that Nostradamus was studying medicine circa 1529 in Montpellier at the same time Rabellais was there studying medicine, albeit the latter getting on in years. There’s no clear record whether they ever met. I think possibly the weather in the 17th century was the worst of the Little Ice Age, under which were the Hundred Year’s War in the Netherlands and Belgium and the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War. The Turks trying one last stab at Vienna. In the Nostradamus field everybody’s an expert before they begin the work—that is why the subject is mosty a target of derision for all of its rampant amateurism and projection. But it takes at least 20 years of study to get your bearings and it also requires a deep and detailed knowledge of the last 7.4 centuries. I’m over a half-century into it. Most of Nostradamus is open to interpretation, but some of these verses and presages aren’t, so it would seem—hundreds of them. Case in point, since we’re talking about the 17th century. I’m working on my “last word” on Nostradamus’ prophecies Here is a updated draft Presage in Verse.
Presage 2
La mer Tyrrhene, l’Occean par la garde,
Du grand Neptun & ses tridents soldats:
Prouence seure par la main du grand Tende,
Plus Mars Narbon1 l’heroiq de Vilars.
The Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ocean for the defense,
Of the great Neptune and his trident soldiers:
Provence secure because of the hand of the great Tende,
More Mars [at] Narbonne the heroic de Villars.
1Latin Narbo Martius, founder of Narbonne.
Here, Stewart Robb makes the best argument for a few of the presage quatrains that predict events far beyond the seer’s times. He cites this one for Marshal de Villars, Comte de Tende, whose name and title are written outright. De Villars was one of Louis XIV’s most trusted and valiant generals. (Some historians, like Pierre Goubert, would add that he was also one of the most vainglorious and contentious generals in Louis’ monarchy.) Let us examine and expand upon the point Robb describes in his compelling line-by-line breakdown of the presage.
The Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ocean for the defense, the great Neptune and his trident soldiers.
This is a reference to an English fleet lurking somewhere in the waters encircled by Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and the west coast of Italy. The classical reference to Britannia, goddess of the ancient Britons, clearly indicates that the soldiers are English seafarers. She holds a trident symbolizing her rule of the oceans. By the first decade of the eighteenth century the English were well on their way to becoming the monarch of the seven seas. Robb shows that the connection between the English and de Villars is evidenced in the marshal’s own memoirs, in an account of his suppressing a Camisard peasant religious revolt in the Cevennes (1702-1705). He writes, “The rebels had a respite because I was obliged to repair to the coast, which seemed menaced by a squadron of 45 vessels of the line which the English had brought into the Mediterranean. I was warned in time and took measures, so that neither the officers that landed nor those sent by the Duke of Savoy could enter the country.”
"Provence secure because of the hand of the great Tende."
De Villars returned to pacify the revolt in the Cevennes. Louis XIV rewarded the general for this and for other victories against the English and Dutch by appointing him governor or Provence in 1712.
"More Mars Narbonne the heroic de Villars."
Nostradamus uses the classical name for Narbonne, Narbo Martius, and its environs to describe the Protestant peasant revolt of the Cevennes. Although Robb is correct about de Villar’s instigating successful negotiations with the rebellion’s leader Jean Cavalier, he overlooks a deeper double pun for more Mars (war) for Narbonne. The peace terms Cavalier had accepted were rejected by the Camisards and the rebellion dragged on into 1705. More War had also come from a papal bull of Pope Clement XI excoriating the Camisards. The bull urged Catholic peasants and de Villar’s soldiers to show little clemency to the Huguenots. They razed over 450 Huguenot villages, burning and slaughtering most of the inhabitants. In the end de Villars, heroic as he was on the battlefields of the War of the Spanish Succession, was less than a hero in his treatment of Protestant civilians in the Cevennes. Still, de Villars is considered the last of the great military leaders of the French monarchy.
***
My final word on Nostradamus will be released in four volumes (750 pages each) starting at the end of each year of 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2031. It will truly be the complete prophecies, every word.
Thank you for your taking time to reading this. Sincerely, John Hogue
<i>The Three Musketeers</i> is a title known even in the Anglophone world. Was also written by Alexandre Dumas and takes place around 1629 under Louis XIII during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and the wars between the king and the rebellious nobility, and involves Richelieu (also known in Anglophone world). This fits into both patterns, the favorited booklist and the battles between elites.
Yes, I will be using this as an example in a later installment of this series
Three Musketeers take place at the very end of the wars of religion. Queen Margo and books that followed - Le Dame de Monsoreu and The Forty Five - take place at the beginning.
Patterns. Inescapable behavior patterns.