u/BachInTime

One thing that has always puzzled me is when posters to this sub uncritically repeat a culture's myths/legends. While obviously I love the myths of giants, fey-folk, and fantastical beasts [I have a well worn copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology if you doubt me] they are, well, fantastical and shouldn’t be taken literally. But, I would argue that what a culture's legends can tell you about them is far more interesting. So let's look at a case study, and of course where else but the pseudo-historical legend behind Rome's generational trauma, the metus Gallicus (Gallic Fear).

The Gallic Fear:

”Metus Gallicus” or more literally “fear of the Gauls” is a modern label the historian Heinz Bellen paired the phrase with metus Punicus (fear of Carthage) in a 1985 paper. While the term itself is new, the fear is encapsulated in a legal framework: tumultus, of which Cicero said, “Our ancestors spoke of an Italian turmoil, because it was domestic, and a Gallic turmoil because that was on the borders of Italy, but they gave that name to no others.” Not even after Cannae did the Romans invoke tumultus, a law whose sweeping power cannot be understated, if tumultus was declared, life in Rome ceased. The treasury was locked, the courts were closed, and two banners were placed on the Capitoline, one red for infantry, the other green for cavalry. Every male citizen was to self designate to one of these, no exemption. Finally, the toga was discarded to be replaced with the sagum, the simple tunic of war. This was Rome’s most desperate law only to be invoked in the most dire of emergencies, and the only foreign foe worthy of this distinction was the Gauls.

So who were the Gauls? Briefly the Gauls were a Celtic sub-group that lived in a massive territory stretching from the Balkans in the east to Gallia (modern day France) in the west. From their home the Gauls launched raids and migrations throughout Europe, with a branch even reaching as far east as southern Turkey were they became the Galatians.

The Sack of Rome (390 BC):

The migration we care about though is the Senones. The Senones are said to have originated near the city of Sens, France. While Livy puts on his historian hat and says they left because of overpopulation and the promise of loot, I much prefer the other story Livy tells. Where a man, Arruns, in the Etruscan city of Clusium had a ward. Anyway, classic tale of ward seducing and stealing Arruns' wife, ward is of course politically connected, so Arruns fills a wagon full of wine and goes off to find someone to sack his city in revenge. [Totally understandable and valid response to that situation.] Arruns meets the Senones, the Senones are like, "dude this wine stuff is awesome, where can we get more?" Arruns tells them of a rich land protected by weak men, and offers to guide them. Which is where Rome enters the story. While not an ally of Rome, the Clusians were considered friends and requested Rome intervene when the Senones besieged the city.

So Rome was riding high at this time. They had just won a century long conflict with their arch rival, the city of Veii, sacked the city and sold its people into slavery, moving up from a local power instead of just one of several cities.

Rome sent three ambassadors, the Fabii brothers [you’re probably familiar with their relative who gave Hannibal heartburn] to negotiate. Long story short they asked the Gauls to leave, the Gauls said they were peaceful and just wanted some of Clusium's land the city wasn't even using. Romans asked by what right the Gauls were attacking Clusium, and the Gauls replied by asking by what right the Romans were here trying to boss them around. Furious with this barbarian's question, the brothers went inside Clusium. When the Clusians then attacked the Gauls, brothers joined the Clusians, a huge no-no for an ambassador, and to cap it all off, one of them rode out ahead and killed a Gallic chieftain, and while taking the chieftain's armor was recognized.

The Gauls then retreated, and the brothers returned to Rome. However, Gallic ambassadors soon arrived demanding the brothers be handed over for the sacrilege of joining the battle even though they were ambassadors. The Senate agreed that they had violated this sacred duty, but the influence of the brothers' family prevented them from being handed over, and the Senate even went one step further and elected the brothers as Consular Tribunes, essentially heads of state, which meant they could not be prosecuted. Furious, the Gauls returned to their army and began to march on Rome.

According to Livy the Romans then busied themselves by finishing up the organization of the territory of Veii, even ignoring a plebeian who claimed to have heard a voice "clearer than any human's" (Livy 5.32) tell him "The Gauls are coming." When they finally did learn of the Gauls' approach the Fabii brothers gathered the army and went to meet them. But they made no sacrificial offering to the gods, and worst of all, they didn't even consult the sacred chickens. [Seriously guys, do you even want to win the battle? This is the Roman equivalent of running upstairs in a horror film. You only do that if you want the ax murderer to get you.]

So the army marches off to battle, where as soon as the Gauls gave their war cries and blew their trumpets, the spirit of Pavor (fear) was upon the Romans and, "They were terrified, and all they thought about was flight, and so utterly had they lost their heads that a far greater number fled to Veii, a hostile city, though the Tiber lay in their way, than by the direct road to Rome, to their wives and children." (Livy 5.38)

Not to fact check Livy, but Veii had been defeated and wasn’t hostile. Upon hearing of this, most Romans fled the city, some of the young men holed up on the Capitoline Hill, home of the Temple of Jupiter, with the sacred objects. The Gauls then sacked Rome, put the Capitoline under siege, and burned everything else to the ground. The siege is said to have lasted seven months. Now there is an entire story about the sacred geese I don't have time for, but I will briefly tell you that a man named Pontius Cominius, sent by the army hiding in Veii, swam the Tiber and climbed the sheer cliffs of the hill at night to ask the Senate to make Marcus Furius Camillus, the hero of Veii, dictator. [Camillus of course had insisted on doing this by the book]. Approval in hand, he scaled back down and swam the Tiber again to deliver the news.

Eventually the besieged Romans agreed to pay the Gauls 1,000 pounds of gold to leave, but when they began piling the gold on the Gauls' scales, the Romans discovered the Gauls were using rigged weights, the hyper-legalistic Romans complained to the Gallic leader Brennus. Brennus replied with one of the most famous lines in Roman history, when he pulled out his massive iron broadsword, tossed it on the Gallic side of the scales and uttered, "Vae Victis" (Woe to the Vanquished) (Livy 5.48).

Now here is where our sources differ, but this is the hyper cinematic version from Livy and Plutarch, where as the sword hits the scales, who else but Marcus Furius Camillus strides out into the forum and announces to the Romans and Gauls that the fatherland is to be reclaimed "ferro, non auro" [with iron, not gold] (Livy 5.49). Camillus then gives a signal, and his army, which had surrounded the scales, attacks, slaughtering the Gauls and forcing them to flee.

In the aftermath many in Rome thought it best to leave the decimated city, with the Plebeian Tribunes stating "that Veii was standing, a city ready to their hand, with its territory fertile and its buildings intact." Camillus objected, asking, "Shall the monument of our victory be the desertion of our fatherland?" The debate was finally settled by a centurion who, unaware of it, marched into the Forum with his patrol and ordered, "Signifer, statue signum; hic manebimus optime." (Standard-bearer, plant your standard; here we shall do best to remain.) Taking this as an omen, the Romans decided to stay and rebuild.

So what does this story tell us? Hubris is bad, obey the gods, love your country, don’t leave your husband for a younger man: the usual. All fine lessons, but the story has a problem. Rome is one of the most thoroughly excavated cities in the world, [I think it has something to do with a subway], and yet: "Excavations in the Forum and on the Palatine have failed to reveal any trace of a destruction layer that can be dated to the early fourth century." (Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, 317). Cornell doesn't doubt the sack happened, just the fire and destruction Livy describes. So what's going on? Livy tells us that Rome was torched and the tribunes wanted to move to Veii because "its buildings were intact," but there's nothing in the archaeological record. Did the Romans make the whole thing up, and even if it is partially true, why were they so afraid of the Gauls if the "Sack of Rome" didn't leave the city in ruins and was more of an extortion racket? I'll be discussing my theory on why in Part 2 tomorrow.

This theory is going to be a little different. Usually alternative theories aren't accepted by academia while the public accepts them to differing degrees. Here it's backwards: the alternative is the academic position. Meanwhile the "accepted" version is so deeply entrenched in the public's mind that if you ask anyone on the street for a fact about Cleopatra, the first answer will involve Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, or a snake, and the second will be that her family married their own brothers and sisters and she was a complete genetic mess. Countless history YouTubers, Reddit historians and blog posts treat this as absolute truth and openly speculate that she probably drooled from her Habsburg chin, and that the only thing Caesar and Antony found attractive about her was her personality. But the thing is…

Cleopatra probably wasn't inbred.

Now wait, hold on, please put your pitchforks down. No I don't have a hole in my head, I'm not on a substance, and yes I am aware that the Ptolemies had the hots for their own sisters. To those of you who already plugged it into Google and are already typing the comment that "Cleopatra was extremely inbred", "she only had 6 great-great-grandparents instead of 16", and "her dad was married to his own sister", I like you guys, that's where I would go too, and unfortunately it's likely wrong. But I get the skepticism, so let's get started.

Background:

First a short intro. Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, who history remembers as Cleopatra, and who I will be referring to as simply Cleopatra, she has some relatives we’ll get to shortly who have the same name, is obviously one of the most famous people in history. She was the Queen of Egypt, the mother of Julius Caesar's only known biological son, and the mother of several children with Mark Antony. She also 'allegedly' killed herself with a snake after Augustus defeated her and Mark Antony. Enough said, you know who I'm talking about.

Cleopatra's family though needs a little more introducing as they are significantly less famous. The Ptolemies were a family of Macedonian Greek extraction, founded by Ptolemy Soter, who was a general, friend, and one of our principal sources for Alexander the Great. After Alexander died, Ptolemy stole Alexander's body and became the ruler of Egypt during the ensuing Diadochi wars amongst Alexander's generals. The Ptolemaic Dynasty then built the city of Alexandria, imported a ton of Greeks to rule over an Egyptian majority, and of course married their sisters. That's all true.

Evidence for:

Now the evidence. While the Ptolemies did diverge from the Macedonian practice of polygamy by only having one queen, which yes was usually their sister, they also had plenty of room for mistresses and concubines, with Athenaeus noting that the married Ptolemy Soter had a mistress, an Athenian courtesan named Thais, who had allegedly spent a little too much time with Alexander for people not to think Ptolemy was taking Alexander's former girlfriend along with his body. Then Ptolemy II had at least 5 mistresses (one of which, Bilistiche, won the chariot race in back to back Olympics), Ptolemy IV had at least one, etc.

Which brings up the first piece of evidence: the Ptolemies typically only recorded the mother of a child if she was the Queen. Otherwise only the father was recorded.

Which brings up Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII. Ptolemy XII's mother was almost certainly a concubine, not his father's sister-wife, with the ever snobby Cicero describing him as "royal in neither birth nor spirit" and Greek writers consistently using the term Nothos (bastard/illegitimate) when talking about him. Pausanias even records the Athenians putting up statues of his father Ptolemy IX and of Berenice III, “his[Ptolemy IX] only legitimate child," which is a polite way of saying Ptolemy XII wasn't. He only got the pharaoh gig because he was literally the only option after an Alexandrine mob lynched Ptolemy XI.

So if Cleopatra's father probably wasn't inbred, what about Cleopatra herself? We believe her mother was Cleopatra V, who we think was Ptolemy XII's sister or maybe a cousin its unclear and nobody actually knows for certain. Cleopatra V, also disappears from the record right around the time of Cleopatra's birth. Possibly Cleopatra V reappears 10 years later as co-monarch with her daughter Berenice IV, but that might be Cleopatra VI who was maybe Berenice's and the famous Cleopatra’s sister, but also might not have existed at all, because everyone is using the same stupid name just to confuse the timeline.

Regarding Berenice IV we also have the following quote from Strabo: "He (Ptolemy XII) was deposed by the Alexandrines; and of his three daughters, one, the eldest [Berenice IV], who was legitimate, they proclaimed queen."

So if Berenice IV is Ptolemy XII's only legitimate child, then Cleopatra is yet another Nothos (bastard), which would mean she didn't have 6 great-great-grandparents as Google tells you, but probably the regular 16, and would be pretty normal from a genetic standpoint. Her father may have been a carrier for some recessive genes, which would make her a carrier too, not an inbred wreck.

Some scholars also point to Cleopatra learning the Egyptian language (the first Ptolemy to bother in nearly 300 years) as evidence that her mother was a native, potentially from a high ranking priestly family in Memphis, but that is essentially conjecture and not great as evidence.

Evidence against:

So here's where we get into even more Ptolemy weirdness, because of course a family that thought marrying their own sister was a good idea would have other issues. Case in point, Cleopatra's great-grandfather Ptolemy VIII, who not only married his sister Cleopatra II, but also took her daughter, his niece/stepdaughter Cleopatra III (yes, yet another Cleopatra, because why would a family need more than one name, are you stupid?), as his mistress and then married her too, without bothering to divorce her mother. Two queens, one of them the other one's mom.

One moment just threw up in my mouth a little bit after typing that.

The point being that while we do have several named mistresses from earlier in the dynasty, such as Thais, the Macedonian courtesan Bilistiche, the Olympian from earlier, and Agathoclea, who was the sister of a court minister, we can't know for certain who the unnamed women who mothered Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII were. "Not the Queen" isn't the same as "not a relative” when it comes to the Ptolemies. Maybe they were unrelated, but as Cleopatra III shows, we unfortunately can't rule out that they were a close relation.

Next is the Nothos (bastard) moniker attached to Ptolemy XII. Ptolemy XII may have been born while his father Ptolemy IX was married to Cleopatra IV, yes just follow the numbers. But Cleopatra III, yes the niece/step-daughter/mistress/wife from earlier, who was the mother of Ptolemy IX, hated Cleopatra IV and forced her son to divorce her. This has caused some historians to question whether the Nothos label is a misreading, or propaganda from hostile sources, who weaponized the fact that Ptolemy XII's parents were divorced. To call him a ‘bastard’ and discredit him as a ruler.

Conclusion:

So there's the evidence that people rarely if ever get into, because everyone runs into the weird Ptolemy sister marriages and just stops there. They probably also show a few pictures of the Habsburgs, but Cleopatra being horribly inbred is simply treated as a fact, while in reality she might have been one of the least inbred people in her dynasty. Because even if Ptolemy XII really was Cleopatra IV's son and as inbred as everyone assumes, Cleopatra herself potentially is still unaffected as long as her own mother was an outsider. Her father is a carrier in that scenario, and she is still not the product of a sibling marriage.

Obviously we can't know for certain, unless we find hers and/or her father's remains and can run some tests.

So this is the theory that the French Revolution was not a spontaneous event, but was in fact at least partial planned and driven by the actions of Philippe the Duc d’Orleans. This is definitely going to be one of the most modern theories on this sub, but it has plenty of conspiracy, treason, and everyone’s favorite ‘kinds’ of evidence hearsay and conjecture.

First Motive, which is simply who was Philippe the Duc d’Orleans. Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, was the head of the House of Orleans, a cadet branch of the Royal House of Bourbon, and the premier prince du sang, First Prince of the Blood, meaning he was the most senior prince outside of the immediate Bourbon family and was seventh, he became sixth during the revolution, in line to the throne after his cousin Louis XVI, Louis XVI’s two sons, and Louis’s brothers the Comte d’Provence and the Comte d’Artois, and Artois two sons. So there is your motive, if Philippe can find a way to remove his cousins from the board he becomes King of France.

Next Means. Philippe was easily the richest man in France, other than the king, in his own right, and was also married to Louise Marie Adélaïde the sole heir of her fabulously wealthy father the  duc d’Penthièvre. Most critically though is that Philippe had a ready flow of cash after he converted much of the Palais-Royal, the primary residence of the Orleans, into essentially a large mall complete with retail stores, bookstores, cafes and most importantly print shops which forms the first pillar of the conspiracy. Because the Palais-Royal was the residence of a Prince, by law the police and more importantly, press censors couldn’t enter the property without Philippe’s explicit permission. By refusing to grant permission for the police to enter the premises, Philippe created a free press zone where banned books, pamphlets, and according to rumor a certain pornographic pamphlet starring Marie Antionette were printed and circulated.

Now we get into the complex part Opportunity, which is going to take some explaining because unfortunately most people learn in school that the French Revolution was Ancien Regime>Estates General>Tennis Court Oath>Bastille>Robespierre>Chop…Chop…Chop>Napoleon. If that leaves out the assassination of a very angry man in his own bathtub, or a con-woman using a prostitute who looked like Marie Antoinette to convince a Catholic Cardinal to buy a multi-million dollar necklace which our con woman strips and sells in London then so be it.

So the French Revolution. I think its pretty common knowledge that the driving force behind the French Revolution was debt. Look fighting most of Europe, only to fight them again to put your grandson on the throne of Spain because *shocker* one of the most inbred people in history couldn’t have kids, and his chosen heir (the son of another one of the most inbred people in history) died young, leaving your grandson as a contender, then another war to keep some lady off the Austrian Throne, only to then have to fight a World War because some guy named George Washington decided to start some sh*t in Ohio, and then you get involved with a bunch of colonial tax protestors led in part by this same guy isn’t cheap.

The other side of the debt issue is obviously taxes, tax revenue in Pre-Revolution France was a mess not because nobles paid no taxes, they did, specifically the Capitation tax (a poll tax that applied to everyone) and the Vingtième (a 5% wealth tax that also applied to everyone).

With the Vingtième I can finally bring Philippe into the picture. The Vingtième unlike other taxes was not permanent, to have a permanent tax you needed the Estates General, or at least that’s what the nobles argued the reality was more complicated and involved the 13 regional Parlement. These Parlement would register the kings taxes and then would be responsible for enforcing them, but these Parlement were run by the nobles and the nobles didn’t want to pay more taxes … I mean see the rights of every Frenchman trampled by this despotic tyrant. The whole despot tyrant thing was of course flying off the printing presses inside the Palais Royal every single day egging on the crowd to support the Parlement against the king. Now the king did have a trump card known as the lis de justice (bed of justice, don’t ask), where he could force the Parlement to do his bidding, his last lis de justice had gone rather poorly though as he had fallen asleep and started audibly snoring during the ceremony which was embarrassing, and more importantly the regimes lenders didn’t want a lis de justice tax. Because a lis de justice meant France was unstable and they were not going to lend money to an unstable regime. So Louis was boxed in, yes he could force his tax, but then the bankers might refuse him the loans he needed to keep the kingdom going.

This is where Philippe steps out of the shadow and takes action himself. Louis’s  Controller-General, a guy named Calonne, whose job was essentially the secretary of the treasury, decided that he could bully the Parlement into submission by calling an Assembly of Notables, 144 of the who’s who of France, including all the archbishops, the upper crust of the nobility, the Marquis de Lafayette (yes that one), the chief justices of the Parlement, Louis’s two brothers, and of course Louis Philippe the premier prince du sang.

Things went from bad to worse at the assembly for Calonne, as the Notables wanted to see the King’s books, because everyone knew the kingdom was in a debt crisis but many of the notables thought this was just plain mismanagement or the work of Madame Deficit, one of Marie Antionette’s nicknames. Calonne refused and even attempted to appeal to the people by publishing his tax plan and framing the notables as greedy, which backfired and led Louis to fire Calonne and appoint a man named Brienne, who actually just led the opposition in the assembly of notables, in his place.

At this point though the monarchy was basically out of money and out of time, so Louis did the only thing he could think of, he summoned the Parlement of Paris, including Philippe and prepared to use his trump card, the lis de justice. Which is when Phillipe struck, during the ceremony the Duke rose to his feet and in a direct challenge to the King stated that the king’s new taxes and loans were illegal. This was devastating as it showed the king’s own cousin and a potential challenger to the throne was openly defying the king, exactly the instability the bankers would hate. So was this a brave act of courage against a tyrant or a cold calculated move to deprive the crown of the stability it required to force the calling of the Estates General?

Unfortunately here’s a section I have to gloss over for brevity, but essentially in the lead up to the Estates General the battle became whether the Estates(Clergy, Nobility, Commons) would meet on traditional lines (equal number of delegates from each and each estate gets one vote) or what the liberals wanted double the delegates from the Third(Commons) and vote by head(one delegate one vote). Philippe as a liberal obviously put his voice, his money, and the presses of the Palais Royale in support of the latter.

Onto the Estates General where while the monarchy did agree to double the third, they did not state whether it would be vote by head, or vote by Order(Estate). What followed is well known, door were locked, the Third Estate Delegates found an open tennis court, dramatic painting and the declaration of the National Assembly. Initially this was only the Third Estate and the King was furious as the Assembly had declared all his taxes illegal if he dissolved them. Which is were once again Philippe entered the fray leading 47 Nobles to join the ‘National Assembly’ thus breaking the Three Estates and according to some historians the absolute monarchy as Louis now caved and recognized that the Assembly had at least something resembling sovereign authority.

While cowed King Louis did try to take back the reins by bringing in the Flanders Regiment, one of the most elite units in the French Army, then something about a party where they trampled the Revolutionary tricolor cockade, again no time, and finally the King dismissed the popular finance minister, who actually wasn’t finance minister but again no time, Jacques Necker, very important guy but this is about Philippe not him. The news of Necker’s firing reached Paris and a certain Camille Desmoulins, very important also look him up, leapt onto a café table in the Palais-Royal garden, and even though he was known to have a horrible stutter, gave the speech of his life and rallied the crowd into a riotous mob. This mob then seized wax busts of Necker and the duc d’Orléans, just in case your wondering why people think Philippe was a mastermind using street muscle to get his way, draped them in black, and paraded them through Paris where troops attacked the procession, where several members of the mob allegedly died defending the busts from the soldiers. This unrest continued for days with marches and street battles before culminating in the march on the Bastille. This string of events led to many in the court at Versailles to write that agitators in the pay of the Philippe were in the crowd egging them on.

Our next event is the critical Woman’s March on Versailles, where anger of the price of bread, boiled over into another riot that culminated in the women marching from Paris to Versailles where they stormed the palace, Marie Antionette allegedly spent 20 minutes hammering at a door as the crowd moved through the palace screaming for her head, and ended with the King moving from Versailles to Paris.

After the Women’s march, the Châtelet Court launched an investigation which found sufficient grounds to order the arrest of Philippe and his ally the comte de Mirabeau, again another crazy important person who funnily enough entered the secret employ of Louis during the investigation, as they found evidence that the march was not random and was actually the work of Philippe’s ‘spymaster’ Choderlos de Laclos, who in the days leading up to the riot distributed money though the streets in order to turn the mob toward a new goal, terrifying Louis into abdicating in favor of his cousin. Eyewitnesses told the investigators that the crowd contained “men dressed as women”, that these men were distributing money, that this money came from Orleans’ accounts, and of course after the crowd had stormed the palace who other than the Duke himself appeared in the hallway directing the crowd to the royal apartments.

I’ll discuss this more in the evidence against section, but for now all you need know is that Mirabeau and Orleans both enjoyed immunity as part of the National Assembly and the Assembly rejected the charges as politically motivated slander.

It's also worth noting that a few months before the Châtelet court released its findings, the National Assembly abolished hereditary titles so Philippe was no longer duc d’Orleans.

The next set piece occurs roughly a year later during the events surrounding the Flight to Varennes, where Louis and his family attempted to flee the country but were caught because of the king’s ‘big nose’. This is were proponents of the theory say the Orleans end game starts to shine through as the radical/liberal papers, especially those found in the Palais Royal, start writing editorials arguing that since the Louis had tried to flee, and even left behind a letter explaining his actions, he had abdicated the throne. They proposed that Louis’s six year old son be made king and Philippe would be elevated to regent. Simultaneously they moved that Louis brother’s, who did escape France and were now émigrés, be removed from the line of succession. So Philippe would be both the regent and the heir to this 6 year old boy if this plan was enacted.

However the Assembly decided to adopt the ‘fiction’ that Louis and his family had been kidnapped instead of fleeing, in order to preserve the constitution they were almost finished drafting and according to several delegates keep Orleans away from the throne.

The incoming Legislative Assembly’s entire back and forth with Louis about this ‘fiction’ is a story for another time as outside his purported influence on the press, Philippe was essentially out of power as the National ‘Constituent’ Assembly had passed a self-denying decree barring any of their members from the Legislative Assembly and Royal Ministry, so Philippe was sidelined during this period.

The mob of Paris yet again asserted itself, with claims of more Orlean agitators in the crowd, and stormed the Assembly forcing them to suspend Louis as King, and call for new elections which created the National Convention. Philippe sought and won election to the National Convention under the name Philippe Égalité (September 1792). Who in one of their first acts abolished the monarchy establishing the First French Republic, an resolution that our now former prince voted for.

Finally for Philippe was the trial of Louis XVI, where he voted for death, he voted against an amendment to postpone the execution, and also voted against an amendment that would have sought a national referendum on the verdict of death. Proponents of this theory say that this was near Philippe’s new end game, where he would sit and bide his time waiting for a new opportunity to seize the throne. With the evidence being that despite being a republic, there always seemed to be a large executive hole in need of filling with first the committee of public safety, then the Directory, the Consulate, and of course Emperor Napoleon.

His downfall, however, would not be part of this plan. Philippe’s son, also named Louis Philippe, became involved in a Royalist plot by General Dumouriez while serving in Dumouriez staff. The plan was discovered by agents of the Republic and Dumouriez and the younger Louis Philippe fled across the lines to the Austrians becoming émigrés. Philippe Égalité was caught in the guilt by association common in the early Republic, and was tried, and guillotined his plan unfulfilled until perhaps years later when a series of events in a certain July saw his son Louis Philippe ascent to the throne as Louis Philippe I, King of the French.

So that is timeline and the evidence, almost all of it circumstantial, or based on hearsay and conjecture, outside of three acts where Philippe deliberately put his thumb on the scale propelling events forward.

Now for the evidence against.

First, obviously if we are to credit the descriptions of Philippe as a machiavellian mastermind, we have to also look to the descriptions that describe him as an affable, and potentially a bit slow, people pleaser. Sure he enjoyed poking his rigidly absolutist cousins, but that was from an idealogical difference of opinion, he certainly didn’t plan to kill them. Then of course we have his patronage of the liberal press, which again is framed as A. Supporting his own ideology and B. It was excellent business sense as the Palais Royal kept the Orleans from the classic noble spiral of being Asset Rich but Cash Poor.

On the findings of the Châtelet Court, the historical consensus is that the charges were absolutely politically motivated as a spontaneous riot because there was not enough food obviously made the monarchy look bad and they needed a scapegoat. The National Assembly at the time which was made up of many men who were not exactly friendly to Orleans found that the charges were baseless.

Finally, during the trial of Louis plenty of accounts say Philippe was despondent that it had come to this and openly questioned whether he should abstain, but was told that he and his family would be murdered by the very mob currently calling for Louis’s head. Obviously that is more hearsay but I mentioned plenty of other hearsay on the matter so it should be included.

So there you go the theory that the French Revolution caused/influenced by the machinations of Louis’s own cousin.

Time for everyone’s favorite Catastrophism. In keeping with my earlier post on Nova Anglia, the purported Anglo-Saxon Colony in the Black Sea, I decided why not stay in the region and share the Black Sea Deluge Theory.

First as always background and the undisputed facts. Obviously you only have to look at a map to know that the Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean by two critical chokepoints the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus Straits with the Sea of Marmara in between the two. Any student of history also knows that these two straits have made this one of the most contested and coveted pieces of land throughout human history, but that is outside the scope here.

They differ however in that the Bosphorus is home to the Bosphorus sill, a plateau of significantly shallower (meaning higher elevation it’s under water currently) bedrock that rises 40m(130 ft) above the highest point of the nearby Dardanelles. What also isn’t disputed is that this sill is marked by massive and significant scouring which is a sign of significant erosion from flowing water. What also isn’t disputed is that since the last glacial maximum sea levels have been rising. 

No this is not a Melt Water pulse, or Younger Dryas theory those sissy 2mm/year sea level rises have nothing on the Black Sea Deluge.

What also isn’t disputed is that Black Sea was once a freshwater, likely brackish but still fresh, lake that was separated from the Mediterranean by first the Dardanelles sill and then the Bosphorus sill for millennia. There also is no disagreement that everyone’s favorite the Proto-Indo-Europeans made their home, raised their horses, and drove their wagons across this area, or that roughly 7,500 years ago they set off in waves of a massive migration that saw them spread from England in the West to India in the East.

The final two facts are that the Black Sea is home to a hypoxic (No dissolved oxygen) zone at around 150m of depth. That core samples from around 7,500 years ago reveal a “knife edge” divide between Marine(Ocean) and Lacustrine(Lake) sediments, or that this knife edge also shows an abrupt change from Freshwater to Saltwater Mollusks in the fossil record.

So here is the theory as originally proposed by Geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman III. Around 7,500 years ago the Mediterranean rose to the point that it breached the Bosphorus sill and began flowing into the Black “Lake” which at the time had a water level of 100m lower than the Bosphorus sill. This wouldn’t be the meltwater sea rise of 1mm/year it is estimated that the water would have initially risen at a rate of 15cm(6 in)/day, slowing to 7cm(3in)/day once the sea level had risen 50m, and continuing to taper off as the pressure differential fell. This isn’t your grandfather telling you he used to play where there is now ankle deep water, this is you wake up in the middle of the night and your stuff is floating around your house, and three weeks later your house is underwater. This ties into our evidence shown by the scouring on the Bosphorus sill, the rapid sediment change, and the rapid change in types of mollusks in the fossil record. It also would explain the Black Sea hypoxic zone since freshwater is less dense than salt water and salt water sliding under this freshwater would become hypoxic. Ryan and Pitman also showed subsurface mapping showing an ancient shoreline at roughly 95m of depth, and what they called “a potential rectangular structure made of wood” on the old shoreline, and they argued that this catastrophe pairs almost perfectly with the start of the Indo-European Diaspora.

Now for the evidence against. First, the scour itself could be explained by long term moderate to low flow instead of massive cataclysmic flow, think 2cm(1in)/year at the beginning still far greater than either meltwater pulse, but not you need to pack up and move now. Second, geologists also point to the lack of a fan, as the single torrent coming out of the Bosphorus would spread out across the basin forming a fan in the geological record. Third is that the ‘knife edge’ sediment divide could simply be an unconformity, this occurs when rock layer(s) is/are eroded away leaving a gap in the geological record, the most famous example is the ‘Great Unconformity’ which exists in the Grand Canyon and elsewhere. Finally from the geologists is that the ancient shoreline is not accurate with one study finding the 100m shoreline may have been thousands of years earlier than Ryan and Pitman found, and that the actually difference between the Bosphorus sill and the Black ‘Lake’ was closer to the 30-50m range, not the 100m difference that Ryan and Pitman argued.

Lastly we have the biologists who argue the mollusk evidence is not very strong, because mollusks are extremely sensitive to changes in salinity and it would not take much of a change to kill all of the freshwater mollusks.

So there you go the Black Sea Deluge, this is personally one of my favorite theories but like every theory it has its holes and while I personally am on the catastrophe side, that position is obviously contested and only further research will reveal the truth.

So usually I’m the one offering criticism of the theories being shared on here, and since I don’t want to be branded as a spoil sport I decided to share a few of the theories that I find compelling.

Before going onto Nova Anglia, a bit of backstory and the facts that are not disputed. After the Anglo-Saxons where defeated at the Battle of Hastings by the forces of William ‘the Bastard’ who then rebranded himself as ‘the Conqueror’, many of the Anglo-Saxons fled England, yes it would actually be Ængland but I’ll use the modern spelling, with a significant portion of them finding their way to Constantinople. There the Anglo-Saxons joined the Varangian Guard of Alexios I Komnenos, yes he was the emperor during the First Crusade, who was having his own problems with the Normans, specifically a certain Robert Guiscard who claimed the Byzantines had mistreated his daughter who was supposed to marry the last emperor’s son, but due to some court intrigue that emperor had been deposed… ok byzantine politics is very messy give it a google if you want to know more moving on. The Anglo Saxons of course saw this coming conflict as an excellent opportunity for some payback.

So Robert Guiscard sent his son Bohemond, you might know him from the first crusade as well, who was actually now his bastard son because Robert’s first marriage had been annulled for Consanguinity, but mostly so Robert could marry the beautiful and fearsome Sikelgaita … sorry getting off topic again Norman Politics is also very messy, ahead with an advance force into Modern day Albania to secure a beachhead before his father arrived with the rest of the army. Once gathered the army set off for the City of Dyrrhachium, also in Albania, and put it to siege. Long siege short the Venetian navy came down and wrecked the Norman navy, Robert continued the siege anyway, Alexios thought he was going to surprise Robert but he didn’t, the Varangians got out of formation because they went chasing a bunch of Norman Knights, they really wanted revenge, this left the Byzantine Flank open and the Norman Cavalry smashed into the remaining troops routing them.

So while this was a bit of a disaster it does firmly establish the significant Anglo-Saxon presence in the Byzantine Empire, and the number of them in the Varangian Guard completely changed the culture to such an extent that the Greeks began calling it the Englinobarangoi.

So now the theory, according to the Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis and the Edwardsaga which chronicles the voyage of 350 ships sailing from England to Constantinople led by 3 earls and 8 barons, along the way the English Fleet captured and sacked the city of Ceuta, the islands of Majorca and Minorca, and even intervening in the ongoing war between the Normans and Moors over Sicily. After these adventures the fleet finally arrived in Constantinople where the Emperor welcomed them with open arms and while some of them stayed in Constantinople another group were granted lands that had previously been part of the Byzantine Empire that were 6 days and 6 nights sailing to the North-East of Constantinoplen where the exiles founded the cities of London and York. Historians like Dr. Caitlin R. Green (Link to her article) say that this would put them roughly in the Straits of Azov, on the eastern part of the Crimean Peninsula.

So here is the evidence medieval maps from the period routinely list this area with the label of Susaco (Sussex) and Londina(London) and a Franciscan monk, Benedict the Pole, on his way to the court of the Mongol Empire in 1247 describes passing through terram Saxorum (Land of the Saxons).

For evidence that’s about for Nova Anglia, two sagas, a few place names, and the account of one monk. While there is mountains of evidence for a long term English presence in the Byzantine court, including a well documented event where during every Christmas Dinner the Varangians would sing a toast of longevity to the emperor in their native Inklinsti (English), the Church of Saints of Blachernae which was dedicated to St. Augustine of Canterbury, and an entire Varangian graveyard that was unfortunately destroyed by the Ottoman Turks in 1865 to make room for a construction project, the evidence for a separate Nova Anglia remains sparse.

Evidence against is obviously 2 place names does not an English Colony make as the name similarities could be coincidence. The 3 earls would be impossible as prior to the conquest there were only 6 earls Harold Godwinson(the king) his two brothers Leofwine and Garth, Edwin, Waltheof, and Morcar. According to the Bayeux Tapestry Harold and his two brothers died at Hastings. Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof all swore allegiance to William but then Edwin and Morcar revolted in 1068 before Edwin was betrayed and killed, and Morcar was captured and imprisoned. Waltheof also revolted but he two was executed after his revolt failed. So that’s all six accounted for so the saga is likely wrong on that number, but I can get behind them being the sons of earls to make it a little better. The next issue is the presence of the Crimean Goths, a germanic people who had lived in Crimea since at least the 3rd Century. Benedict the Pole’s entire quote is, “erram Saxorum quos nos credimus esse Gothos, et hii sunt christiani…" We passed through the land of the Saxons, who we believe to be Goths, who are Christian. Gothic is a germanic language so it isn’t much of a leap to assume our Franciscan monk heard what sounded like German to him and just labeled them Saxons.

So that’s the for and the against, I really do hope one day some Anglo-Saxon artifacts are unearthed in the area as this in my opinion is a fantastic theory and we only have to look to the L'Anse aux Meadows to see how archaeology can turn a tale found in a literary saga into a reality.

DESCRIPTION
Calradia's kingdoms are held together by more than its great houses. Precarium Houses adds a living lower nobility to the campaign: 27 landless minor noble clans who take service with kingdoms under precarium land-grants — fixed-term tenure in exchange for service, in the manner of the early medieval world — and 10 rooted merchant families who never swear to anyone, running trade fleets and caravans out of their home cities. These houses have custom families, hero descriptions, and notifications.
Minor houses seek patrons on their own judgment, serve out their terms, renew or move on, and get orphaned when their patron loses the lands that drew them. Merchant families enrich the towns they live in — and if you own one of those towns, they'll do business with you directly.
MAIN FEATURES
Precarium minor nobility — 27 semi-mobile noble houses (3 per kingdom). Best way I can describe them is they are somewhere between mercenaries and actual noble houses, although they are probably less loyal than mercenaries as they will ditch if things are looking bad.
Rooted merchant families — 10 independent trading houses with full authored lore, anchored to their home cities. They field independent trade caravans (naval convoys with War Sails) flying their own house banners, and passively enrich their home town: a "Resident Merchant Family" prosperity bonus visible in the town UI plus a share of tariff income to the town's owner. 
Yes, the merchants are fully independent and you can attack them without starting a war.
Merchant services — own a merchant family's home town and you can subscribe to their services in dialog: food shipments, construction materials, or caravan attraction, on yearly terms with lapse notifications.
Hire them yourself — recruit precarium house leaders into your own kingdom on 1/5/10-year terms, and they weigh your offer before accepting. Hosting them shows as a proper subsidy line in your clan finance screen.
Lore Friendly - All families carry Calradian names and backgrounds, nothing new is added. 

Nexus

Feel free to ask me any questions you have in the comments or features you'd like to see added.