Happy Bastille Day!

[Caliga]

To you, he's dead.  To me, he's an inbred drooling retard with a bad case of prognathism.

[MadImmortalMan]

There's no bread, let them eat cake
There's no end to what they'll take
Flaunt the fruits of noble birth
Wash the salt into the earth

But they're marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Free the dungeons of the innocent
The king will kneel and let his kingdom rise

Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by

And we're marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Sing, oh choirs of cacophony
The king has kneeled, to let his kingdom rise

Lessons taught but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn't all that money buys

[Habsburg]

She would have been wise to embrace the teachings of Calvin as well.

Your love of the Protestants against the Habsburgs has been noted traitor.

I just...cannot believe what I am seeing.  Habsburg is dead to me.

I can not help myself, the idol worshiping Roman Church is evil.  So are the Calvanists, at least they are not so corrupt.

I kinda only like the Lutherans. :shrug:



Tho getting religious doctrine from a Beaver Top Hat is kind of cool *SLC*, sort of like God talking to you in the desert *Medina* 

[garbon]

I can not help myself, the idol worshiping Roman Church is evil. 

[Habsburg]

I can not help myself, the idol worshiping Roman Church is evil.

You are probably one of the people who "viewed" my plea for help in gaming, laughed and moved on. 

Monkeybuttpirate gets three Prada points for at least trying to help. 

[garbon]

You are probably one of the people who "viewed" my plea for help in gaming, laughed and moved on. 

Monkeybuttpirate gets three Prada points for at least trying to help. 

I viewed it after making my post in this thread. I don't have any advice about shopping at Chanel as I've never played HOI2.

[katmai]

I can not help myself, the idol worshiping Roman Church is evil.

[Capetan Mihali]

Finally got G. Lefebvre's "The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France" from the library today in honor. 

[Drakken]

Tragic day.

What with the result, the great unwashed killing aristocracy.

Result.

I'm not certain what you mean, if it's the British never turned back as teh #1...

That happened when the French rejected the teachings of Calvin and keep ties with the idol worshipping Roman Church.

I find it infinitely saddening that I wasn't born and able to see the body of that wart-faced, pockmarked despot and supertraitor dug out of his grave and publicly hung, drawn, and quartered on Charing Cross.

[Valmy]

Charles I was so stupidly stubborn and lacked so much common sense I more consider his death a suicide than a execution.

[grumbler]

Oh and isn't stringing up despots invariably a good idea, especially if they're still living; having Charles I executed has contributed marvelously towards Elizabeth II being such a good constitutional monarch.

Indeed.  If they had hanged or beheaded, say, five or six ruling monarchs Elizabeth II would already have the Britons using flying cars.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm not certain what you mean, if it's the British never turned back as teh #1...

That happened when the French rejected the teachings of Calvin and keep ties with the idol worshipping Roman Church.

[Drakken]

.........

I find it infinitely saddening that I wasn't born and able to see the body of that wart-faced, pockmarked despot and supertraitor dug out of his grave and publicly hung, drawn, and quartered on Charing Cross.

One of the great, yet flawed, Englishmen. 

Oh and isn't stringing up despots invariably a good idea, especially if they're still living; having Charles I executed has contributed marvelously towards Elizabeth II being such a good constitutional monarch.

What are you smoking? The real Cromwell is nothing like 1970 Richard Harris' Cromwell.

What Cromwell established, in fact, was a personal military dictatorship. In fact his rule was more absolute than what Charles I could ever achieve, with a purged lameduck Parliament and military governors answering directly to him. Parliament had no more real or independent say about taxation or controlling the Lord Protector's purse, which was the core of the power it had over the King, because it could be purged ad infinitum.

Please tell me how Cromwell's rule was either more democratic or constitutional than Charles I. Charles I was clumsy and stubborn, yes, but he was acting within a known constitutional framework. Cromwell was not. No precedent, no charter, nor any legal custom bound the powers of a military dictator in England, especially when the guy had a personal permanent army at his command. Cromwell was even offered the crown in 1657, because at least the King was conventionally bound by traditional customs, precedents and charters even at the time. Take away the "Republic" veil, and what you have in England is what Louis XIV would establish during his personal rule, and what later whigs would totally abhor: absolute monarchy.

And you know what? He seriously considered accepting the crown. How's that for a Champion of Republicanism? That he didn't because it would limit his powers speaks for itself.

Cromwell just succeeded where Charles I had failed: dissolving Parliament into a joke with a nasty politicalized private army at his personal command. That is why there was no more demand for a new Commonwealth even after the abysmal failure of James II's reign : because the only thing it achieved was as chaffing ultra-Puritan dictatorship ruled by fiat.

Beheading Charles I contributed nothing to a constitutional monarch, because English monarchs were already bound by rules befoe that. What did was the Hanoverians George I and II taking hikes in Hanover while leaving the day-to-day politics to a Prime Minister needing the confidence of the House, and thus putting even more emphasis to the role of Parliament as decision-maker in modern politics than the King's.

[Valmy]

I think you are being just a little harsh on Cromwell.  He didn't set out to do those things, all of that developed organically out of the Civil War.

He was a military dictator but after the chaos and terror of the Civil War what the English really wanted was order and Cromwell brought them that...and then conveniently died after only 9 years.  Hobbes and Leviathan and all that.

[saskganesh]

My 3 yr old nephew was born a day late, but we still call him a Bastille Baby anyway.