Wednesday 9 April 1662

Sir George Carteret, Sir Williams both and myself all the morning at the office passing the Victualler’s accounts, and at noon to dinner at the Dolphin, where a good chine of beef and other good cheer. At dinner Sir George showed me an account in French of the great famine, which is to the greatest extremity in some part of France at this day, which is very strange.¹ So to the Exchange, Mrs. Turner (who I found sick in bed), and several other places about business, and so home. Supper and to bed.

On the 5th of June following, Louis, notwithstanding the scarcity, gave that splendid carousal in the court before the Tuileries, from which the place has ever since taken its name.—B.

Thursday 10 April 1662Tuesday 8 April 1662

Also on this day

Temperature: 8°C / 46°F

(Average for April 1662)

In Parliament

House of Commons
House of Lords

In Earls Colne, Essex

(About this data)

Annotations

N JWB on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 12:58am

Picture [ Le carrousel de 1662 ] http://courses.arch.hku.hk/history_and_theory/02/shyuenb/louvre/h5.htm
N JWB on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 01:06am

Sun King
“… 1662, on the occasion of the famous Fete de Carrousel, the King took to himself the symbol that is still linked with his name:

I chose to assume the form of the sun, because of the unique quality of the radiance that surrounds it;…” Philippe Erlanger
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/louisxiverlanger.html
N language hat on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 02:02am

“that splendid carousal… from which the place has ever since taken its name”

The note is mistaken; the OED derives carrousel from Italian carosello, garosello
N vicenzo on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 03:05am

There were surposed to be 11 Famines during 17C in France, but the only reference found was this: “1659
Starvation, pestilence and war plague France. The peasants are paying a large portion of their crop for local seigneur feudal dues, church tithes and the king
N JWB on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 03:35am

Famine
16th,17th & 18th centuries called the little ice age with resultant famines. The 30 Years War in Germany certainly did not help. Imagine that little turnip of a man calling himself the Sun King a century & half into three centuries of global cooling. Beware if an Ice King cometh in this era of global warming.
N vicenzo on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 06:09am

To-day, the House of Commons is deciding which mines to give to the King [There be thinking it be a Socialist idea to Nationlize mines, Silly me]
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=26493#s2
N Britney Spears on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 08:57am

Language hat, it’s not carrousel, it’s carousel with one r. The place de carousel is near where the old Tuileries palace used to stand, and it was named after Louix XIV’s big show.
N Britney Spears on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 08:59am

Vincent, I found this

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:GXt7UjrD7-UJ:www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/A-FAM.PDF+famine+1662&hl=en

‘Two great famines - those of 1594-7 and 1659-62 - had a particularly disastrous impact on Europe in this century.

The Electors of Burgundy, for instance, sent a protest to the King in 1662 which stated that ‘famine this year has put an end to over seventeen thousand families in your province and forced a third of the inhabitants, even in the good towns, to eat wild plants.’ The chronicle even alleged that ‘Some people ate human flesh”.
N Britney Spears on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 09:02am

Carrousel
Actually, it does have two rs.
N Linda on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 09:27am

An interesting site on carroseuls:
http://carouselmagic.com/history.htm
I always thought they were a French invention put into place after a king was killed during jousting, but see I was wrong. I do know jousting was outlawed after this happened. After the Revolution, the caroseul was then used by the public, having only been in the domain of the nobles until then.
N A. De Araujo on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 02:26pm

“Sun King”
Not because he was warm or because everything revolved around him(it was before Galileo,I think)but because he was compared to Apolo,sometimes to Hercules cf Ercole Amante-Cavalli.
N dirk on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 09:23pm

Car(r)ousel

According to the dictionary both spellings are correct in English - although French only permits the “rr” spelling (from Italian carosello, tilting match)

For those interested, “Le Dictionnaire de l’Acad
N dirk on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 09:37pm

correction

“dancing” should read “racing”
N Alan Bedford on Mon 11 Apr 2005, 01:33am

And while we’re talking etymology, to carouse (v.i.) ‘1567, from M.Fr. carousser “drink, quaff, swill,” from Ger. gar aus “quite out,” from gar austrinken “to drink up entirely.”’

Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=c&p=4
N vicenzo on Mon 11 Apr 2005, 04:46am

Strange, history tells us the very little of the plight of the majority, only about the affluence of the Successful whom doth be de winners. ‘Tis our weakness and strength. Let us eat cake.
N GrahamT on Mon 11 Apr 2005, 01:33pm

Carrousel
My flawed translation of dirk’s definition:
“A kind of festival consisting of head (to head?) races and ring (circuit?) races between many people, divided into teams of four, distinguished by their colours and livery, and by their magnificent different dress.”
This assumes “teste” is old French for “t
N dirk on Tue 12 Apr 2005, 12:31am

Carrousel

re - GrahamT

Fair translation, I think. Thanks. But “bague” only means “ring” as the object you put on your finger - not circuit.

So, as I see it, what happened was a kind of contest between groups of four people, where they tried (probably on horseback) to snatch a ring or an animal head from a pole or similar. Not so long ago there were still races in some parts of western Europe where people on horseback tried to be the first to pull the head off a (live) goose… So this may be less improbable than it sounds!
N GrahamT on Tue 12 Apr 2005, 09:12am

Carrousel:
Absolutely right Dirk. A bague in this instance (course de bague) is a ring hung up in the lists which the knights tilted at and tried to catch on their lances, if I have followed the word trail through the 1694 La Rousse, linked above, correctly. Maybe the course de teste (t
N A. Hamilton on Wed 13 Apr 2005, 10:58pm

that splendid carousal in the court before the Tuileries, from which the place has ever since taken its name

Pace LHat, I think the note is probably not mistaken. As Britney Spears (!) notes, it is a place name that figures, for example, in Baudelaire’s Le Cygne, where the poet speaks of the “bric-a brac confus” of the “nouveau Carrousel.”

http://www.fleursdumal.org/poem/220

I find nothing in the OED to contradict the assertion that this space got its name from a festivity given by Louis XIV.
N language hat on Thu 14 Apr 2005, 08:59pm

The note *is* mistaken—
not in asserting that the place was named for the festivity (which is not in question) but in asserting that the word is the same as “carousal” (from the verb “carouse”), which it’s not — the two are entirely unrelated.
N language hat on Thu 14 Apr 2005, 08:59pm

And the Baudelaire poem is one of my favorites; it’s where I learned about the place.