I Am Louis XIV

   Chapter 416 Domino-style collapse

Neither Joseph nor Guy were stupid, but their education and accumulated experience meant that all they could see was this - Joseph didn't even feel happy, the gallows and execution platforms in the Martyrdom Square were maintained to the best of their ability. It took nearly three months—after Du Bo, the leader of the woodworking guild, and his comrades were tortured and executed, the leaders of the Orleans Textile Guild and a group of people who were as stubborn and naive as him—so naive that they thought that as long as the yang and yin violated the rules, they procrastinated and perfunctory. , a fool who can maintain his privilege and status.

The    guild was first born in the twelfth century and has a history of more than 600 years.

   Some families, such as Dubo, almost regarded the guild as their own kingdom. He is the uncrowned king, the elders are ministers, the craftsmen are the subjects, and the helpers and apprentices are slaves, and they seem to really hold the power of life and death. As long as they don't appear in front of real nobles and officials, they can wear brocade, eat plans, and be complacent in the illusion of being unable to extricate themselves.

until today.

Even if Joseph was brought before the king, or Dubo was put to death, the guild leaders still didn't think their lives would change—they thought proudly that the king might not be able to pass on the kingdom to his son, However, the guild has been inherited from the father's business for hundreds of years and has never ceased. Any guild leader may have a surname that is older than that of the local aristocrat, sometimes even dating back to the Romans or Gauls - so how can there be no guilds, no them, no such , Isn't the handicraft industry in France going to die?

Even if Louis XIV had an army of several hundred thousand people, the guilds had only a lot of craftsmen. If there were no guilds, these young and strong young men would have no work to do. Don't they go crazy, when the time comes, Even His Majesty the King must be in a constant state of panic.

With such ridiculous thoughts in their minds, they watched Du Bo of the Woodworking Guild die miserably, Roubaix of the Textile Guild was also sent to the gallows, and they watched the Candle Guild, the Iron Guild, the Gold Guild The heads of the silversmiths' guild, one by one, were caught in this inexplicable storm like a sampan in a hurricane - it seems that the whole city of Orleans is against the king, but they know no, They still hope to serve the king... Especially Louis XIV is famous for not caring about his origin and surname, the merchants are targeting Colbert, and the guild leaders will also want to elect such a person who can speak for them. !

   They don’t want much, really not much…

Everyone was caught in a fog of incomprehension, including those who were persecuted and oppressed like Joseph, who looked at Orleans' guild system in disbelief like stacked dominoes, With just a little touch of a little finger, it collapsed irrevocably from one to ten thousand, to one hundred thousand, to one million.

  Everyone is talking shit, everyone is done, everyone is worried, they are losing their jobs and they can't support their families.

But when the sun rises, they are surprised to find that nothing has changed. They still have to go to the workshop to work - those workshops that have lost their craftsmen or helpers are also taken over by people they know well. These people may not be involved in the conspiracy. , or a craftsman who was promoted from a helper, whether one person is in charge of two or three workshops - the person in charge of these new workshops (not the owner) said to appease the helpers and apprentices, don't worry, there will be raw materials and accessories , there will also be orders, and there will be people who are responsible for negotiating prices (buying and selling). As long as they work hard, they will also get paid.

Even so, the craftsmen can't help but keep asking questions around the craftsmen. The problem is that these craftsmen don't know much. To be honest, their courage is almost broken. Think about it. Well, the lampposts around the Martyrdom Square are almost full - in order to prevent the corpse from decaying and causing a plague, and the beak doctor painted them with lime - this treatment has been quite rare in recent years, after all, Louis XIV was not that kind. A king who likes to terrorize his people with death and pain.

   But for the guild members who had been acting rebellious, the threat was immediate—the chaos and frenzy the guild leaders had hoped for after losing their grip did not materialize. Those guild members who had succumbed to their cowardice did not dare to challenge the patience of the king - the new guild leader designated by the king's officials was in place under the gallows, and there was no objection to the orders of the officials, and the process of uploading and distributing was even more difficult. It was as smooth as a new spinning wheel with grease.

   With the new head of the woodworking guild, Guy, making chestnuts, Dubo was still dancing in the air with his legs kicked, and he began to prepare the spinning wheel and loom workshop that the king explained.

Yes, the king felt that the word workshop was no longer enough to describe his industry, and the new term "workshop" came into being. in the big project.

The original order will be pushed back, no matter what kind of seller can be compared with the king - fortunately Joseph is named as the master craftsman of this project, he will select a hundred craftsmen he approves as disciples, teach How they made the spinning wheel, so did another English artisan who made the loom. When these men had learned, they would return to their workshops, teaching and making spinning wheels and looms with their apprentices and helpers.

   These must be completed within a month.

Not that no one complained, because it was so outrageous - but when the new head of the blacksmiths' guild also showed up in the warehouse that was borrowed as a teaching ground, the final noise disappeared - both on the new spinning wheel and on the loom. For the iron castings, Joseph had secretly taken them to a blacksmith in another city to make them, for which he paid a lot of money. But the blacksmith, as agreed, did not ask what it was for, nor did he say it was Joseph's order.

  These blacksmiths will ask meticulously what role these iron castings will play, what special effects they need, and how long they need to be used, etc...

This kind of behavior is impossible before the death of the guild, because if the blacksmith and the woodworker communicate in such a deep way, it will not only cross the line but also violate the taboo. It's not impossible to get up or kill someone.

But this kind of behavior obviously has the support of the king, and the blacksmiths are frowning. Like carpenters, they have to hand over a sufficient amount of perfect accessories within the specified time. For sure, when a person knows what he is doing, he can do it more accurately and quickly than when he does not know anything.

  Some blacksmiths even boldly suggested their own, which did make the new spinning wheel and loom more perfect.

   They received a handsome reward.

The king left Orleans without waiting for the new spinning wheel to be manufactured in batches. After all, his grand parade was only one third of the way, but when the king and his party drove into the Provence region, the city of Orleans had already sent them. the latest cotton.

The cotton cloth woven by the new spinning wheel and loom is smooth and dense, not inferior to the goods brought back from India by the East India Company, and it is not afraid of washing many times. Verified by time.

However, even if this weakness is retained, its width and output are enough to make people smile. In this respect, handwork will never compare to tireless machines, and with the woodworking guild and the blacksmith guild, they are forcibly combined into one On the whole, people of insight are worried that the mass unemployment of textile workers caused by the new spinning wheel and loom has not happened and caused social unrest. The king's textile factory is like a monster with a huge mouth. How many people come here? can be swallowed.

   Don't you see that the king was going to use it to guide women out of the house from the beginning, isn't it a joke if even the existing textile workers (men) can't accept it? The textile workers who were once full of worries and vigilance slowly felt relieved when they saw the construction of the king's workshop. After all, the area of ​​these houses that stretched outside the city of Orleans was so vast. Thousands of members and their helpers, apprentices work day and night, and new spinning wheels and looms are constantly being transported out of the city - "Every machine needs at least one person to work." They said so , while counting the number of machines, the more machines, the more reassuring they are.

   Besides, even if they were not employed for the time being, the new leader of the textile guild gave them a settlement allowance, so that those workshop members who had to stop working due to lack of raw materials would not starve and be displaced. What surprised Louis was that the fee was not claimed by them from the officials, but was drawn by the new leader from the property owned by the original leader of the guild.

   "It turns out that these people are not incapable of doing good things." The Duke of Orleans said sarcastically.

   "They are not idiots, they are just lucky." Louis said indifferently, didn't the former head of the textile guild in Orleans know that the new spinning wheel and weaving would bring more output and better quality products?

But such an outcome is good for workers, good for buyers, and even profitable for merchants, but it is a big trouble for guilds - without the process of apprentice-helper-craftsman, the role of guilds will be There is a lot less, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is equivalent to nothing. After all, when a woman, a child, and an old man can easily learn how to use a machine in a few days and work in the king's workshop, what's the point of their existence?

   Aren't those apprentices, helpers, and craftsmen willing to hand over most of their income to them?

Moreover, the king, or the lord, or the workshop of the big merchant, can directly negotiate the sale with the upstream supplier or the downstream seller, and they don't need the guild to hinder, entangle, the supplier and the seller. Would also be happy to drop a layer of exploitation.

   Therefore, new technologies, new raw materials, and new machinery are all detrimental to the vested interests of the guild, and it is not surprising that they are so eager to do so.

However, with the precedent of the city of Orleans, the guilds in other places had to see the facts clearly and bowed their heads. Some craftsmen who were afraid of the threat of the guilds also summoned the courage to sneak out of the town where they were located. Presented to the king his own inventions, some spinning wheels and looms, some not, but as long as Louis saw what he found valuable, he accepted them all. Of course, some people's works were not as good as they thought, or repeated, and the king's officials accepted them all and arranged them to work in the king's workshop.

Colbert and the Marquis of Lois calculated the number after sorting out the recent documents, so they couldn't help but let out a sigh—in just three months, they have already accepted tens of thousands of craftsmen to defect—don't think this number is small, there is There have never been many courageous people.

  As the number of craftsmen, the types of occupations, and the number of origins increased, the guild, the behemoth that had been entrenched in France, Europe, and England for hundreds of years, finally wailed...

People always say, "Why don't we go to the king's workshop?" Even if there is no talent or invention, in the king's workshop, as long as you work hard, the reward will never be short of a few. And you won't be allowed to work for helpers or craftsmen in vain, and you don't have to take a sum of money from your child's mouth to dedicate to the guild leader... If you want to be promoted, the leader of the workshop or the official also said, pure Based on your output and seniority - there is a special departmental statistical approval. Instead of one or two people having the final say.

The system established by Colbert may be seen as backward and crude in the eyes of people hundreds of years later, but to the people of this era, they are as new and noble as workshops and machines, and they simply go to them with admiration. Those who observe these systems are mostly focused on rewards and promotions.

   This is also human nature.

  The biggest enemy of the guild leaders has finally arrived. Some people say that bad things always spread a hundred miles, and so are good things.

In the tavern, in the apartment, in the square, or in the church, there are guild members whispering and whispering, "Are there any more people there? How much? Do women want? What about children? You see my father dyed his hair black. Can you try it?"

  There are also daring craftsmen who in turn threatened him to go to work elsewhere when faced with the blackmail of the guild manager - the guild net was torn apart by the king's workshop, and they were no longer afraid of being expelled by the guild.

   It is more because there is no bribe money, the workshops, tools and mortgages required by the guild, the helpers or apprentices, and their families, quietly disappeared. Anyway, someone in the king's workshop taught them how to work, and they weren't lazy or stupid, so why should they stay in the workshop and suffer?

   The apprentices are the lowest level of the guild pyramid. They left in large numbers one after another, which finally led to the final collapse of the guild.

   As if overnight.

   (end of this chapter)