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Saturday November 17th 2018Tim
Candler9
Toward the
end of the 18th Century the British Army was engaged in
the Spanish Peninsular supporting the Portuguese in
attempting to keep the French from winning influence
over the Spanish. The English King at that time was
probably certifiably nuts, but let's just call him so
highly eccentric his courtiers preferred to keep him
entertained and safely shut away in one or other of his
many palaces. One of his great pleasures was to summon a
military man so that he could hear accounts of daring-do
on a far away battle fields. As the story progressed
he'd begin to believe that he himself had participated
in the action, and by the time the story was over his
exaggerations were such that to all the world he'd
pretty much won the battle single handedly.
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At the same
time the King was only too ready to offer his opinions
on a wide range issues, and half baked though his
opinions usually were courtiers soon learned not to take
them too seriously. A suggestion such as the solution to
forest fires was to rake up all the leaves in England
would have been treated with the respect due a king, and
as a rule by the time the practicalities were fully
realized the King himself would have forgotten all about
his first solution to the problem of for example forest
fires and would have come up with another idea. In the
18th Century the English still struggled with the role
of their king, a great many of them loved the idea of a
no nonsense absolute monarchy but it was having
something like a series of highly eccentric and
potentially disastrous kings that helped secure the
power of an elected Parliament.
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