“I grant you that the sans culottes,
 Who please themselves by cutting throats,
 Might well expect, if times should alter,
 To be rewarded with a halter;
 But they who loved the Constitution
Prepared the second Revolution;
’Twas they who led their hapless nation
Out of the road of her salvation,
To follow that fantastic scheme,
The rights of man; a boyish dream
Where words of vague, ambiguous sense 
Conduct to bloodiest consequence.
They pulled unhappy Louis down,
Then mock’d him with a paper crown
 Which any breath might blow away
 And leave him bare. In short, ’twas they
 Who, with a rage perverse and blind,
 Would fain have ruined all mankind.” - Gouverneur Morris1

Foreword:

Revolutions sit within the historical record as some of the most profound catalysts of sociological change. Often, these events are characterized by displays of nobility, intellect, and honor. Other times, they take on a more sinister character entirely. France’s Revolution was no exception. In light of recent domestic events, examples of historic betrayal have been ever present within the author’s mind. The focus of this essay will be one of history’s deepest acts of betrayal. More specifically, we will examine the First Prince of the Blood, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, his role in initiating the French Revolution, and the fickle fortunes of fate. By analyzing this infamous act of betrayal, this essay aims to extract enduring insights about the political, social, and personal consequences of treachery during revolutionary days.

The French Revolution was unquestionably one of the most important events in recorded history. An old world was killed, truly, by force; and a new one would be reconstituted, through blood and fire, from what remained. Over the course of this world-changing event, a plethora of eccentric characters have come down to us within the historical record. Our man, however, is known to a much lesser extent by the public than by scholars and historians. Americans, for whom the author primarily writes, are particularly unlikely to have heard this tale. Yet it is one that the author believes has preserved many eternal lessons. Ours is a tale of envy and betrayal; of faux goodwill, and of mean revenge.

What follows will be a deeply American interpretation of events:

I. The Duke · II. The King · III. La Révolution · IV. The Flight · V. The Spark · VI. The Fall · Meditations

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Ⅰ

The Duke:

“Those who contend against a foe
 Of great resources strive to sow
 Dissension in his state; make friends,
 Who may contribute to their ends;
 And, easier conquests to obtain,
 Adopt the rule—divide and reign.”  - Gouverneur Morris1

The French Revolution has come to be characterized by its radical violence and extremist acts. The spirit of the age was that of egalitarian liberalism, but the ancient institutions of France had failed to adapt to the new political realities within their kingdom. Louis Philippe II, despite his best efforts, was no exception to this rule. His actions during the French Revolution were as bewildering as they were to prove catastrophically destructive. To understand who Louis Philippe II was as a man, and why his actions played such a pivotal role during France’s revolution, we must first place him within the broader context of the time. Louis Philippe II was King Louis XVI’s first cousin. By 1785, not only did he hold the title Duke of Orléans, but he was also head of the House of Orléans and the Premier Prince du Sang — the First Prince of the Blood. This meant that if anything should happen to France’s King, Louis XVI, Louis Philippe II would be in line for the throne behind only the King’s immediate family. Naturally, Louis Philippe II was one of the most powerful and wealthy individuals in the entire kingdom of France. This relationship is crucial to understand as we describe the proceeding events.

The Duke had gone to great lengths to cultivate his image as a “noble on the side of the people.” Whether these gestures were sincere remains a point of contention. What we do know is that he was a champion of the liberal values of the day, supporting not only tax reform but also voting by head instead of by estate, the cause over which the Third Estate would become so incensed. Additionally, in 1784, he had opened his Palais-Royal, one of the grandest buildings within Paris, to the public, opening cafés, maintaining gardens, and, most consequentially, enabling it to serve as a hub for political thought. Here, people openly debated politics, while stalls with speakers and pamphlets populated its spaces. Later, during the Revolution, this vast public space quickly became a central hub for many of France’s most dangerous revolutionaries. Jacobins would freely meet within the palace grounds. Elite clubs, like the Society of 1789, were happy to share the space, though the Jacobins despised them. As Schama describes the palace:

“Cafés of every kind flourished, from the staid Foy to the risqué Grotte Flamande. One could visit wigmakers and lace makers; sip lemonade from the stalls; play chess or checkers at the Café Chartres; listen to a strolling guitar-playing abbé (presumably defrocked) who specialized in bawdy songs; peruse the political satires (often vicious) written and distributed by a team of hacks working for the duke (136).”²

The Duke also wielded immense power. As one of the wealthiest men in France, he employed his vast resources like a needle, always maintaining plausible deniability through obfuscation and subversion. He became famous for distributing money to crowds, supporting writers, journalists, and other propagandists; paid retainers and political organizers were even “rumored” to be on his payroll.³ As France was descending into crisis, with food shortages and disorder rapidly spreading, the public flocked to him. But the Duke did none of these things in the spirit of charity or out of the kindness of his heart. He was effectively “buying” the public, positioning himself, many believed, to be a replacement for his cousin as France’s new constitutional monarch. As we will continue to see, these accusations were far from baseless.

The motivations behind the Duke’s actions become even clearer when we analyze his personal relationship with his cousin, the King, and the King’s family. Tension within France’s House of Bourbon, of which the House of Orléans was a cadet branch, had long been strained. The Duke would routinely challenge royal authority, sometimes subtly and at other times in quite overt displays. As early as the 1770s, he had taken the side of the Parlements, elite judicial councils, which had resisted reforms unilaterally imposed by the Crown. This open challenge to the King’s authority already put him directly at odds with not only his own family, but also much of the monarchy as an institution, and thus the nobility of France. As early as 1787, before the initiation of the Revolution, the Duke was already openly advocating for a British-style constitutional monarchy, as opposed to the French-style absolute monarchy.

In 1787, the King convened his Assembly of Notables, an elite council, to resolve France’s economic crisis in an effort to avoid calling the Estates General into session. This council consisted of 144 handpicked nobles, clergy, and magistrates; Louis Philippe II was one of those members. King Louis XVI was attempting to bypass established French law to force his tax reforms through, since the Parlement of Paris refused to register them. It is here that the first explosive clash between the King and the Duke would take place. On November 19, 1787, Louis ordered the registration of loans that were being discussed, even though they lacked the Parlement of Paris’s approval. Though the original exchange was likely phrased in far more formal and legalistic French, this is how the following events unfolded. Expressing strong criticism of the proceeding, the Duke reportedly shot up and declared to the King:

“C’est illégal.” (“This is illegal.”)

He argued that the King was violating the laws of the Kingdom by attempting to ram his tax reforms through without approval from the Parlement or the Estates General. The King, astounded, is reported to have replied:

“C’est légal parce que je le veux.” (“It is legal because I wish it.”)⁴

A high prince of royal blood had publicly challenged the legality of the King’s actions and had done so in front of the highest court in France. This was simply unprecedented. Immediately, the King issued a lettre de cachet, which was essentially a broad royal warrant authorizing imprisonment or exile of an individual without formal trial. The very next day, the Duke was forced into comfortable exile at his countryside estate, the Villers-Cotterêts. However, the King was no man of mean spirit or petty revenge. By April 1788, he had forgiven the bold Duke and allowed him to return. This gesture of goodwill and loyalty would not be repaid in kind.

Ⅱ

The King:

“An easy task it is to blame.
 And when a general’s measures fail,
 The world is privileged to rail;
 But would you, whilst men wound and curse you,
 Present them naught but Christian mercy?
 Mildness to those abandoned wretches!
 The men of Paris without breeches,
 With due submission to your meekness.” - Gouverneur Morris1

In 1789, King Louis XVI accidentally changed the world. That spring, after more than 150 years, he opened his Estates General. France was facing an economic crisis. It had still not fully recovered from its catastrophic loss in the Seven Years’ War and was further indebted when the King authorized France’s intervention into the American Revolutionary War. Though that intervention saved America’s cause, inflicting a major defeat upon the British Empire while founding a new nation, it simultaneously damned the King and the French monarchy that had stood for nearly 1,400 years. King Louis XVI, however, was no unhinged tyrant. Far from it, in fact. Yet French law stood in the way of his attempted reforms. Before a tax could be collected, it had to be legally registered by regional high courts called the Parlements. When the King tried to bypass the Estates General and force a tax on land, the Parlements refused, asserting that only the Estates General had the authority to approve new taxation. Thus, forced into a corner, and in a pattern that will soon become familiar, he relented. On May 5, the Estates General formally convened. The King’s aim from this meeting was to work with the three estates of his kingdom: the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commoners to find a solution that might avert France’s impending fiscal crisis. By 1789, roughly 50% of France’s entire national budget was flowing towards interest payments on this debt.⁵ The situation had become untenable, and the crisis had grown too large to contain. Critically, during the months preceding this meeting, Louis Philippe II was elected as a member of the Second Estate, the body which represented the nobility.

Traditionally, the body’s votes would be counted by “estate.” In other words, each of the three estates would get one vote on all matters of importance. This arrangement satisfied the King, as it heavily favored the Clergy and Nobility, who usually outvoted the commoners. The Duke of Orléans found himself in the spotlight of these unfolding events when he entered the hall on the first day of the Estates General. Though King Louis XVI himself was met with warm applause, the crowd remained largely silent as the hated Queen Marie Antoinette was seen, and once more cheered with enthusiasm when they saw the Duke of Orléans. In the words of Gouverneur Morris — the American Founding Father who penned the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, later a diplomat, and a witness present at Versailles on May 5, 1789:

“When M. Necker comes in he is loudly and repeatedly clapped and so is the Duke of Orléans.”⁶

At this early stage, the Duke of Orléans was extremely popular with the people. However, the dissatisfaction with this arrangement by the Third Estate was palpable. Consisting of roughly ~97% of France’s population, it was only granted a singular vote. The King offered to double their representation, increasing their deputies from the traditional roughly 300 to 600, and promised meetings of the Estates General at regular intervals. But here, the King stopped. He insisted that the Estates would still vote “by order,” and that each would retain their traditional singular vote. But the spirit of the age had changed. It was 1614, the last time the Estates General convened, no longer. Confronted with the systemic theft of any true say in matters, the Third Estate instead withdrew from the Estates General. This was now truly uncharted territory. Thus, on June 17, 1789, the Third Estate declared itself France’s new National Assembly. King Louis XVI and the French Monarchy were now sitting on a tremendous powder keg. It is in these opening days that Louis Philippe II begins to alter the very course of history, damning not only France, but himself, to the unwavering retribution of fate.

This was the step that pushed France from the Precipice. The National Assembly had just claimed that the true source of political authority came from the Nation, not the King nor the Monarchy as an institution. This spelled profound change; at this stage, Kings had ruled in France since shortly after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. French society was still very much structured around monarchical feudalism, as it was in the Middle Ages. Europe had never seen such an open declaration against the authority of Kings from one of its great powers. Though Charles I of England had been deposed and executed during the English Civil War a century and a half earlier, that conflict was much less about the institution of the monarchy itself than it was about the King’s frankly humorous obstinacy in the face of innumerable opportunities for compromise. At his own trial, the presiding judges, many parliamentary commissioners, and army leaders still wished to avoid executing him. They meant to force him to enter a plea to establish the legitimacy of the court and force the King into compromise, regardless of whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty. But King Charles I, in a famous act of defiance, instead stated:

“I would know by what authority, I mean lawful; there are many unlawful authorities in the world—thieves and robbers by the highways—but I would know by what authority I was carried from place to place, and I know not what.”⁷

Then he simply refused to enter a plea at all. From there, history bears the events that would soon follow. His son, King Charles II, was even invited back by Parliament, and sat on the English throne within just 11 years. As will rapidly become clear, what was happening within France starting in 1789 was of a very different character than what had happened in England in the century before.

Populist Nationalism began to proliferate through French society at an ever-increasing rate. On June 20, the Assembly arrived at their usual meeting hall in Versailles and were infuriated to find the doors barred. The hall, they were told, was being refurbished in preparation for a royal session. To many of the deputies, this was a clear sign that King Louis XVI meant to dissolve the Assembly by force.⁸ Undeterred, the deputies squeezed into a nearby indoor tennis court, and on that fateful day, led by Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, and Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, they swore an oath not to separate until France had a constitution.⁸ In a matter of three days, the Third Estate had essentially gone from a symbolic body existing only by the explicit permission of the King to a national body aimed at nullifying the power of the Monarchy and claiming constitutional authority. Naturally, this “Tennis Court Oath” would become a foundational legend of the Revolution.

Three days later, on June 23, King Louis XVI held a formal royal session at Versailles. Ceremonies, armed guards, members of the aristocracy, and all symbols of royal authority surrounded him. In this session, he would annul the formation of the National Assembly and issue his “Declaration of the Intentions of the King, 23 June 1789”:

“The King wishes that the ancient distinction of the three orders of the state be preserved in its entirety, as essentially linked to the constitution of his Kingdom; that the deputies, freely elected by each of the three orders, forming three chambers, deliberating by order, and being able, with the approval of the sovereign, to agree to deliberate in common, can alone be considered as forming the body of the representatives of the nation. As a result, the King has declared null the resolutions passed by the deputies of the order of the Third Estate, the 17th of this month, as well as those which have followed them as illegal and unconstitutional.”

Further, the declaration continued:

“No new tax shall be established, no old one shall be continued beyond the term fixed by the laws, without the consent of the representatives of the nation. [...] As the borrowing of money might lead to an increase of taxes, no money shall be borrowed without the consent of the Estates-General, under the condition, however, that in case of war, or other national danger, the sovereign shall have the right to borrow without delay, to the amount of one hundred millions [livres]: for it is the formal intention of the King never to make the safety of his realm dependent upon any person.”

Continuing, he outlined his intended reforms:

“When the formal dispositions announced by the clergy and the nobility, to renounce their pecuniary privileges, shall have become a reality by their deliberations, it is the intention of the King to sanction them, and there will no longer exist any kind of privileges or distinctions in the payment of taxes.

The King wishes that to consecrate a disposition so important, the name of taille be abolished in the Kingdom, and that this tax be joined either to the vingtièmes, or to any other land tax, or finally that it be replaced in some way, but always in just and equal proportions and without distinction of estate, rank and birth.”

The King then spoke to the representatives of his flock directly:

“The King, desiring to assure the personal liberty of all citizens in the most solid and durable manner, invites the Estates-General to seek for and to propose to him the means that may be the most fitting to conciliate the orders known under the name of lettres de cachet, with the maintenance of public security and with the precautions necessary in some cases to guard the honor of families, to repress with celerity the beginning of sedition or to guarantee the state from the effects of criminal negotiations with foreign powers.

The Estates-General shall examine and make known to His Majesty, the means most fitting to reconcile the liberty of the press with respect due to religion, custom, and the honor of the citizens.”

And ending, in all his regal majesty, with:

“alone I will assure the well-being of my people, alone I will consider myself as their true representative; and knowing your cahiers, knowing the perfect accord which exists between the most general wish of the nation and my kindly intentions, I will have all the confidence which so rare a harmony ought to inspire and I will advance towards the goal that I wish to attain with all the courage and firmness that it ought to inspire in me. [...] so I am the natural guarantee of your respective rights, and all the orders of the state can depend upon my equitable impartiality. All distrust upon your part would be a great injustice. It is I, at present, who am doing everything for the happiness of my people, and it is rare, perhaps, that the only ambition of a sovereign is to come to an understanding with his subjects that they may accept his kindnesses.”⁹

Upon the conclusion of this speech, the King formally ended the session and left the hall. His declaration closed with an order to his deputies to leave, and the royal officials still present, including the Master of Ceremonies, reminded the deputies of their duty to obey. According to tradition, they were to obey the order immediately. The nobility and most of the clergy withdrew. Yet the deputies of the Third Estate remained defiantly seated. Under absolutism, overtly disobeying the King’s order, particularly in public, was unheard of. At that moment, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, an aristocrat by birth, reportedly stood and exclaimed:

“Go tell your master that we are here by the will of the people and will leave only at the point of bayonets.”⁸

In effect, the Assembly had declared that royal commands no longer carried unquestioned legitimacy, that political authority was derived from the Nation, and that they, as the nation’s representatives, would be the executors of said authority. This entire dramatic episode was a moment of profound symbolism; as a titanic clash of worlds began to rapidly develop, flashes of France’s fate through the 26 years that stood before it began to be seen.

Ⅲ

La Révolution

“France, in Freedom’s mantle gay,
 Her former state disdains,
 Yet proud her fav’rite Bard t’obey
 Tho’ dead, his spirit reigns.
 The common road to power he trod,
 Cried, “pull all tyrants down”
 And, making of the mob a god,
 Has gained from them a crown.” - Gouverneur Morris10

On the 25th of June, the Rubicon was crossed. That day, a group of 47 liberal nobles, about 15% of the Second Estate, made the fateful decision to join the National Assembly. Chief among them, and by far the man of highest standing, was the Duke of Orléans, Louis Philippe II.³ The day before, a group of the lower clergy had also defected to the National Assembly. Now, for the first real time, the very legitimacy of King Louis XVI had become an open question. On the 23rd, the King’s authority was publicly defied; on the 24th, members of his First Estate defected; and on the 25th, members of his Second Estate defected too.¹¹ The old system wasn’t being challenged or bent; functionally, this was, to it, a mortal blow. From that moment on, no single man could stop what had been set in motion.

On the 27th, the King, in a pattern that will become all too familiar, relented. Though still in command of his armed forces, the King, an indecisive and often timid figure, chose to give in an inch. Unfortunately for him, and tens of thousands of others, that inch would soon cost many miles. The National Assembly was ignoring his commands and functioning without him. They were meeting, making decisions, and acting like an actual government. It seemed to many, at this stage, that if the King failed to act, the system would collapse anyway, with or without him. Consequently, on that day, he instructed the remaining deputies of the First and Second Estates to join the Assembly. This marked a profound moment of transition, whether the men involved at the time knew it or not. The King had just legitimized the burgeoning revolution, and in ordering the remaining deputies to join the Assembly, he had effectively admitted he was no longer in control of the political system. Over the course of those dramatic days, political legitimacy transferred from the monarchy to the nation.

On June 30, the first frightful sign of things to come occurred. That day, the Paris mob, using the Duke’s Palais-Royal as their “command center,” sprang into action. It was rumored that 11 soldiers of the Gardes Françaises — the French Guards — an elite royal infantry regiment, had been thrown into the jail at Abbaye prison of Saint-Germain-des-Prés for insubordination after refusing orders to turn their weapons on civilians at Versailles in the weeks before.¹² The crowd, acting on the “authority” of the meeting at the Palais-Royal, broke down the doors to the prison and liberated the soldiers. It is critically important to understand that this mob acted on its own authority, without authorization or prior knowledge of the National Assembly. After escorting the soldiers from the prison on the night of June 30, 1789, the disorder was thought to have finally subsided. In an effort to mediate tensions, on July 2, the National Assembly intervened.

At this stage, it was clear that France was bordering on total anarchy. To try and defuse the situation, the National Assembly sent the Archbishop of Paris, Antoine-Éléonor-Léon Leclerc de Juigné, to ask the King to pardon the Guards who had been forcibly liberated from the Abbaye prison.¹³ The King, with characteristic measure and eloquence, warned that the growing “spirit of license and insubordination” was “destructive of every bond” and that he foresaw it as a mounting danger to both the happiness of the people and the Assembly’s own work.¹³ At this critical juncture, rather than reinstitute order in Paris through force, the King once again allowed this disorder to go unpunished, choosing to pardon the Guards who had been freed by the mob. The King’s orders and authority had yet again been publicly ignored. The King condemned the anarchy and warned of the precedent being set, but did nothing else and, in effect, retreated. The stage was now set for one of the more famous moments from France’s revolution. Two weeks later, the Bastille was stormed, heralding the Revolution’s transition from a political crisis into a full-blown social collapse.

On July 12, 1789, Paris exploded. The day before, King Louis had dismissed his extremely popular Finance Minister, Jacques Necker. Necker was widely seen as a leading advocate for reform within the King’s court. His dismissal, yet again, signaled to many that the King intended to crush the National Assembly by force.¹⁴ Though, as we have seen of the King thus far, this was surely not true. On the 12th, on the grounds of the Duke’s Palais-Royal, young lawyer and revolutionary Camille Desmoulins mounted a table outside the Café de Foy. There, a crowd 6,000 strong faced him. Reportedly framing the violence that the mob now saw as inevitable as a new St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, he said, in effect, that the people were about to be crushed by force unless they armed themselves, and began shouting:

“Aux armes! Aux armes!” (“To arms! To arms!”)¹⁵

The crowd then set off toward Versailles, presumably with the intent of surrounding the Royal Court. Incredibly, as this mob marched, busts of not only Necker were seen, hoisted above the many frenzied heads, but also the esteemed bust of Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orléans, himself. The Duke, whether he had meant it or not, had officially become a symbol of the Revolution. The chaotic mass would make it as far as the Tuileries before being confronted by elements of Lambesc’s Royal-Allemand cavalry. From here, Desmoulins describes what happened next:

“The noise from the tumult reached the camp; the Cravates, the Swiss, the Dragoons, the Royal-Allemand all arrived. Prince Lambesc, leading the regiment of Royal-Allemands, entered the Tuileries on horseback. He personally cut down an unarmed French guardsman with his sword, and knocked over women and children. The crowd became furious, and from that point on, there was but a single cry heard across Paris: ‘To Arms!’”¹⁶

As a result of this incursion by Prince Lambesc, the mob had dispersed by force. The first direct confrontations between the old system and the new were starting to unfold, but as was illustrated plainly, the coming anarchy was not inevitable. At this stage, order could still be reinstated by force.

The atmosphere in Paris the next day, the 13th, was dense. Barriers were being erected, and Paris began to arm itself. Crowds reportedly stormed into gunsmiths, shops, and armories; poles and axes were seized, and anything that could be used as a weapon was happily furnished to the Revolution.

On the 14th, abstract visions of liberty then descended into unadulterated murder. By this stage, the mob had acquired more than 30,000 muskets, but had to deal with an acute shortage of both ball and powder. To them, the solution was obvious. The Bastille, a fortress that was built in the 14th century, stood as an imposing symbol of royal power in the center of Paris. Historically, it had functioned as a political prison, but by 1789 the fortress was primarily used as an armory, and only a handful of prisoners were actually housed within its walls. But to the crowd, the fortress stood as an infallible symbol of royal tyranny. In seizing it, they meant to adequately equip themselves and to free the many political prisoners they believed were housed inside.

By this stage, the mob had grown to include not only Parisian citizens, but also elements of local militias and even some soldiers of the Gardes Françaises. Factions of the Royal Army itself were beginning to defect. Through delegates, the mob’s demands were presented to the fort’s governor, Bernard-René de Launay. The mob demanded that the fort’s gunpowder and arms be handed over, that its cannons be spiked or withdrawn completely, and that the fort’s garrison not fire on the people. De Launay, however, refused, arguing he would not surrender the fortress under any circumstances without royal orders. Shooting began shortly after and would carry on throughout the day. Around 5 p.m., de Launay sent out a formal letter dictating that he was open to surrender, but that if the garrison was not permitted to evacuate the fortress unharmed, he would detonate its powder stocks. Immediately, it became clear that the fort’s garrison had no leverage and that none of de Launay’s demands would be met. In recognition of the fort’s dwindling supplies and of the mob’s dismissal of his demands, de Launay elected to surrender. As the gates opened, the mob flooded in. De Launay was seized, beaten, and dragged outside. There, a discussion over poor de Launay’s fate commenced. De Launay reportedly shouted, “Enough! Let me die!” and proceeded to assault the nearest member of the mob. De Launay was then savagely murdered, stabbed to death by the implements of the untold hordes around him. Swords, bayonets, and kitchen knives were employed for this heinous cause, and poor de Launay’s head was then cut off and put atop a pike.¹⁷ According to Doctor Edward Rigby, an English traveler in Paris that day:

“[We] perceived two bloody heads raised on pikes, which were said to be the heads of the Marquis de Launay, Governor of the Bastille, and of Monsieur Flesselles, Prévôt des Marchands. It was a chilling and a horrid sight! ... Shocked and disgusted at this scene, [we] retired immediately from the streets.”¹⁸

The meetings of the Estates General and all the political drama surrounding it surely acted as the opening chapter of the Revolution. But it was no longer a political revolution. Now it had poured out onto the streets. And though the Duke did not organize or command this attack, the road to the Bastille did not begin out front of that fortress. Indeed, it ran straight to the center of his Palais-Royal.

After the events of July, the Revolution began to accelerate with ferocity. Over the summer and fall of that year, France’s social structure was dramatically altered through revolutionary force. The Great Fear, from July through August, saw panic and mob violence spread throughout rural France; feudal lands were pillaged, feudal records burned, and the countryside began to descend into revolutionary disorder. On August 4, the Assembly abolished feudal privileges, a titanic blow to the Ancien Régime. Later that month, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, influenced, in part, by a certain Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the National Assembly.

That fall, on the 5th of October, the Women’s March on Versailles took place, where an attempt on Marie Antoinette’s life was made. Though there is no direct evidence linking Orléans to the event, it was widely speculated that he was behind it. The Queen’s daughter even pronounced:

“the principal project [of the attack] was to assassinate my mother, on whom the Duc d’Orléans wished to avenge himself because of offenses he believed he had received from her” (Fraser 295).¹⁹

At this stage, the Marquis de La Fayette, who, as commander of the Paris National Guard, had expended much effort attempting to keep the Revolution within rationality’s bounds, believed Orléans and his popular influence were growing dangerous. Reportedly, beginning that month, the mob began hailing the Duke as “our father.” Stunningly, chants of “Our father is with us: Long live King Orléans” were even heard during the Women’s March on Versailles.²⁰ This Bourbon Prince was going mainstream. His image as an alternative to the King was gaining real mass appeal. The Duke himself was growing inseparable from the Revolution.

Lafayette, whose grip on control was growing precarious, then concluded that Orléans must leave Paris if any semblance of order was to be maintained. He had come to suspect that agents of the Duke were actively funding and encouraging mob agitation; that the instigation of the Women’s March on Versailles was provoked by him; and that he was positioning himself to replace his cousin, the King. Lafayette was rather explicit in his suspicions, confronting the Duke in person and saying:

“I have reason to believe that you aspire to the throne. I opposed despotism as much as I could; but now that the power of the monarch will be placed within its just and legitimate limits, I will defend his person and his right to the last drop of my blood. If, then, your designs are what I have reason to believe them to be, one of three things must happen: either my head must be cut off, or yours, or you must leave this country.”²¹

Thus, immediately following October’s unrest, Lafayette convinced the Duke to go to Britain on state business. Orléans was reluctant, but Lafayette, wisely, framed the trip as a “mission” of important public service rather than what it really was: political exile. Later that month, the King would formally order the Duke to England on official state business. The Duke was forced into a corner. If he stayed and disregarded the King’s orders so flagrantly, he would effectively be admitting he meant to remain in Paris for political and factional reasons. This would all but prove the many accusations leveled in his direction. So, under immense suspicion, the Duke elected to follow the King’s commands. In his diary on October 14, Gouverneur Morris writes of this trip:

“He tells me that the Duke of Orleans is off for England; he (General Dalrymple) wants to know my opinion as to his journey. I am surprised at this, but conclude that some transactions of his Royal Highness have been discovered which would involve disagreeable consequences, and that the King has desired him to go off by way of avoiding inquiry. It is said that he has gone on business of a public nature, but this, I think, must be an excuse, because no man in France is more personally disagreeable to the King of England [...] Go to the club and inquire a little about the departure of the Duke of Orleans, who certainly is sent by the King in a diplomatic capacity, but there must be some reason not diplomatic.”²²

Gouverneur Morris’s firsthand accounts become invaluable at this stage. When he writes of the Duke, he speaks as if it is common knowledge within high Parisian society that he is financing the growing discontent. As if his involvement in the spreading chaos is self-evident, Morris writes in his diary on the 17th: “It is affirmed by Madame [de Chastellux], on good authority, that the Duke is stopped.”²² And once more, in an October 17 letter to Lafayette, Morris describes the Duke’s trip as “the retreat of the Duke of Orleans.”²² Further, he adds, “[it] is called by some his flight, and by others his banishment.”²² In England, the Duke would remain until July of the following year. Immediately after the Duke’s diplomatic removal, the chaos and violence in Paris subsided. Though it did not come to a full stop, no more would there be mobs storming palaces or prisons. The reader can draw their own conclusions from this.

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IV

The Flight:

“Tis said that kings, with wild ambition fired,
 To pow’rs despotic always have aspired,
 Like untam’d coursers, whose indignant soul
 Spurns at restraint and scorns all weak control.
 Hence British Senators, with patriot skill,
 Have strove to check and curb the monarch’s will;
 But Gallic statesmen take a wiser course,
 And make the bridle stronger than the horse.” - Gouverneur Morris23

Before leaving Paris in 1789, the Duke commanded immense influence. Not only due to his royal title, but on the streets, and especially in politics. By the time the Duke had settled back into the ebbs and flows of Paris in late 1790, his situation had changed dramatically. The Revolution, in nearly every way, had outgrown him. His ambiguity towards the Ancien Régime and the carefully crafted status he created foisted him into the minds of the many people his influence had reached before his departure. At this stage, the importance of his Palais-Royal was dimming as well. The National Assembly, Paris Commune, the National Guard, revolutionary clubs, and newspapers of Paris were operating freely. No more did they need his sheltered harbor to scheme upon their designs. In the early days of France’s political troubles, he had become a rallying point for much of the energy oscillating between the people and the nobility. Now the Revolution had become institutional; never again would he prove able to unilaterally sway the tides of politics within Paris as he had before his departure.

Worse yet, in his absence, the National Assembly abolished hereditary and noble titles. He was not returning to France as a triumphant revolutionary prince. Quite the opposite; in fact, he returned as a man whose old rank and status had already been, in many ways, hollowed out. Though Louis Philippe II was no longer the Duke of Orléans, his most astounding change would not occur until months later. On top of all this, unlike the masses he had spent so much energy and resources to influence, members of the government and of Paris’s high society remembered him well, and still viewed him with an aura of suspicion when interacting within these social circles. As Gouverneur Morris notes on multiple occasions in his diary, the Duke of Orléans and his involvement in fomenting France’s political crisis were an open secret routinely discussed within Parisian high society:

“The Vicomte de Ségur comes in and tells us that the Baron de Besenval has discovered that England gives two millions sterling to make mischief in this country. I dispute the matter, which is, I am sure, impossible. He insists with great warmth that it is true, and thence concludes that the tales circulated to the prejudice of the Duke of Orleans are false. There is a great deal of absurdity in all this, and if he makes such a defence for the Duke everywhere, he will convict him. Madame de Ségur takes me aside at going out, to remark on this, and adds her persuasion that the Duke was the distributor of the money given for these wicked purposes.”²⁴

The very government his instigation helped establish was now, in all but action, casting him aside. The Revolution he had worked so hard to ignite had outgrown both his aims and any need for him. As such, the chaos he had let loose was now truly out of his control. This diminishment of influence, power, and status would only continue through 1791.

For Louis Philippe II, 1791 remained rather stagnant, but for the King, it was catastrophic. The King believed his position had grown precarious. At this stage, though still a King by title, he no longer believed he was truly a king in any meaningful sense. King Louis XVI, who began this whole epic chapter as a vocal advocate for, albeit tempered, reform, believed the Revolution had moved far beyond reason. Having been dragged back to Paris with his entire family by the mob, he came to believe he was now nothing more than a political prisoner. Furthermore, a devout Catholic who held his faith in tremendous esteem, he was horrified when the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was presented to him. This law, in short, subordinated the Catholic Church within France to the revolutionary government. The King reached out to the Pope for guidance on his situation, but by this time, there was nothing the Bishop of Rome could do to help King Louis XVI. Under extreme duress he signed it into law.

By June 1791, the King had seen enough. On the night of the 20th, he made the fateful decision to flee Paris with his family, meaning to reach Montmédy, near the eastern frontier on the border of the Austrian Netherlands, where loyal troops under the Marquis de Bouillé could protect him. King Louis XVI then hoped to negotiate with the Assembly from a position of strength to expose that his acceptance of the course the Revolution had taken was coerced. Before his departure, the King left a document called “Louis XVI Declaration of Louis XVI to the French People, on Leaving Paris, June 20, 1791,”²⁵ in an effort to explain his decisions. Unfortunately, this document is far too long to be included in full here, but the author will do his best to distill its primary message:

The June 20 declaration was Louis XVI’s explanation of what he perceived to be his captivity. He claimed that the Revolution had not created liberty, but had transferred power from the Crown to political clubs, committees, mobs, and ideological factions. The King insisted that he had yielded again and again to preserve peace, only to find himself stripped of authority, surrounded by enemies, and reduced to the ceremonial mask of a monarchy already gutted in substance. Varennes was therefore not, in his mind, an act of betrayal against France, but an attempted escape from a revolutionary panopticon built in France’s name.

Many times, In the document he speaks directly to his people:

“People of France – is that what you intended when you sent your representatives to the National Assembly? Did you wish for the anarchy and despotism of the clubs to replace the monarchical government, under which the nation prospered for 1,400 years? Did you wish to see your king showered with insults, and deprived of his liberty, while his only goal was to establish yours?”²⁵

His thinking and feelings become even clearer once we read the closing paragraphs of the letter:

“From all these reasons, and the impossibility where the King is now to operate the good and to prevent the evil which is committed, is it astonishing that the King sought to recover his freedom and to put himself safe with his family?

[France], and you especially Parisians, you inhabitants of a city that the ancestors of His Majesty liked to call the good city of Paris, beware of the suggestions and lies of your false friends, return to your King, he will always be your father, your best friend. What a pleasure it will be to forget all [his] personal insults, and to meet again in your midst when a Constitution which [he] will have freely accepted will make that our holy religion will be respected, that the government will be established on a stable and useful base [...] and that finally freedom will be posed on firm and unshakable bases.”²⁵

Donning disguises, the royal family and their servants loaded into several carriages and set off. Tainted with aristocratic hubris, this trip was doomed from the start. At Sainte-Menehould, the plan unraveled. The King was recognized from his likeness on the money throughout France, and the local postmaster, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, knew it was him. Correctly guessing where the procession would pass through next, Drouet hurriedly rode ahead to Varennes to raise the alarm.²⁶

With the advanced warning having foiled the planned escape, Varennes then became a bottleneck. To reach Montmédy, the procession had to cross a bridge over the Aire River, but the local officials and citizens had mobilized. Erecting barriers preventing the King’s crossing, the King and his family were stopped, brought to the house of a local municipal officer, and, though poorly disguised, immediately identified. This was a catastrophe for the King. Before this trip, though there was much discussion of the King’s role in the new France, there was never any real mass appeal in debasing him, or even jailing him, let alone execution. Before this, he was effectively a symbolic constitutional monarch; now he was seen by many as a traitor to his nation. By trying to all but abandon France, in effect, he was decrying the Revolution.

By the time representatives of the National Assembly arrived to take command of the situation, France was finishing its historic transition out of the Middle Ages and into the epoch of the modern world. Bringing with them a massive escort force of 6,000 national guardsmen and citizens, the Assembly’s representatives then began their trip back to Paris. Once more, in an effort to avert confrontation, King Louis XVI had changed more than he could have ever imagined. Traveling in broad daylight, the now truly massive procession took days to reach Paris. On this trip, the King and his family sat in plain view as they passed through the many towns on their route. Though it may not have been the intention, this journey served to publicly degrade the image of the earnest, though fool-hearted, King. But the greatest humiliation was yet to come.

The royal family reached Paris on the 25th of June. Paris was in a state that perhaps had never been seen. The city already knew everything. The press and the political clubs had gone to great lengths to spread the news, and now, even the people were turning upon the King. The crowds had been ordered to silence, enforced by the National Guard; cheering, insults, and general disorder would not be tolerated. As Montgomery accounts:

“As they passed through the streets on their way to the Tuileries… There was profound silence. Government placards conspicuously posted [by Lafayette] notified the public as follows: ‘Whoever applauds the king shall be flogged; whoever insults him shall be hanged.’”²⁷

In near total silence, with their hats firmly remaining on as a defiant sign of disrespect, an immense crowd looked on as the royal family was escorted into the Tuileries palace. Again, we are confronted with a profound moment of symbolism here. The revolutionary government wasn’t vying for power or reform any longer. No; now they were illustrating plainly, through their open display of organization, force, and the people’s compliance, that it was they who controlled France.

V

The Spark:

“And found in arms ’twas better die
 Than to surrender, or to fly.
 Thus Brunswick was oblig’d to fight,
 Both with the party Jacobite
 And with the Feuillantins their foes,
 Who but for him had come to blows
 Before this hour; and thus the nation,
 United by his proclamation,
Displayed at once uncommon force.” -  Gouverneur Morris1

On April 20, 1792, France’s Legislative Assembly, created under the Constitution adopted in September 1791, declared war on the Habsburg Austrian Empire, Europe’s greatest continental monarchy. Soon after, the continent’s other great German power, Prussia, joined its ally Austria and declared war on France. The Revolution that began on the political level in a tennis court had now drawn some of Europe’s greatest powers into open war. The chaos it had unleashed within the Kingdom of France escaped its borders, and now the stage was set for a conflict that would soon spread across all of Western civilization. On July 25, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, commanding a massive Prussian-Austrian invasion force, issued his “Brunswick Manifesto,” declaring with the confidence of an old soldier:

“The city of Paris and all its inhabitants shall be required to submit at once and without delay to the king, to place that prince in full and complete liberty, and to assure to him… the inviolability and respect which the law of nature and of nations demands of subjects toward sovereigns… If the chateau of the Tuileries is entered by force or attacked, if the least violence be offered to their Majesties, and if their safety and their liberty are not immediately assured, [we] will inflict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to military execution and complete destruction, and the rebels guilty of the said outrages to the punishment that they merit.”²⁸

Though the intent in issuing this manifesto was to intimidate the radical revolutionary factions that were nearing total control over France and to reassure those untold millions with love still for their king, in doing so, he had just sealed King Louis XVI’s fate. Now two foreign armies were on the very doorstep of France with the stated goal of intervening to annihilate the Revolution and to save the King. For many, especially those closest to power within France, this was all that they needed to see. To them, the King was now a protected ally of foreign armies. Paired with the King’s doomed flight late in the year before, the King was now looked upon as a traitor to his nation. The fear was simple: if Paris harmed Louis, foreign armies would harm Paris. To revolutionaries, this sounded like proof enough that the King and Europe had joined against France. The Revolution reacted with reflexive shock. Soon after, on August 10, almost as if taunting the Prussian Duke, the mob surrounded the Tuileries and laid siege. Protected by a small contingent of Swiss Guards, the King fled, finding refuge with the Legislative Assembly. Here, again, another profound moment of symbolism passed. As a symbol of royal authority, the palace was defended doggedly, but the King was no longer even there! In France, there was no longer a sovereign commander.

Here, for one final time, the King blundered. Fighting began to rage within the palace grounds. The Swiss Guard, though massively outnumbered by the mob, was a fiercely loyal and highly competent fighting force, able to effectively defend the palace. Yet, unbelievably, the King, hearing the sounds of the battle from his refuge in the Legislative Assembly, issued a letter ordering the Guard to lay down their arms and retire to their barracks.²⁹ Even at this late hour, the King still hoped his piety could prevent the escalating bloodshed, horrified by the prospect of Civil War above all else. It is likely he also wanted to save his loyal Swiss Guards as well, though from his hideout, he could have never known the situation on the ground. And it was precisely this uncertainty that turned this episode into such a catastrophic blunder. Elements of the Swiss Guard, having received their commands, began to withdraw in due order; but in the chaos unfolding across the 25 hectares of the palace grounds, not all had received their orders. As a result, the frenzied revolutionary mob overwhelmed the remaining defenders and began a massacre. Abandoned by the collapse of the royal regime, the remnants of the Swiss Guard were slaughtered, with roughly 600 of the 900 men present falling on that day.²⁹ Later that same day, the Legislative Assembly, a body that only existed as a consequence of King Louis’s aversion to confrontation, suspended his royal authority. No longer was there even the illusion of France having a King. The royal family was seized, kept under armed guard, and moved to the medieval fortress-prison known as the Temple. It is here the poor King would remain until meeting his unjust end.

By September, the Revolution had passed from suspicion into savagery. The monarchy had fallen on the 10th of August; the King and his family were prisoners in the Temple; Paris had been seized by frenzied paranoia, horrified by war, invasion, and treason. Thus, the city turned upon the helpless captives of the Revolution, in what has been termed the “September Massacres.” Among these victims was the Princesse de Lamballe, friend and faithful attendant of the Queen, a woman whose only crime was proximity to Marie Antoinette. Dragged before the revolutionary mob at La Force, she was commanded to renounce the King and Queen. She would not, and for this display of loyalty she was butchered, her body mutilated, and her head raised upon a pike and carried through the streets of Paris. The malevolent procession came before the Palais-Royal, in view of the Duke of Orléans. There, it is said, the Duke looked upon the severed head of the murdered princess and calmly remarked:

“Oh, it is Lamballe’s head; I know it by the long hair. Let us sit down to supper.”³⁰

And then he carried on as if nothing was out of order. Orléans had learned to watch the destruction of his own order not with horror or concern, but with detached carelessness. September saw great change in France’s governing bodies as well. On the 21st the National Convention, then took the reins, replacing the Legislative Assembly, and formally abolishing the monarchy. That same day, France was proclaimed a republic.

VI

The Fall:

“’Tis something more than hope, and yet ’tis prayer; 
’Tis confidence and resignation too. 
The eye appears, with chastened glance, to view
 On high the throne of everlasting day.
 The silent semblance speaks. It seems to say:
 ‘Vouchsafe, O Father, to accept in me
 The willing victim of thy firm decree;
 Be in my death fulfilled redemption’s plan,
 And these the pledges between God and man.’” - Gouverneur Morris31

The monarchy had officially fallen, and now there was blood in the water. This violence, whose seeds were sown so many years before, was not going to stop at the streets. That much was clear to all. The new Republic now had to make a decision on what to do with its former King. It was here, finally, that the former Duke of Orléans stepped fully into the role history would remember him for. Amid the chaos and quickening occurring within Paris, and with the arrest of his cousin the King, the former Duke of Orléans saw the writing on the wall. In all his vapid ingratiation, Louis Philippe II made the decision to formally change his name. Renouncing the name of Orléans, he instead chose “Philippe Égalité,” or, in English, Philip Equality.

The Revolution itself had adopted the slogan “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” and many viewed his choice of name as nothing more than opportunistic, self-serving pandering.

Yet we have finally arrived at our moment. The fate of King Louis XVI, now simply referred to as Louis Capet (though the author will continue to refer to him by his regal title) was in the air. Factions of the National Convention, more specifically the Montagnards, with their more radical deputies openly associated with the Jacobins, the Paris Commune, and Robespierre, were the leading advocates for execution. Their argument, banal in its simplicity, was that the King was not simply a criminal citizen for trying to collude with foreign armies, but that his continued presence was a threat to the very Republic itself. They believed he could be a dangerous symbol, serving as a rallying point for counterrevolutionaries and royalists. After all, two massive armies had already invaded France in the name of King Louis XVI. Thus, the Montagnards vehemently moved for death, immediate execution, with no appeal to the people. More moderate factions of the Convention, like the Girondins, were not so easily convinced of this course of action. Many of them favored imprisonment, exile, or letting the very people of France decide his fate, rather than submitting to the dictates of obscure radical revolutionaries who had stumbled their way into the highest levels of French power.

Thus, in December of 1792, King Louis XVI’s trial began. Louis was charged with 33 offenses, largely stemming from the discovery of his secret correspondence, the armoire de fer, and evidence of his collusion with foreign powers to save his kingdom from the chaos of real, protracted war. On January 15, 1793, the former King of France, Louis XVI, was found guilty of conspiracy against public liberty and attacks against the security of the state. From January 16–17, debate thus commenced upon the fate of the forsaken King. Amazingly, the former Duke of Orléans, now Philippe Égalité, was himself still involved at the highest levels of French politics as a member of the National Convention. Each deputy present was called by name and had to proclaim his vote publicly. There was no illusion of anonymity; each man who voted for execution put his name beside the King’s mortal life and death.

Still, opinions were dramatically varied. 721 deputies would cast their votes upon the King’s sentence over those fateful days. A bare majority was needed to decide the King’s sentence; 361 deputies was all that was needed to condemn the forlorn King. The results, in an almost unbelievable display of Providence, came down to the very last vote. 360 deputies cast their votes in favor of delayed sentencing or various lesser penalties for their former King. 361 deputies voted for immediate death.³² The King had been condemned to die by one vote…

In an act so alien to the author that he struggles to describe it, Philippe Égalité, Philip Equality, the former Duke of Orléans, voted for the death of his own cousin, the King, stating:

“Solely governed by my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked, or shall attack, the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I vote for death.”³²

The King had been condemned to death by one vote. Had Philippe Égalité been noble, loyal, or even politically savvy, the entire course of human history might have been dramatically altered. Instead, in another contemptuous display of self-preservation, he decided to pander to the radicals; the very people Égalité had enabled to destabilize the country were now exponentially more powerful than him. Soon, the monster he had so willingly unleashed would turn on him too.

When King Louis XVI received news of his condemnation, he reacted with characteristic restraint and dignity. As noted by Jean-Baptiste Cléry, Louis XVI’s valet at the Temple prison, in his Mémoires de M. Cléry, valet-de-chambre de Louis XVI, after becoming aware that his own cousin had voted in favor of his death, the King calmly remarked:

“Je ne cherche aucun espoir… mais je suis bien affligé de ce que M. d’Orléans, mon parent, a voté ma mort. Voyez cette liste.”

(“I seek no hope… but I am deeply afflicted that M. d’Orléans, my kinsman, voted for my death. Look at this list.”)³³

With his composure absolute, resolute in his infallible innocence, he did not fall to his knees, he did not beg, he did not cry. Instead, he requested three things:

1. A delay of three days before execution, so he could prepare himself spiritually (The King was a devout Catholic) for death.

2. Permission to see a priest of his own choosing, the Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont.

3. Permission to see his family privately.³⁴

For his role in this demented plot, Égalité was to receive the just retribution of a traitor. For obvious reasons, the former Duke was insecure in his own station. He had already changed his name to satiate the mob he, personally, helped to unleash. But this was not enough. The very presence of the royal blood flowing in his veins left him under immense suspicion. Égalité’s decision was undoubtedly made in an effort to save himself. By showing the Revolution he had become a true “equal,” in debasing himself, spitting in the face of God, and damning the very head of his own house’s ancient dynasty, he hoped the Revolution would see him as one of them. Truly, this tactic could not have worked further against him.

The Convention had refused the King’s first request; there would be no delay in his execution. They did, however, grant his other two requests. On the dreadfully cold morning of January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI heard Catholic Mass with Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, receiving the Catholic sacraments. Shortly thereafter, he made his trip through Paris from the Temple to the Place de la Révolution, formerly Place Louis XV.³⁴ The King gracefully climbed the scaffold as a crowd thousands strong watched on. He attempted to give a final speech, stating with astonishing prescience:

“I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.”³⁴

Though he had more to say, the National Guard drummers were ordered to beat, drowning out the doomed King’s true final message. The crowd reacted with characteristic fervor, and the meaning of the execution was clear to all. On that January day, Louis, by the Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, fell victim to the Revolution his cousin had worked so hard to bring forth. Égalité had seemingly always aimed to maneuver around King Louis XVI to find a route to the throne; that he ever foresaw where that road might lead is very much in doubt. At this stage, intent was irrelevant anyway; the Revolution was now carrying on through its own momentum.

Égalité’s vote in favor of his cousin’s death would not be rewarded or validated. There was universal moral disgust around the repugnant decision. Even among the deputies of the Montagnards, his vote won him no favor. As Gouverneur Morris notes in his diary, “The Duke of Orleans is loaded with universal contempt.”²³ On April 1, the Convention passed a vague, sweeping decree ordering the arrests of those people with “strong presumptions of complicity with the enemies of liberty”; with an impressive lack of self-awareness, Égalité himself voted to pass this decree.³⁵ On the 5th, General Charles-François Dumouriez, along with Égalité’s son Louis-Philippe, Duke of Chartres — who was reportedly horrified to hear of his father’s vote in favor of the King’s execution — saw which way the winds were blowing and defected to Austria. Though Égalité’s son would go on to live a long life, becoming the last King of France — King Louis-Philippe — this defection finally damned the duplicitous Duke.

On April 6, the revolutionary government began to arrest Égalité and the members of his family. Falling under the exact same suspicion that damned his cousin, Égalité was accused of conspiring with foreign powers against the liberty of France. Though there is no evidence Égalité was involved in his son’s flight, the very Revolution Égalité had set in motion was now well beyond the need for evidence. Now Égalité, like his cousin before him, was seen as a potential figure for counterrevolutionaries or foreign powers to rally behind. Thus, he had become a loose end that the Convention had every intention of tying. Charged under the very law he voted to pass a mere five days before, Égalité was arrested and sent to Fort Saint-Jean in Marseille, where he would remain until November of that year. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson later that month, Gouverneur Morris writes, “The Duke of Orleans is in the way of reaping the fruits of his conduct, being, as you will see, sent a prisoner to Marseilles.”³⁵

On November 6, Égalité was brought before a revolutionary tribunal and condemned to death. With an eerie calm, as if he had already accepted his fate, and certainly having already confronted his own actions, which did so much to bring him to that moment, he requested of the revolutionary tribunal that his execution not be delayed but carried out the same day.³⁶ Shortly after, Égalité was allowed a final meal, dining on a lavish platter of oysters, ribs, and Bordeaux wine. Powdering his hair and dressing in the aristocratic style he tried so hard to pretend he despised, he would then travel to the very site of his cousin’s execution, this time, however, for his own.³⁶ On his way to execution, Égalité was taken past his Palais-Royal, once the true seat of his power and the Revolution’s influence. Once in view of the Palace, the mob seized the horses’ reins, stopping the wagon, so the former Duke could see “Republic, one and indivisible; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. This is National Property,” painted in blue, white, and red letters upon it.³⁷ Answering this, Égalité replied, “How they applauded me once!”³⁸ Though described as having the same uncommon courage of his cousin, it seems that he was less resolute in the morality of his actions and instead decided, as the man who meant to be King, that he would rather die than live amongst the mongrels he had done so much to frenzy.

As he ascended the scaffold that day, at the very place he had sent his cousin to die, the crowds taunted him, saying, “I vote for death.”³⁹ The damned Duke was unnaturally composed as his death approached. Seemingly bothered by life, as he was fastened into the guillotine, the executioner began to cuff his boots. In response to this, Égalité urged:

“They will come off better after: let us have done”⁴⁰

Another version of the story has him simply saying:

“Get on with it.”

No political speech. No repentance. No dramatics. No remorse. Thus was the end of Égalité: a man high-born who, through vanity, envy, and deceit, met his end in very low circumstances. A man of many faces and many names: Égalité, the Duke of Orléans, Louis Philippe II, First Prince of the Blood; betrayer.

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Meditations:

Wow! What a story!

It is difficult to know where to even start. From this story, history furnishes us with two things: first, an unbelievable historic drama, rife with the stuff of legends; and second, innumerable lessons acting as a window into the minds of the actors operating at the end of another civilizational cycle, so detached from our own. America itself was born during the turning of that last great civilizational cycle, which birthed the modern world; but it was France that firmly closed it, dragging the rest of Western civilization along with it. The very world, as it existed then, turned upside down. France went through a societal transition simply unparalleled in scale and ferocity in the storied history of the Western world. It is only natural that this profound disturbance in human affairs would ultimately spread to the very corners of Western civilization. The American Revolution was very different in nature from that of France. For America’s revolution founded a nation. France’s unwound an ancient one and totally reordered it. The events in America were leading up to something brand new, while in France, nothing occurred outside the broader context of what was old. Ultimately, it was what the French Revolution set in motion which became profoundly more significant than the revolution itself. For out of the chaos and bloodshed of the day, one of the greatest human beings who has ever lived would rise far above the crowd: The Emperor.

From a King to an Emperor, France went, in only 11 years. Is this not an inherent contradiction? Yes, it most definitely is! But such is the nature of this reality in which you, the reader, and I, the author, have found ourselves. Did the King deserve to die? Hardly. While it is true that he was naive to an almost childlike extent, he was no tyrant or deranged killer. In fact, quite the opposite. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson on Dec. 21, 1792, Gouverneur Morris echoed this sentiment:

“To a person less intimately acquainted than you are with the history of human affairs, it would seem strange that the mildest monarch who ever filled the French throne, one who is precipitated from it precisely because he would not adopt the harsh measures of his predecessors, a man whom none could charge with a criminal act, should be prosecuted as one of the most nefarious tyrants that ever disgraced the annals of human nature.”⁴¹

Had King Louis XVI been the “monster” the Revolution feared, had he exercised his monopoly on force during the opening days of the chaos as France’s legitimate ruler, it seems highly likely that order may have been maintained. The King wasn’t even disliked! He was loved by almost all at the outbreak of this whole epic, and even at his end, half of his country’s representatives refused to immediately condemn him. That this whole monumental chapter of history might have been stalled before ever leaving the barn, and that the King himself might have kept his head, had he embraced his role as sovereign ruler, seems highly probable. Piety, innocence, and gentleness are the virtues of women! For a man of action, a king no less, these are the vices that invite one’s own destruction. King Louis XVI clearly did not understand this. A king, when met with open disorder and growing chaos in his realm, has a duty to fulfill to God, his nation, and posterity in protecting the ancient order of European affairs. Categorically, then, it can be declared that King Louis XVI failed. A pious and kind man? Maybe. An effective King? Clearly not.

And now, the crux of this entire piece: the Duke of Orléans. Again, it is difficult to know where to even start. What a strange relationship the Duke had with the King. Clearly, it was wrought with envy and insubordination, going back as far as records of their public interactions date. What we have witnessed through this entire grand narrative, in the most literal sense, was a deathly serious game of thrones. But why? It is not like the Duke was poor, ineffectual, or sitting in his cousin’s shadow. He began this grand tragedy as one of the richest and most powerful men in all of France, and through the onset of this great tumult, he was truly adored by the masses. What, then, possessed him so greedily, with an inherent lack of consideration for the other members of his station, to go after the throne? This is very difficult to ascertain, as the Duke left us no substantive memoirs explaining his motivations. All that he left to us was his 1791 The Memoire of M. Louis-Philip-Joseph, Duke d’Orleans, where he attempted to defend himself from accusations of involvement in the events of 1789.⁴² The document is empty in substance, erroneous in argumentation, and way too long. A writing produced by a man clearly trying to save his ass. Then, suppose we are to assume he was motivated only by the prospect of attaining the pinnacle of power. There seems to be little else the Duke lacked, and being born in such proximity to absolute power must have spurred many dreams of grandeur.

So we can safely presume that he sought to obtain power as France’s head of state at the expense of his cousin, King Louis XVI. That he intended for the King to die, we cannot say, but that he meant to be king himself seems beyond doubt. Did the Duke hate the King? Envy appears to be a better description than hatred, especially as the King showed nothing but kindness to the Duke, even to the point of his own personal expense. So, what, then, are we to learn from this grand tragedy, and from the Duke who flew too close to the sun?

1.Traitors are never rewarded:

A man who betrays his trust may be useful once, but he has forever tainted himself with faithlessness. Duplicity done unto others invites duplicity done unto you. This is a principle with truly ancient origins. Traitors are never happily invited into the new order; they are used and removed, so that they may not now betray the new rulers. The Mongols’ practice of this principle was especially striking. Genghis Khan’s great rival, Jamukha, was betrayed by his own companions in the opening days of the Khan’s domination. Jamukha was brought before the Khan, and according to tradition, Genghis then ordered Jamukha’s captors mercilessly slaughtered, while Jamukha was granted an honorable and bloodless death.⁴³ Treason may see short-term gains and the mirage of status, but in the end, betrayal of one’s base of power only leaves one baseless and powerless.

2. Weakness in authority invites vulnerability:

This lesson is nearly impossible to escape. As King Louis XVI illustrated to us time and time again by backing down even when he did not have to, the perception of weakness eroded the legitimacy of his authority down to the nub. Countless times, the King sought compromise or dialogue, and each time, he was met with even more flagrant displays of insubordination. Power, when not used, will be seized. And if you go after a king, you had better kill him. These are eternal maxims of the human condition.

3. Legitimacy, once transferred, is almost impossible to recover.

As King Louis XVI sought to compromise and avoid any direct confrontation, he made a fatal mistake. With each step backward he took on the road to compromise, the King gave up ground. Ground that he was never able to get back. As he relented, the Revolution gained more and more metaphysical territory, and eventually, the King was confronted with the fact that it had become more powerful than him. Men are not quick to give up that which they have gained, especially not after immense struggle or tribulation. If legitimacy is seen to falter, what was constructed through centuries of triumph, drama, and blood can be lost within a matter of months.

4. Appeals to contrived morality and public virtue do not appease radicals.

This is perhaps the most darkly humorous lesson. Appealing to the fashionable virtues of a revolutionary movement is almost always futile. In such dynamic days, the morality of one week may be denounced as treason in the next. This is not to say that revolutionary movements believe in nothing, but rather that their standards rarely remain stagnant long enough for any man attempting to satiate them. This mistake was Égalité’s final humiliation. Louis Philippe II was not a common peasant from the streets of Paris. He was a Duke—a Bourbon—and one of the highest-born men in the entire Kingdom of France. Yet, in a futile effort to distort his royal status, he shamefully renamed himself “Equality,” pandering to the very people most inclined to despise him. In the end, the Revolution’s promise of equality was fulfilled. The former Duke met his end as an equal. Not among citizens, but among the condemned.

5. Symbols are eternal:

Specificities of argumentation and diction, or displays of intellectual prowess, are easily forgotten. Images, however, stay within the mind of man forever. Thus, literacy is no impediment to proliferating information to mass groups of people. The King’s head, the Bastille, the tricolor, the guillotine—these are what people remember. Not the endless debates and speeches contrived by ineffectual lawyers. That this essay chose image over argument through its body—a Prince, a cousin, a single vote—was not accidental. Who is morally right in argumentation rarely wins over an adversary employing potent symbols.

6. Providence, fate, or karma— whatever one calls it — has a coherent grammar.

The final lesson is also likely the most important. The astute reader can probably tell by now that, over the course of our story, something of greater proportions was at play. Call it Providence. Call it Fate. Call it God. There was a subtle structure governing affairs and doling out punishments. Some, like the King, did not “deserve” to die. Yet the very question of what he deserved was almost a foregone conclusion. Once the King allowed the disintegration of his Estates General, he then found himself on a narrow path, with his death sitting at the end, unavoidable through mere mortal agency. The Duke, whose actions led to the destruction of the King’s authority, later found no authority existed anymore to protect him. Throughout the story, the Duke was repaid in kind for his own disloyalty. It was almost too on the nose, as if his punishment was divine in employment. He voted for the death of the King; he was answered with death himself. He helped normalize the aura of suspicion in Paris, only for suspicion itself to later condemn him. He sought power through dishonor, and in turn received only dishonor without power. This lesson is more challenging to distill than the others. Entire civilizations have risen and fallen over differences in their religious beliefs. But God, the supreme entity, whatever you choose to call it, is real. By spitting in the face of that great creator that governs all of man’s affairs, in challenging courses divinely set into stone, and in attempting to distort one’s destiny, men are met with only one thing: crushing defeat. Thus is the structure of God’s divine stage. Betrayal may succeed for a season, but it is rarely allowed to govern during the harvest.

So how does any of this pertain to our own time?

Well, reader, I am glad you asked!

What is treason? We have spoken of it continuously throughout this piece, but what does it entail to be a traitor? Well according to Article III Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”⁴⁴

Mariam Webster defines it as:

“The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family.”⁴⁵

If we use these descriptions, then it can confidently be declared that the Duke was indeed a traitor. Yet the history of the modern world is filled with examples of saboteurs, subversion, and outright treason. The Duke’s example may be less rarified than most modern examples of egregious betrayal, but it definitely does not stand alone.

When we survey the West as it stands today, the astute observer immediately arrives at a series of unfortunate conclusions. Though militarily, through paper money, and through economic coercion, it does still wield tremendous global power. The very cohesion of the nations that make up our civilization is being mercilessly assaulted from all sides, always, on the orders of those “elites” who have nakedly betrayed their people. Every single Western nation. None have been spared from this. Who, then, have our “leaders” betrayed us to? Well, that answer is quite obvious these days, for anyone paying attention to domestic events or the geopolitical stage. In a word, the seat of Western fealty lies no longer within either the European or American continents. How do we know this? Just look around. A century ago, the West dominated the planet. Today, in every one of our Western nations, their native inhabitants are being ethnically cleansed. Maybe not overtly, not in camps or with firing squads, but through something far more insidious, equating to literal ethnic cleansing nonetheless. Every year, more and more “migrants” are brought to our countries. No number of protestations, no amount of voting, no amount of political action by the nations themselves, as opposed to the states, has proved able to stop this. And it is being done by design.

But let us zoom back in for a moment. Before we can speak seriously of saving this civilization, our nation must first be dragged up for air. The 21st century has seen a dramatic decline in the quality of life of many Americans. While GDP increases, while financial derivatives traded on international markets balloon, Americans’ quality of life has plummeted. Their share in the country’s wealth has precipitously declined, and has never been lower than it is today.⁴⁶ All the while, they are being told to be satisfied with those untold millions who are meant to replace them, as more arrive each day. This paradigm is continuing, right now, as you are reading this. Congress has an approval rating sitting at 10%,⁴⁷ and the Pentagon siphons wealth from the nation to launder it, failing eight consecutive audits in a row.⁴⁸

Americans, can we not safely declare to have lost our consent of the governed?

The U.S. federal government has morphed into a monster, infinitely more tyrannical than the Crown was in 1776, dominated by foreign interests and powers, and has laid its sights upon us, the people. There is a war being waged upon this civilization, a real war. As the most powerful member of this civilization, it is being waged particularly hard here, within the U.S. You know this. It may be difficult to vocalize, but deep down, we all know what I have just stated is true. This should not discourage you. Not necessarily. We may, now, be losing, but in confronting the very fact that we have been betrayed, we take our first steps down the road to progress. More than progress. Righteous reconquest. Have we yet even begun to put up a unified front? America is a Nation, not an economic zone, and it is definitely not the state, that all-pervasive entity that has almost exclusively interpenetrated within all sectors of our lives in negative ways. In America, we are approaching our precipice. The energy has oscillated for too long. More than a decade of frustration manifested into political action has been all but nullified by an Administration seemingly more interested in catering to its donors and foreign entities, which in many cases are one and the same, than in putting the American nation first. Something will break. The energy has nowhere else to go, and it has been made clear to all that we will not get out of this crisis through voting.

Yet, before we continue, the reader would do well to remember one critical thing. You and I have found ourselves within the most heavily armed nation in all of recorded human history. On top of this, tens of millions of vassals of our enemies are armed too and roaming our country. This is true. But so is the overwhelming reality that no force yet conceived of could pacify almost 200 million Americans presenting a united front. Something will happen; this is no longer in doubt. Any student of history, and particularly of Western affairs, can recognize it. If the “fourth turning” hasn’t already begun, it will surely begin soon. So, what are we to do? How are we to rightfully reassert our sovereignty without igniting a full-blown social collapse?

This is the hidden question that this whole long account has been approaching the entire time.

The natural American inclination when confronted with these realities is extremely dangerous for our cause. Righteous indignation? Of course! But we can hardly imagine the levels of implacable fury that will begin to pour forth. This is not to say that this instinct is wrong, but rather that it has the potential to prove catastrophically destructive. If we are to go in “guns blazing” and engage in overt confrontations with the government, we may hand them exactly what they want. Sporadic acts of violence across millions of square miles, with no grander aims, are exactly how we let the controlling apparatus divide and crush us. No; 1861 is not the answer this time. Maybe we should take our cue from the Third Estate.

Now the reader may be asking themselves how I, the author, can state this with confidence after what you have just read. It is not my intention to moralize the Revolution, to justify its outbreak, or to applaud its outcomes. This should be obvious to you, the reader, who has read the entire narrative just to get to this point. Undeniably, what the Third Estate started escaped the bounds of reason and control rather quickly. Though, of course, it did have “friends” in high places instigating disorder.

So just what is it that the Third Estate did that I find so prescient?

On June 17^th, 1789, the Third Estate withdrew from the Estates General.

In doing so, it established parallel legitimacy with the old system. The world as we know it could not have been without this profound act of agency. In withdrawing, they told the system that they would no longer be participating in the rigged “game” and set off to establish a government of their own. The King couldn’t kill them; they had technically committed no heinous crime. The King couldn’t ignore them; they were acting as a functioning government without him or his approval. Thus, it was the King, the system, in the end, that was forced to come to them.

That is how we are to prosecute the reconquest of our national borders while mitigating the catastrophic risks of civil war and anarchy. If we elect to do nothing, the country is lost. If we attempt to confront the system directly, we may deliver unto it exactly what it wants. So, with no options left, what else are we supposed to do? This is our country, and we do not have to continue tolerating the engineered decline of this truly glorious Nation. I see no clearer solution. If the government wants to replace you and me, let them collect their revenues from the “new Americans.” We will have no further part in it. What was that old revolutionary slogan again?

“No taxation without representation!”

This was done to us. On purpose. By design. It was organized by traitors within our own ranks and by the agents of overtly hostile foreign powers. It is difficult, at first, to recognize this reality, but we are under siege! They have drawn it out as long as possible, as subtly as it could be done, so as not to alert the American nation. The frog and the pot. The die must be cast; our only alternative is to accept a disgraceful death. The model is admittedly imperfect, but the direction is clear. We must make the system come to us. If the government refuses to bend to our will, it is time to establish one of our own. The alternatives seem hopelessly depressing or indescribably volatile.

Works Cited:1. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 29–30. Online Library of Liberty.

2. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 136.

3. Damien Tricoire, “The duc d’Orléans, the Palais-Royal Court and the Outbreak of the French Revolution, or Why We Should Take Dynasties Seriously,” Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, no. 28 (2026), https://doi.org/10.4000/15yd8.

4. Isabelle Storez-Brancourt, “‘C’est légal parce que je le veux’: loi et constitution dans le face à face du roi et du Parlement à la fin de l’Ancien Régime,” Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique 15, no. 1 (2011), 61.

5. Eugene Nelson White, “The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance, 1770–1815,” The Journal of Economic History 55, no. 2 (1995): 227–255.

6. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, ed. Anne Cary Morris, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. III, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library edition.

7. The Trial of Charles I, in Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, vol. 4 (London: R. Bagshaw, 1809), 995.

8. Palace of Versailles, “Jeu de Paume Oath, 1789,” accessed June 21, 2026, https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/jeu-paume-oath-1789.

9. Frank Maloy Anderson, The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789–1907, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson, 1908), 11–15.

10. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 1, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. XVI, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library edition.

11. William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 103–6.

12. Révolutions de Paris, 1789: Illustrations, vols. 1–2, nos. 1–26, July 12, 1789–January 9, 1790, ed. and trans. Margaret H. Darrow (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Library), “Events of June 30, 1789 between 7 and 8 o’clock in the evening,” no. 4, August 2–8, 1789, 20.

13. “Two Letters of Louis XVI to Archbishop de Juigné,” Rodama: A Blog of 18th-Century and Revolutionary France, May 5, 2019.

14. “The Storming of the Bastille,” Lumen Learning: World History, accessed June 21, 2026.

15. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 387–89.

16. Camille Desmoulins, “Desmoulins on His Own Role,” Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, accessed June 21, 2026, https://revolution.chnm.org/d/380.

17. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 399–405.

18. Edward Rigby, Dr. Rigby’s Letters from France &c. in 1789, ed. Lady Eastlake (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1880).

19. Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2001), 295.

20. Barry M. Shapiro, Revolutionary Justice in Paris, 1789–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 4.

21. Adolphe Thiers, The History of the French Revolution, trans. Frederick Shoberl, vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), chap. IV.

22. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 1, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. IX, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library.

23. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 1, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. XX, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library edition.

24. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 1, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. X, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library edition.

25. Louis XVI, “Declaration of Louis XVI to the French People, on Leaving Paris, June 20, 1791,” in Frank Maloy Anderson, The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789–1907, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson, 1908), 61–66.

26. Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Récit fait par M. Drouet, maître de poste à Ste Menehould, de la manière dont il a reconnu le Roi, et a été cause de son arrestation à Varennes (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1791).

27. David Henry Montgomery, The Leading Facts of French History (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1891), 201.

28. Frank Maloy Anderson, The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789–1907, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson, 1908), 44–46.

29. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 612–615.

30. Blanche Christabel Hardy, The Princesse de Lamballe: A Biography (London: John Long, 1908), 294–295.

31. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 120. Online Library of Liberty.

32. Proceedings of the French National Convention on the Trial of Louis XVI, Late King of France and Navarre (London: J. Debrett, 1793).

33. Jean-Baptiste Cléry, Mémoires de M. Cléry, valet-de-chambre de Louis XVI (Paris, 1825), 201–202.

34. Henry Essex Edgeworth de Firmont, Memoirs of the Abbé Edgeworth (various editions), account of Louis XVI’s final days, 132-145

35. Robert Wernick, “Égalité,” accessed June 21, 2026, https://www.robertwernick.org/articles/Egalite.shtml.

35. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, vol. 2, ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), chap. XXVIII, 43, accessed via Liberty Fund Online Library edition.

36. “Philippe Égalité.” Enlightenment and Revolution. Last modified January 9, 2023. https://enlightenment-revolution.org/index.php?title=Philippe_Egalité.

37. Montgomery, Walter. Stories of the French Revolution. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1910. “Philippe Égalité.”

38. Berry, Mary. France in Eighteen Hundred and Two. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845. Project Gutenberg.

39. Cartwright, Mark. “Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans.” World History Encyclopedia. October 20, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/Louis_Philippe_II,_Duke_of_Orleans/.

40. Bent, Samuel Arthur, ed. “Duc d’Orléans (Égalité).” In Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887. Bartleby.com. https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/samuel-arthur-bent/duc-dorlans-galit/.

41. Morris, Gouverneur. The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris: Minister of the United States to France; Member of the Constitutional Convention, Etc. Vol. 2. Edited by Anne Cary Morris. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888. Chapter 27. Online Library of Liberty. https://oll-resources.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/oll3/store/titles/1170/Morris_0215-02.html.

42. Orléans, Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d’. The Memoire of M. Louis-Philip-Joseph, Duke d’Orleans. Dublin: Printed for P. Wogan et al., 1791.

43. The Secret History of the Mongols. Translated by Francis Woodman Cleaves. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

44. U.S. Const. art. III, § 3, cl. 1. Constitution Annotated, Library of Congress. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-3/section-3/clause-1/.

45. “Treason.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Accessed June 21, 2026. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treason.

46. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Share of Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles).” FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Updated June 2, 2026.

47. Brenan, Megan. “Disapproval of Congress Ties Record High at 86%.” Gallup, April 22, 2026. https://news.gallup.com/poll/708722/disapproval-congress-ties-record-high.aspx.

48. Kheel, Rebecca. “Pentagon Fails Financial Audit for 8th Year in a Row.” Military Times, December 19, 2025. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/12/19/pentagon-fails-financial-audit-for-8th-year-in-a-row/.

“War is a racket! A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many” - Major General, Smedley Butler

Foreword: This is the beginning of a long account of how the United States abandoned its republic and forged an empire while exploiting the goodwill of the American people through foreign aid. It starts with the Second World War, where devastation opened the door for a new global order, and where the precedent was set that American wealth would be squandered across the globe. What follows is not a tale of charity or necessity, but of a great betrayal—of blood and treasure taken from the people of this nation and spent to reshape a world they never asked to rule.

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(This project has been abandoned by the author, as it is his belief the conclusions drawn from the piece are self evident, and would have been constructive 20 or 30 years ago. He has shifted to topics with more relevance to the increasing tumult of our time. For students of history, this piece still contains valuable insights. Enjoy!)

The Great Crusade of Modernity

On April 3rd, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law. What began as an admission of Faustian guilt that the United States had undertaken during World War 2, and the devastation it had wrought upon Germany, opened the door for one of the largest transfers of wealth in world history. Americans, who had been unwillingly brought into a world war, were then told that their taxes would go toward the reconstruction of the Old World—an Old World the United States had just helped destroy, fielding some of history’s largest armies, in the great crusade of modernity.

But why did U.S. bombers level one of the ancient centers of European civilization if, a mere three years later, its people would be forced to pay for its reconstruction?
And what have the consequences of that precedent been for the United States and its people?

I want the size of the issue made clear from the start. Since the end of the Second World War, 3.8 trillion dollars in American taxpayer money has been stolen and sent overseas. Beginning with the onset of the Second World War, elements of the U.S. government have continually poured its tax revenues across the planet in a bid to buy off, instigate, and fund “projects” overseas. This—already absurd enough—only becomes more damning when we examine who actually received this money. We soon come to find that the U.S. taxpayer has been, conveniently, funding and equipping a multitude of the U.S. government’s “boogeymen” for decades now. The World Bank received more than $20 billion¹ in “aid” between 2013–2022, along with more than 1.5 million, Orwellianly labeled “Non-Government Organizations,” which are largely—and dare I say conveniently—tax exempt. In 2024 alone, 175² countries—90% of the countries on Earth recognized by the United States—received U.S. taxpayer dollars without a vote from the citizens of the United States. In other words, the U.S. government stole money from its citizens, lit it on fire, and spread the ashes across the globe. This becomes even more insidious when we look at a list of countries that have received U.S. foreign aid. This list of recipients includes the following nations: Russia ($36 billion³, 1991–2000), North Korea ($1.3 billion⁴, 1995–2008), Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq (~$60 billion⁵, 2003–2011), Afghanistan (~$146 billion⁶, 2001–2014), Belarus, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Venezuela.

But the astute reader would by now surely recognize a pattern. Why has our government funneled billions of our dollars into nations it openly declares are our enemies? Surely it isn’t for our benefit; and the U.S. government has waged covert and overt wars upon almost all of these countries, so clearly it isn’t for their benefit either. Then what is the purpose? Who stands to gain from the United States becoming poorer, while trillions of dollars that could have been spent at home are instead stashed under mattresses and flushed down toilets across the globe?

Yet before we continue, one breathtaking exception must be addressed. One nation stands far above the rest in terms of the volume of American wealth stolen by our government and then transferred into alien hands.

Since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, the United States government has given a staggering $310 billion⁷ (nominally) in “aid,” both monetarily and militarily, to Israel. While the quality of life continues to decline for the average American, while many are forced to go without healthcare, while tens of millions of foreigners are imported into the country without end, and while our nation has been broken apart piece by piece, hundreds of billions of our material and financial wealth—wealth that should have gone toward the preservation of America’s vitality and security—have instead been diverted into the coffers of Israel; wholly funding its continued existence. To this day, U.S. tax dollars fund universal healthcare within Israel, fund offensive military operations against civilians, and bribe the surrounding Arab countries to dissuade them from invasion. At face value, this is staggering, and this “special” relationship will be discussed in great detail during Parts II & III of this series.

It is here where we are left with no choice but to confront one of the greatest crimes of our time.

How did we arrive at this juncture? The United States is a nation that was founded upon an explicit aversion to taxation. How did the population of the United States come to view the hemorrhaging of its wealth as normal and of no concern? The answers to these questions are deeply uncomfortable, and we cannot answer them until we look upon the catalyst of this bloodletting: World War Two.

In separate questions in the same 1939 poll, Americans were asked if the U.S. should declare war on Germany in support of England, France, and Poland, and whether it should deploy forces to assist those countries. Americans were almost universally opposed, with 90%⁸ rejecting the idea and only 8% in favor. The demographics of the country at the time make this seem like a foregone conclusion: in 1939, German was the second most commonly spoken language in America, and even today roughly 50 million Americans are of German heritage. The American people wanted no part in that terrible war for a multitude of reasons: kinship, traditional isolationism, and self-interest being chief among them.

But for this essay, the reasons why the United States was brought into the Second World War are not important; for those reasons are many, deeply insidious, and would surely fill volumes to properly dissect. What we are focusing on instead is what that series of events set in motion.

By September 1940, with his main opponent and ardent isolationist Huey Long long since—and very conveniently—shot dead, President FDR authorized the first major U.S. aid program since World War One. Throughout this chapter of American history, a sequence of incredible events occurred. It is in this sequence that we see the death throes of the Old Republic—writhing, fighting the rise of the globally minded National Security State that came to prominence after the Second World War. FDR, as he did in so many ways, then spat on the lawfare and legal precedents of the United States, doing so in a few distinct ways. The Neutrality Act of 1939 allowed belligerents to purchase war materiel from the United States, but only on a “cash and carry” basis. This, however, was a major problem for the President and his goals.

You see, there was something blocking the pipeline for the aid our President desired to send, particularly to Great Britain. The U.S. had loaned Britain roughly $3.7 billion⁹ dollars ($70–80 billion 2025) in the First World War, an enormous sum that almost certainly kept Britain afloat against Germany’s ferocious armies. Yet, in 1934, Britain defaulted upon its loans. This was foreseen by many of the power brokers in Washington, and on April 13th, 1934, the Johnson Act was passed to preempt this default. This act prohibited the extension of credit to countries that had not repaid U.S. loans made to them during World War I—namely Great Britain. It also prohibited the marketing of their government bonds and securities in the United States, a major issue for the monied interests at home and across the pond. This act effectively shut out those nations who had defaulted on their loans from the U.S. markets. Much like in our own time, there was a growing sentiment among the American people against the continued financing of foreign powers while domestic hardship persisted. After all, the Johnson Act was passed a year after the height of the Great Depression.

On top of this overwhelming lack of public support, the President’s military advisors strongly advised against sending military aid, as well as against American involvement in the growing conflict. The situation in Europe, by 1940, indeed looked rather bleak for the British Empire; consequently, top brass in the American military explicitly opposed the diversion of military supplies to the United Kingdom. In a rather incredible twist of irony, it was the Army’s Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall—the very same Marshall from the later Marshall Plan—who was one of the most vocal critics of the U.S. sending aid to Europe. It was Marshall’s belief that Britain would surrender following the collapse of France, and thus American supplies sent to the British would ultimately fall into German hands. Marshall therefore argued, from the traditional American isolationist stance, that U.S. national security would be better served by reserving military supplies for the defense of the Western Hemisphere. Thus, FDR was opposed by his nation, his military, and the laws passed and signed into law by his Congress in his fervent wish to supply Britain with enormous sums of material and financial aid and thus escalate what can arguably be described as a decided conflict. This, however, was not enough to deter the only President in American history to serve beyond his two terms.

Staying uninvolved in the storm brewing in Europe was not an option for FDR. Thus, he had to find a way to fund the initiative without overtly breaking the law and while placating the wishes of 90% of the American people. In other words, FDR chose to ignore the wishes of more than 130 million Americans, ignore his military’s top advisors, and bring the U.S. into open involvement in what would become the largest war in human history. On September 2nd, 1940, he found just the way to nudge the U.S. into its, then, inevitable involvement in that conflict. To this end, on that fateful day, FDR signed the “Destroyers for Bases” agreement with the British Empire. Winston Churchill even had the nerve to urge FDR to give the destroyers to Britain as a gift. But in order to satiate the U.S. public, FDR only agreed to give the destroyers to Britain in exchange for a 99-year lease to territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean.

This, however, was all it took. From that autumn day on, the United States has been hemorrhaging its wealth overseas without end.

Lend Lease: Belligerence and Reappropriation

Britain, whose prime minister had worked so hard to escalate the continental war, was soon in a crisis. Germany had dominated Central Europe. By late 1940, France had fallen, and the British Army had been driven off the continent. The Germans had even brought the war to Britain by then, with their air force, the Luftwaffe, initiating the Battle of Britain. Things were beginning to look bleak. On November 23rd, Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Lord Lothian, arrived in New York bringing with him the typical English arrogance of the time. Here he stated, amidst a hastily assembled press conference:

“Well boys, Britain’s Broke, its your money we want¹⁰”

But by this point, FDR had already skirted U.S. law and provided aid to Britain without approval from Congress. The Overton window had been shifted. Soon after, FDR took the inch he created and turned it into a mile.

Merely months later, in response to these developments, and enabled by the centralization of the American financial system under the 1913 Federal Reserve act, FDR was able to ram the Lend-Lease Act through Congress in March of 1941. The numbers for the Lend-Lease program, through the duration of the Second World War, are staggering. During that conflict, the United States lived up to its given name—“the arsenal of democracy”—as much as it lived up to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s later self-reflection, “the destroyer of worlds.” The people of the United States—their labor, their blood, sweat, and tears—would then be ionized and sent to destroy the world from whence their ancestors came.

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On October 28th, 1941, Congress allocated $13 billion (~$285 billion in 2025) to the Lend-Lease program via the newly created Office of Lend-Lease Administration, and a mere two months later, FDR would find his excuse to drag America into the Second World War.

On December 7th, 1941, to the great shock of everybody except FDR and his ilk, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The very next day, FDR would demand that Congress make a formal declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. Soon after that, the Third Reich would declare war upon the United States. This, at first, may seem like an unnecessary escalation of aggression on behalf of Hitler’s Germany, but in reality, the Germans were simply formalizing the state of war that had existed between the U.S. and Germany for more than a year. As FDR funneled billions of dollars in supplies, weaponry, and loans to the British Empire—feigning neutrality—a German response to these provocations was inevitable and, dare I say, was the goal from the start. In September of 1941 FDR even authorized American warships to fire upon German naval assets in the Atlantic, effectively initiating a state of war with no declaration. By this stage, the U.S. was totally embroiled in the conflict, and the scale of foreign “aid” delivered between 1940 and 1941 would soon be utterly dwarfed.

During that conflict, more than 50.1 billion¹¹ U.S. dollars (~800 billion in 2024) worth of aid was sent by the United States Department of War to more than 40 countries, including ~13,000 tanks, ~400,000 trucks, ~14,000 ships, ~18,000 fighters, ~10,000 bombers, ~9 million tons of munitions, ~2,000 locomotives and ~11,000 rail cars, ~2.3 million tons of steel, ~2.6 million tons of petroleum products, ~1.5 million miles of telephone cables, and ~15 million pairs of boots¹². Chief among these recipients was Britain—its colonies and dominions included—receiving a staggering 63% of the total aid, as well as the Soviet Union, led by the murderous tyrant Joseph Stalin, which received about 22% of the total aid¹³. Much of this was given out as outright gifts, as Winston Churchill had so arrogantly requested in 1940, and more than 1.5 million Americans had shed their blood in a conflict they wanted no part in. Consequently, vast sums of their financial and material wealth were spread across the Earth.

And what did this treasure do? It was given, but what was it used for?

The money that the U.S. had funneled into its “allies” was used for nothing less than the total destruction of the ancient centers of European civilization, a crime from which Western civilization has never recovered.

The second Adolf Hitler’s armies crossed into Russia, his war was lost. The USSR, once mobilized, was an unstoppable machine, and that mortal conflict was largely decided before U.S. aid would reach the USSR in decisive quantities. It is what the British Empire did with that “aid” that was far less justifiable and far more intentionally destructive.

The British Empire, led by one of the greatest warmongers in history, along with the United States, took that “aid” and the economic boost they received from it and annihilated vast swaths of Europe—not through acts of nobility or tactical genius, but through acts of sheer, depraved barbarity. As early as May 1940, spitting in the face of Europe’s storied history of honorable conflict, the British Empire had begun carpet bombing civilian targets within Germany. Emboldened by their strongest daughter’s weaponry, money, and aid, the British Empire began leveling cities full of women and children. In this fantastic act of terrorism, Britain stopped fighting a war and began carrying out what can arguably be labeled a holocaust in the truest sense of the word, as entire cities and their inhabitants were wholly consumed by fire.

Though it was a few years later, during the night of March 28th, 1942, when the Rubicon was fully crossed. More than 234 English heavy bombers flew across the Channel and into German skies, where they unleashed hellfire upon the city of Lübeck. Only weeks later, on May 30th, 1942, the first “thousand bomber” raid took place, when the British Air Force sent more than 1,000 heavy bombers to level the ancient city of Cologne. This act was carried out with zero military necessity and was explicitly carried out to destroy the city along with its inhabitants. These acts then set a precedent that had never previously been seen in Europe, where annihilating civilian centers from the skies became acceptable. That same year, the Revenue Act of 1942—the single largest tax increase in American history—was passed. In a bid to fund the war effort, across the board, Congress raised taxes dramatically, not for corporations, not only for the wealthy, but for everybody in the nation. It was at this moment when mass taxation by the centralized bodies in DC became normalized. Before this point, income tax simply did not exist for most Americans, and thereafter, it did—for tens of millions of them. This was passed under the guise and justification of a noble cause—the prosecution of the crusade against the Axis powers. Not only that, but this act introduced withholding in the United States, normalizing the Government’s ability to take money from workers checks before they ever see it. This, of course, was all sold to the public as wartime necessity, but as the less naive among us could well predict, it then became a permanent institution of American life. It is at this juncture where the federal government transformed from a limited revenue structure to a permanent, centralized fiscal machine.

By 1943, the USAAF had begun flying its heavy bombers during daytime raids, while the British continued their more cowardly night raids. Thus, the bombings of civilian targets within Germany began occurring around the clock. Air raids composed of hundreds—and, in some instances, more than 1,000—British and American bombers became a common sight, and many German cities, full of women and children, were utterly destroyed.

It is important to note that it was Britain, not Germany, who declared war on the other in the fall of 1939, spurning countless offers of peace and negotiations. It was Winston Churchill, not Adolf Hitler, who so desperately wanted war with Britain’s ancient cousins. After all, this was the man who wrote during the first war, far from the front lines:

“”I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment—and yet—I can’t help it—I enjoy every second of it¹⁴“

Happy as he was to take the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people while he sat in the comfort of his privileged life, it was Winston Churchill, above all other Allied leaders, who worked to great lengths to ensure the conflict could not be contained.

By 1945, the results of this conflict—fueled by American industry and finance—were devastating to the Western world.

Germany had been utterly destroyed. Even the great American warhorse, General George Patton, was stunned. In a speech in Los Angeles in 1945, the good general, speaking of what he had witnessed in Germany, would solemnly state:

“Coming over here, there was a very great lesson. The first four hours we passed over a destroyed land...utterly destroyed. You who have not seen it do not know what Hell looks like from the top. That’s what Germany looks like.¹⁵”

But American soldiers were told their war was to free Europe. Instead their actions not only destroyed it, but vassalized the ancient nations of Central Europe; and soon after they were told they would be forced to foot the bill to reconstruct it. Just three years later, without a vote from its citizenry, President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law, formalizing for the first time the peace time normality of the United States’ wealth being taken from its people and spread throughout the Earth. The very same man who had so solemnly implored FDR to stay out of the conflict—General George Marshall—was then tasked with rebuilding Europe from the devastation he had foreseen.

It was the precedent set by that Marshall Plan that opened the doors for the unending stream of money sent to the far corners of the world that has continued to flow from the U.S. taxpayers’ pockets ever since.

In the end, this expenditure of both blood and treasure benefited nobody—except, of course, one notable exception. Of roughly 70 countries that directly participated in the fighting during the Second World War, only one would emerge from the bloodshed any better than it had gone in: the United States. The postwar landscape, which had been profoundly changed, left the United States of America the most powerful nation on Earth. But Europe lay in ruin. The destruction was staggering. Germany suffered 6-8 million dead, the U.K. half a million, France half a million, Italy half a million, Poland more than 5 million, and the USSR—shockingly—nearly 30 million¹⁶. The economic and social situation was no better. Nearly 30%¹⁷ of the homes in the U.K. were destroyed; France, Belgium, and the Netherlands each suffered roughly 20%¹⁷; and, staggeringly, by the war’s end, roughly 40%¹⁸ of Europe’s industrial infrastructure had been annihilated continent-wide. Even in 1945 dollars, the cost of the Second World War exceeded $1 trillion (~$17 trillion in 2025), and the U.S. had spent more than $341 billion (~$5.8 trillion in 2025) by the end of the conflict¹⁹.

None of this could have, or would have, happened without the wealth and industry of the United States. America was used as a hammer to create the very world order it now subsidizes, polices, and decays under today. This titanic struggle also created the necessary conditions for decolonization. What had been won through centuries of blood and struggle was dismantled within a few short years, spurred by the Second World War. In 1947, India declared independence; soon after, the Middle East and Indochina also lit aflame, and the period of interruption in the colonial rule of those great nations of Europe became the final nail in the coffin for the age of colonialism. In short, the world order that had existed for centuries was destroyed.

There are few events in world history as profoundly transformative to the geopolitical stage as was the Second World War. Few events have been so destructive, few have taken so much from so many, and few have witnessed such a staggering reorganization of the world order.

With the onset of the Marshall Plan, it became clear to all that the United States would take on an entirely different role in global affairs than it had through the entirety of its existence—spurred on by the world’s new reserve currency: the U.S. dollar. After extracting so much wealth from the people of America, the U.S. government then decided to push the envelope further. The UN was formed shortly after the end of the fighting, and the United States was granted a permanent seat on the UN’s Security Council. It would then assume a transformative role in the emerging global order—one never chosen by its citizens—unleashing actions whose consequences reverberated through the Cold War and continue to shape our own time.

Between 1948 and 1952, the Marshall Plan sent more than $13 billion²⁰ (~$170 billion in 2025) to 16 countries in Europe for their reconstruction. After asking so much from the American people, the U.S. government then used their wealth and sent it across an ocean to rebuild a destroyed land that they themselves had chosen to annihilate mere years before.

The results of this have been devastating for the people of the United States and the world at large. Turning away from its legacy as a constitutional republic founded upon isolationism and intrinsic rights, the U.S. national security establishment—led by unconstitutional entities like the CIA, IRS, and NSA, as well as networks of international finance—transitioned into a global empire. Not for the benefit of its people, nowhere near as benevolent as was the British Empire, and far more destructive than any of the European empires that came before.

The war would end, but the revenue system it created would not. What was created between 1940 and 1952 was more than mere policy, it was embedded infrastructure—legal, financial, and ideological in scope. Once it was up and running, it would require war and empire to justify its continued existence. This fiscal transformation made possible the sweeping foreign-aid handouts and global reorganization efforts that followed. Every wartime tax justified as a temporary necessity then became the financial bedrock of America’s post-1945 international ambitions. Yet these were only the opening days of the new global order that had been forged through steel, fire, and—most importantly—international tools of finance. The events that would follow it—the world that would be born from the old’s ashes—and the power and reach wielded by the U.S. national security establishment would rapidly grow to scales unprecedented in all of recorded history. None of it could have been possible without the exploitation of the American people and their wealth, and the scale of theft and fraud witnessed during the Second World War would soon be truly dwarfed in scope.

Here we will end Part I of this project, but we will continue to map this great tragedy—from the formation of the postwar landscape to the Cold War, all the way up to the calamity that is modernity. Through it all, the United States government, in an act of profound treason, has played a central role in destroying all that was built by the giants of early modern European history while robbing its own people of the birthright its founders fought and died for.

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End Notes:

1. World Bank, “Contributor Countries,” International Development Association, accessed December 13, 2025, https://ida.worldbank.org/en/about/contributor-countries.

2. Congressional Research Service, U.S. Foreign Assistance: Overview of FY2023 Assistance Recipients and Obligations (report, updated July 31, 2025), stating that approximately 175 countries and territories received U.S. assistance in FY2023, accessed December 13, 2025, ForeignAssistance.gov.

3. U.S. Government Accountability Office, International Efforts to Aid Russia’s Transition Have Had Mixed Results, GAO-01-8 (Washington, DC: GAO, November 1, 2000), which states that about $36 billion in assistance was provided to Russia from 1992 to September 2000.

4. Congressional Research Service, Foreign Assistance to North Korea (CRS Report R40095, April 2, 2014), which notes that between 1995 and 2008 the United States provided North Korea with over $1.3 billion in assistance (including food aid and energy support), accessed December 13, 2025, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R40095.html.

5. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Learning from Iraq: A Final Report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2013), stating that approximately $60 billion was appropriated for Iraq relief and reconstruction from 2003 onward.

6. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Quarterly Report to the United States Congress (Washington, DC, October 30, 2014), reporting that the United States appropriated approximately $146 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001.

7. Congressional Research Service, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (CRS Report RL33222, updated 2024), stating that since 1946 the United States has provided Israel with approximately $310 billion in bilateral assistance (nominal dollars), accessed December 13, 2025, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33222.html.

8. R.J. Reinhart, Gallup Vault: U.S. Opinion and the Start of World War II, Gallup, August 29, 2019, noting that in a September 1939 Gallup poll, 90 % of Americans opposed and 8 % supported declaring war on Germany to aid England, France, and Poland. Accessed December 13, 2025. https://news.gallup.com/vault/265865/gallup-vault-opinion-start-world-war.aspx.

9. N. Mulder, “War Finance,” 1914-1918 Online Encyclopedia, noting that between 1914 and 1918 the United States lent a total of about $7 billion to the Allied nations, with approximately $3.7 billion going to Great Britain, accessed December 13, 2025, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_finance

10. U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 1941, vol. 87, pt. 1,

11. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II,” stating that the United States provided approximately $50 billion in Lend-Lease aid between 1941 and 1945, accessed December 13, 2025, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/lend-lease.

12. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II,” summarizing U.S. Lend-Lease deliveries including tanks, aircraft, vehicles, ships, raw materials, petroleum products, transportation equipment, and supplies, accessed December 13, 2025, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/lend-lease

13. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II,” providing a breakdown of Lend-Lease aid by recipient, indicating that the British Empire received approximately 63 percent of total aid and the Soviet Union approximately 22 percent, accessed December 13, 2025, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/lend-lease.

14. Churchill, Winston S. Letter to Violet Asquith. In Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume I, Part 2, edited by Martin Gilbert. London: Heinemann, 1967.

15. Blumenson, Martin. Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885–1945. New York: William Morrow, 1985.

16. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “World War II: Estimated Casualties,” providing total military and civilian death estimates by country, accessed December 13, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Cost-of-the-war.

17. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “World War II: Destruction and Reconstruction,” detailing the scale of wartime damage to housing and buildings across Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Poland, accessed December 13, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Destruction-and-reconstruction.

18. Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), General Report on the European Recovery Program (Paris: OEEC, 1948), reporting that by the immediate postwar period European industrial production remained approximately 35–40 percent below prewar levels due to widespread physical destruction, dislocation of transport and energy systems, and loss of industrial plant.

19. Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), which estimates that the total economic cost of World War II exceeded $1 trillion in 1945 dollars and that U.S. government war expenditures amounted to approximately $341 billion nominal.

20. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Marshall Plan, 1948–1952,” stating that the United States provided over $13 billion in economic assistance to sixteen European countries under the European Recovery Program, accessed December 13, 2025,https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan.

In the summer of 1914, what began as a regional conflict in the Balkans between tiny Serbia and an Austro-Hungarian Empire in the final phases of terminal decline spiraled into one of the largest wars in human history, when, over the course of a single month, the French, German, and Russian armies mobilized and intervened. And surely, nobody serious could argue there could possibly have been a Second World War without the First. After all, two of history’s greatest warlords, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, were both very much products of World War I. Adolf Hitler fought in the trenches of the Western Front against the French army, where he was gassed; and Joseph Stalin commanded troops in the Russian Civil War, which was itself one of the ten deadliest wars in human history and a direct product of World War 1. Both of these men were extremely serious individuals, and both personalities were forged within the crucible of global war. Without the disastrous consequences of abrupt and poorly planned intervention, the First World War could never have become what it did. Adolf Hitler would have died a mere painter, Joseph Stalin a priest, Nazi Germany would never have existed, the Soviet Union could not have formed, and more than 100 million people who died in the violence of our time might have survived. Clearly, war can be a perilous endeavor, with far-reaching and epoch-defining consequences. Thus, it is imperative that the U.S. National Security Establishment refrains from the poor planning and narrow-minded thinking that led the Empires of Europe into the global calamity that was the World Wars.

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The War To End All Wars

Volumes have been written about the events of 1914–1918. Millions died, Empires disintegrated, and the foundations of the modern world would be born in the shell craters and bloodshed of global war. The First World War is undoubtedly the most important event of the 20th century, as well as one of the greatest tragedies of world history. Furthermore, it is largely responsible for shaping the world around us today. Though in our age the World Wars may seem to us to have been inevitable, this assumption is simply untrue. It was largely avoidable—at the very least, it could have been contained; unchecked hubris, imperious desire, reckless alliance calculations, and poor predictions in the responses of other great powers created the maelstrom that we know of so well today. Innumerable lessons can be drawn from the lead-up and opening days of that great conflict, and no strategist can truly claim to operate seriously on the stage of modernity without a deep understanding of that conflict and its many consequences. This will not be a study of the events of World War I, but instead of the series of events that occurred during that fateful month following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

By the time news of the assassination of the Archduke had spread to the capitals of Europe, the reaction of the continent was notably rather mute. Though initially this may appear surprising, given the all-encompassing and profound consequences of the events that would soon follow, one has to understand the state of the world at that time. Europe had seen the murder of royalty and presidents before, many times, in fact. Between 1900 and 1914, King Umberto I of Italy, King Alexander I and Queen Draga of Serbia, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, King Carlos I of Portugal, King George I of Greece, and the President of the United States, William McKinley, had all been murdered in acts of political violence¹. None of these assassinations had triggered wars; in fact, the death of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich arguably helped to hasten the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Many in Europe thought of the event as nothing more than political extremism in faraway lands, and nobody outside of the war’s initial belligerents believed that any potential conflict would soon spread directly to them. Yet, as history proves, that assumption was catastrophically incorrect.

Initially, only four main belligerents actively responded to the events. The Austro-Hungarians were the first to make a move. Count Leopold Berchtold²—an ethnic German noble and the Imperial Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary—emerged as one of the loudest proponents of war, and began drafting plans for Austria-Hungary’s response to the assassination. For the Count, the next steps for Austria-Hungary were clear. A fragile empire, composed of a patchwork of Central Europe’s many ethnic groups, the Empire’s response needed to be firm, and it needed to come fast. He believed the Empire needed to strike back at Serbia, whom he believed—not entirely without merit—had helped sponsor the assassination at the state level³. The assassination was taken as a direct attack on the Empire’s nobility and thus its legitimacy, and Berchtold believed annihilating the rising pan-Slavism sentiments in the Balkans was imperative to the Empire’s survival. Yet one ever-present, unavoidable obstacle stood in the way of this desired course of action: Russia. The Count understood that any military action against Serbia was likely to draw Russia into the conflict, a conflict that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would then have little hope of escaping intact. It is at this junction that we find the geopolitical circumstances that turned an irrelevant Balkan conflict into a World War.

On July 5th, the Count opened official talks between the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires⁴. Berchtold dispatched Count Hoyos to Berlin, bringing with him a memorandum outlining Austria’s intention to act against Serbia as well as a personal letter from Emperor Franz Joseph to Kaiser Wilhelm II.⁴ Hoyos would meet with Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, and Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow⁵, while Ambassador Count Szögyény-Marich met Kaiser Wilhelm II⁶, outlining the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s justifications for war, and plainly stating their concerns of wider conflict, particularly with Russia⁷. The German Empire’s response was decisively German in quality: cold, pragmatic, and direct. They did not urge Austro-Hungarian restraint; in fact, they encouraged its aggression, and Kaiser Wilhelm II personally issued the “blank check” on that fateful day.⁸ The German Empire would back its Austrian brothers, even if that meant direct conflict with the Russian Empire.

Yet before we continue, one question is likely hanging upon the reader’s mind: just why was Russia so insistent on backing Serbia? It had not been attacked and the Empire’s borders were not threatened. Why, then, did the Tsar set his nation on course directly into the flames of the first half of the 20th century? The answer to this question is deeply relevant to our time, and it is here where we will first take a step back—to understand why Russia did what it did, why its response was so important, and the many consequences of brushing off the warnings of that Great Power of the East. If the Austrians were reacting to immediate threats to their imperial power, the Russians were driven by something far older: a sense of historical duty and a deeply integrated civilizational memory.

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Psyche: The Holy Russian Empire

The scale of Russian suffering during the first half of the 20th century was truly beyond words. It was the only nation of the 20th century that endured, as a main belligerent, three of the ten deadliest wars in history: World War I, the Russian Civil War, and World War II⁹. Across these three conflicts, the Russian nation and the many lands under its dominion would suffer more than 40 million dead.¹⁰ Yet, this disaster of mankind was not inevitable. The motivations of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Empire were varied and deeply rooted in history. One cannot possibly grasp the reasons for Russia’s insistence on backing the Serbian nation without understanding the history of Orthodox Christianity and the many Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Of great importance, both Serbia and Russia—Slavic nations with deep historic and cultural ties—would convert to Christianity in the 9th¹¹ and 10th¹² centuries, respectively.

In 1054, the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches occurred. For the first time in a thousand years, Christendom had splintered. For the next 400 years, this state of affairs would persist, as the spiritual home of Orthodox Christianity remained in Constantinople—until the events of the 15th century, when, after more than two millennia, the Roman state would cease to exist. The de facto home of Eastern Orthodoxy then became Russia, which was by far the largest, strongest, and most secure of the many Orthodox nations. This fact—and more importantly, this civilizational mindset—would only be cemented further when, in the mid-1500s, Philotheus of Pskov wrote to the Grand Prince Vasili III of Russia:

“Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.”¹³

Initiating the “Third Rome Doctrine” of the Russian state. Ultimately, Russia did not view itself as simply another kingdom, but as the spiritual and political center of Orthodox civilization, cementing for all posterity the Russian identity as the protector of Europe’s Orthodox Christians. By 1910, there were more than 120 million Orthodox Christians living in Europe¹⁴, the vast majority of whom lived in Russia and the Balkans. This left Tsar Nicholas II with the mandate his ancestors left to him: as the ruler of the declared “Third Rome,” and as the protector of Orthodox Christianity as well as 150 million Slavic peoples.¹⁵ Thus, Russia did not view Serbia as a tiny and irrelevant Balkan country, but as a brother nation, deeply intertwined within its own cultural and historic identity. And still, there was so much more.

The Russians also had a multitude of strategic concerns, not simply qualms on ethnic and cultural lines. The Balkans was a region of great importance for the Russian Empire. Russia’s greatest weakness has always been its geographic location. The vast majority of its ports become inundated with ice for most of the year. Without access to territories in more temperate climates, Russia can be cut off from the world ocean, and thus cut off from its status as a Great Power. For this reason, the Balkans was a region of vital strategic importance to the Russians, who, with the Ottoman Turks to the south controlling the Bosporus and the Dardanelles Straits, and the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires along the entirety of its western borders, saw the recently independent Balkans as Russia’s only realistic option at attaining their desired ports and retaining influence in Orthodox Christian lands long sought by their more powerful neighbors. Serbia by itself had little chance of withstanding the Austro-Hungarian forces, and it had virtually no chance of withstanding both the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. If Serbia collapsed, Russia would not just lose a regional ally, it would suffer a devastating strategic blow. The Austro-German axis would tighten its grip around Russia’s western and southern borders, leaving it isolated, encircled, and impotent in the Balkans. For the Tsar and his ministers, this possibility was simply untenable. Military action against the Serbians became existential for Russia itself. Thus, Russian intervention in any war against the Kingdom of Serbia became essentially inevitable.

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The Kaisers Gambit

The stage was set. With the backing of the German Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire began to act with purpose. On July 23rd¹⁶, the Austro-Hungarian Empire issued its “July Ultimatum” to the Kingdom of Serbia. The issued demands were as follows¹⁷:

1. Suppress all anti-Austrian publications and propaganda in Serbia.

2. Dissolve nationalist organizations (especially Narodna Odbrana) that were viewed as hostile to Austria-Hungary.

3. Remove anti-Austrian individuals from military and civilian positions (specific officials named by Austria).

4. Accept Austro-Hungarian participation in Serbia’s own internal investigation against conspirators linked to the assassination.

5. Arrest specific named individuals allegedly involved in the assassination plot.

6. Prevent smuggling of arms and explosives across the border.

7. Take judicial proceedings against accessories to the assassination, under Austro-Hungarian supervision.

8. Immediately suppress anti-Austrian propaganda through state-sanctioned means.

9. Provide explanations to Austria-Hungary about hostile statements made by Serbian officials.

10. Inform Austria-Hungary immediately about the execution of all these measures.

The demands were meant to be overbearing and provocative. The Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted Serbia to reject them so that they could use Serbia’s rejection as a casus belli and go to war¹⁸. On July 25th¹⁹, before the ultimatum deadline expired, Serbia responded in two ways. First, the Serbian government ordered a full mobilization of the nation, (correctly) assuming that war with the Austro-Hungarian Empire was now inevitable, making it the first of the initial belligerents to do so. Second,and to the astonishment of most observers, the Serbian government had agreed to virtually all of the demands—all except demands #4 and #7—citing that compliance with these demands would lead to a diminishing of Serbia’s sovereignty²⁰. A sovereignty that the Serbians were quick to guard, having only recently achieved independence after more than four centuries under Ottoman rule. But to reiterate, these demands were never intended to avert war; they were, in fact, issued in the very hope of creating one. So the rejection of the two demands that Serbia viewed as a threat to its sovereignty was enough. The Austro-Hungarian Empire would have their war, and the entire course of the 20th century would soon be radically altered.

The Austro-Hungarian response came immediately—swift and uncompromising. That same evening, following Serbia’s response, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would sever all diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian minister in Belgrade, Baron Giesl, delivered the break-off note and immediately left Serbia²¹. Austria-Hungary rejected Serbia’s concessions in their entirety, calling the overall Serbian response “unsatisfactory”²² because they had failed to meet all points unconditionally. By this stage, the war was becoming inevitable. Though all of the signs pointed toward the conflict spiraling out of control, those responsible for bringing things this far were seemingly willfully ignorant to what has become obvious to us now. Between July 25th–26th²³, Emperor Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ordered a partial mobilization of his empire’s forces, aimed at Serbia, and on July 28th²⁴—just three days after Serbia’s response—the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia.

Shelling began immediately, but due to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s ethnic makeup and linguistic diversity, mobilization was a slow and disorganized process. After learning of the shelling of Belgrade later during the day of the 29th²⁵, Tsar Nicholas II ordered his empire’s forces to partially mobilize. Initially, this was only aimed at the Austro-Hungarians, in hopes the mobilization of Russian forces would intimidate the Austro-Hungarian Empire and influence them to stand down²⁶. But the Tsar and his ministers had no way of knowing about the German Empire’s “blank check,” and thus could never have understood why the Austro-Hungarian Empire was acting with such confidence and aggression. The Russians had long assumed the German Empire would get involved in any war between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire due to their deep Germanic historic and cultural ties. However, they had no idea to what extent the Germans had encouraged Austria-Hungary to act with intention—that Germany had gone so far as to encourage their Austrian brothers, even if that meant the German Empire’s direct involvement in a much wider war.

This state of affairs continued throughout the day and night of the 29th, but the quickening was already under way. The last hope at containing the conflagration that was actively developing was rapidly slipping away. On the 30th, the Tsar’s ministers warned him that Russia’s partial mobilization was dangerous. They were (correctly) of the opinion that Germany was clearly preparing for war and that partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary was impossible without also mobilizing against Germany. In acknowledgment of this reality, all of Russia’s war plans treated Germany and Austria as co-belligerents. What was obvious to his ministers—that if Russia stayed partially mobilized while Germany fully mobilized, Russia would be caught at a huge disadvantage at the outbreak of war—then became equally clear to Tsar Nicholas II himself. Thus, on July 30th, under immense pressure from his ministers, particularly General Yanushkevich, Foreign Minister Sazonov, and War Minister Sukhomlinov²⁷, as well as from the actions of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, Tsar Nicholas II ordered a full mobilization of his empire’s forces. Military necessity made partial mobilization untenable. Germany’s overt preparations for war forced Russia’s hand. The Sovereign, Tsar Nicholas II, was put in the middle of a rapidly unfolding and tremendously important security setting, and under intense pressure, he sided with his advisors. Russia would now prepare for war.

On July 31st, in response to full Russian mobilization, the German Empire sent a formal ultimatum to Russia, demanding that it halt all mobilization within 12 hours²⁸. Germany warned that if Russia did not stop, it would mobilize its own army and declare war against Russia. The German Empire would not allow the Russians to destroy their Austrian brothers, and it would intervene militarily to prevent that from happening at all costs. Russia did not even entertain this ultimatum, and after the German demands were ignored and the ultimatum expired, the German Empire declared war on Russia on August 1st²⁹ and began its own general mobilization. What had begun as a minor conflict in the Balkans, only a month before, had now turned into a huge war, rapidly increasing in scale and involving some of the most powerful nations on Earth. Yet these were just the opening days, and these four nations were but the initial belligerents. The gravity of the situation and the scale of warfare to follow would soon grow to incomprehensible scales.

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The Immolation of the West

It is at this point where this already massive conflict involving the primary belligerents spiraled into a continent-wide war. In 1892,³⁰ Russia and France signed the Franco-Russian alliance in secret. After France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, France was left isolated and without allies on the continent. The German Empire had gone to great lengths to ensure this by intentionally building a system of continental alliances to keep France isolated. In 1890,³¹ Kaiser Wilhelm II of the German Empire would dismiss the great German statesmen—creator of virtually all of Germany’s continental alliances and architect of the modern German state—Otto von Bismarck. Later that same year, he would again, intentionally, allow Bismarck’s Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to expire.³² This treaty stated in plain terms that if either Germany or Russia were attacked by a third party, both empires would stay neutral toward each other—which was, frankly, a brilliant strategic move on behalf of the German Empire. For it kept France isolated (since France would be left with no Russian ally) which was the German states’ traditional continental enemy, and avoided a two-front war, addressing Germany’s greatest weakness: its geography.

It was never the Kaiser’s intention to throw Russia to the wayside or to disregard its immense power and historical importance. The Kaiser believed the Reinsurance Treaty was too complicated and opted for a less formal diplomacy. He believed he could manage foreign relations himself by talking with other monarchs, an approach he termed “personal” diplomacy.³³ The Kaiser believed the treaty conflicted with Germany’s alliance with Austria-Hungary and that Russia would stay friendly without it because Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II were first cousins.³⁴ But the Kaiser was royalty; he was clearly neither a trained nor an experienced politician. Ultimately, the Kaiser’s intentions would become irrelevant—how his actions were perceived on the international stage would prove of much greater consequence.

For its own part, Russia felt betrayed and exposed. Russia was surrounded by potential enemies: Austria-Hungary and Germany in the west, the Ottoman Turks to the south, Britain in Central Asia—and it needed at least one major European power to be neutral or friendly. Without Germany’s promise of neutrality, Russia realized it could be attacked by Germany and Austria simultaneously, with no major ally in Europe to rely on. Russia had trusted Bismarck’s diplomacy. Wilhelm II suddenly acting so differently made Russia feel abandoned after working hard to maintain peace with Germany. This left Russia with no choice except to seek a new powerful partner in Europe in order to re-tip the scales and address its many security concerns. That new partner was France. The Germans, however, were not naive. They knew from the very beginning that a war with Russia would certainly be a war with France as well, and they had prepared for this outcome extensively. The Schlieffen Plan,³⁵ created by German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen in 1905, addressed this dangerous scenario head-on. The Russian Empire was a vast and multi-ethnic empire, and thus, the Germans believed it would take Russia longer to mobilize than the other main belligerents. So the Germans decided, in case of war with Russia, it would be best to first overwhelm Russia’s allies, roundly defeat their armies in the field, and then redeploy the German forces in the east to face the full might of the Russian Empire. This was their plan; however, the revenge of reality would soon come to haunt the Germans. On August 4th,³⁶ the Germans launched their surprise attack on France, sending ~8 army corps—nearly half a million men—smashing through the Belgian defensive lines. The Germans could not attack France directly; the French defenses on the Franco-German border were strong, and the Germans did not have time to get bogged down so early. In order for their war plan to succeed, they needed to reach Paris and force the French to sue for peace as soon as humanly possible. However, the Germans had made yet another fatal error. In invading Belgium to bypass the French defenses, they had drawn another powerful nation to arms against their cause: the British Empire.

Belgian neutrality was guaranteed by Britain under the 1839 Treaty of London,³⁷ and on that same day, August 4th, 1914, the British Empire declared war on Germany.³⁸ Thus, the Germans were now engaged in a full-scale war against three of the most powerful nations in human history: the British Empire, the Third French Republic, and the Russian Empire. To make matters even worse, the Germans had believed it would take Russia more than six weeks to fully mobilize. The Schlieffen Plan counted on this timetable for the feasibility of its goals, but in reality, Russia was fully mobilized and ready for war in two weeks.³⁹ Germany would fight a two-front war. Its plans had been flawed from the very beginning, and its bold and aggressive actions had left it in a position where it could not back down.

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Catharsis

Four years later, by the time the dust had settled, and the guns had fallen silent, the world had changed dramatically. Europe had been devastated. More than 20 million⁴⁰ people had been killed during the fighting. Serbia was particularly devastated, seeing up to 27%⁴¹ of its entire population killed, with some sources placing military deaths at an astounding 56%⁴¹ of all mobilized men. The Russian Empire had been overthrown in 1917 by a provisional government that was then itself overthrown later that same year by the radical Bolsheviks, initiating the Russian Civil War.⁴² Germany was left economically destroyed, and the Kaiser abdicated his throne late in 1918, ending the German Empire, which was replaced by the Weimar Republic⁴³—a republic which was immediately neutered and stripped of all war material by the victorious Allied powers under the Treaty of Versailles.⁴⁴ The Austro-Hungarian Empire had dissolved, ending almost 700 years of Habsburg reign in Austria; with the Treaties of Saint-Germain (1919)⁴⁵ and of Trianon (1920)⁴⁵ formalizing the massive loss of territory for both Austria and Hungary. France had suffered nearly 1.5 million killed⁴⁶ and was economically devastated, seeing national debt skyrocket from 66%⁴⁷ of GDP in 1913 to over 170%⁴⁷ by 1919. The British had mortgaged the largest empire in human history to finance the war, going from the world’s top creditor in 1914⁴⁸ to the world’s largest debtor in 1918.⁴⁸ It had borrowed heavily, particularly from the United States, owing over $4 billion⁴⁹ (~$76 billion 2025)⁵⁰ to Washington by 1919—passing permanently the torch of global financial dominance to the United States. And after expending such vast quantities of blood and treasure, nothing of true substance had been accomplished. The only tangible results were the destruction of Europe’s influence, empires, and the permanent loss of its status as the political and economic “center” of the world—leaving only Russia and the United States wielding any kind of relevant power in the modern age. Yet something of far greater importance was lost as well, something more abstract and far grander in scale.

The First World War is perhaps the most frightening and well-documented example of a suicide of an entire civilization. In 1900 the Western world made up approximately 36%⁵¹ of Earth’s population. The thrones of Europe, along with the United States, utterly dominated the planet. No power on Earth could, nor would, stand up to any of these nations until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. The territories controlled by the Empires and the United States amounted to approximately 80%⁵² of the entire globe’s surface, and ~900 million⁵³ people—roughly half the Earth’s population⁵⁴—fell under their dominion. Additionally, ~85%⁵⁵ of the entire planet’s GDP was owned by these states and their empires. All in all, what these realities meant in 1900 was that Western civilization was the undisputed master of the entire globe. It was indeed the First World War that laid the foundations for the fracturing of this civilizational dominance, that was then truly global in scale. Just over 100 years later, most of the nations of Europe—and the West at large—have become mere shells of their former selves. Today the West (as well as Russia) possesses only ~15%⁵⁶ of the globe’s population. Today those same nations only control a mere ~11%⁵⁷ of the Earth’s land, and their share of the globe’s GDP has been staggeringly reduced by nearly half—only now accounting for approximately ~50%⁵⁸ of the globe’s GDP. One of the few things the war measurably accomplished was nothing short of the profound diminishing of the West’s power and influence in global affairs across virtually every conceivable metric.

The point that these simple measures prove is clear. War, above all other social interactions, holds within itself the most catastrophic destructive potential—not only in terms of human life, but in terms of civilizational strength and epoch-defining reductions in global status. Thus, it is imperative that the US National Security Establishment refrains from making the many mistakes of the Empires of old. Small-scale conflicts can easily become large-scale confrontations between peer adversaries when strategic interests and cultural ties intersect with imperious or hyper-nationalist designs. The history of the modern world is filled with examples illustrating just that. The results of these confrontations are almost always devastating to all belligerents involved, and the costs of such conflagrations are paid over the course of generations—and, in some cases, even centuries.

Among the world’s great powers, the United States finds itself in a unique geographic position. Separated from the supercontinent by two great oceans, fortress America has always traditionally been spared from any of the events of the Old World. In both World War I and World War II, the Old World’s strongest daughter landed armies on the old continent, helping to bring an end to the devastation in Europe while being itself virtually completely spared from that devastation at home. In the age of interconnectedness, high technology, and intercontinental-capable weaponry, when the next war happens, this will not be the case. The U.S. must hold onto the power it has earned over the course of the previous centuries at all costs—but it must do so strategically. Without creating unneeded weakness in its framework of global security. Without provoking other great powers needlessly. And without exposing itself to the humiliation of total defeat on a foreign battlefield by a coalition of nations. In order to accomplish this, the U.S. National Security Establishment must learn from the indomitable lessons of the past and avoid, at all costs, making the same mistakes in our age that once led to devastation and radical change on a global scale. If we fail to learn from the lessons of 1914, we risk repeating the First World War’s enduring legacy—not merely with rifles and trenches, but with satellites, drones, and nuclear warheads. The entire world was shaken by the events that occurred from 1914 to 1945, and it indeed took decades for it to recover. The next time these mistakes are made, it may, in fact, take centuries.

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Strategic Lessons

Having now the benefit that no single leader of WW I had—the privilege of more than 100 years of hindsight—there is a plethora of lessons that we can learn from the belligerents that created that great conflict. More than 20 million⁴⁰ soldiers and civilians would perish amongst the flames. The German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires would all collapse. Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family would be executed in a basement in Siberia; the Soviet Union would form, waging wars of aggression throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Britain was left with tremendous amounts of debt, vast swaths of Europe were destroyed, and the United States would emerge from the conflict as one of the most powerful nations on Earth. The legacy of World War I is not confined to history—it has reverberated throughout our own time, shaping the century that followed and still shaping the strategic landscape we live in today. So just what are those lessons, and what insights must modern strategists draw from the war that was supposed to end all wars?

1. Intervention Without Defined End Goals Leads to Strategic Catastrophe

Austria-Hungary sought to punish Serbia, but it had no plan for what would come after. Almost willfully it ignored the disastrous potential for a larger war, counting the Germans to have their backs. Germany backed its ally not based on clearly articulated objectives, but on an obscure promise of unlimited support, the infamous “blank check.” Russia intervened in defense of its civilizational brethren, but without a broader strategy for containment or diplomacy. Once the Russians had made up their mind, the war was truly inevitable. None of the great powers could articulate what a victory would look like, only what they feared to lose. And when the conflict began, no state had an exit strategy. The result was four years of slaughter that solved none of the geopolitical questions it was meant to address. If anything it only made the geopolitical situation in the West more volatile, culminating with the largest war in human history, between virtually all of the same nations, just 20 years later.

Strategic Lesson: No modern intervention should ever be undertaken without defined political end goals. Power projection without purpose invites decline and destruction to both friend and foe alike.

2. Alliances Are Not Deterrents—But They Can Be Potential Triggers

The network of alliances across Europe was designed to maintain the balance of power, a state of affairs that has been termed “The Concert of Europe.” In practice, it created a fragile web of obligations that made restraint nearly impossible. When one nation became embroiled in the conflict, all of its allies became obligated to join the fighting as well. Germany’s commitment to Austria-Hungary dragged it into war with Russia; France’s treaty with Russia brought it into war with Germany; and Britain’s commitment to Belgian neutrality sealed the continent’s fate. What was meant to prevent war in fact ensured nothing but war could occur.

Strategic Lesson: Alliances should be tools of calculated leverage, not blind commitments. If they are not backed by strategic discretion, they become traps, not shields.

3. Civilizational Identity Drives Action as Much as Rational Interest

To the Austrians, Serbia was a terrorist threat. To the Russians, Serbia was a spiritual and ethnic sibling. The Tsar’s support was not merely about power projection, it was about duty, history, and destiny. Western strategists today often overlook these deeper motivations, assuming that all states act with cold rationality. That is a fatal error. Russia’s identity as the “Third Rome,” protector of Orthodoxy and the Slavic peoples, turned a regional dispute into a civilizational call to arms.

Strategic Lesson: Strategists must study not just interests, but identities. Civilizational memory and national mythology are potent, and too often overlooked forces in global affairs.

4. Geography Is Destiny—And It Dictates Strategic Imperatives

Russia’s concern over losing influence in the Balkans was not simply emotional, it was existential. Surrounded by adversaries and blocked in by ice-locked ports and hostile straits, Serbia represented Russia’s only remaining hope for warm-water access and regional depth.

Germany, for its part, saw itself surrounded, and acted to preempt a two-front war through the Schlieffen Plan. In both cases geography was much more important in determining action than was ideology.

Strategic Lesson: Geographic realities often become strategic imperatives. Any power that fails to account for geography in its strategic calculus is doomed from the very beginning.

5. Political Hubris and Overconfidence Accelerate Collapse

The arrogance of the leaders in 1914 is perhaps the most damning element of the war’s origin. Austria believed it could strike Serbia without wider consequences. Germany believed it could defeat France in weeks. Russia believed its mobilization would intimidate, not provoke. All of them were wrong. All of them paid in blood. The illusion of control over the chain reaction they had set in motion was shattered by the firestorm of full-scale mechanized war.

Strategic Lesson: The most dangerous delusion in statecraft is believing that events will unfold exactly as predicted. A multitude of contingency plans must always be prepared before any use of hard power on the global stage.

The architects of World War I did not stumble blindly into catastrophe; they strode into it with confidence. That is what makes this story so dangerous. For it reminds us that great powers do not fall because they are weak, but precisely because they are powerful—because they misread the world, underestimate their enemies, and overestimate themselves. Today’s geopolitical stage may be globalized and digitized, but the realities of power remain unchanged. Alliances still entangle. Geography still dictates. Civilizations still remember. And hubris still kills. The war that was supposed to end all wars became the first chapter in the bloodiest century in recorded history because no one stopped to ask the right questions or plan beyond the first move. If the United States National Security Establishment is to avoid that fate in our own time—if we are to wield power without becoming consumed by it—then we must study not just what happened in 1914, but above all else, why. The structure of war escalation has not changed, only the players, and we must remember that in the age of nuclear proliferation, the margin for error is gone.

End Notes:

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3. Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 8.

4. History of England and the British Commonwealth, (London: Longmans, Green, n.d.), 788.

5. Jean-Paul Bled, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), 95.

6. H. W. Koch, German Diplomatic Relations, 1871–1945 (London: Routledge, 1978), 113.

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33. John C. G. Röhl, *The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1900* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 82.

34. Christopher Clark, “Nicky, Willy and George,” *London Review of Books* 31, no. 20 (2009), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n20/christopher-clark/nicky-willy-and-george.

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58. Jean-Paul Bled, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), 96.

Today the United States finds itself intimately involved in waging the largest industrialized war of the 21st century against the central core of the former Soviet Empire. That war, the Russo-Ukraine war, to date, has seen a million dead, more than 200 billion $ in American and European aid absorbed by our perilous foe, and the Russian army is advancing across the entire front. What we have witnessed since February of 2022, has been nothing short of the largest confrontation between the Earth's nuclear armed super powers, since deep into the Cold War. Much has happened since those fearful days of the Cold War, and the world has changed dramatically. After declaring itself the winner of the Cold War in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, the US inherited an Earth in which it was truly unrivaled, both militarily and politically. This period of history saw the US rise to a hegemonic status, where it wielded many of the sweeping and world changing powers of the empires of old.

But as these events unfolded, Russia was left in ruin. Not even Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht inflicted as much damage upon the Russian nation as did the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Before this collapse, the USSR was universally recognized as the second most powerful nation on Earth. The entire world knew which two nations were at the center of the competing spheres of influence: The United States and Russia. But after the Soviet Union's collapse, the strength and enduring presence of the Russian state was drawn into question.

We in the West have never experienced anything like it in modern times. Virtually every indicator of social health went into steep decline after the Union fell.

In 1990: Male Life expectancy sat around ~63 years, and Female life expectancy ~74 years.¹ Mortality rates sat at baseline levels, and excess deaths basically did not exist. The USSR’s GDP was more than 2 trillion $ (PPP,) poverty was less than 11.4%,² and unemployment sat at negligible levels. In short, in 1990 the USSR, with Russia as its core, was a powerful nation, essentially unrivaled in its military, geographic, and economic scale. Yet just 5 years later, this would all change dramatically. By 1995 Russia's Male life expectancy dropped to ~58 years, nearly a 10% decline. Female life expectancy also fell to ~72 years.³ Between 1991–1994 the mortality rate soared dramatically up 33%⁴ from baseline levels. Between 1990–1996 ~4 million excess deaths were recorded.

The economic collapse was just as severe. By 1995 GDP plunged 40–50%,⁶ poverty rates went up to ~33%,² and unemployment rates soared to ~18.74%.⁷ Alcohol-related mortality surged—alcohol abuse caused approximately 59% of premature deaths in men (ages 15–54) and 33% in women by 2009.⁸ Infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV spread rapidly post-collapse. Between 1991–1997 TB deaths doubled;⁹ HIV cases rose from virtually none to tens of thousands by the late 1990s.⁹

The military situation was no better. By the late 1980’s the USSR fielded the largest military on Earth, with 5 million active service members¹⁰, and possessed the largest tank arsenal—more than 55,000¹¹ vehicles of various types—on Earth. By 2000 Russia's military only had 1.27 million personnel,¹² a ~75% reduction. In 1985 its defense budget was ~229$ Billion¹³ a year, down to ~18–22 $ billion¹⁴ by 1997. Operational readiness collapsed. Russia saw a 60–70% drop in operational readiness of its strategic bomber fleet, possessing ~180 nuclear capable strategic bombers in 1990, to only ~73 combat ready planes in 1999.¹⁵ In 1990 the USSR possessed more than ~13,000¹⁶ aircraft in its air force, by 1999 Russia only maintained ~65%¹⁶ of that force operationally ready; with their air superiority degraded to near uselessness outside limited regional defense. Naval power deteriorated just as dramatically. In 1990 the USSR had the second largest¹⁷ navy in the world by tonnage, operating more than ~1,052¹⁸ ships. By 2001, its order of battle was one third of that in 1992, and ninety per cent of its ships were in need of repair.¹⁹ In 1990 there were ~55,000–65,000 tanks in service across the USSR. From 1972–1990, the Soviets produced around 30,000 T-72’s alone, in addition to around 7,000 T-80s and 12,000 T-64s; by 1999 this fleet had been dramatically reduced—as a gesture of goodwill—to only ~6,000 active units.²⁰

By 1999, Russia’s military hardware had deteriorated into a barely functional relic. Its bomber fleet was depleted, its fighter pilots lacked flight time, and its once-mighty navy was rusting in dock. Operational capacity across all major platforms collapsed by ~60–80%, leaving the country with little more than a symbolic nuclear deterrent and the memory of great power.

In short, the collapse of the Soviet Union was borderline apocalyptic to its residents. We, in the West, have not experienced such a civilizational collapse since arguably King Alaric (The Barbarian) and his Germanic armies brought down the Roman empire. By the mid 90’s many were even asking if Russia would survive the calamity at all. It had been dramatically weakened, it had drawn back from the Soviet Empire's borders, and some thought it was on track for dissolution and partition.

But something incredible happened instead.

A New Look at the Russian State and the World in Our Time

Nuclear Capabilities: The Russian Federation is one of 5 Nuclear Weapon states recognized by the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). As of 2025, the Russian Federation possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, estimated at ~5,549 warheads,²¹ including ~1,718²¹ deployed strategic warheads. Russia maintains a robust nuclear triad: silo- and road-mobile ICBMs like the RS-24 Yars and Sarmat, strategic SLBMs on Borei-class submarines, and long-range nuclear capable bombers like the Tu-160 and Tu-95MS. With approximately ~333²² ICBM launchers, Russia can deliver ~1,254²² warheads from land-based platforms alone—most of them MIRV-capable. Furthermore, Russia is widely assessed to operate a dead man’s switch it inherited from the USSR—an automated second-strike mechanism ensuring retaliation even after command decapitation. This system alone elevates Russia’s nuclear posture to a level of strategic deterrence unmatched by any other state. Russia's nuclear arsenal is highly advanced, massive in scale, and demands attention when dealing with it on the international stage.

The Russian Armed Forces: Russia’s total warfighting manpower, inclusive of its standing army, reserve forces, Rosgvardiya, state-aligned PMCs, and territorial volunteer battalions, exceeds ~2.3 million²³ personnel. Unlike Western militaries, the Russian Federation’s armed forces are a complex web of regular, paramilitary, and private entities, all of which ultimately answer to the centralized strategic command of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD). Russia's Aerospace Forces (VKS) maintain the 2nd largest fleet of combat aircraft globally, possessing more than ~4,200²⁴ aircraft, composed of highly advanced 4th+ generation aircraft, ~120²⁵ nuclear capable strategic bombers, and a slow, but consistent production of its 5th generation fighter: the SU-57. Russia also possesses the world's 3rd largest Navy, with ~420 total ships.²⁶ However, in terms of blue-water, power projection naval assets, Russia is a regional naval power with limited global reach. Yet there is a notable exception to this rule.

Russia's fleet of nuclear powered submersibles is among the finest in the world. This fleet consists of Russia's SSBN fleet (ballistic missile submarines): Borei-class (newest and most capable), Delta IV-class (modernized legacy), Delta III-class (phasing out). Russia’s SSGNs (cruise missile submarines): Oscar II-class (Kursk type), Yasen-class (most advanced SSGN in Russia’s fleet). They can stay at sea virtually indefinitely, only needing to surface to resupply. To this length, Russian surface vessels are far less problematic than their submersibles. Unlike their surface vessels, Russia's fleet of submarines have proven time and again that Russia maintains its ability to project its power across oceans, and it is a threat that must never be underestimated. Additionally Russia has the largest inventory of tanks in the world: ~15,500 tanks total (active + storage),²⁷ modernized tanks: ~11,000 (T-72B3, T-80BV/U, T-90A/M).²⁸ With large stockpiles of Soviet-era T-72s, T-80s, and T-64s remaining in reserve. By comparison: United States: ~6,300 tanks²⁹ (Abrams series) China: ~5,800–7,000²⁹ (mixed types). The Ukraine war has depleted some frontline tank numbers, but Russia’s ability to recondition old stocks into operational units is unparalleled anywhere else on Earth, and grants them a fearsome tank force with depth unmatched by any other nation.

Russian Capabilities in Space: Russia is one of only a few nations (alongside the U.S., China, India, Japan, Iran, Israel, France, North and South Korea)³⁰ that fully develops, produces, and operates its own space launch vehicles. Notable launch systems: Soyuz family (Soyuz-2 variants)—backbone of Russian space launches; reliable, human-rated.³¹ Proton-M—heavy-lift launch vehicle (phasing out but still operational as of 2025).³¹ Angara rocket family—Russia’s next-generation modular launch system, designed to replace Proton and support a wide range of payload classes.³¹ Unlike many space programs reliant on foreign or commercial launch providers, Russia retains vertical integration of its launch vehicle development and production processes. Additionally it possesses vast capabilities in space as well. Russia’s Soyuz MS crewed capsule remains one of the most reliable re-entry systems ever built.³² Operational since the 1960s, continually upgraded. It is still a primary transport vehicle for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).³² Russia's ability to safely return crew and cargo from orbit is mature, proven, and independent of external partners. Between 2011-2020 the US itself relied on the Russian Space Program to get astronauts into space. Russia possesses independent re-entry, landing, and recovery operations (e.g., Soyuz landings in Kazakhstan). Russia also maintains a broad and evolving military satellite ecosystem, spanning deep strategic assets like early-warning and navigation capabilities involving reconnaissance, surveillance, and possible counter-space weaponry. Though Russia has no operational reusable spaceplane today (like the U.S. X-37B), its human spaceflight return capability is continuous and proven by practice.

Russian Prominence in International Affairs: Russia is one of the 5 Permanent Members of the UNSC, alongside the U.S., China, France, and the United Kingdom. This grants it sweeping powers, namely, the power of veto. Russia can unilaterally block any Security Council resolution on the UN’s floor. Despite Western attempts to “isolate” Russia diplomatically, no mechanism exists to strip a Permanent member of its status or veto power. This ensures Russia maintains formal legal influence over all binding decisions on international peace and security. Russia’s veto power is a hard stop to any UNSC-mandated actions against it or its allies. Most recently it used this power to veto the 2022 condemnation of Russia invasion of Ukraine, presented by Ukraine's Permanent Representative of the United Nations.³³

Russia is also a founding member of BRICs, a growing economic bloc focused on creating a counterweight for international relations and finance outside of the US or Western dominated G7 and IMF. To date BRICs represent over 40% of the global population and ~37% of global GDP (PPP).³⁴ Spearheaded by Russia's reaction to sweeping sanctions, as well as from cooperation with China, BRIC’s relevance and expansion efforts have increased dramatically since the start of the decade. Russia is also a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and leading security pillar of the SCO, alongside China.³⁵ The SCO’s primary focus is on regional security, counter-terrorism, and economic cooperation across Eurasia, and includes members like India, Pakistan, and Central Asian states, giving Russia significant diplomatic leverage across the Eurasian heartland.

China and Russia have seen a dramatic increase in cooperation over the past 3 decades, leaving Russia-China relations at their strongest in modern history, forming a quasi-strategic alliance. Though not a formal military alliance, joint military drills (naval, air, and ground) demonstrate operational coordination against NATO’s strategic posture has become commonplace. The political, economic, and security coordination between Moscow and Beijing is a key axis of the multipolar world order. Even today, Russia remains one of the world’s largest arms exporters, supplying: India, Vietnam, Egypt, Algeria, North Korea,³⁶ as well as multiple African and Latin American nations. Despite Western sanctions, Russian military hardware remains a backbone of many nations' defense strategies, and its industrial capabilities remain robust. Russia is also totally energy independent, accounting for 11-13% of total global oil production, with their net crude oil exports totalling 46.8%.³⁷ Consequently Russia maintains enormous leverage in the international energy markets. Oil and gas exports remain a cornerstone of state budgets. In 2025, Russia anticipates energy export revenues of ~$200 billion, down about 15% from 2024’s ~$235 billion, yet still a tremendous sum, representing one-third of federal revenues.³⁸ This energy dominance shields the Russian state from economic coercion, while ensuring its leverage over global energy flows remains intact, especially within the Asian and European markets.

Power Projection: Russia remains a global power projection force—not because of its GDP or alliances—but because of its ability to impose costs, create strategic dilemmas, and sustain force presence across multiple theaters through asymmetric means. In the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has projected power into various armed conflicts around the globe. What follows is a list of Military interventions by Russia, since 1991: Transnistria, 1991, Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia) 1992-2008 (de facto to present), Tajikistan, 1992-1997 (with a military presence to present), Bosnia, 1996-2003, Ethiopia, 1998–2000, Kosovo, 1999-2003, Chechnya, 1994-1996; Second War, 1999-2009, Anti-piracy, Gulf of Aden, 2008-present, Ukraine, 2014-present, Syria, 2015-Present (operations scaled after regime consolidation), Central African Republic, 2018-present, Libya, 2019-present, Mozambique 2019, Madagascar, 2018, Sudan, 2017-present, Mali, 2021-present, Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan/Armenia), 2020–2024, Kazakhstan, 2022, Belarus, 2022-present (including the staging of Russian Nuclear warheads on the territory of Belarus), as well as dozens of other minor deployments and military cooperation with other countries around the world.^{39, 40, 41, 42}

Russia also projects its power through naval force, operating one of the largest and advanced fleets of submersibles anywhere on Earth. Publicly available data points to Russia possessing: ~16 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), ~14 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), ~11 nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (SSGNs), as well as 23 diesel-electric subs (though not nuclear-powered.)⁴³ These submarines have been spotted in the Mediterranean, the English Channel, the Caribbean (Particularly around Florida and Cuba), in the Atlantic off America’s East Coast, as well as the Arctic circle. This fleet of submersibles is highly advanced, tested through continuous patrols and combat actions, and highly capable in their offensive capabilities. Russia's satellites can also monitor any developments on the ground, and its GPS equivalent, the GLONASS system, allows for global navigation via Russia's own assets in space. When taken into account, these things mean Russia can project its power, in multiple ways, across multiple continents. There is no corner of the Earth that the Russian Federation can not see or reach.

Food: The Russian Federation feeds itself, relying on very little imports of foodstuffs in order to maintain the sustenance of its population. To maintain this ability, Russia’s Food Security Doctrine (2020) set targets for self-sufficiency for key food items: Grain: 95% (actual 170.8%), Sugar: 90% (actual 112.6%), Vegetable oil: 90% (actual: 198.4%), Meat: 85% (actual: ~94.6%), Milk/dairy: 90% target (actual: ~81.7%), Fish products: 85% (actual: ~154.5%), Potatoes: 95% (actual: 100%), Vegetables: 90% (actual: 95.8%), Fruit & berries: 60% (actual: 33.9%).⁴⁴ Famously, Russia has implemented a ban on the cultivation and breeding of genetically modified (GM) plants and animals in 2016.⁴⁵ Since the early 2000’s Russia has sustained its status as a net grain exporter nation. In 2023-2024, even under wartime conditions, Russia exported 60 million tons of Grain, totaling roughly half of its production. By 2023 Russia's total cereal harvest reached 137 million tons, including ~100 million tons of wheat.⁴⁷ The Russian Federation accounts for ~26% of global wheat trade,^48% and up to 38%⁴⁹ of global sunflower oil exports. Russia's food production is massive in volume, allowing it near total self sufficiency, and leaving it a significant exporter of foodstuffs on the global market. It can not be starved out.

Territory: The scale of Russia is difficult to grasp. By wide margins, it is the largest nation on Earth, comprising more than 17.098 million km², nearly twice the size of the U.S., and accounting for nearly 11%⁵⁰ of the Earth's total landmass. The country covers 11 time zones, spans Europe and Asia, and stretches 9,000km west to east, and 4,500km north to south.⁵¹ Russia also has the fourth-longest coastline globally (~37,653km)⁵¹ with access to the Arctic, Pacific, Mediterranean, and remote access to the Atlantic. Russia is gargantuan, as it exists today, it is one of the largest countries in all of recorded history.

This immense territory also allows it access to massive pools of Natural Resources. Russia holds the largest proven gas reserves in the world—estimated between 33 tcm and 49 tcm,⁵² the world's second-largest coal reserves at ~15%⁵³ of global share, and possesses the eight⁵⁴ largest proven oil reserves on Earth. Additionally, Russia is the 2nd⁵⁵ largest exporter of gas, as well as the fourth-largest⁵⁶ producer of LNG on Earth. Russia produces about 10.75 million barrels of oil per day, accounting for approximately 11% of global oil production;⁵⁷ accounting for ~20%⁵⁸ of Europe’s refinery throughput, especially via the Druzhba pipeline. As of 2022 Russia is also the 4th⁵⁹ largest producer of electricity in the world, with hydropower accounting for ~17.3%⁶⁰ of its domestic electricity output, and nuclear accounting for another ~20%⁶⁰; ~17.8%⁶¹ of the world's total global nuclear power output. It holds a vast share of the globe's resource reserves and natural resources constitute a significant share of national wealth. It is a global leader in iron ore reserves, tin, and lead; and is also rich in diamonds, gold, silver, copper, nickel, mercury. The Arctic region unlocks massive reserves of oil, natural gas, and rare earth minerals, with Russia's Arctic coast being longer than any other country. Climate change is opening maritime access (Northern Sea Route), enhanced by Russia’s fleet of icebreakers and port infrastructure boosting extraction and geopolitical leverage. Russia’s sheer scale—not just in size but breadth of natural wealth—positions it as a global superpower in energy, mineral extraction, forestry, and strategic Arctic access.

GDP: In nominal terms, Russia ranks 11th globally at roughly $2.17⁶² trillion (World Bank 2024), a figure that does not at first impress. Yet nominal GDP alone leaves a distorted frame, because it does not account for differences in cost of living or exchange rates. When purchasing power parity is considered, the scale of Russia’s economy looks much different. By PPP, Russia ranks 4th in the world, behind only China, the United States, and India, with an economy valued at approximately $6.92⁶³ trillion (World Bank 2024). On a per capita basis, Russia’s PPP-adjusted GDP is around $47,405⁶⁴ (World Bank 2024), a level equivalent to many developed states in Europe.

PPP provides a more whole view of Russia’s real economic weight and its ability to sustain domestic industry and military production. This was demonstrated beyond doubt in the aftermath of Western sanctions. Despite becoming the most sanctioned country on Earth, Russia's GDP grew by 3.6%⁶⁴ in 2023 (World Bank), and by 4.1%⁶⁵ (World Bank) in 2024. All while sustaining high-intensity warfare on a scale unmatched in the 21st century thus far. Though its GDP is projected to decelerate to 1.6%⁶⁵ through 2025. Even under conditions of near-total international isolation—which Russia is far from today—the scale of its economy would still allow it to maintain a massive industrial and military machine.

Russia’s economy remains deeply industrial, supported by near boundless energy and natural resources; as well as a large and effective Military industrial complex. Military expenditure now accounts for roughly 7.2%⁶⁶ (SIPRI) of GDP, the highest share since the Soviet era. This reflects not only the demands of modern warfare, but also the state’s enduring ability to mobilize resources on a national scale. Russia’s economic power should never be underestimated. It is not merely a commodity exporter or “gas station with nukes.” It is a rich nation, not only in terms of financial flows but in extensive mineral and industrial wealth, and it retains the resilience to remain a first-rank power even in the midst of sustained strategic pressure.

Industrial Capacity: Joseph Stalin, the man of steel, sacrificed millions of lives to drag Russia into the industrial age. The modern Russian state has not forgotten this. It has maintained much of the old Soviet Union’s industrial plants and expanded its own organic capacity in recent decades. This has left Russia with enormous industrial potential in both civilian and military applications.

Russia ranks 5th⁶⁷ globally in steel production, producing 71⁶⁷ million tons per year (2024), alongside more than 67⁶⁸ million tons (2024) of cement. As of 2023 it generated 1,164⁶⁹ TWh of electricity annually, drawn from a diverse mix⁶⁹ of 45% gas, 19% nuclear, 18% hydro, 15% coal, and roughly 3% other sources. Its oil refining capacity stands at about 5.4⁶⁹ million barrels per day, with a 2024 throughput totaling 1.97 billion barrels per year. The country’s rail network, the backbone of its continental economy, moved approximately 1.18 billion⁷⁰ tons of freight in 2024—a fifteen-year low, yet still staggering in scale. Manufacturing remains a major pillar of the economy. In 2024, manufacturing accounted for about 13.25%⁷¹ of GDP (World Bank), while industry comprised roughly 30.72%⁷¹ of GDP (World Bank) in 2024. It also produces a wide range of specialized machines and tools that keep its industrial ecosystem largely self-sufficient.

But it is in the military sphere that Russia’s industrial scale becomes clearest. Western estimates suggest Russia produced and refurbished over 4.5⁷² million artillery shells in 2024 alone, at a monthly rate of ~250,000.⁷³ By contrast, the entire NATO bloc—including the United States—produced only 1.2⁷⁴ million shells in the same year. In other words, Russia manufactured nearly four times the artillery munitions as all of NATO combined—a bloc of over 950 million people no less. This alone is jaw-dropping.

Russia is the world’s third-largest arms exporter (~7.8%⁷⁵ global share) and is capable of independently building and maintaining nuclear power plants. Thirty-six⁷⁶ such reactors operate domestically, with ~20⁷⁶ additional projects underway abroad. Russia controls ~65%⁷⁷ of the global export market for nuclear reactors. Additionally, it is one of only four nations that domestically manufacture jet engines. Rostec’s United Engine Corporation (UEC) oversees over 80% of Russia’s aircraft engine industry, producing for military, civil aviation, space, power turbines, and marine applications. Russia’s vertically integrated jet-engine industry maintains legacy platforms while producing advanced AL-41F1 and AL-51F‑1 engines for frontline fighters. In sum, Russia’s industrial base—sprawling, self-sufficient, and adaptive—remains resilient, as evidenced by its survival under the harshest sanctions regime ever imposed.

Population: As of 2025, Russia’s population—including Crimea and Sevastopol—is ~146 million (144⁷⁸ million excluding those regions). Crimea adds ~1.9⁷⁹ million and Sevastopol ~558,200.⁸⁰ With a population density of only 8.79⁷⁸ inhabitants per km², Russia is one of the world’s most sparsely populated large states. Its urbanized population stretches horizontally across 4,300 miles, meaning its centers of gravity cannot be easily targeted from a single theater.

Demographic challenges persist. Russia’s fertility rate stands at ~1.52⁸¹ children per woman (below replacement), with a median age of 41.9 ⁸²(CIA). However, Western states fare no better: the U.S. sits at 1.84⁸¹, France at 1.9⁸¹, Germany at 1.58⁸¹, and the UK at 1.63⁸¹. Furthermore, by late 2023, Russia hosted ~1.3⁸³ million Ukrainian refugees per UNHCR estimates. When factoring in internal reports and forced relocations, the total may exceed 2 million. Russia’s population is almost certainly larger than at the start of the Ukraine war.

Gold: By mid-2025, Russia had built its gold reserves to unprecedented levels—valued at approximately $247⁸⁴ billion, up from $217 billion just two months earlier. In terms of volume, it holds over 2,330⁸⁵ tonnes—ranking in the global top five—and gold now comprises 36.3%⁸⁶ of its international reserves, the highest share since 1999. The value of these reserves has surged by 72%—a gain of nearly $96 billion—since early 2022. This dramatic buildup reflects a deliberate strategy to use gold as a hedge against sanctions and economic volatility, reinforcing Russia’s sovereign financial resilience.

Alliances: Russia’s most important partner is China, bound by a strategic partnership rather than a formal alliance. In 2024 bilateral trade hit $244⁸⁷ billion in 2023, with China supplying ~38%⁸⁸ of Russia’s imports and absorbing increasing volumes of its energy exports. The two conduct regular joint military exercises and coordinate through entities like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Cooperation spans energy, defense, and high technology—making China a vital economic and geopolitical counterweight to the West.

Iran is another core ally, solidified by a 20-year Strategic Partnership Treaty signed in January 2025. The agreement covers 47⁸⁹ articles spanning energy, finance, cyber, and defense collaboration. Iran and Russia have linked their financial systems (SPFS–SEPAM) to bypass SWIFT, while Iran has supplied drones and missile tech central to Russia’s war effort. North Korea has also contributed ammunition and manpower. Together, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea form a transactional bloc sometimes referred to as "CRINK"—the most serious counterweight to Western hegemony since the Cold War. This coalition assists one another in military cooperation, sanctions evasion, and economic resilience.

Cyber Capabilities: Russia is one of the world’s most dangerous and capable cyber powers. Groups such as APT28⁹⁰ (Fancy Bear), APT29⁹⁰ (Cozy Bear), and Sandworm⁹¹—linked to Russian state agencies—have executed high-profile attacks like NotPetya⁹² (2017) and SolarWinds⁹² (2020), causing global disruptions. In Ukraine, Russian cyberattacks have repeatedly disabled energy and logistics infrastructure.

In electronic warfare (EW), Russia is a clear peer adversary. Systems like the Krasukha-4⁹³ and Murmansk-BN⁹³ can jam GPS, disable drones, and blind satellite systems at ranges exceeding hundreds of kilometers. Russia fields dedicated EW brigades—the world’s largest standing force of its kind—giving it superiority in spectrum control. While not matching U.S. or Chinese R&D budgets, Russia compensates with agile state-criminal hybrid networks, offering global reach and plausible deniability. This asymmetric capacity allows Russia to impose costs on adversaries at minimal expense.

Arctic Power: Russia is the dominant Arctic power, controlling nearly half of the region’s coastline and territory. Its Arctic zone covers 4.8⁹⁴ million km², a region holding an estimated 22% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves. The Northern Sea Route (NSR), running through Russian Arctic waters, offers a 40%⁹⁵ reduction in transit time between Europe and Asia compared to the Suez Canal.

Russia has heavily invested in Arctic infrastructure, with militarized outposts, search-and-rescue stations, and expanded port facilities. NSR traffic hit 38 million tons in 2024, with projections of further growth by the end of 2025. Russia’s icebreaker fleet, ~40 strong, including 8⁹⁶ nuclear-powered vessels—the world’s only fleet of such vessels. No other nation can match its year-round Arctic access. Energy projects like Yamal LNG rely on these capabilities. In parallel, Russia has deployed air defenses, radar systems, and Arctic-adapted brigades to reinforce control. In geography, infrastructure, and force posture, Russia owns the High North—making the Arctic both a strategic bastion and a storehouse of future wealth.

So, after this exhaustive collection of data, just what does all this mean? It means that the Russian Federation is more powerful than 99% of the countries on Earth—and by most metrics—by vast margins. In this world, nothing is given. Russia did not come to possess the largest territory on Earth because it was weak. These metrics when viewed individually are surely impressive, but it is only when we survey the entire picture together, that we come to grasp the true scale of the Russian state. It is impervious to economic or food blockades. It has one of the largest, advanced, and capable armed forces on the planet. It possesses the Earth's largest arsenal of Nuclear weaponry. It feeds hundreds of millions around the globe, as well as producing 11% of the planet's oil. It is one of three nations on Earth that operates fleets of nuclear capable strategic bombers, and its highly advanced fleet of submersibles have been spotted across the entire globe. On top of this it has Veto powers as a permanent member of the UN’s security council. In short, Russia is a country who can—and has many times in the past—defined entire chapters of human history. When its interests are ignored, when it is dismissed as weak, when hubris supersedes caution, calamity occurs. We don’t have to guess. In the previous two centuries it was Russia who not just defeated, but crushed two of the greatest war lords in human history. Russia destroyed the empires of both Napoleon and Hitler—leaders who dismissed it as a backward state. Both miscalculations ended in national ruin.

These realities demand a sober reassessment of American policy. None of this is to say that the US itself is weak, or that Russia is more powerful. To the contrary. The United States, for a wide variety of reasons, is undoubtedly a more powerful nation. But we are talking about super powers, not mere regional competitors. War between our two nations would mean nothing but suicide for us both. For that reason it is of the utmost importance that we treat Russia with the respect and caution that true power demands. For, if that nation ever feels that its sovereignty is threatened, the entire human race will pay for the consequences. In the emerging multi polar world it would be wise for the US to hedge our bets. Russia is not an inherent enemy of the United States. During the largest war in human history, Russian and American soldiers fought side by side to victory. Russia is a dangerous and cunning adversary when backed into a corner, yet it is a powerful and constructive ally when drawn near. Russia's influence and reach extends clear across the globe, it is more than a mere “great power” it is a true Superpower. Underestimating Russia in our century isn't just foolish, it is dangerous. That would be a mistake which will prove disastrous to the US and its long term interests.

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End Notes:

1. “Report: Life Expectancy in Former Soviet Union Lags Behind Western Europe,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 2, 2013, https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030.html.

2. Branko Milanović, “The World Bank and the Transition in Central and Eastern Europe,” World Bank Research Observer 18, no. 1 (2003): 23–66, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/292841468095055404/pdf/766160JRN0WBRO00Box374385B00PUBLIC0.pdf.

3. M. McKee, “Life Expectancy in Russia,” BMJ 312, no. 7034 (1996): 799, https://www.bmj.com/content/312/7034/799.1.

4. David A. Leon et al., “Huge Variation in Russian Mortality Rates 1984–94: Artefact, Alcohol, or What?,” The Lancet 350, no. 9075 (1997): 383–88, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9508159/.

5. Martin McKee et al., “Alcohol Consumption and Public Health in Russia: The Continuing Challenge,” The Lancet Public Health 2, no. 6 (2017): e302–e303, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(17)30072-5/fulltext.

6. Glenn E. Curtis, ed., Russia: A Country Study (Washington, DC: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996), chap. 5, https://countrystudies.us/russia/58.htm.

7. “Russia Youth Unemployment Rate 1991–2024,” Macrotrends, accessed August 25, 2025, https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countries/rus/russia/youth-unemployment-rate.

8. “Half of All Premature Deaths in Russian Adults Down to Alcohol,” University of Oxford News Release, June 26, 2009, https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2009-06-26-half-all-premature-deaths-russian-adults-down-alcohol.

9. World Bank, HIV/AIDS in Russia: The Economic and Demographic Impact (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002), https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/751721468776061981/pdf/319500RU0TB0HIV0AID0in0Russia01public1.pdf.

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But every beginning has to start somewhere. This space exists because the world is changing faster than the institutions, media, and experts tasked with explaining it. The unipolar moment of American primacy is fading, multipolarity is emerging, and the stakes are rising. My work here will cut through the noise to examine power, strategy, and the forces shaping global politics.

Why this, why now

The Substack launches with my latest longform essay: “Power Index: Re-Evaluating the Russian Federation in the Emerging Multi-Polar World.”
This piece is not a hot take—it’s a strategic audit. Russia has been dismissed, underestimated, and prematurely written off too many times. The essay takes apart those assumptions, analyzing history, collapse, recovery, and the present military-economic posture of a state that still sits at the heart of global power politics.

I’ve written this because Western analysis is often locked in the short-term, reactive to headlines. My goal is to restore depth: history, numbers, and cold evaluation of capability.

What kind of community this will be

This will not be a space for surface-level commentary. It will be a forum for:

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I’m building a community of readers who want to think beyond the daily news cycle—students, analysts, policymakers, and anyone who understands that power and survival are shaped by more than soundbites. I want this project to live up, in some small way, to the legacy of General Smedley Butler—a man who told uncomfortable truths about war and the machinery behind it. That’s the spirit I intend to carry forward here: uncompromising, unsentimental, and honest.

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• Essays: Longform pieces (2,000-5,000+ words) grounded in history, strategy, and data. Expect one new essay every ~4 weeks.

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