The Perils of Excellence: Nicolas Fouquet and the Law of Superiority

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents, or you might accomplish the opposite: inspiring fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are, and you will attain the heights of power.

The Case of Nicolas Fouquet

Nicolas Fouquet was Louis XIV’s finance minister. He was the type of man who loved lavish parties, beautiful women, poetry, and money. He was very clever and indispensable to the King. In the year 1661, Jules Mazarin, the Prime Minister, died. Usually, when a Prime Minister passes away, the finance minister is expected to be the next in line for the position. However, the King decided to abolish the office entirely.

Fouquet was very disappointed by this. He decided to impress the King by hosting a lavish party in his honor. He arranged the most luxurious event of that era and used his influence to invite the greatest minds of the time. The party went exceptionally well; Fouquet even paid tribute to the King by having songs composed for him. The event became a hot topic of discussion everywhere.

The Consequences

But there was a twist: Fouquet was arrested the very next day by King Louis XIV’s soldiers. The reason? It was because the party went too well. It was the greatest celebration of its time, leading to rumors that it surpassed the King’s own standards. People even began to whisper that Fouquet was superior to Louis XIV.

Louis XIV was an arrogant man who placed himself above everyone else. Naturally, this event bruised his ego because people suggested he was no better than Fouquet. To rectify this, the King fabricated a reason to arrest him, claiming Fouquet had illegally used money from the treasury to fund the party. Consequently, the man who tried to outshine his master ended up losing all the power he possessed.