The good old days?

Last night I watched two parts of a documentary about the Regency. Here are two views of the man himself; Prinny, later to become George IV. In the days before photography very few people knew what their monarch looked like, so the man was able to get away with the absurdly flattering portrait at the top by Thomas Lawrence. The cartoon below (I think by Gilray) is probably nearer the truth. Here we see a morbidly obese, greedy, flatulent bore. In real life he had a string of greedy, fat, matronly mistresses. It is not reported, however, whether they were flatulent or not.

His was one of those reactionary and oppressive regimes that followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. While the privileged few lived their decadent lifestyles in great opulence, the ordinary man was struggling with crippling poverty, unemployment and urbanisation, all resulting from the Industrial Revolution. The reaction to any popular dissent was swift and brutal. This is how the authorities reacted when a peaceful meeting took place in St Peter's Fields, Manchester in 1819:

All the people were asking for was electoral reform.

At the same time traditional handlooms were being superseded by steam-powered looms, resulting in mass-unemployment. The frightened unemployed weavers began breaking the new machines. The frightened authorities reacted with new legislation making frame-breaking a capital offence. Here is what happened to a particular group of weavers:

You cant help noticing that Prinny was also a bit of a cunt.