Tea at Trianon: The Real Bastille Day

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, July 16, 2007

The Real Bastille Day

I am breaking my blogging fast in order to post this excellent article from Taki's blog, about the real Bastille Day. To quote:

"Death to the Austrian woman," the blood-crazed rabble cried, marching through burning streets to demand the murder of a queen – and they got it. Why was Marie Antoinette executed? (Hint: She never said "Let them eat cake" – that urban myth had been invented 100 years before, to defame another foreign Queen of France.) The lovely, brave, devout Marie Antoinette – who as a girl had flirted with the boy Mozart while he played the piano – was caged like an animal for months, watching her maltreated boy, Louis, die slowly of disease. Then she was dragged off to be beheaded. Why? Mainly for being foreign, and having had more wit than her husband, enough to try to resist the collapse of her adopted country into subhuman chaos. Share

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: I recently went to Mt Vernon with my wife. During the tour of the mansion they make a great deal of the friendship between La Fayette, and Washington. Mt Vernon is a Masonic Shrine. Scary. There in Washington's home is a replica key to the bastile along with a print of the destruction of the fortress given to Washington by
la Fayette. La Fayette was in command of the National Guards
that captured the ancient fortess and it's 3(?) prisoners.

The original key is in the museum at the estate.

I do not usually like Taki's articles but today it is a fine job.

Vive le roi! Vive La Reine!
de Brantigny; July 16, 2007 at 1:19:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: I thought it was a particularly goos article, too.; July 16, 2007 at 7:44:00 PM EDT