Tea at Trianon: The Life and Career of Horatio Nelson

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

Friday, November 2, 2018

The Life and Career of Horatio Nelson

From Regency History:

Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805) is probably the most well-known of all the heroes of late Georgian England. He can’t match Mr Darcy in popularity, but Nelson did have the benefit of being a real person! Born in 1758, the sixth of eleven children living in Norfolk, his father was a rector and his mother died when he was age nine. Three years later he decided to join the navy having read of his uncle taking command of a sixty-four gun warship. He joined his uncle’s ship, the Raisonnable, at Chatham in 1771, as a midshipman. Keen to give the boy more experience, his uncle arranged for him to serve on other ships, taking him to North America and to India. In 1777 the 18-year-old Nelson applied for, and was given, promotion to Lieutenant.

For the next few years, Nelson spent much of his time in and around the Caribbean. Promoted again to Post-Captain, he was given his first command, HMS Badger, in late 1778. He took part in several military engagements, both at sea and on land.

On 11 March 1787, on the Caribbean island of Nevis, he married 29-year-old Frances Nisbet, a widow with a young son. The bride was given away by Prince William (later William IV), at that time a junior officer in the navy and a friend of Nelson. (Read more.)