A place for friends to meet... with reflections on politics, history, art, music, books, morals, manners, and matters of faith.
A blog by Elena Maria Vidal.
"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."
"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."
"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
A Note on Reviews
Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.
An old article, but worth reading. Lately, I have been researching about the Viking slave trade, which involved kidnapping blond Saxon girls and selling them in Southern Europe and sometimes as far as Asia. But that was centuries before the time referred to in the article. From OSU:
A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were
enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far
greater number than had ever been estimated before.
In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University,
developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white
Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at
much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had
found.
Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to
estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in
particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts
have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of
thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and
1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in
North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.
It should not come as a surprise to see the same methods deployed
against President Trump in 2024 that were used by the FBI in 2016. The
difference is now that President Trump understands the full power of his
office in the security clearance process and that he doesn’t need the
FBI.
In 2016 the FBI used their power to conduct security clearances as a
tool to stall and block President Trump appointments. Historically this
is one of the ways a very corrupt and political FBI interfere in any
system that might be against the interests of the Intelligence Community
that controls them. However, in 2024 President-Elect Trump and his
transition team have already taken a different approach. (Read more.)
The Islamic State (IS) rendered its verdict on Donald Trump’s re-election in the main editorial of the 469th edition of its weekly newsletter, Al-Naba, published on 14 November. The editorial is entitled, “The Unbelievers Will Not Be Successful”, drawn from Qur’an 23:117.
Al-Naba begins: “Politicians have overflowed with commentary about the expected changes after the taghut
Trump takes power, [speaking] in a tone that suggests the world is
subject to his absolute control and whim. They talk about him with a
crazy, obsessive tendency, as if he was the orchestrating master of the
Affairs of Creation! This is not an exaggeration, merely an unvarnished
description of reality.” (Read more.)
House Oversight Committee Chairman
James Comer revealed Tuesday that a whistleblower claimed a FEMA
supervisor in Georgia directed a family to remove Trump campaign signage
from their home, saying it was not “looked kindly” on by the agency.
Comer
made the statements during a hearing where lawmakers grilled FEMA
Administrator Deanne Criswell about an agency employee who told relief
workers in Florida to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Criswell has
maintained that the guidance was an isolated incident and not the result
of agency policy to skip over “politically hostile” homes.
But testimony from Comer and other lawmakers testimony casts doubt on Criswell’s comments.
“My
staff made contact with a new whistleblower who provided a credible
account that a FEMA contractor visited the home of an elderly disabled
veteran’s family around October 10 following Hurricane Helene,” Comer
said after the committee came back from recess. “While there he
recommended that they remove Trump campaign materials and signs from
both their house and yard. He warned the family that his FEMA supervisor
does not take kindly to Trump supporters and that they are seen as
domestic terrorists.” (Read more.)
Biden and the left walked right into Trump’s trap. The former
president baited the Biden-Harris team into an emotional reaction
highlighted by the trash reference.
“They treat you like
garbage. They treat our whole country like garbage. How do you like my
garbage truck? Trump asked reporters. This truck is in honor of Kamala
and Joe Biden.” – President-elect Donald Trump
Trump
made the comments during a publicity stunt in Green Bay just ahead of
election night. The best part was that The Don went to the extent of
wearing a bright orange garbage collector safety vest.
Trump even
had his team pick him up from the local airport using a garbage truck.
He then rode that truck all the way to the Green Bay rally. (Read more.)
The French were not the only encyclopedists; nor were they the first. In
fact, they were inspired by the French translation of the Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,
a work published twenty-three years earlier by the Englishman Ephraim
Chambers, a globe maker turned author/editor who had, in turn,
translated French scientific texts. In the Cyclopaedia, he included an entry under the same heading as Diderot, Agnus scythicus, which referred to a zoophyte (an animal with plant characteristics) with the appearance of a lamb living in Tartary. Other names given were Agnus vegetabilis and Agnus tartaricus, as well as endonyms like Borometz, Borametz, and Boranetz. (Read more.)
From early in her rule, the Austrian-born queen inspired in her French subjects the most virulent misogyny. The market was flooded with whole libraries of violent pornography that depicted her as a wasteful and treacherous nymphomaniac who conducted orgies at Versailles, fornicated with cardinals and generals, and spied on France for the Austrians while satisfying her lusts. The most inventive, mock-serious work, Historical Essay on the Life of Marie-Antoinette hit the underground market in 1781 and was updated almost every year until her death, with vivid illustrations of the queen lifting her skirts for the entire male court. It was soon supplemented by Anandria, which depicted her in a lesbian love triangle with her ladies-in-waiting — the French having a particular obsession with the “German vice” — and sexually molesting her young son, the eight-year-old Dauphin.
This hallucinogenic strain of pornography might sound too extreme to have been taken seriously, but it resurfaced after the Revolution with concrete force as Marie-Antoinette was shuffled into ever more humiliating prisons. Her every public appearance was met with streams of abuse about her carnal desires; even a farewell to her most loyal friend, the Princess de Lamballe, who would soon end up on the guillotine, was reported in the press as a depraved lesbian embrace. The low point came at her trial in 1793, when the deposed queen — by now frail, pallid, and gray-haired — was accused before the packed court of committing incest with her son, the Dauphin....(Read more.)
The good news is that people are awake now and realize this is all a scam - even many who declared there was no fraud in 2020!
In 2020, I was warning people daily of the post-election steal
- but few were listening. It was like yelling into an empty room.
Today, Democrats are openly stealing races - because we didn’t stop them
last time - and have even admitted that they are counting ILLEGAL
ballots in many races. They feel emboldened and don’t care that what
they are doing in illegal. They figure they will get away with it again.
Below is a snapshot of the fraud - in real time - day by
day. There’s NO reason for these states to take weeks to count ballots -
unless they are making them in the back room!
On election night,
Trump was ahead by 7 MILLION in the popular vote (52%) and the numbers
pointed out glaringly that there was NO way that Biden could have ever
gotten 81 MILLION votes in 2020 unless they manufactured them out of
thin air. (Read more.)
One of the more famous conflicts between France and England, the Hundred Years’ War, was a period of sporadic fighting between the two kingdoms that lasted for 116 years. The fighting started as a result of the death of the king of France,
Charles IV, in 1328 at the age of 33. He left no direct heirs, and his
closest relative was Edward III, the king of England. French nobles,
however, refused to acknowledge any rights Edward had on the French
throne, and crowned Philippe, Count of Valois, as the new king of
France. Thus ended the Capetian dynasty, and began the reign of the
Valois monarchs.
After the French demanded the return of Gascony, Edward III responded
with military force. The English saw major successes in the first
phases of the war, winning significant victories at Crécy in 1346 and
Poitiers ten years later. English victories and the capture of the
French king, Jean II, led to the Treaties of Brétigny and Calais, where
vast portions of French land were ceded to England.
Jean, however, died in captivity, and his son, Charles, refused to
abide by the treaties. He reignited the conflict and put France on the
offensive. French pressure on the English petered out after the death of
Charles V in 1380. Civil unrest in both kingdoms led to a pause in the
conflict, but the unrest in England was quelled earlier than in France,
and Henry V of England decided to take advantage of the situation by
launching an invasion. (Read more.)
These two sea monsters
are almost always referred to in Ancient Greek mythology as a pair.
This is because they were said to be two monsters on either side of a
narrow strait, making them far more dangerous to ships than they ever
would have been individually. Scylla was a multi-headed, serpentine
monster that reached out to grab sailors from their boats. Charybdis was
essentially an enormous, living whirlpool that would devour entire
ships whenever it got the chance.
The most famous Greek myth featuring these two sea monsters is the Odyssey. This is the story of Odysseus attempting to sail back to Greece after the Trojan War.
In this story, the goddess Circe advises Odysseus to sail closer to
Scylla than to Charybdis. She points out that it would make more sense
to lose six men than the entire ship. (Read more.)
Instead of rooting out the corruption at the department, most of
permanent D.C. did absolutely nothing in response. Yet somehow the
chattering class was shocked when Trump nominated loyal foot soldier
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fl., to be attorney general in Trump’s second term
and to fix DOJ.
Gaetz had proven to be one of the most effective advocates against
corruption at DOJ and was unwilling to back down in the face of
overwhelming public pressure. However, Gaetz does not fit the education
or experience profile of many previous attorneys general and has limited
experience practicing law.
Many Americans are sick and tired of elected officials and media
pundits doing nothing as DOJ attempted to destroy the country with its
abuse of the rule of law. Among the many powerful figures in Washington,
D.C. opposed to the Gaetz nomination are some who are attempting to
thwart it by releasing a report from the House Ethics Committee that
will attempt to tie Gaetz to salacious allegations involving child sex
trafficking.
The report comes years after DOJ dropped its investigation into the
same claims on the grounds that the two central witnesses had serious credibility issues.
Yet these are the same two central witnesses the House Ethics Committee
has relied on for its critical report of Gaetz—the same report it is leaking to compliant reporters as part of a coordinated effort to thwart his nomination as President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general. (Read more.)
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort
to trim the fat under which the federal government labors — namely, a
sprawling bureaucracy and runaway government spending.
Musk spawned the idea for the department and offered to head it up during an X space with Trump back in August. On Tuesday, Trump made DOGE official, saying
in a statement that it will “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash
excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal
Agencies” and give government an “entrepreneurial approach.”
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said.
The
new department has already sparked endless memes — the DOGE acronym is a
nod to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Musk is a fan, and briefly changed
X’s logo to the coin’s dog meme last year. Another meme making the
rounds shows Musk and Ramaswamy as the downsizing consultants from the
movie “Office Space,” who famously ask an employee, “What would you say you do here?” (Read more.)
Several mainstream news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Reuters, reported Sunday that Joe Biden's administration
has lifted restrictions that had blocked Ukraine from using
U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory.
The report originated in typical fashion, leaked to the New York Times by three unnamed deep-state sources.
This development marks “a significant change to U.S. policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict,”
Reuters reports, when in fact the U.S. policy was always to escalate
the war, with this latest move no doubt planned months ago to be lowered
like a hammer on Russia right before Trump takes office.
It’s
no surprise. We knew it was coming. We predicted many times that the
U.S. government would give the greenlight to such attacks, because we
know that the U.S. deep state wants the war to escalate further before
Donald Trump takes over the White House. Their hope is that the stampede
toward World War III will become so intense by January 20th that Trump
will be unable to stop it.
Ukraine plans to conduct its first
long-range attacks in the coming days, the sources said, without
revealing details due to operational security concerns.
The move by the United States, which comes just over two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes
office on January 20, comes after months of requests by Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow Ukraine's military to use U.S.
weapons to hit Russian military targets far from its border. (Read more.)
Marie-Antoinette "en gaulle" by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
#1 in Kindle Biographies of Royalty!
Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars: Her Life, Her Times, Her Legacy
An Audible Bestseller
Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars: Her Life, Her Times, Her Legacy
An Amazon Bestseller
Trianon: A Novel of Royal France
My Queen, My Love: A Novel of Henrietta Maria
Available from Amazon
The Saga of Marie-Antoinette's daughter, Marie-Thérèse of France
A Novel of the Restoration
In Kirkus Top 20 for 2014! And #1 in Kindle Historical Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction
"In every Eden, there dwells a serpent . . . ."
#1 in Kindle History of France!
The Night's Dark Shade: A Novel of the Cathars
Listen to Tea at Trianon Radio
All about Marie-Antoinette!
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East of the Sun, West of the Moon
St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us!
"...Bud forth as the rose planted by the brooks of waters. Give ye a sweet odor as frankincense. Send forth flowers, as the lily...and bring forth leaves in grace, and praise with canticles, and bless the Lord in his works." —Ecclesiasticus 39:17-19
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