Imaginary Prisoner of the Bastille

From Geri Walton:

Despite Madame Tussaud’s attestation, there appears to have been no Comte de Lorges freed from the Bastille. Moreover, the seven prisoners freed were not imprisoned because of political expediency. Four were common criminals incarcerated for counterfeiting and were Bernard Laroche known as Beausablon, Jean Béchade, Jean La Corrège, and Jean-Antoine Pujade. Shortly after they were freed, they were once again rounded up and incarcerated in Bicêtre. (Read more.)

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God's Hand Intervened

 From Tierney's Real News:

It just came out that there were major security failures between the Secret Service and the local authorities on July 13, 2024 when they tried to kill President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. I reported this a year ago. But, suddenly it's all being announced as "breaking and exclusive" news.

On this one year anniversary of the attempt against Trump's life at Butler, Pennsylvania, please take a moment to read my multi-part series on what I think really happened that day. It's worth your time and the best summary out there. I’m biased but it’s true. (Read more.)

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Bastille Day and Other Convenient Myths

From Fr. George Rutler at Crisis:

While the adage obtains that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it, those who do not know their history can also be fooled. “Bastille Day” is the celebration of an inflated myth. Propagandists—and later romanticizers like Alexandre Dumas with his Man in the Iron Mask and the amiably pathetic Doctor Manette of Charles Dickens—made the storming of the prison the first thrust of the liberators.  The Bastille was far from a fetid torture chamber. It had a storied history. While at times it must not have been a congenial hospice, the number of prisoners dwindled under benign Louis XVI, making it the equivalent of an American “white collar” place of custody, with tapestries, paintings, a library, and at least one personal chef.

On July 14, 1789, there were only seven inmates, a couple of them mental patients. Ten days earlier, the Marquis de Sade, not a paragon of virtue, ran along the rampart of the prison shouting lies about inmates being murdered. This was too much for the congenial warden, the Marquis René Jourdan de Launay, to handle, and so the aristocratic patron of sadism was remaindered to a lunatic asylum in Charenton, founded by the Catholic Brothers of Charity, who were pioneers in psychotherapy.  The Marquis de Sade left behind his unfinished 1785 magnum opus, The 120 Days of Sodom, in the Bastille.

Yet the myth of the dank dungeon persists, and the one-pound-three-ounce key to the Bastille now hangs in Mount Vernon, the proud gift of the Marquis de Lafayette, sent in the summer of 1790 via Thomas Paine to New York where it was displayed as a relic at a presidential levee, and then through Philadelphia to Virginia. As for the Bastille, its remnant prisoners were an afterthought since the revolutionaries had pulled down its gates to get hold of 250 barrels of gunpowder. Indeed the confused inmates seemed reluctant to leave. The kindly, if dour, Marquis de Launay was dragged out and brutally stabbed, and then a butcher named Matthieu Jouve Jourdon sawed his head off. The prison was soon torn down, but bits and pieces are preserved as relics. (Read more.)

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Understanding Marie-Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette approaching the tumbril, on the day of her execution

I have always believed that the only way to fully understand Marie-Antoinette is to understand her in the light of the faith to which she adhered. In his first public speech in 1929 Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira eloquently describes how Marie-Antoinette's religion dictated her behavior, in marriage, during the fiascoes of the Revolution and at the hour of death. It is a superb article although I venture to mention two points on which I disagree. The article refers to Louis XVI as weak. I just wish to add  that early in his reign, Louis XVI often displayed confidence and resolution in his decisions, especially in legislating reforms for his people, in the matter of Bavaria and in the War for American Independence. However, the time of his oldest son's death in June 1789 coincided with the Estates-General and the outbreak of the Revolution. Louis sank into what I think can be considered clinical depression which, combined with the tuberculosis that he had become infected with as a child, left him in a very bad state. I also do not believe that there was an "absence of love" between Louis and Antoinette. They did come to love each other deeply, as I explain in detail in the book Daughter of the Caesars.

 
As for Madame de Polignac, she is not someone I would necessarily characterize as "frivolous" as the article says. For one thing, she was much older than Marie-Antoinette. In spite of her annoying, ever-present in-laws,  Madame de Polignac was not a bad soul. She preferred simple attire and actually encouraged the Queen in that direction. She was a good mother which was why Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI wanted her to be the Governess of the royal children. When Madame de Tourzel became governess after Madame de Polignac's departure in 1789, she found that the royal children knew their lessons, which means they received careful training under Madame de Polignac's watch.

The following are some excerpts from Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira's magnificent homage to Marie-Antoinette:

Amid the collapsing social and political edifice of the Bourbon monarchy, when everyone feels the ground crumbling beneath their feet, the joyful Archduchess of Austria and youthful Queen of France, whose elegant bearing resembles a statuette of Sevres porcelain and whose laughter conveys the charms of cloudless happiness, drinks with admirable Christian resignation, aplomb and dignity, from the bitter yet immense cup of gall with which Divine Providence decides to glorify her....

Louis XVI...was known for his austere conduct and for the piety, kindness and honesty that adorned his character. His bitterest opponents were able to raise only three charges against him: being apathetic, a glutton and a highly skilled locksmith. In the new princely family, formed without deep bonds of affection, the Christian spirit that imbued the spouses more than compensated for the absence of love. Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were always exemplary spouses who built the undeniable happiness of their family life on the solid foundations of mutual respect and absolute morality....

Not for an instant did the dethroned sovereign cease to be Queen. Greater in suffering than in glory, confronting unarmed with her son in her arms the furious mob of drunkards that invaded the royal palace, she showed herself to be from a race that fears no danger, particularly when embodying a just cause. With royalty dragged into the Paris mud and Louis XVI’s weak personality bent low under the weight of misfortune, Marie Antoinette became the sole bastion of resistance. Turning her misfortune into a dazzling throne for her personality, armed in the face of suffering only with the sublime breastplate of faith and Christian resignation, she fearlessly confronted the tidal wave about to overwhelm France....

That sovereign sought to save her throne until the last moment, not out of personal interest but for love of the monarchical principle. And she did it without hesitation, encouraging everyone and never despairing even as the mob dragged her out of the Tuileries, where she had been imprisoned, and took her with cries and jeers into the deadly and grim shadows of the Temple prison; and even as she saw, struck with horror and remorse, at the tip of a rod between the window bars of her dungeon, the severed head of the courageous Princess of Lamballe, eyes gouged out, wig sprinkled with blood, and lips completely livid – attesting to her best friend’s bitter and unmerited death. Behold, gentlemen, the torture of your Queen. It was complete, nothing was lacking; and she endured everything with calmness and resignation, prying, from time to time, cries of admiration from her own adversaries.

As a wife, Marie Antoinette suffered the greatest of martyrdoms. After being the target of most cruel insults, her husband, to whom she devoted all the feelings of an exemplary Catholic wife, was eventually dragged to a death regarded as glorious by posterity but which at that moment seemed utterly depressing....

Yet, gentlemen, it was as a mother that Marie Antoinette suffered her most horrific torture. When the Convention tried to separate her from her son, she covered the innocent prince with her own body, fighting for two hours against the brutal Simon, the shoemaker, and his cohorts. She only let go when her strength failed her. There followed long months of separation. Left alone, terribly alone, locked up with armed guards in a cell in the horrific Temple prison, the unfortunate woman had prayer as her sole, albeit powerful, consolation. To this day, France keeps her daily Missal upon which there surely fell the bitter tears of that mother who, at the height of misfortune and abandonment, always thanked God for the helplessness in which she found herself.

Finally, she was judged by the “Committee of Public Safety” for betraying her country, being a new Catherine de Medici, a bad wife and mother, and especially for the less admissible reason that she opposed the heretical goals of a certain secret charitable association which is not entirely unknown.

During the proceedings, her suffering attains an apex. Brutalized by alcohol, her son had been turned into a little animal, constantly trembling with fear....

 Death finally came. In His immense goodness, God had prepared a worthy place in heaven for her who had suffered so much and loved Him more when He sent her trials than in the fullness of pleasure. October 16, 1793 saw the end of her long martyrdom as the guillotine blade, at the same time criminal and charitable, cut off the thread of her extraordinary life. (Read entire article.)

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The 5 Reasons Socialism Doesn’t Work

 From Culturcidal:

In fact, the only time socialism ever looks viable at all is when a thriving capitalist system is built and socialism is layered on top of it, without being so overdone that it immediately destroys the whole economy. It’s like a world class sprinter that is forced to wear a weight vest. It immediately slows him down, gets worse as the weight is increased and can eventually become so heavy he can’t even move.

Why? Well…

1) Economic centralization just doesn’t work: There was a time in human history when the most brilliant minds could essentially “know everything” or pretty close. For example, I asked ChatGPT for a list of things Leonardo Da Vinci was an “expert” at. Among other things, it told me, "Anatomy, Physics, Mechanics, Engineering, Invention, Hydraulics, Art, Painting, Drawing, Perspective and Composition, Mathematics and Geometry, Proportion and Symmetry, Golden Ratio Studies, Natural Sciences, Botany, Geology, Zoology, Flight Dynamics, Architectural Design, Urban Planning, Fortification Design, Writing and Thought and Scientific Observation." Granted, Da Vinci had an amazing mind, but the world was also much simpler, and the base level of knowledge was a tiny fraction of what it is today.

On the other hand, today, the world is highly technical, deeply complex, and rapidly shifting. Even if you were the greatest genius on earth in, say, quantum physics or rocket science, that wouldn’t mean you’d have even the most basic understanding of something like farming, brain surgery or, social media marketing.

So, when politicians and bureaucrats, who are frequently no smarter than even the average person, are asked to make decisions about a wide variety of jobs, resources, policies, and regulations, the results are inevitably going to be disastrous.

It’s tricky enough for even true experts in a field to figure out the best way to use their resources or what the market will want in a couple of years, so when you move almost all of those sorts of decisions into the hands of people with outside agendas, who don’t understand what they’re doing, it’s going to get extremely dysfunctional, extremely fast.

Capitalism deals with this by leaving as many decisions as possible in the hands of the market, while socialism deals with it by failing over and over and over again and shifting the blame to non-socialists, businesses, and capitalism. (Read more.)

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Two Ravennas: Arian and Catholic

 From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

Arianism and its many offshoots and sub-genres of heresy plagued the Church with mini-schisms, factions, disagreements and controversy for more than three centuries, long after the Council of Nicaea had formally condemned it in 325.

The Germanic tribes were Arians, not Christians in the proper sense of the word. Arianism had taken root among the Goths in the 4th century through the missionary, Arian bishop and philologist, Ulfilas (c. 311 – 383). He was a Cappadocian Greek who translated the Bible into Gothic - creating the Gothic alphabet for the purpose - and passed on a theology that had already been condemned by the Church.

When Odoacer, deposed the last western emperor, he did so as an Arian. Though he claimed to govern Italy in the name of the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople, Zeno, his religious position put him at odds with the Catholic majority in the West and the East. This marked the beginning of a new and uneasy phase in which Italy was ruled by a non-Roman warlord who held a heretical version of the faith, while the majority of those he ruled, including clergy and most of the old Roman elite, professed the Nicene Creed. Though not an Ostrogoth himself (he was likely of Scirian origin) his successor continued this problem, though handling it with a certain diplomatic grace. 

When Theodoric the Great, (r. 493–526), an Ostrogoth and also an Arian, took power, this religious tension between state and church continued. Theodoric was a savvy and deliberate ruler who sought stability by maintaining Roman institutions and promoted religious tolerance. He allowed the Catholic population to keep their bishops and churches, while commissioning Arian churches for his court and followers. (Read more.)

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Bastille Day and the French Revolution Were Not Caused by Marie-Antoinette

From The New American:

July 14 marks another anniversary of Bastille Day, the day the Paris mob rioted and stormed the Bastille, a prison fortress in the city. The popular image of the incident is that of the French Revolution itself, which is that the liberty-loving French folk in Paris spontaneously rose up against a tyrannical king and his arrogant wife, and heroically stormed the symbol of the Old Regime — liberating hundreds of political prisoners. This led to an abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a government dedicated to liberty for all the people of France.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Almost everyone has heard that Queen Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake,” in haughty response to the plea of the poor starving masses of France: “We have no bread.”

That is also untrue.

And it is widely believed that Antoinette caused or at least was the principal cause — of the entire French Revolution.

That is ridiculous.

Whereas Louis XVI and his wife, Marie, are usually pictured in the history books and in the popular culture as tyrants of the worst sort, the truth is quite different. The real Marie Antoinette was a charitable woman, who lodged and fed 12 poor families, at her own expense, at Trianon. She founded the Society of Ladies of Maternal Charity. She even once stopped her carriage for over an hour to aid an injured person, waiting until a surgeon was located.

Historian Antonia Fraser disputed the cruel libel in her book Marie Antoinette, the Journey. “As a handy journalistic cliché, [“Let them eat cake”] it may never die,” Fraser wrote, adding “such ignorant behavior would have been quite out of character. The unfashionably philanthropic Marie Antoinette would have been far more likely to bestow her own cake impulsively upon the starving people before her.”

If the Revolution was not caused by Marie Antoinette, then just who did cause it? (Read more.)

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When “Nazi” Becomes a Normalized Slur

 From Direct Line News:

There’s a straight line—undeniable, uncomfortable, and increasingly dangerous—between the rhetoric we hear from the left and the violence we see in the streets. We’ve watched the temperature rise for years, and now, tragically, the pot is boiling over. On social media, in classrooms, and on cable news, Democrats and their radical allies have normalized one of the most reckless lies of our time: that Republicans, ICE agents, and Donald Trump himself are somehow equivalent to Nazis.

Let that sink in. Not people you simply disagree with. Not opponents in a two-party system. But Nazis. That kind of language doesn’t stay rhetorical for long. It invites violence. It licenses it. And increasingly, it inspires it.

Over the weekend, another violent attack was carried out on an ICE field office in El Paso. Molotov cocktails. Gunfire. The building was targeted after an “Abolish ICE” rally marched through the city chanting anti-American slogans and holding signs that depicted ICE agents as stormtroopers and death camp guards. The so-called protesters were egged on by the same talking points we’ve heard for years from members of “The Squad,” the ACLU, and leftist professors: that America’s immigration enforcement officers are part of a fascist system. (Read more.)

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Catherine Howard's Proclamation as Queen at Hampton Court, 1541

 From Gareth Russell at Historic Royal Palaces:

Hampton Court was where the business of Catherine’s queenship truly began. As Queen, Catherine was head of the largest female-run establishment in England, with a substantial income and a large number of staff. 

On 8 August 1540 – the same day as Catherine reached Hampton Court – the government announced that Catherine was the lawful Queen of England. According to the contemporary chronicler Edward Hall, Catherine was also ‘showed openly as Queen at Hampton Court.’ This meant that she was presented to the entire court with the honours and titles of a queen. Hall does not specify but, very likely, there would also have been a quasi-public component to this, whereby Catherine walked in procession from the Queen’s Apartments to hear Mass in the Chapel Royal.

With protocol satisfied, Queen Catherine and King Henry left Hampton Court for an extended hunting trip that would last until October. Moving through the sweltering countryside, they stayed at smaller royal homes at Reading, Grafton (where Henry’s grandparents Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville had married), Ampthill, Dunstable, and St Albans. (Read more.)

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