Tea at Trianon: Louise d'Artois (1819-1864)

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

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Louise d'Artois (1819-1864)

As readers of Madame Royale know, Louise d'Artois was the daughter of the Duc and Duchesse de Berry and the beloved niece of the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Louise's father was murdered in 1820 when she was an infant; her brother Henri the Comte de Chambord, born a few months after Berry's murder, was hailed "The Miracle Child." After the Revolution of 1830, Louise accompanied her old grandfather Charles X into exile. After her mother's failed attempt to regain the throne for Henri, Louise and Henri were raised by the Duc and Duchesse d'Angoulême. In 1845, she married Carlo III the Duke of Parma. After Carlo's assassination in 1854, Louise was regent until her son Robert I came of age. Robert had 24 children, one of who became the Empress Zita, wife of Blessed Charles of Austria. Louise was known for her piety and died a holy death in 1864. Share