Tea at Trianon: Trial of Louis XVI

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, January 16, 2025

Trial of Louis XVI

Here is an excerpt from the trial of Louis XVI in December of 1792. It is interesting to note the brevity and acuity of the king's answers, which once again give lie to the myth that he was a weak-minded idiot. From the Eighteenth-Century Reading Room:

President. — “Louis, the French Nation accuses you of having committed a multitude of crimes to establish your tyranny, in destroying her freedom. You have, on the 20th of June, 1789, attempted the sovereignty of the people, by suspending the assemblies of their representatives, and driving them with violence from the places of their sittings. This is proved in the Proces Veral set up at the Tennis-Court of Versailles by the members of the Constituent Assembly. On the 23d of June you wanted to dictate laws to the nation — you surrounded their representatives with troops — you presented to them two royal declarations, subversive of all liberty, and ordered them to separate. Your own declarations, and the minutes of the Assembly prove these attempts — What have you to answer?”

Louis. — “No laws were then existing to prevent me from it.”
(Read more.)

May said...: Poor King! By the way, might you consider posting more on the trial, and on those involved (Malesherbes, Desèze, etc.)?; August 23, 2009 at 9:15:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: I might later in the year but in the meantime, some of it is covered in the novel Trianon.; August 23, 2009 at 9:31:00 PM EDT