Tea at Trianon: Learning to Love the French

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, December 21, 2007

Learning to Love the French

Charles A. Coulombe has an engaging article about his French ancestry.

The France whose language and religion I hold died in stages between 1789 and 1905. Just as Quebec is no longer the land of the voyageurs and Frontenac, Montcalm and Mgr. Laval, so too with la belle France et douce. She is not today the nation founded by the crowning and baptism of Clovis, the realm of Saints and Kings, the land where Ss. Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Lazarus arrived by boat; where Charlemagne and St. Louis ruled, and St. Joan of Arc fought; where the Knights of the Table Round prowled Breton forests, and the country was consecrated to Our Lady of the Assumption and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She is not even the land of the Sun King or the heroes of the Vendee.
Were one to be honest, even that France made some real howlers, from which we all suffer today (in my humble opinion, though most, perhaps all, will differ). Certainly, the siding of Francis I with the Turks and Louis XIII with the Protestants against the Habsburgs was a huge error. Not backing a Stuart restoration wholeheartedly led to future woes. Backing the American Revolutionaries was a huge blunder, both in the immediate and later (the bankruptcy that victory cost the Crown directly led to the guillotine). Napoleon III’s reluctance to recognize the Confederacy and break the blockade led directly to the failure of Maximilian’s Mexico. Even so, until the breaking of the Concordat, it was still possible to speak, at least in some sense, of the gesta Dei per Francorum. One cannot now.

Brantigny said...: What a sad commentary

There are those myself included who wait with patience for the Great Monarch, a reestablishment of the Faith and Monarchy in France. I never give up hope.

http://lefleurdelystoo.blogspot.com/2007/12/jeanne-mance.html

http://lefleurdelystoo.blogspot.com/2007/12/party-seeks-to-restore-monarchy.html

The motto of Quebec is still,
"Je Me Souviens", "I remember."

Une Foi, Une France, Une Roi.
de Brantigny; December 21, 2007 at 4:46:00 PM EST
elena maria vidal said...: C'est triste, mais je me souviens.; December 22, 2007 at 9:27:00 AM EST