Tea at Trianon: Birthday of Louis XVII

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, March 27, 2008

Birthday of Louis XVII

On March 27, 1785, Easter Sunday, Louis-Charles, Duc de Normandie, later Louis XVII, was born. Here is an excerpt of a poem by the great Victor Hugo in honor of the little son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. After being dragged from his mother's arms at the age of eight, he was mistreated in the Temple prison. The child was beaten, given strong drink, and generally corrupted in order to force him to testify against the queen and his aunt Madame Elisabeth. The French title of the poem, Capet, éveille-toi! or "Capet, wake up!" recalls how the little king was repeatedly awaken in the course of the night and prevented from a decent sleep, as an additional method of torture. He died at the age of ten in 1795, covered with sores, diseased, mute and alone.

What if thy wasted arms are bleeding yet,
And wounded with the fetter's cruel trace.
No earthly diadem has ever set
A stain upon thy face.
"Child, life and hope were with thee at thy birth;
But life soon bowed thy tender form to earth,
And hope forsook thee in thy hour of need.
Come, for thy Saviour had his pains divine;
Come, for his brow was crowned with thorns like thine;
His sceptre was a reed."