Tea at Trianon: Marie-Adelaide, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1894-1924)

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

Monday, March 24, 2008

Marie-Adelaide, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (1894-1924)

In 1912, Marie-Adelaide of Nassau-Weilburg ascended the grand-ducal throne of Luxembourg. She was not only the first ruling princess but a devout Catholic succeeding her Protestant father. She encountered many problems, including war and modernism. Like Blessed Charles of Austria, she tried to be a Catholic ruler in the twentieth century. She was forced to abdicate in 1919, and entered a Carmelite monastery. It did not work out for her there and she had to leave. She tried medical school--another disaster. Her health deteriorated and she died in 1924 at the age of twenty-nine. She met every catastrophe with a spirit of humility and resignation to the will of God. In her failure, she achieved ultimate triumph.

Here is a short but deeply inspiring biography of Marie-Adelaide by Diane Moczar.