Tea at Trianon: Crimes Against Humanity

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

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Crimes Against Humanity

In France, 1794. (Warning: graphic content.)

When one thinks of genocide one thinks of Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz. Unfortunately this is not the case. In a country which dedicated itself to, tolerance, to liberty, to equality, and to brotherhood, committed an atrocity so great that the people of the area still call for justice. Yet,few know of it. That place is the area called by it's occupants the Vendee. That is the area immediately south of the Loire River in west central France.

lara77 said...: Yesterday, July 14th, Bastille Day; the blogs were busy with everyone wishing a Happy Bastille Day. I mentioned on one of the blogs about the crimes of the Vendee and was verbally attacked by French People for trying to denigrate their revolution. One can see how successful the republic was in teaching their children THEIR version of the truth. I prayed for all the victims of revolution and barbarism in France whose lives soon would end after that fateful July day. God grant them all peace.; July 15, 2009 at 8:05:00 AM EDT