Tea at Trianon: Poland's Dark Days

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, September 15, 2009

Poland's Dark Days

Memories of seventy years ago. (Via Serge)

Sitting on the steps outside her family’s kitchen, 11-year-old Romualda Smolicz spotted soldiers on the horizon in the Polish village of Lozowicze as the sun rose on Sept. 17, 1939.

“I said to my family, ‘Oh, they are Polish soldiers.’ They had eagles on their hats. Five minutes later they came to our orchard and, oh, they were something different and life was not the same,” she remembered.

They were Soviet troops who would soon perpetuate in the east, atrocities that had begun a little more than two weeks earlier on Sept. 1 when Nazi troops invaded Poland from the north, south and west. The country was divided between Russia and Germany and World War II was effectively under way.

“It was like a flood and we were under,” said Smolicz who is now a nun living in Chester.

May said...: The heroism and superhuman endurance of "ordinary" people in the 20th century, was incredible. The bloodiest century in history...; September 16, 2009 at 9:50:00 PM EDT
lara77 said...: Poor Poland had the misfortune to be located between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; that only spelled misfortune for these brave people. I have the feeling that the Catholicism of the Polish people was their guiding light as it was centuries earlier for the Irish People.; September 17, 2009 at 11:26:00 AM EDT
xavier said...: Maria Elena:
And the Ukranians. If you think about from 1914-1955, that part of the world has been pratically emptied from constant warfare and we now see that the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are totally depopulating.

xavier; September 17, 2009 at 7:54:00 PM EDT