Tea at Trianon: The Winter War

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 18, 2009

The Winter War

The Sword and the Sea remembers the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 and how the heroic Finns, although they had to sue for peace, were able to retain their national sovereignty. Share

1 comment:

Alexandra said...: Speaking of tyrants, the History Channel just had a show on warfare and covered the success of the Swedish army against Ivan the Terrible - so interesting how they won the war with their skis and arrows against terrible odds. I think it was 30 to one, but the Russians were unfamiliar with the territory - deep snow drifts and heavily wooded. I think they were terrified because the Swede's arrows seemingly came out of nowhere, and they moved like the wind.; December 18, 2009 at 11:42:00 PM EST