Tea at Trianon: Out of the Depths

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, June 11, 2010

Out of the Depths

An excellent account about the spontaneity of the Counter-Revolution. To quote:

Accepted mythology about the French Revolution is that the people were oppressed to such an extent that, finally, they could no longer take it and rose up against the tyrant, or "Veto" as Louis XVI was called. The problem with such popular mythology is that, while it may be rooted in fact, it manages to give exactly the wrong idea of what happened.

Contrary to popular belief, the French Revolution was not a popular uprising. The image of bloodthirsty peasants rounding up and executing the detested "Aristos" (except for those rescued by the Scarlet Pimpernel or Sidney Carton) is extraordinarily misleading, to say the least. Most people guillotined during the Terror were ordinary people, some executed for nothing more than "insufficient revolutionary fervor."

lara77 said...: Thank you Elena Maria for this contact and WONDERFUL article. It proves the myth of the French Revolution and the lies told to this day in our history books. The earlier article on the lavishness of the lifestyle at the Elysee Palace under Sarkozy proved another fact; the French Republic is like the nouveau riche couple trying to keep up with ancient nations like Britain which kept its ancient monarchy. The republic remains the greatest insult to ancient eternal France because it denied France's Christian and Royalist heritage.; June 12, 2010 at 9:34:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Thank you, Lara!; June 12, 2010 at 9:36:00 AM EDT