Tea at Trianon: The Sans-Culottes

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

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Sans-Culottes

Street fashion became THE fashion. A tongue-in-cheek post. More about the sans-culottes here. Share

4 comments:

tubbs said...: Well thanks for putting me on to a wonderfully bizzaro blog. I could only read a couple posts of it this morning.... But I'll go back and check it out some more on my next break; August 18, 2010 at 10:47:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: You're welcome, tubbs. Wandering off the beaten path is what I do best! ;-); August 18, 2010 at 10:57:00 AM EDT
Julygirl said...: I can see where the expression....One can always know about a person by the way they dress.... really goes deeper than we realize.; August 18, 2010 at 11:08:00 AM EDT
laughingsalmon said...: It would have been extremely difficult for a former aristocratic person who had spent most of their life in court circles to have faked being a real "sans-coulottist" even if they wished to "blend in"...All of their innate mannerisms and speech patterns would likely have given them away...Not to mention soft,uncalloused hands...; April 12, 2011 at 12:43:00 PM EDT