Tea at Trianon: The Weather of 1788

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

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The Weather of 1788

The harsh weather triggered the bread shortages in France, making the inflation worse. To quote:

The year 1788 is a notably bad one considering weather in France. The country was first struck in July as an incredible hailstorm swept through the countryside. The storm was wide and strong, and the stones destroyed crops across many provinces. The following harvest was poor, suffering greatly from the loss.

The disappointment of the autumn was followed by an unusually bitter winter at the end of the year. The severity of the weather took a toll on many areas of the country.

In Provence and Languedoc a third of valuable olive trees were lost. Of the surviving trees many were thought to be useless until they could repair themselves enough to grow fruit again, a process that had the potential to last two years if ever correcting itself.

Southern France also saw a great number of crops and grain destroyed from what has been described as, severe frost. (make of it what you will!) And to add to the misfortune many chestnut trees also died.

I consulted The Weather Almanac and Meteorological and Rural Hand-book for 1865 just for fun, and learned the severity of the winter of 1788-9 did not reoccur for forty one years, the winter of 1829!