Tea at Trianon: The Flight of Mesdames Tantes

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, June 19, 2011

The Flight of Mesdames Tantes

Madame Adelaïde de France, aunt of Louis XVI

Lauren reports on how the surviving daughters of Louis XV decided to flee in 1790 after the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed. Madame Adelaïde and Madame Victoire would not receive Holy Communion from a priest who had taken the oath to the Revolutionary government, denying the papal supremacy. (Neither would Marie-Antoinette, but she refused to leave Louis XVI's side.) Share

2 comments:

lara77 said...: The republic of "liberte egalite fraternite" held up the King's aunts for days until the National Assembly decided they could leave for Rome. Is it not ironic that those governments "dedicated to freedom" are the most repressive in history. Today's China and yesterday's Soviet Union remind me so much of the the First French Republic. Hypocrites and murderers!; June 20, 2011 at 2:06:00 PM EDT
May said...: It all depends on what one means by "freedom". Freedom for whom, to do what?; June 20, 2011 at 8:09:00 PM EDT