Tea at Trianon: Massacres in La Vendée

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, July 24, 2011

Massacres in La Vendée

From Nobility:

Although a great number of children were sacrificed, the republicans seem to have made some attempts to save them. The entrepôt was a huge building, used before the revolution as a storehouse for merchandise. During the reign of terror it was turned into a prison, as its proximity to the river adapted it for the noyades*. There, on one occasion, a vast number of Vendean women were confined, many of them with babes at the breast; and it was announced that any women of Nantes who wished to save the children of the Vendeans might be admitted to the entrepôt, and that each might rescue one of the little creatures. A great number of charitable women rushed to the prison; and the Christian mother can alone picture to herself the scene which ensued. (Read entire article.)

lara77 said...: Dear God! The choice given to these poor mothers by such evil people of the republic. France truly reached levels of depravity and evil that I never thought possible in "civilized France." Poor King Louis XVI! How he must have wept for his people and the horrors brought on them by the republic. Everytime I try to read accounts of the Vendee during the reign of terror I find my eyes filling up with tears. It is a horror to read and to ever imagine.; July 25, 2011 at 12:15:00 PM EDT
Julygirl said...: Even though this happened in the late 1700's I feel it was a prelude to the 20th Century's ultimate spiral into Atheism.; July 25, 2011 at 11:47:00 PM EDT