Tea at Trianon: A Mother Forgives

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

Thursday, July 14, 2011

A Mother Forgives

A mother forgives the Revolutionary who killed her son.

When the Chouans first took up arms, there lived as portress in the chateau of Thuré a poor widow woman named Madame Huneau. She was known to all the country round for her works of mercy. Having acquired some practical knowledge of medicine, she was a constant attendant upon the sick-beds of the poor; and when her skill was insufficient to effect a cure, she soothed and comforted the dying with the consolations of religion, for she was of an exemplary devotion.

She had an only son, too young to take any part in the insurrection; but he contrived to be useful to the Chouans by carrying their correspondence and watching the movements of the Blues. The partisans of the Republic in the neighborhood, suspecting the cause of his frequent absence from home, laid wait for him; and as he was returning one evening from one of his expeditions, he was shot in the avenue of the chateau, and within a few paces of his mother. At the same time a man rushed through the bushes, and made his escape. Her skill, poor woman, was useless, for he was mortally wounded; but, in resignation to the will of God, she gave herself up with greater diligence to her works of charity. (Read entire article.)

lara77 said...: What an amazing and heart breaking story. How many of us could ever do what that woman did for the killer of her only son? I am thinking of all the innocent lives taken too soon beginning on that fateful day of July 14, 1789. I will never view that day as a celebration but the beginning of death and heartbreak for thousands in France and eventually across Europe.; July 14, 2011 at 11:39:00 AM EDT