Tea at Trianon: Spain 1936

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

Monday, July 25, 2011

Spain 1936

More reflections on the Passion of Spain.

Civil wars are terrible things, and the Spanish war of 1936-9 particularly dreadful. Nonetheless the fact that it occured reflects the tensions within Spain at the time. What took place was a battle not merely for power - Spanish nineteenth century history is strewn with such episodes - but of two wholly opposed world views. The horrific violence unleashed against the Church and any imagined supporters of the traditional Spain in the wake of the army's move illustrates what they were acting against - for many on the left this was the opportunity to create a new world order, with Spain as the laboratory. After five years of radical change and turmoil the Nationalists may have finally precipitated the conflict, but the actions in the name of the republic which ensued were post factum validation for the actions of the army and its supporters.

My sympathies have always been entirely with the Nationalists - my ideas were formed as a schoolboy reading Luis Bolin Spain:The Vital Years (Bolin arranged the aircraft to fly General Franco from the Canaries to Spanish Morrocco) and C.E.Lucas Phillips The Spanish Pimpernel. I have never had sympathy for the International Left and the "poor little rich kids" like John Cornford and Esmond Romilly (and his girlfriend Jessica Mitford) who decided to visit left-wing revolution in its nastiest form on Catholic, traditional Spain. I once tried to read some of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, and was bemused to find that the hated "right wingers" were the official Communists...

Speaking of the regions of Spain it is interesting to reflect that the geographical division in the country during the war was essentially, though by no means exactly, that between Castille and Leon, on the Nationalist side, and republican control in Aragon, and the north-east. Similarly the Basque nationalism sponsored by the republic reflected ancient traditions of autonomy, and conflicted with the Catholic, and indeed Carlist, traditions of the north of the country. To understand the background to the conflict means stretching deep into the past of the country. (Read entire post.)