Tea at Trianon: Louis XVI and Smallpox

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

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Louis XVI and Smallpox

From Vive la Reine:

After the death of Louis XV from smallpox and the contraction of the disease by his three daughters, various other members of the royal family were persuaded to receive a smallpox inoculation to protect themselves. At the time this was done by injecting a person with a serum made from a mild case of the disease, which would cause a fever and hopefully milder smallpox pustules on the body. Marie Antoinette had already contracted smallpox as a child, but Louis XVI, his brothers and the comtesse d’Artois chose to receive an inoculation in the hopes of preventing a deadlier strain of the disease such as that of Louis XV.(Read entire post.)

Julygirl said...: I understand, in those days, receiving the vaccine was a serious step that many were hesitant to take. Some died from the administration of the vaccine.; November 9, 2011 at 6:48:00 PM EST
lara77 said...: The best part of the article is King Louis XVI's pure and simple humanity. "No one who has never had the disease should attend him; down to the lowliest of servants." What kindness, what humanity, what a truly Christian King of France. I could never imagine Louis XIV uttering these words and certainly not Napoleon!; November 10, 2011 at 2:36:00 PM EST