Tea at Trianon: Portrait of Zamor

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, December 4, 2011

Portrait of Zamor

From Vive la Reine:

Zamor was a young boy in Chittagong when he was captured by slave traders and eventually sold to Louis XV. Louis XVI put him into the service of Madame du Barry, as a page boy. Madame du Barry paid for his education and welfare until 1792, when she was arrested upon his testimony that she was smuggling in jewels from England. She managed to avoid prison for the time being, but dismissed him from service. According to Zamor at Madame du Barry’s trial, she dismissed him when he told her that he found her lavish lifestyle, hatred of liberty, and assistance to emigrated aristocrats deplorable.

He was one of several key witnesses at her in 1793 trial that led to her execution, though Zamor himself was arrested soon after on suspicion of being her accomplice. He was released, and died in France in 1820.