Tea at Trianon: Fayetteville

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

Friday, March 9, 2012

Fayetteville

The Lafayette Society in Fayetteville, NC recently entertained a delegation from France.

A French delegation from Fayetteville's sister city wraps up a weeklong visit with a tour of Fort Bragg today. The three-member delegation from St. Avold, France, watched Saturday's Duke-Carolina game on television, went to a hockey game at the Crown Coliseum and attended a banquet Sunday hosted by the Lafayette Society at the Holiday Inn Bordeaux & Conference Center.

The French entourage participated a public panel discussion Tuesday night at the downtown Headquarters Library on King Louis XVI's role in the American Revolution. Pascal Flaus, a St. Avold historian and archivist touring with the French delegation, talked about how the French king was an unappreciated monarch.

Fayetteville and St. Avold have been sister cities since 1993. The city's relationship with France goes back to 1825 when the Marquis de Lafayette visited his namesake American city. A bronze bust of the French war hero is in City Hall's lobby.(Read entire article.)