Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette Faces the Mob

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

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Marie-Antoinette Faces the Mob

On the balcony at Versailles.

It was the daughter of the Caesars who appeared. The noble haughtiness of her brow, the dignity of her bearing, wrung from the crowd a shout of admiration and surprise. Even those who, a moment before, wanted to kill her, joined in the cry. A loud roar of “Long live the Queen!” burst forth. Marie Antoinette was not the dupe of this greeting; she heard the crowd shouting another alarming cry: “To Paris with the King!” and, leaving the balcony, she went up to Madame Necker, and said sadly, “They are going to make the King and me go to Paris, with the heads of our guards carried before us on the ends of their pikes.” (Read entire post.)

julygirl said...: Her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, did not know that she was sending her beautiful and carefree daughter to a tragic end and eventual death.; April 3, 2012 at 5:48:00 PM EDT