Tea at Trianon: The Coaches of Versailles

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, September 19, 2012

The Coaches of Versailles

A sketch of Louis XVI's coronation coach

There is a remarkable new exhibit at Versailles about the various kinds of conveyances used by the royal family, including the coronation coach of Louis XVI. To quote:

On 11th June 1775, Louis XVI was crowned in Reims. For the formal entrance into the city and procession to the Cathedral, a new royal carriage was ordered. Bélanger, an architect and decorator in the department of the Menus Plaisirs, was tasked with designing it. The coach he designed astonished his contemporaries, who deemed it “superb, unique and immense”. A veritable throne on wheels, laden with the emblems of royalty, this Berlin did not escape Revolutionary ire: it was condemned for destruction by the Convention in 1794, as a "monstrous assemblage of the gold of the people and the excess of flattery”. Can we see this action as Robespierre’s revenge? An engraving by Jean-Louis Prieur, who produced the bronzes that decorated it, hands a glimpse of it down to us, as does a miraculously saved door panel.

The palace website provides more information, including detailed articles on: