Tea at Trianon: The Reckoning

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

Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Reckoning

No doubt he killed more than six. From The Washington Post:

BUCHAREST, Romania — A Romanian committee investigating crimes committed by the former communist government asked the general prosecutor on Tuesday to bring charges of aggravated murder against a prison commander for the deaths of six political prisoners.

From 1956 to 1963, Lt. Col. Alexandru Visinescu ran the notorious Ramnicu Sarat prison where Romania’s pre-communist political leaders and intellectual elite were incarcerated. Andrei Muraru, head of the institute investigating communist crimes, said prisoners died from beatings, hunger, a lack of medical treatment and exposure to cold. It plans to hand a total of 35 files to prosecutors.

Romania had communist governments from 1945 until 1989. The investigating committee is currently concentrating on political crimes from the early 1950s until 1964, when a general amnesty was declared.

Speaking to journalists near his Bucharest home Tuesday, Visinescu, 87, rejected the accusations against him and said he was only doing his job. He cursed and took a swipe at a cameraman. (Read entire article.)