Tea at Trianon: 1258: The Year Without Summer

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, October 8, 2013

1258: The Year Without Summer

How a massive volcano caused worldwide weather changes in the medieval period. To quote:

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists reveal that when Samalas Volcano, located on Lombok Island in Indonesia, exploded sometime between May and October 1257, it was the largest blast the earth had seen in 7000 years.

The blast, which was significantly greater than the explosion at Krakatoa in 1883, left volcanic debris from the Arctic to Antarctica. The researchers write:

Tree-ring, historical, and archeological records attest to substantial climatic impacts, which were most pronounced in the northern hemisphere in A.D. 1258. Medieval chronicles highlight an unseasonable cold summer with incessant rains, associated with devastating ﬂoods and poor harvests.

Last year archaeologists discovered that a mass burial in London took place in 1258, as famine struck the country. The English chronicler Matthew Paris wrote that during this year “the north wind blew without intermission, a continued frost prevailed, accompanied by snow and such unendurable cold, that it bound up the face of the earth, sorely afflicted the poor, suspended all cultivation, and killed the young of the cattle to such an extent that it seemed as if a general plague was raging amongst the sheep and lambs.” (Read more.)