Tea at Trianon: El Cid Confronts the King

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

Sunday, November 24, 2013

El Cid Confronts the King

Speaking truth to power. From Nobility:

According to a tradition accepted by Menéndez Pidal, Rodrigo was not so eagerly swayed. He and the rest of Sancho’s vassals were convinced that Alfonso had engineered the treacherous murder of their king. Before he would give his allegiance to Alfonso, Rodrigo insisted that the king swear an oath, in the Church of Saint Gadea in Burgos, that he had not murdered his brother. After Alfonso repeated the oath three times, Rodrigo replied, “Then, if you swear falsely, may it please God, that a vassal slay you, even as the traitor Vellido Adolfo slew King Sancho.” (Read more.)

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