Tea at Trianon: Lamentation of Marie-Antoinette

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

Friday, January 17, 2014

Lamentation of Marie-Antoinette

From Reading Treasure:

Marie Antoinette's Lamentation, in her Prison of the Temple by Mary Robinson. Published in The Oracle on March 8th, 1793.

When on my bosom Evening's ruby light
Through my thrice-grated window warmly glows,
Why does the cheerful ray offend my sight,
And with its lustre mock my weary woes?
Alas! because, on my sad breast appears
A dreadful Record — written with my Tears!
(Read more.)

lara77 said...: How totally heartbreaking is this.....a Queen once so high and beloved now brought low by evil men who will stop at nothing to debase and destroy. I cannot imagine the horrors Marie Antoinette went through; the fear for her children and what lay ahead. This is totally devastating to read and so encapsulates what Her Majesty suffered at the hands of barbarians.; January 18, 2014 at 11:17:00 AM EST