Tea at Trianon: Salt in Crimea

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, April 25, 2014

Salt in Crimea

Sometimes it all boils down to salt. From Amusing Planet:

The Crimean Peninsula lies between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, just south of the Ukrainian mainland, and is almost completely surrounded by water. It is connected with the Ukrainian mainland by the Isthmus of Perekop - a strip of land about 5 to 7 kilometers wide, and is separated from the Russian region of Kuban on the east by the Strait of Kerch. To the northeast is located the Arabat Spit, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of shallow salt-water lagoons named Sivash, from the Sea of Azov.

These lagoons nearly cuts the Crimean Peninsula off from the mainland, and serves as a natural border between the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Kherson Oblast that passes through Sivash. To the north, the Isthmus of Perekop separates Sivash from the Black Sea and at the same time, connects the Crimean Peninsula to the mainland. (Read more.)