Tea at Trianon: How to Ruin a Queen

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, June 19, 2014

How to Ruin a Queen

From The Spectator:

You usually know where you are with a book that promises the story ‘would violate the laws of plausibility’ if it appeared in a novel, and that’s in deep trouble. In the case of How to Ruin a Queen, however, this is a boast with a surprising amount of substance to it. You could make it up — just about — but you’d probably have a very sore head afterwards.

In 1786 Cardinal Louis de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France and scion of one of the country’s leading families, went on trial accused of having stolen a 2,800-carat diamond necklace. This was serious enough, but what was far more serious was that he was accused of having appropriated the Queen’s name to do so.

Rohan furiously protested his innocence — as well he might, considering he had been the victim of one of the most audacious cons ever perpetrated. The mastermind behind it was a woman called Jeanne de Saint-Remy. Jeanne’s father was descended from an illegitimate son of the Valois King Henry II, but any inherited money had long since disappeared. As a child she was reduced to begging, proclaiming her antecedents in a shrill voice in an attempt to play on people’s sympathy.

On returning to the family hovel, her mother would beat her with unflagging vigour, sometimes with a vinegar-soaked rod wrapped in nettles. Jeanne’s prospects were looking somewhere between bleak and non-existent when one day she saw a carriage go by and swung into her usual patter. Astonishingly, the occupant — a local count — believed her, and she was soon ensconced in his château with a pension from the King.

Alas, the pension wasn’t enough to keep Jeanne in the style she felt she deserved and she began casting about for ways to boost her income. Her eye soon fell on Prince Louis de Rohan. As well as being a prodigious shagger, Rohan was a colossal snob. But while serving as French ambassador in Vienna, he had unwisely made some disparaging remarks about the Empress Maria Theresa. (Read more.)