Tea at Trianon: Henri III

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, August 7, 2014

Henri III

From Once I Was a Clever Boy:

There is a biography of King Henri III, who was born in 1551 and had been the elected King of Poland-Lithuania in 1573- 4 until he succeeded his brother King Charles IX as King of France on the latter's death in 1574, here.

Having succeeded to both the Polish and French thrones on the feast of Pentecost he established in 1578 what became the premier chivalric Order of the French Crown, the Order of the Holy Ghost or Saint-Esprit. There is an illustrated account of the Order here.

Like his elder brothers and his mother Queen Catherine de' Medici, he reigned over a France bitterly divided by the Wars of Religion, and was forced to seek to negotiate with one or other, or both sides to maintain not only his own position but that of the monarchy.

Given the fraught world of the French Court in his lifetime and the political tensions that surrounded him it is perhaps not surprising that he was a complex man. The impression is of a fey young man, often assumed to be homosexual - although that interpretation has been challenged,as outline in the biographical link above - yet devoted to his wife, Louise of Lorraine. She was in turn devoted to him, and may have miscarried a child in the early years of their marriage. His behaviour does suggest the bisexual world of renaissance court culture. There is a biography of Queen Louise here. He was also notably pious in his practise of Catholicism as well as veing very much a man concerned with his appearance and fashion. (Read more.)