Tea at Trianon: A March in Paris

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

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

A March in Paris

The Revolution marches on. From The New Yorker:

The leaders of many countries marched at the head of the demonstration, but in the midst of the crowd we could not see them. The French government had decided not to impose any procedure on the gathering, and we milled and pushed forward among police vans and TV broadcasting trucks without any direction. There was no loudspeaker system telling us what to do or how to feel. From time to time, a wave of applause broke out, like a wind-carried ripple. The “Marseillaise” was sung, not with the vigor of triumphant nationalism but quietly, reverently, like a hymn.

There were flags of many nations, Australian and Albanian and rainbow L.G.B.T. There were orange stars and green stripes that I couldn’t identify and many tricolores. People converged and crammed into the seven roads that lead to the Place de la République. At the center, Marianne, enormous and cast in bronze, wearing the Phrygian cap from the barricades, an olive branch in one hand, the other resting on a tablet inscribed with the Rights of Man. Around the base are listed the dates of revolution—1789, 1830, 1848, 1870—giving reason to the sword that she wears in her belt.

Dozens of young men had climbed up onto her flanks, waving flags from Pakistan and Turkey and Egypt. I saw the Kurdish sun and a portrait of Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader who has been in prison, since 1999, in Turkey. The young guys called out to the older, perhaps more conservative crowd, “Vous êtes qui?” (“Who are you?”), and a few people called back, “Charlie!” (Read more.)

Some commentary from the American Conservative. Share