Tea at Trianon: The First Born of Maria Theresa

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

Monday, February 23, 2015

The First Born of Maria Theresa

The first born child of Emperor Francis and Empress Maria Theresa. To quote:

On this day in history, February 5th, in 1737, Archduchess Maria Elisabeth Amalia Antonia Josepha Gabriele Johanna Agathe of Austria was born. Known as Maria Elisabeth, she was the first of many children born to Maria Theresa and Francis I, and was born only a week before their first wedding anniversary.

Initially they were disappointed at the lack of a son, but the lively child soon became a favourite of her parents and her grandfather, Charles VI.

On June 7, 1740, at the age of just three years old, she began to suffer from stomach cramps and vomiting and died in her father’s arms. Elisabeth was buried in Tomb 48 in the Imperial Crypt. A younger sister, born three years after her death, would be named in her honour.