Tea at Trianon: Amalia

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, March 5, 2015

Amalia

Marie-Antoinette's second favorite sister, Maria Amalia of Lorraine-Austria, Duchess of Parma. From Tiny-Librarian:

Against her wishes, she was married to Ferdinand, Duke of Parma. Ferdinand’s sister Isabella had been the first wife of Amalia’s elder brother, Joseph II. She and Ferdinand had nine children, four of whom would survive to adulthood.

Resenting the forced marriage and her mother’s attempts to control her from Austria, she remained estranged from Maria Theresa for most of her life. She was, however, very close to her sisters Maria Carolina and Marie Antoinette, and the women often exchanged letters and gifts though they never met in person again after their respective marriages.

After her husband’s death, in October of 1802, and Napoleon’s invasion of Italy, she was expelled from the country only a few weeks after Ferdinand passed away. She moved to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, where she herself would die two years later in 1804. Amalia is the only one of Maria Theresa and Francis’ children not to be buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, though her heart was brought back and interred in the Heart Crypt. Her body was buried in the royal crypt of the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. (Read more.)