Tea at Trianon: Louis XVII

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, March 3, 2015

Louis XVII

A portrait of Louis-Charles, the "peasant child," later Louis XVII, who was so tormented in the Temple prison, after being torn from his mother's arms. (More HERE.) Via Tiny-Librarian. Share

2 comments:

Jack B. said...: I've got to admit I've never been able to understand the abject cruelty and inhumanity in how that child was treated, even by hardened Jacobins. Even the Republican committee sent to look on him before his death were disgusted. And yet nothing much was done for him. And then nobody seemed to care when he died. He wasn't even given a funeral. Yet, unlike his mother and father, had never been convicted of anything (indeed was forced to call himself Citizen Capet). Contrast the Directory's insistence on giving Marie-Therese a trousseau (which I always took as an insult) when she was traded to the Austrians as a sign of Republican French honor! For Louis Charles? Nothing.

Even today, the French Republic does not like to talk about him. I think a lot of if has to do with saving face for the Revolution. He is never really mentioned in French historical textbooks and when his heart was reinterred with his parents the French Republic sent no representatives for someone whom a) was regarded as King of France by most of Europe and many Frenchmen and b) had been basically murdered by officials of the First French Republic.; March 3, 2015 at 10:36:00 PM EST
julygirl said...: To this day and to my knowledge the French consider the Revolution a triumph without admitting the horror suffered by many innocent people.; March 4, 2015 at 1:59:00 PM EST