Tea at Trianon: Simon de Montfort

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, March 2, 2015

Simon de Montfort

From author Darren Baker:

I had to learn more about the two pivotal events in his life, the Albigensian crusade of his childhood and Henry’s entire reign. I suppose not surprisingly, I came away from the first with a much better opinion of his father than historians generally have, and in the case of Henry, I grew to respect him because he was a better man at heart than most other medieval English monarchs. He seems to be all but forgotten by the British public today, probably for no other reason than he was no warrior king like Richard I, Edwards I and III, and Henry V, and yet everywhere today you see more of his legacy than all of them put together. As for the kind of man Simon was, we don’t know what he looked like, we can just go by the very general description of one chronicler that he was tall in body and handsome in face. Another one noted he had a courteous and pleasant way of speaking. Put these two together and I don’t see the modern tendency to portray him as grasping, harsh and imperious. But there has always been this natural inclination, even in his own day, to see him like his father, who was not afraid to employ fire and sword against the Albigensian heretics. It’s probably fair to say he had a breadth of personal qualities, both good and bad, that made him stand out amongst the average nobleman of that era. (Read more.)