Tea at Trianon: The Fourteenth Century Crusade and the Ottoman Invasion

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

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

The Fourteenth Century Crusade and the Ottoman Invasion

From Nobility:

Having become master of Serbia at the battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Sultan Bajazet imposed his sovereignty upon John V and secured possession of Philadelphia, the last Greek city in Asia Minor. Sigismund, King of Hungary, alarmed at the progress of the Turks, sent an embassy to Charles VI, and a large number of French lords, among them the Count of Nevers, son of the Duke of Burgundy, enlisted under the standard of the cross and, in July 1396, were joined at Buda by English and German knights. The crusaders invaded Serbia, but despite their prodigies of valeur Bajazet completely routed them before Nicopolis, 25 September, 1396. (Read more.)