Tea at Trianon: Marriage by Proxy: April 19, 1770

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, April 20, 2015

Marriage by Proxy: April 19, 1770

The Augustinian Church at the Hofburg in Vienna

April 19, 1770 was the day the Dauphin Louis-Auguste and Marie-Antoinette of Lorraine-Austria officially became husband and wife through a proxy marriage ceremony.

To quote:

On April 19th, 1770, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were married by proxy inside the Augustinian Church, which is located next to the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Many Habsburg weddings had taken place there, including that of Antoinette’s parents 34 years before.

The bride wore a cloth of silver gown, her train carried by Countess Trautmannsdorf as her mother led her up the aisle. Her older brother, Archduke Ferdinand, stood in for the groom.

A cloth of silver gown (Image source.)

julygirl said...: It is tragic how the lives of young Royals in that era were traded and pawned for political purposes and alliances, and still the countries of Europe could not get along without constant warring.; April 20, 2015 at 4:54:00 PM EDT