Tea at Trianon: Return to Boscobel and the Batttle of Monocacy

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, September 15, 2015

My friend Virginia makes another visit to the grounds of Boscobel in Frederick County, Maryland. To quote:

Boscobel is situated high on a hill above the Monocacy River and Bush Creek. The builders of the stunning house made their money as millers, and so, at the base of the driveway is the Mill House. My great-grandparents were not millers, but farmers. And early in their marriage, my grandparents resided in the stone Mill House at the base of the long driveway up to Boscobel. In addition to my personal history, all of this ground was part of the Battle of the Monocacy, sometimes called The Battle that Saved Washington.(Read more.)