Tea at Trianon: William the Marshal's Horses

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

Sunday, April 24, 2016

William the Marshal's Horses

From author Elizabeth Chadwick:

Having been ransomed from his predicament by Eleanor of Aquitaine, William joined the royal household as tutor in chivalry to Henry and Eleanor’s eldest son, The Young King and from that position in society, set out to tourney with a joyous vengeance. ‘Then you would have seen many kinds of banner and flag fall and slide into the mud, and many a horse, both piebald and bay, fleeing riderless over the field. Those most able to take full advantage made gains and captured horses.’ What happened to these horses? The Histoire doesn’t say, but I would make an educated guess that they were either kept, sold on, or ransomed back to their owners. One of the main methods of capturing a knight in the tourney appears to have been by seizing his bridle and dragging him by main force out of the tourney, then forcing him to yield. (Read more.)