Tea at Trianon: Hardman's New Biography of Louis XVI

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

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Hardman's New Biography of Louis XVI

From Munro Price at the Literary Review:

Bringing to life such an enigmatic and elusive character is a formidable task. John Hardman accomplishes this with immense subtlety and skill. He has already written one excellent biography of Louis, which appeared on the bicentenary of the king’s death in 1993. His latest, however, is greatly expanded: broader in scope and considerably more detailed. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, finally, some of the papers examined by Soulavie have resurfaced – 171 of Louis’s letters to his long-serving foreign minister Vergennes, which at a stroke quadruple the existing number. These were published in 1998. The second is that, after a long period of neglect, historians have returned to the field of 18th-century French politics and some important new works have appeared. The materials are now in place for a fuller portrait of Louis XVI than at any previous time.

As a result, Hardman is able to dispel many of the myths that have gathered about the king since his death. Contrary to what hostile contemporaries, echoed by many historians, claimed, Louis was very far from stupid or lazy. He was gifted at mathematics and geography, and fascinated by the sea – his reign saw a remarkable rebuilding of the French navy. He also spoke Latin, Italian and, surprisingly, English, the language of France’s hereditary enemy. Throughout his life he was alternately fascinated and repelled by Britain’s political system and commercial power. He is probably the only French ruler to have had a subscription to The Spectator. Louis’s flaw was not stupidity but sometimes paralysing indecision, a product of heredity, early bereavements and the stultifying ritual of Versailles. Its effects were memorably summarised by his younger brother, the future Louis XVIII: ‘Imagine a set of oiled billiard-balls that you vainly try to hold together.’

This indecision, however, was much less apparent before than after 1789. Indeed, the greatest importance of the newly available letters to Vergennes is in showing how effective Louis could be, particularly in foreign policy, the traditional business of kingship, when seconded by a minister he trusted. This is clearest in Louis’s most crucial decision before the Revolution, to intervene on the side of the Americans in their struggle against Britain. This had enormous consequences: it brought the United States into being but saddled France with a war debt that four years later pitched the monarchy into terminal financial crisis. Louis later claimed that he regretted the decision. In the course of eighty fascinating pages that shed much new light on this turning point in the American War of Independence, Hardman shows that ultimate responsibility was the king’s. (Read more.)