Tea at Trianon: Louis Joseph Xavier de France (1781-1789)

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, June 7, 2016

Louis Joseph Xavier de France (1781-1789)

A miniature sketch of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette's oldest son who died on June 4, 1789. Share

1 comment:

Hans Georg Lundahl said...: It seems the royal family has more than their fair share of childhood mortality, then.

// "En trente-quatre ans de métier, Catherine Desvoyes est marraine quinze fois ... elle a ondoyé 182 bébés sur 3839 nouveaux-nés, dont 59 morts dans les premiers 20 jours (32,4%) sur la totalité 526 décès (13,7%)" //

Which I cited from a Historical Magazine (forget which one, but I may have told it on the post) which I cited here:

New blog on the kid : Chirurgiens et surtout Sage-femmes
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/2015/01/chirurgiens-et-surtout-sage-femmes.html; June 7, 2016 at 7:36:00 AM EDT