Tea at Trianon: ‘A Most Lamented Princesse’

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

Friday, September 2, 2016

‘A Most Lamented Princesse’

From the National Archives:

Henriette was the daughter of Charles I, born in Exeter in 1644. Smuggled out of England two years later, she was brought up at the French court. The restoration of her brother, Charles II, to the English throne in 1660 raised her standing in the European royal marriage market, resulting in her marriage to Philippe in 1661. The young couple’s high status at the French court was underlined by the simplicity of their titles – ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Madame’.

Madame had close and affectionate relationships with her brother, Charles II, and with her brother-in-law, Louis XIV, although there is no evidence that she had an affair with the latter as suggested in the TV series. In May 1670, because of the trust shown in her by both monarchs, she traveled to England to sign the secret Treaty of Dover on behalf of Louis; secret primarily because of Charles’s controversial commitment in it to return his country to Catholicism. Only a few weeks later, on 29 June 1670, Madame was dead, aged just 26. ¹

The news arrived in England three days later. ² This short letter from William Perwich, English agent in France, was written to Joseph Williamson in the Secretary of State’s office just two hours after the event.

‘…Madam fell sick of the Cholick yesterday about 4 in the afternoon & dyed a most Lamented Princesse this morning at 3. Grief will not let me ad[d]…’
The letter has been roughly torn around the seal, suggesting it was opened hurriedly by its recipient. (Read more.)