Tea at Trianon: Louise, Queen of Prussia

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

Monday, July 1, 2024

Louise, Queen of Prussia

The "Beautiful Enemy" of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia, became a Protestant icon to the foes of Napoleon Bonaparte, even as Marie-Thérèse of France was the Catholic icon. According to Susan Nagel in Marie-Thérèse, Child of Terror, Louise and Marie-Thérèse were friends, their mothers having been raised together. Louise's mother, Friederike of Hesse-Darmstadt, who died when Louise was a small girl, corresponded with Queen Marie-Antoinette, so that the two girls felt a certain kinship. Both Louise and Marie-Thérèse were among the few people who did not feel the need to cower before Bonaparte and his army; each made a heroic stand. Napoleon referred to Queen Louise as his "beautiful enemy." He tried to ruin her prestige by destroying her reputation but succeeded only in making the Queen more beloved by her people.

As the artist Madame LeBrun described in her Memoirs:

But here my pen must remain powerless for it cannot convey the impression

1801

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that my first meeting with the Princess made upon me. her charming and heavenly face shone with an expression of gentle virtue and she possessed the finest and most regular features. The beauty of her figure, her neck, her arms, the dazzling freshness of her complexion, everything about her surpassed the most perfect ideal. She was in deep mourning and wore a crown made with spikes of jet which, far from unbecoming, gave her pallid cheeks a certain radiance.


1801
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After her untimely death in 1810 at the age of thirty-four, Queen Louise became a romantic figure in the century that followed. She was painted posthumously many times, her portrait appearing even on china. The legacy of Queen Louise, however, is not her physical beauty but her refusal to give in to fear. She learned that not being afraid is half the battle; her infectious courage gave heart to a nation.