Tea at Trianon: Great in Misfortune

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, March 31, 2017

Great in Misfortune

Madame Adélaïde de France said of Marie-Antoinette in September, 1793:

How great she is in misfortune! It is not the first time we have seen it, and if all had depended on her! They say her firmness has made such an impression that that is why they have not dared to interrogate her yet and begin her trial. May God deliver her from that: she deserves it.

"It is not the first time we have seen it...." No doubt the princess was remembering how Marie-Antoinette as a teenager stood up to Madame du Barry. And of course, the Mesdames had witnessed the Queen's courage when the mob broke into Versailles. It is good to know that she had come to appreciate her nephew's wife's good qualities. Share