Tea at Trianon: Tales of the King of Rome

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

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Tales of the King of Rome

In spite of the egalitarian nature of the French Revolution, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte was being brought up in a manner befitting a dauphin. His story is a sad one. From Shannon Selin:

On January 24, 1814, the King of Rome saw his father for the last time. Napoleon left to campaign in Germany, in a failing attempt to prevent his enemies from entering France. On March 28, as the allies closed in on Paris, Napoleon wrote to insist that his wife Marie Louise and their son leave the city. Marie-Marguerite Broquet, the mother of Napoleon’s valet Louis-Joseph Marchand, was a nurse to the King of Rome. She told Marchand how the boy resisted leaving the Tuileries Palace.

The King of Rome…grabbed onto each piece of furniture so as not to go to Rambouillet, which he deemed too ugly. Made impatient by the force used on him – and force had to be used to get him into his carriage – he said in anger: ‘I don’t want to leave Paris, Papa is not here, I am the master here.’ (5)
When Napoleon was exiled to Elba, Marie Louise took the King of Rome to Vienna. He spent the rest of his life there, in the court of his grandfather, Emperor Francis I of Austria, who gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt.(Read more.)