Tea at Trianon: Machiavelli and the Borgias

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

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Machiavelli and the Borgias

From The New York Times:

In her latest novel, Sarah Dunant returns to the Borgias, that flamboyant family of 15th-century clerics and cutthroats, a larger-than-life clan that includes Pope Alexander VI, also known as Rodrigo; his son Cesare, a reluctant cardinal turned conqueror; and the infamous Lucrezia, whose reputation Dunant has done much to restore. In Dunant’s view, Lucrezia isn’t nearly as bad as, say, Victor Hugo or Alexander Dumas led us to believe — or Donizetti in his opera. And historians now agree, having dismissed as gossip the notion of Lucrezia as a murderer with a love of poison.

To a degree, “In the Name of the Family” has less excitement than its predecessor, “Blood and Beauty,” in which Dunant followed the rise of Rodrigo as pontiff, describing his galvanic lust for attention, for women, for power, and his willingness to make use of his helpless daughter, who becomes a pawn in his machinations, forced to marry men who would advance her father’s worldly kingdom. To compensate, Dunant has added another character, Niccolò Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” who provides us, at the outset, with a snapshot of the Italy of his time, a boot whose surface has been “discolored by the vicissitudes of history.” This is a reminder that the action will take place centuries before unification, that the Italy of the period is still a loose collection of city-states, each with its own internal tensions, its own rivals and potential invaders. In the midst of all this, the Borgias have risen, a family with a talent for conquest — just the sort of people to captivate Machiavelli, the master of expediency. It’s material that, in the hands of a gifted storyteller like Dunant, will captivate readers. (Read more.)