Tea at Trianon: Where Marie-Antoinette was Born

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, April 21, 2017

Where Marie-Antoinette was Born

From Royal Central:

The Archduchess Maria Antonia – Maria being an established Habsburg prefix given to all the daughters of Empress Maria Theresia, to mark the dynasty’s special allegiance to and veneration for, The Virgin Mary – was born as the 15th child of Maria Theresia on 2 November 1755 at around 8.30 in the evening. She was one of 11 daughters to the imperial couple. She celebrated her name day – a day with probably even greater personal importance to her than her actual birthday – on the Feast Day of St Antony on 13 June. She was christened the day after her birth promptly, being baptised under the names Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. Maria Theresia had abolished the practice of a public delivery, which was something however – as Marie Antoinette’s biographer Antonia Fraser has correctly pointed out – that the future Queen of France would encounter in her time, as being very much still de rigeur at Versailles.

Maria Theresia’s rooms at the Hofburg Palace were located in the so-called Leopoldnischer Trakt (Leopoldine Wing) which was built in the 1660s during the reign of Emperor Leopold I, after whom the wing takes its name. Today, these are part of the Austrian Chancellery of the Federal President and are therefore not open to the public. The Leopoldine Wing connects the much older Swiss Wing – with its famous Swiss Gate – to the Amalienburg and directly faces the Imperial Chancellery. Originally constructed under the Swiss-Italian architect Filberto Lucchese, it was later enlarged by Giovanni Pietro Tencala. (Read more.)