Tea at Trianon: Amalia

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

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Amalia

From Tiny-Librarian:

Archduchess Maria Amalia had a stubborn disposition and was the only daughter who refused to even to pretend to follow her mother’s advice after she was married. She was therefore shunned by the Empress, although her younger sisters were quite fond of her. Considered one of the prettiest sisters in a family of beauties, she had been determined to marry the man she loved the way Mimi had. Maria Theresa, having recovered her strength of mind, would not hear of it. Instead Amalia had to marry Ferdinand of Parma, another grandson of Louis XV. They had several children although they both cheated on each other, and Amalia later behaved so badly people thought she was mad. Maria Theresa worried that the rumours about Amalia would make it to France and soil Antoine’s reputation; indeed it may have contributed to the French people’s readiness to believe anything unsavoury about their Queen. As a widow, Amalia was driven out of Parma by Napoleon’s army and sought refuge in Bohemia, where she died in Prague in 1804.