Tea at Trianon: Last Diary Entry of Alexandra Feodorovna

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

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Last Diary Entry of Alexandra Feodorovna

The last diary entry of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. A few hours after penning those lines, the Empress was shot with the Tsar and their five children.

Her last entry:

Yekaterinburg 3/16 July
[Niece] Irina’s 23d birthday.
Gray morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby [Alexei] has a slight cold. All went out 1/2-hour in the morning. Olga and I arrange our medicines [code word for jewellery and other valuables being hidden from the guards]. Tatiana read spiritual readings.
They went out. Tatiana stayed with me and we read: The Book of the prophet Amos and prophet Obadiah.
Every morning the commandant comes to our rooms: at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.
8: Supper.
Suddenly Lenka Sednev [the kitchen boy] was fetched to go and see his uncle and flew off -wonder whether it’s true and we shall see the boy back again! Played bezique [a card game] with N.
10:30 to bed. 15 degrees.

julygirl said...: Innocents slaughtered for the advancement of what was to become the most brutal era of the 20th Century....and for what.; June 28, 2017 at 9:21:00 AM EDT
Unknown said...: Vivat y gloria to the martyres...!; October 16, 2021 at 3:24:00 AM EDT