Tea at Trianon: Famous Medieval Knights

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

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Famous Medieval Knights

From War History Online:

James Douglas was only a child when his father died fighting alongside William Wallace against the English invasion of Scotland. Sent to Paris for his own safety, it was there that he learned the ways of knighthood. On his return to Britain, he found King Edward I unwilling to restore his family’s lands, and so joined Robert the Bruce in the successful first Scottish war of Independence.

A leading fighter in the Scottish guerrilla war, Sir James captured Douglas and Roxburgh Castles (1307 and 1314) and fought in the famous Scottish victory at Bannockburn (1314). He became one of Bruce’s closest companions, and was known by the English as the Black Douglas. When Bruce – now King Robert I – died in 1329 he asked Sir James to take his heart to Jerusalem. Diverted to a crusade against the Saracens in Spain, Douglas saw a fellow knight become surrounded at the Battle of Teba. Throwing Bruce’s heart ahead of him, he charged into the thick of the fighting and died a warrior to the last. (Read more.)