Tea at Trianon: King of Rage

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

Monday, May 21, 2018

King of Rage

The reign of Henry VIII was the first time in English history that religious were publicly executed in their habits. From Fox News:

The bloodthirsty draft of a letter by King Henry VIII in which he demands a monk’s violent death is set to go on public display. In the 16^th-century death warrant, the famous king orders that the abbot of Norton Abbey in the North of England be “hung drawn and quartered,” but then decides that the clergyman should just be hanged. Frank Hargrave, director of Norton Priory Museum and Garden, told Fox News that the letter is significant for two reasons. “Because it is a corrected draft we can almost read the thoughts of the king before he has had a chance to calm down or speak to his advisors,” he explained. “His initial fury is evident and the demand that the abbot be hanged, drawn and quartered is extreme — this was a fate usually reserved for traitors.”

“The other reason it is important is that it shows the level at which the king involved himself wherever his power was affronted,” he added. (Read more.)