Tea at Trianon: Assassination of Marat

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 14, 2018

Assassination of Marat

From The Daily Telegraph:

Marat, born in Boudry, Switzerland in 1743, had been a well-known doctor, specialising in skin and eye conditions, in London where he published research papers in the 1770s. In 1777 he was appointed as physician to guards of the comte d’Artois, later Charles X, youngest brother of Louis XVI, and also called to consult at the Palace of Versailles. After failing to be appointed to the French Academy of Sciences, Marat quit his medical post to publish articles pleading for the drafting of a liberal constitution when the States General met in June 1789, the first since 1614.

In September 1789 he published a daily newspaper, Le Publiciste Parisian, later changing the name to L’Ami du peuple, or the people’s friend. Forced to flee to London in late 1789 because of his virulent attacks on royalty, he returned in May 1790 to condemn monarchy, government and the aristocracy in his newspaper. (Read more.)