Tea at Trianon: The Battle of Borodino

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, September 15, 2018

The Battle of Borodino

From Shannon Selin:

The Battle of Borodino, fought on September 7, 1812, was the bloodiest single day of fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon had marched his Grande Armée into Russia in June of 1812. He hoped to quickly engage the Russian army, win a decisive victory, and force Tsar Alexander I to agree to his terms. However, the Russians kept retreating, setting fire to military stores, crops, and towns along the way. Napoleon had counted on his troops being able to forage for sustenance, but as they were drawn further into Russia, they became increasingly reliant on overstretched supply lines. By September, Napoleon – who had entered Russia with more than 400,000 soldiers, one-third of them French, the rest from French-occupied or allied territories – had lost a third of his men to starvation, straggling, desertion and disease. (Read more.)