Tea at Trianon: Henri d’Artois, Unready to be King

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, October 2, 2018

Henri d’Artois, Unready to be King

Shannon Slein discusses the Comte de Chambord, also known as Henri V:

Born on September 29, 1820 at the Tuileries Palace in Paris, Henri d’Artois was the son of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, and Maria Carolina, daughter of the King of the Two Sicilies. The Duke of Berry had been assassinated seven months earlier, so Henri’s birth was regarded as a miracle, since it meant the senior Bourbon line would continue.

Henri’s great-uncle, King Louis XVIII of France, had no children. Henri’s grandfather, the Count of Artois, was first in line to the throne. The Count of Artois’s son, the Duke of Angoulême – elder brother of the Duke of Berry – was second. Since the Duke of Angoulême didn’t have any children, Henri was Angoulême’s presumed heir. Henri did have an older sister Louise, but the Salic Law prohibited her, or any other woman, from succeeding to the throne. (Read more.)