Tea at Trianon: Benjamin Franklin Sails to France, Oct. 26, 1776

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

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Benjamin Franklin Sails to France, Oct. 26, 1776

From Politico:

On this day in 1776, one month to the day after the Continental Congress named him ambassador to the court of King Louis XVI, Benjamin Franklin, at age 70, set sail from Philadelphia for Paris with the mission of helping to negotiate a formal alliance between France and the rebellious British colonies in North America. Scientific and literary circles feted the accomplished colonial envoy. He learned to speak French, albeit haltingly, soon becoming a familiar and popular fixture in high Parisian society. He declined, however, to wear a powdered wig, unlike nearly all the aristocrats with whom he associated.

As the Encyclopedia Britannica noted, Franklin violated protocol by dressing “in a simple brown-and-white linen suit and wore a fur cap, no wig, and no sword to the court of Versailles, the most formal and elaborate court in all of Europe. And the French aristocracy and court loved it, caught up as they were with the idea of America. ... His face appeared everywhere — on medallions, on snuffboxes, on candy boxes, in rings, in statues, in prints; women even did their hair à la Franklin.”

Franklin’s diplomatic successes, however, were slower in coming. Although the French had been secretly aiding the American rebels, providing them with military supplies since the outbreak of the revolution, they balked at signing a formal allegiance with the patriots until an American victory over the British crown became more assured. It was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that French policymakers sensed the Americans might in time defeat their powerful foe and win the war. (Read more.)