Tea at Trianon: Photos of the Last Romanovs

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, February 12, 2019

Photos of the Last Romanovs

From Orthodox Christianity:

A collection of rare photographs of the Royal Martyrs was discovered recently by workers repairing the roof at the Federal Treasury building in Essentuki in the Stavropol Krai in Russia, reports Pobeda and the Ministry of Tourism and Health Resorts of the Stavropol Krai. The pictures were found in an envelope under an old I-beam. Most of the photos show a high Cossack among colleagues with Tsar Nicholas II and the Royal Family. None of the photos have been published before. The news agency Rublev reports that 7 photos and 2 postcards were found.

The postcards even bear the signatures of the royal children. The Grand Duchesses signed their joint portrait, and the Tsarevich wrote a dedicatory inscription on the back of his photo: “To Anatoly Semenovich. Tsarskoe Selo. April 7, 1917.” Local historian Roman Nutrikhin found out that the photographs belonged to Anatoly Fedyushkin, a Terek Cossack who joined the special forces responsible for the protection of the Royal Family in 1909. As the Deputy Head of the Regional Department of the Treasury Vera Samarina notes, Anatoly Fedyushkin is often mentioned in the diaries and letters of the Grand Duchesses and Empress Alexandra under the name “Yuzik,” which the children called him in honor of his favorite literary hero. (Read more.)