Tea at Trianon: The Cult of Reason

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

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Cult of Reason

The Feast of Reason at Notre Dame on November 10, 1793

From Nobility:

As you know, the Jacobins were a kind of communists of their time. “On another float they carried a dove with which he was said to have played in prison and which gave him one of his last joys. A band of Jacobins and unspeakably low level women continuously shouted: Down with the aristocrats! Long live the republic! Long live the guillotine!” One sees how well they understand the connections between things. They hold a party in which at the same time they profane hosts, break statues and shout “down with aristocracy!” and “long live the guillotine!” All this to adore the new god. Yet when you talk to many Catholics about aristocracy, they say, “Oh, I don’t know what this has to do with religion.” The revolutionaries know. The devil knows. The bandit knows; the Catholic does not. This is how miserable things are.

“Then came the profaners of churches with the insignia of the Bacchae and barbarism of demons, drinking and getting drunk using the sacred vessels and chalices. They also brought in a donkey with a bishop’s miter on his head, a rain cover on his back, and a crucifix and a copy of the Old and New Testament hanging from his neck. The donkey also wore a stole. Behind the donkey came three representatives of the Convention: Fouché, Colot d’Herbois and Laporte (taking on devout airs ‘to stimulate laughter’) under a canopy like the one used in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. A military escort closed the procession, which went through many streets all the way to Terror square.

There they had erected, on a platform, a new altar on which the bust of the new god Chalier was respectfully placed to be worshiped. They formed a circle around the altar, from which came, one after another, each of the Commission representatives. [One by one] they bent their knees and said a prayer in the new religion of the murdered one. This prayer [by Colot d’Herbois, one of the main bandits of the French Revolution] said: “god and savior, look at the nation prostrated at thy feet, asking thee forgiveness for the impious crime that ended the life of one of the most virtuous of men. Thou wilt be avenged! We swear thee by the republic!” (Read more.)