Tea at Trianon: Life and Death of Sophie Charlotte of Bavaria, Duchess of Alençon

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, April 13, 2019

Life and Death of Sophie Charlotte of Bavaria, Duchess of Alençon

From Crowns, Tiaras and Coronets (via Queen of the Amazons):

On May 4, 1897, Sophie Charlotte was attending an annual charity event hosted by the French Catholic aristocracy in Paris called the Bazar de la Charité. The event was held in a different location every year but this year it was set up in a large wooden shed in the middle of the city. A projectionist’s equipment, which had been brought for entertainment, caught fire in the afternoon, which resulted in the deaths of a total of 126 people, most of whom were prominent aristocratic women. One of the victims of the fire was Sophie Charlotte herself, who refused several rescue attempts to make sure that the girls working with her at the event were saved before any effort was carried out to rescue her. But eventually, it was too late to save her and the Duchess of Alençon met her tragic end in that burning wooden shed, aged fifty years old. Her remains were collected and buried in the Royal Chapel of Dreux, the traditional burial site of members of the House of Orléans. Prince Ferdinand survived his wife by thirteen years before dying on July 29, 1910 at the age of sixty-six, after which he was buried with her. (Read more.)