Tea at Trianon: July 17, 1794

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, June 19, 2019

July 17, 1794

Above is the final scene from the 1984 French film Dialogues des Carmélites, based upon the play of the same name by Georges Bernanos, with an opera by Poulenc. The original novel, by Gertrud von le Fort, is a retelling of the story of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiègne. The nuns offered their lives for France which was in the throes of a genocidal revolution; ten days after their deaths on July 17, 1794 the Reign of Terror came to an end. They were arrested as counter-revolutionaries, the evidence of which was a Sacred Heart Badge and a portrait of King Louis XVI. The nuns saw the Royal Family as patrons of the Carmelite Order. Among other favors, Marie-Antoinette had provided a dowry for the Prioress Mère Thérèse de Saint-Augustin.

Below is the final scene (dubbed in Spanish) from the 1960 film Dialogues des Carmélites, starring Jeanne Moreau and Alida Valli.

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