Tea at Trianon: More Irish Famine Victims Found

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

Thursday, June 27, 2019

More Irish Famine Victims Found

From The Irish Post:

THE REMAINS of three bodies were found washed up on a Canadian beach back in 2011, and on the same beach in 2016, the remains of a further 18 bodies were discovered after an archaeological dig. Canadian scientists have now confirmed that a study of the bones show that these are the remains of Irish famine victims who fled across the Atlantic in the mid 1800s. The initial remains that were discovered in 2011 on a beach in Forillon National Park, Quebec, were identified as two seven-year-old boys and an 11-year-old boy. Their bones indicated severe malnutrition according to scientists. (Read more.)

For more on the Irish in Canada, please see my novel The Paradise Tree. Share