Tea at Trianon: The Frenchman Who Helped Save America

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

Monday, June 24, 2019

The Frenchman Who Helped Save America

The Marquis de Lafayette, who helped Louis XVI save America. From WND:

Born Sept. 6, 1757, his father died before he was two years old and his mother died when he was twelve, leaving him to inherit their fortune. At 14-years-old, he joined the French Military and, at age 16, became a captain. He married Marie Adrienne Francoise de Noailles, whose family was related to King Louis XVI. His name was Marquis de Lafayette.

At age 19, against the king’s wishes, Lafayette purchased a ship and persuaded several French officers to accompany him to fight in the American Revolution, arriving June 13, 1777. Trained in the French Military, he was a descendant of one of the oldest French families, with ancestors who fought alongside of Joan of Arc, and previously fought in the Crusades against Muslim occupiers of what had been the Christian Middle East.
Commander-in-Chief George Washington appointed Lafayette a Major General in the Continental Army, though Lafayette paid all his own expenses. (Read more.)