Tea at Trianon: Trooping the Color

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

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Trooping the Color

From the BBC:

The Queen's official birthday has been marked with the annual Trooping the Colour parade. She was joined by members of her family and thousands of spectators to watch the display in Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall. The Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex all attended. The Queen celebrated her 93rd birthday in April. The royal colonels - the Prince of Wales, colonel of the Welsh Guards, the Princess Royal, colonel of the Blues and Royals, the Duke of Cambridge, colonel of the Irish Guards and the Duke of York, colonel of the Grenadier Guards - all rode on horseback as part of the parade. (Read more.)