Tea at Trianon: Graves of Slaves

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, January 28, 2020

Graves of Slaves

In Britain, from Roman times. From Live Science:

Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the graves of 50 enslaved workers who labored at an elite Roman villa just under 2,000 years ago in what is now southern England. These burials date to the Roman period in the United Kingdom, from about A.D. 43 to A.D. 410. Many of the deceased were buried with grave goods, such as pottery and brooches, in what is now Somerset, a county in southwest England.

"It's relatively rare to excavate this number of Roman burials in our region, but in particular, in this case, we are very confident that all the burials are people who worked on a Roman villa estate," said Steve Membery, a senior historic environment officer at South West Heritage Trust in the United Kingdom, which oversaw the archaeological excavation. (Read more.)