Tea at Trianon: Funeral Services for Louis XVI and Louis XVII

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, April 28, 2020

Funeral Services for Louis XVI and Louis XVII

And Marie-Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth. From East of the Sun, West of the Moon:

In consideration that for more than 21 years, good French people have been refused the right to make public the pain they have never ceased to feel deep in their hearts for the most execrable of crimes committed on the day of January 21st, 1793; the torment of the most virtuous of kings was followed by those of his august wife and sister, and of the slower but no less agonizing death of Louis XVII…(Read more.)

May said...: This is beautifully written, sensitive to the sufferings of the royal family and of the loyal French people.; April 28, 2020 at 12:14:00 PM EDT