Tea at Trianon: Seal of Clan Campbell

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

Friday, April 17, 2020

Seal of Clan Campbell

From Ancient Origins:

Archaeologists in Scotland excavating a castle on the western isles have discovered a seal matrix forged in a time of great struggle between the clan Campbell and clan MacDonald. In the early 17th-century the clan Campbell, loyal to the crown, battled furiously with the clan MacDonald for strategic territories on the west coast of Scotland and one of the most important island strongholds was the Isle of Islay, the seat of the MacDonald Lord of the Isles. A new paper published in the journal Antiquity, by researchers from the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading , presents the results of a castle excavation on Islay at which a rare artifact was recovered pertaining to the great feud between the clan Campbell and clan MacDonald. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: I have been to Glencoe the site of the Campbell slaughter of the MacDonald Clan. There is an eerie beauty and silence about the place.; April 17, 2020 at 5:13:00 PM EDT