Tea at Trianon: The Day America Raided England

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

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

The Day America Raided England

From Heritage Daily:

On April 22nd, 1778, a lone USS Naval ship carried out a daring raid during the American Revolutionary War on the town of Whitehaven in England. It was a clear night and the frost had begun to settle across the west coast of Cumbria. Two boats were lowered around 11.00pm from the USS Ranger, a 308 long ton (313 t) sloop-of-war in the Continental Navy, armed with 18 × 6-pounder guns. The Ranger was commanded by John Paul Jones, often referred to as the “Father of the American Navy” (a sobriquet he shares with John Barry and John Adams). John Paul Jones was born in 1747 and grew up in Scotland, serving as a commander of several British merchant ships. After having killed one of his crew members with a sword, he fled to the Colony of Virginia in 1775 and joined the newly founded Continental Navy in their fight against the British. (Read more.)