Tea at Trianon: A New World Begins

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, September 29, 2020

A New World Begins

A book review from Chronicles:

Readers familiar and unfamiliar with the history of the Revolution can read this brisk narrative with profit. Those who do make the effort should be alert to the many incidents and quotations that betray not only Popkin’s earnest small-r republicanism but also his eye for historical irony. For the most important lesson drawn from any history of the Revolution is the power of unintended consequences, and the dangers that arise when those who unleash forces prove unable to control them.
This insight was certainly best expressed by those who built the First Republic, such as the Girondist Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud. Dragged to the guillotine by his Jacobin enemies in 1793, he left us with the bon mot: “The revolution, like Saturn, devours its children.” More self-consciously dramatic, another republican stalwart, Madame Roland, made sure that a friend was standing close to the guillotine to hear her last words: “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!”
Conservatives with a well-developed sense for the tragic often nod sagely at such scenes, which highlight the fecklessness or evil of those who overthrew a king only to produce a tyrant emperor from the resulting chaos—one who turned Europe into a charnel house.

Yet there are lessons in this history for conservatives as well. As Popkin lays out quite convincingly, the overwhelming majority of aristocrats and clergy, even when presented with clear material evidence that the king needed concessions on taxes to avoid fiscal and political calamity, refused to sacrifice. Some denied there was a crisis at all; others thought they could simply ride it out, or perhaps turn it to their advantage against a weakened monarch.

Even the decision to call the Estates General was less a radical plot than a delaying tactic from aristocrats who refused concrete reforms. They stymied the king, thinking he would bend to their will, only to find within a few short years their privileges destroyed, their châteaux in flames, and the king in prison. Soon they found themselves mounting creaking wooden steps to visit Madame La Guillotine, accompanied by the rattle of tumbrels and jeers from the angry crowds in the Place de la Révolution. How many of them, if given the chance, would have gladly sent warnings to their earlier selves that it might have been wise to surrender a few extra livre to help balance the budget? (Read more.)