Tea at Trianon: Forgotten Medieval Tunnel

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

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Forgotten Medieval Tunnel

From Smithsonian:

Other medieval structures in the vicinity of the corridor could offer clues to its creation. Scholars are unsure exactly who made the tunnel and why, but WPD notes that it seems to follow the path of the Angiddy Brook and “may have been unknowingly walked on for centuries.”

Nearby Tintern Abbey is arguably the most significant historical site in the area. Established by Cistercian monks in 1131, the house of worship was expanded into a “masterpiece” of British Gothic architecture during the late 13th century but fell into disrepair following Henry VIII’s dissolution of Catholic monasteries in the late 1530s and ’40s, notes Cadw.

Today, the church’s ruins—which are filled with archaic furnaces, iron works and forges that may be linked to the tunnel—remain a major Welsh tourist attraction. (Fans of Romantic poet William Wordsworth may recognize the site’s name from his 1798 work “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”) (Read more.)