Tea at Trianon: The Pequot War

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 28, 2021

The Pequot War

From World History Encyclopedia:

The Pequot War (1636-1638) was a conflict between the Native American Pequot tribe of modern-day Connecticut and the English immigrants who had established settlements in New England between 1620-1630. The immediate cause of the war was the murder of two English traders, Captain John Stone (d. 1634) and John Oldham (l. 1592-1636), allegedly by the Western Niantic tribe, allies and tributaries of the Pequot. In 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s third governor, Sir Henry Vane (l. 1613-1662) sent John Endicott (l. c. 1600-1665) on an expedition to Block Island, where Oldham was killed, to demand from the Western Niantic the surrender of the murderers. Endicott wound up burning the native villages there and killing one man before sailing on to a coastal Pequot village, burning it, killing more people, and destroying crops. In retaliation, the Pequots began raiding English settlements and killing colonists.

The conflict escalated, and on 26 May 1637, a company of militia from Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies, assisted by members of the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes, attacked the Pequot stronghold at Mystic. The fort was set on fire and over 700 Pequot, mostly women and children, killed. Survivors fled to another fortification and were led by their chief Sassacus (l. c. 1560-1637) toward safety in New Netherlands (modern-day New York State) where they hoped to find welcome from the Iroquois Confederacy. The Mohawks of the Iroquois instead executed Sassacus, sending his head and hands back to the English.

Of the approximately 3,000 Pequots who lived in the region at the time, only a little over 200 survived the war. Some of these were sold into slavery in the West Indies, Bermuda, or to local farmers while others were given as slaves to the Mohegans and Narragansetts. The Pequots were forbidden to call themselves by their name or inhabit their ancestral lands and, even after the war, bounty was paid by colonial authorities for Pequot scalps.

The war resulted in the near extermination of the Pequot tribe and opened up the regions of Connecticut and Long Island to further English colonization, allowing for easier westward expansion afterwards. Modern historians generally agree that the Pequots were not responsible for the conflict and the causes were fabricated by the English in the interests of expanding and securing profitable ports and routes for trade. (Read more.)