Tea at Trianon: French Warship Sunk in West Cork

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, May 18, 2021

French Warship Sunk in West Cork

From Cork Beo:

She fought the British navy off the coast of America to help free the States - but her final mission to aid Irish freedom ended at the bottom of Bantry Bay. The French frigate La Surveillante was lost and forgotten for almost 200 years until another major event in the bay, the Whiddy Island Disaster in 1979 led to her discovery. And now, stunning new images have revealed the final resting place of this French warship, lying in 35 metres on the bottom of the bay with her cannons still on board. The high-resolution images show La Surveillante, a 32-gun, three-masted frigate, largely intact and resting on her keel, with many of her iron cannon still at their fighting stations. (Read more.)