Tea at Trianon: The Beginnings of Maryland

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 11, 2021

The Beginnings of Maryland

From WBAL:

After nearly a century of searching, archaeologists found the oldest known colonial settlement in Maryland in St. Mary's County on Maryland Day, and they're calling it the find of a lifetime. Not even rain could dampen the mood: The excitement for Maryland archaeologists so close to piecing together the possible very beginning of Maryland history was palpable.
"I raced out here. I just kept taking pictures. I didn't know what to do. I just had to photograph this moment," said senior archaeologist Ruth Mitchell. Mitchell remembers the day in 2017 that geophysical technology found the remnants of an old, abandoned fort -- a bastion and its connecting wall -- dating back to 1634.
"But what did the fort look like inside? The answer to that question has yet to be determined based on the archaeological evidence that we discover," Mitchell said. Some of that evidence is found through tedious sifting sessions. On Maryland Day, they found a bullet for a musket.
"This is a German stoneware that dates to the 17th century and it was found at the site," Mitchell said. There's also imported pottery and jewelry, even a cannonball, found years before the fort itself. They also found a projectile point that archaeologists believe is at least a couple thousand years old -- more evidence that Native Americans also lay near the site. Under tarps near the fort, archaeologists say old dwellings show Native Americans once lived with or near the 200 or so English colonists at peak occupancy. A chapel sits across the road from pink flags marking the site. (Read more.)