Tea at Trianon: France and Hungary

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, June 16, 2021

France and Hungary

From EuroNews:

In the comments below György Habsburg’s first interview to French media in 2021 as Hungary’s new ambassador to France, some readers demonstrated how far back the bad blood between France and Hungary went by bringing up the memory of Marie-Antoinette.
The hated wife of Louis XVI, who was executed in 1793 during the terror that followed the French Revolution, was the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire - and, as Habsburgs - György’s distant relative.
But despite the fact that it may have been the distant relatives of those Le Figaro readers that relieved Marie-Antoinette of her head, György Habsburg does not share their enmity. “Thank God we have a free Europe, everyone has the right to their own opinion,” he told Euronews.
Anyway, he said, he received far fewer negative comments below his first appearance in the French press than he generally does when he speaks to the media in Austria, the seat of the Habsburgs for more than 400 years until the empire’s dissolution in November 1918. (Read more.)