Tea at Trianon: The Costly Kidnapping Of King Agilulf’s Daughter

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

Sunday, June 27, 2021

The Costly Kidnapping Of King Agilulf’s Daughter

From The Historian's Hut:

Around the year 599, Emperor Maurice of Constantinople (r. 582-602) made a peace agreement with King Agilulf of the Lombards (r. 590-616), temporarily putting the Lombard conquest of Italy on pause. Despite this peace, Maurice’s leading lieutenant in Italy, a certain Patrician Callinicus (or Kallinikos), did not get the memo to be on his best behavior. Quite the opposite, the patrician used the peace-time to plot a bizarre covert military action against the Lombard king’s family. His plan, which he presumably carried out sometime between 599 and 601, was to kidnap King Agilulf’s daughter, as well as her children. This event was mentioned by Paul the Deacon (c. 720-799), in his History of the Lombards, in which he wrote, “In these days the daughter of King Agilulf was taken from the city of Parma, together with her husband named Gudescalc (Gottschalk), by the army of the patrician Gallicinus (Callinicus), and they were brought to the city of Ravenna” (History of the Lombards, IV.20). Callinicus might have been able to make something of his scheme if the kidnapped daughter had a different father, or if the plot had been carried out at a different time. Yet, King Agilulf was not the kind of man to pay ransoms, and the Empire of Constantinople would soon wish it had been befriending its neighbors instead of kidnapping their daughters. (Read more.)