Tea at Trianon: An Indian Slave’s Role In The French Revolution

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

Friday, August 20, 2021

An Indian Slave’s Role In The French Revolution

From The Better India:

In France, Zamor was baptised and christened as ‘Louis-Benoit’. But his birthplace lay halfway across the world in Chittagong, Bengal (now in Bangladesh). It is speculated that he may have been of Siddhi origin. He later told people he was born in the Bengal Sabah of the Mughal Empire and that when he was around 11 years old, he was kidnapped by British slave traders and taken to Europe.

Eventually, Zamor was taken to France via Madagascar and sold to King Louis XV as a ‘slave’. The king handed him over to Madame du Barry, a royal mistress at the time – probably around 1769. The countess’s own story is nothing short of a period film — she was the illegitimate daughter of a French seamstress and a friar, who rose through the ranks with her beauty and caught the king’s attention. She was famed for her golden locks, bright blue eyes and snow-white skin.

Before she found herself living a lavish life on the floor right above the king’s quarters in the magnificent Palace of Versailles, she was a poor woman who struggled to make ends meet – and was the lover of many rich men (including the king’s courtiers). Regardless, her fortunes changed around the age of 25, when the king (who was around 58) took a fancy to her.

As for Zamor, she seems to have taken him up as a pet project. Jeanne dressed Zamor up in elegant clothing, kept him by her side at all times, and showed him off, the way one would a pet. In her memoir, she wrote that her first love and priority was Dorine, her dog, who “sipped her coffee daily from a golden saucer, and Zamor (who seems to have disliked Dorine) was appointed her cupbearer” (Read more.)