Tea at Trianon: Source of the Nile

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, August 18, 2021

Source of the Nile

From Discover:

The quest to discover the source of the Nile River was one of the most important scientific questions of the 19th century in Europe. While it’s difficult to envision such conundrum in the era of Google Maps, the search was nearly as gripping as the race to put a man on the moon, as it was wrapped up in heroics and intrigue.
Expeditions led to the glorification of figures like David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley and Richard Francis Burton — but at the cost of injury, illness and even death in Livingstone’s case. At the same time, the geographic quest, in some ways, sparked European colonial interest in Africa, the legacy of which lives on today. “The mystery of the source of the Nile has been a challenge for three millennia,” says Christopher Ondaatje, an explorer who wrote the book Journey to the Source of the Nile. (Read more.)

Napoleon in Egypt. From France24:

More than 300 French naval ships left the Mediterranean port Toulon for Egypt on May 19, 1798. Nearly 54,000 people, including more than 36,000 soldiers, set sail under General Napoléon Bonaparte’s command. The 29-year-old future emperor launched the campaign at the behest of the Directory controlling revolutionary France with the official objectives of freeing Egypt from the tyranny of the Mamluk ruling warrior class and cuting off Britain’s route to India.
Napoléon’s well-equipped force enjoyed easy victories initially – notably the capture of Alexandria and the Battle of the Pyramids. But the military operation soon turned into a fiasco as the British Royal Navy, under the command of Horatio Nelson, sunk the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 (a preamble to the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar off the Spanish coast, when the legendary British admiral smashed Napoléon’s navy for good).
The Egyptian campaign culminated in further humiliation with the British and Ottoman victory in May 1799 in the Siege of Acre, now in Israel – compounded by the plague epidemic that struck the massed French soldiers. Napoléon fled back to France on August 22, 1799, managing to evade the Royal Navy but leaving his troops behind to eventually surrender on August 31, 1801. (Read more.)