Tea at Trianon: The Plan That Won The American 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

Saturday, September 4, 2021

The Plan That Won The American Revolution

From Today in Connecticut History:

Washington cane to the Wethersfield strategy session to propose an aggressive joint offensive against the British Army in New York City. The British occupation of New York had long been a thorn in the side of the American patriots, who had been trying in vain to drive them out since the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. Rochambeau, however, countered Washington’s idea with one of his own: Instead of New York, the French and American forces should focus on defeating the British Army in the southern colonies. With a large fleet of French naval vessels at their disposal, Rochambeau convinced Washington to abandon his dream of reclaiming New York and instead target the Yorktown peninsula in the tidewater region of Virginia. (Read more.)