Tea at Trianon: The Battle of Kadesh

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, January 29, 2022

The Battle of Kadesh

From Historical Eve:

The Battle of Qadesh faced the armies of Ramses II of Egypt and Muwatalli II, king of the Hittite Empire, in 1274 BC, Kadesh, in what is now Syria. For a long time the tension between the two empires was palpable on their borders, but there were no episodes that reached the level of a warlike conflict, in addition to the fact that between both civilizations there were several agreements that avoided all kinds of confrontation. These tense but conflict-free relations were ended 50 years before the Battle of Kadesh, as the Hittites attacked several cities belonging to Egypt in the areas near Syria, which would cause the Battle of Kadesh to unfold in 1,274 BC. Egyptian sources are the ones that most refer to the facts of the battle and from which some important facts are known. The struggle between the Hittites and the great pharaoh Ramses II is considered -usually- as the war episode that had a greater number of battle chariots and that ended with the incontestable victory of the Egyptian king. (Read more.)