Tea at Trianon: Ghosts of Edgehill

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, February 23, 2022

Ghosts of Edgehill

From History Hit:

The Battle of Edgehill was the first major conflict of the English Civil War, taking place on the fields of Warwickshire. But after the armies departed, the villagers continued to be haunted by spectres and apparitions. The ghosts were recorded by Charles’ officers, and are the only ones to be officially recognised by the British Public Record Office.
The Battle of Edgehill was fought on 23 October 1642. After the fighting, the Parliamentarians retreated to Warwick, and the Royalists made tracks south, but failed to monopolise on the open road to London. Edgehill was not the decisive, one-off battle everyone had hoped for. It was the start of a long slog of years of war, tearing the fabric of Britain apart.
The Earl of Essex and Charles I may have moved on, but they left behind a trail of bloodshed and upheaval. Corpses which littered the fields were tossed into mass graves. For those who survived, they were pretty much ruined, becoming dependent on local charity. One Royalist’s account of Kineton stated: “the Earle of Essex left behind him in the village 200 miserable maimed solders, without relief of money or surgeons, horribly crying out upon the villainy of those men who corrupted them.” (Read more.)