Tea at Trianon: Marriage of the Duc and Duchesse d'Angoulême

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

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Marriage of the Duc and Duchesse d'Angoulême

Marie-Thérèse de France

Louis-Antoine, Duc d'Angoulême

Reunion of the Duc and Duchesse, 1823

The Royal Family, 1824

Flight from Bordeaux, 1815

Louis-Antoine and Marie-Thérèse played together at Versailles so not sure why she would not remeber seeing him, unless it was amnesia brought on by trauma. From Shannon Selin:

Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, was born on August 6, 1775, the son of the Count of Artois and Marie Thérèse of Savoy. He is less well known than his cousin and wife, Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême, who was born at Versailles on December 19, 1778. She was the eldest child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the only one of their offspring to survive the French Revolution. Marie-Thérèse (or Madame Royale, as she was then known) was imprisoned in the Temple, the remains of a medieval fortress in Paris, from August 13, 1792 to December 18, 1795, the eve of her seventeenth birthday. During this time her parents were guillotined and her younger brother – imprisoned in a separate room and neglected – died of illness. On her release from prison, Marie-Thérèse was taken to Vienna (her mother was a member of the Austrian royal family). She then joined her uncle Louis XVIII in exile in Mitau, in present-day Latvia, where he was living as a guest of the Russian Tsar. Louis XVIII wanted Marie-Thérèse to marry the Duke of Angoulême. She readily agreed, as it was a project her parents had favoured, though she could not remember ever having seen her cousin. They were married on June 10, 1799 at Jelgava Palace. (Read more.)