Tea at Trianon: El Dorado: Real History Behind the Legend

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

Thursday, April 14, 2022

El Dorado: Real History Behind the Legend

From Live Science:

El Dorado was a mythical city said to be rich with gold, first reported in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The rumoured location of El Dorado is disputed in different sources, but most commonly said to have been in South America. Many explorers and those seeking gold or fortune searched for El Dorado. However, according to the journal The Historian(opens in new tab) El Dorado was in fact a combination of several myths, rather than one fixed location. In some accounts El Dorado is a man, in others a lake or a valley. By 1835, the myth of El Dorado was already three centuries old, according to the BBC(opens in new tab), but its origin and whether a real city of gold existed is still disputed. One of the most famous El Dorado origin stories was first mentioned when Juan de Castellanos, a conquistador-turned-priest, included it as part of his verse history of Spanish heroism in the Americas, "Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias(opens in new tab)", likely written in the 1570s. (Read more.)