Tea at Trianon: Christendom and Its Defenders

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, August 4, 2022

Christendom and Its Defenders

From Charles Coulombe:

Since it was in France, “the Oldest Daughter of the Church,” that the Revolution began in 1789, it should be no surprise that it was in France that the Counter-Revolution began. In the Vendee, Brittany, Normandy, Auvergne, and throughout the country, heroes and heroines arose to fight the evils unleashed in 1789. But not all the combat was in the field: the Counter-Revolutionaries also fought on the intellectual plain. Such names as de Maistre (who, although French-speaking was actually a Savoyard, as we saw last time), de Bonald, Chateaubriand, Rivarol, Barruel, Ballanche, d’Eckstein, and many others emerged. When Napoleon was banished to St. Helena, the murdered Louis XVI’s younger brother assumed the throne as Louis XVIII. Thus was ushered in the period called The Restoration, in which King Louis played a role analogous to that of Charles II in England’s period of the same name. While attempting to reign in appearance as his fathers had, he was skillful at dealing with the various new powers-that-were.

But the strongest supporters of the Restoration were keen on excising every element of the Revolution from national life; this lead to the rise of two somewhat-linked but distinct organisations that has begun under Bonaparte. These were the more strictly religious Congregation specialising in reviving Church life after the wreck of the Revolution, and the Chevaliers de la foi— the “Knights of the Faith”— acting as a sort of Catholic counter-Masonry in political life. Also aligned with them were the party supporting Louis’ younger brother and heir, the future Charles X; these were called the Ultras.

When Louis died in 1824, his brother came to the throne. Charles X was destined to play James II to Louis’ Charles II. Like the last reigning Stuart King, Charles had had a profligate youth followed by a religious conversion; when he became King he was quite devout, and determined to beat back every element of Jacobinism in the country’s religious, cultural, and political life. The year following his accession, he had a traditional Coronation ceremony at Rheims, where he touched and cured several people suffering from scrofula— the “King’s Evil”— as his medieval ancestors had done.

His policies aroused a great deal of opposition among the Liberal-minded wealthy; the result was his overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830. He abdicated (as did his eldest son, who thus reigned as “Louis XIX” for about twenty minutes), in favour of his grandson, Henri V. This was done on the assurance of their cousin Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, that he would serve as regent for Henri. But even as his father had betrayed Louis XVI— going so far as to vote for his King and cousin’s death in 1793— so it was with Louis Philippe. When Charles X and his family left the country, Louis Philippe convinced the revolutionaries to make him “King of the French”— and so usurped the throne in eerie reminiscence of William of Orange. The supporters of the betrayed Henri would henceforth be called “Legitimists,” as opposed to those of Louis Philippe and his supporters who would be called “Orleanists.”

Louis Philippe encouraged the wealthy to enrich themselves; but the result was the rise of pre-Marxist Socialism. In 1848 he too was overthrown, and was replaced by the Second Republic. But the new entity’s elected president was Napoleon’s nephew, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1851, he overthrew the republic, proclaimed the Second Empire, and took the title Napoleon III. As with his uncle, the new Monarch was pulled in two directions at once: on the one hand he wanted to be a modern, liberal Monarch; but on the other, he also wanted to be a Catholic and Legitimate Sovereign. This duality arose again and again— most noticeably in his policy toward Italy and Rome. It was under his watch that many Legitimists joined the embattled army of the Papal States in the Pontifical Zouaves. His downfall would come with the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. (Read more.)