Tea at Trianon: The Fall of the Praetorian Guard

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

Monday, April 17, 2023

The Fall of the Praetorian Guard

From Heritage Daily:

The roots of the guard can be found during the Roman Republic, when soldiers served as protectors for Roman generals and important figures, or as elite guards for military praetors. High-ranked generals with imperium held public office by serving as a magistrate or promagistrate. They were assigned a civil servant, lictors, to serve as an attendant and bodyguard. Where no personal bodyguard was assigned, senior field officers safeguarded themselves with temporary bodyguard units of selected soldiers.
Around 40 BC, Octavian, who would later become Emperor Caesar Augustus, installed praetorians within the pomerium (a religious boundary around the city of Rome), the first example of troops being permanently garrisoned in Rome proper. Members of the guard accompanied Augustus on active campaigns, protecting the civic administrations and rule of law. At camp, the cohors praetoria (a cohort of praetorians guarding the commander), were posted near the praetorium, the tent of the commander, which the guard is believed to be named after.

After the construction of Rome’s Praetorian camp known as the Castra Praetoria around 23 BC, their role extended to escorting the emperor and the members of the imperial family, and to serve as a policing force during times of riot. According to the Roman historian and politician, Tacitus, the guard around this time numbered nine Praetorian cohorts (4500 men, the equivalent of a legion), however, an inscription from near the end of Augustus’s rule suggests that their numbers were briefly increased to twelve. (Read more.)