Tea at Trianon: The First Millennium

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 3, 2023

The First Millennium

From Laura Crockett at The History Desk:

That first millennium can also be termed, the Big Migration. There have been others, but this one is like a world wide game of musical chairs. To study this period of history is to come to the conclusion that one of the main acts of being human is to go someplace else to live. We experience this now, not only in the United States, but the West in general deals with a vast movement of human beings. Two thousand years back, Europe’s upheaval of people had invaders and migrants coming at them from all directions. Germans from the North, Huns from the Northeast, Muslims from the Southeast, and Vikings, aka, Danes, who originated from the North, they came from all directions. The entire world was restless.
Even the Roman emperor was on the move. Constantine picked up his family and moved them east. To a place once occupied by the Greeks, it is a strategic location for doing business with both the West and the East. It was to be the Eastern Roman Empire, but later on, it was called Constantinople, and then Byzantium.
In Byzantium, Westerners learned the art of luxury as practiced by Easterners, or Asians. Asians had silk, and a penchant for showing off beautiful clothes, and furnishings.
How a civilization built itself up during that first millennium is one bloody miracle, and I do mean it was bloody. The operative word here is, tenacious. And I’ve go 45 minutes to explain it all to you during class time. Yikes!
Well, that yellow dress does the talking. And she’s got plenty to say about this era. There have been books written about it. Much information is available. However, the yellow dress tells you these things because she wants to convey an appreciation for the era. We are here because those ancestors persevered.
Those German tribes were the biggest influences on Europe. They created both England and France. They moved into Spain, but were pushed back by the Islamic invaders, who worked their way up to France. Those invaders were then pushed back to Spain, where they remained for 700 years.
The Danes created Normandy, and then moved east to work on places in the Mediterranean. Sicily and then Italy, became their life’s work. They were badass because they also took on the empire, Byzantium. But that happened at the beginning of the second millennium. Those Normans never wandered far from their Viking roots.
We will examine, naturally, what they wore whilst creating this civilization. And how those Germans, Danes, Muslims, and The Eastern Romans, i.e., Byzantium, influenced styles. Silk is introduced as the silk road becomes an artery to China. Constantinople is the big player here, for it is the door to that road.
The trade with China went well until Mohammad made a new business plan. His big conquering program slowed down the progress of trade, and its corresponding building programs. War is like that: Disruptive.
As brutal as war is, the survivors rebuild. They also shift around, and create new ways of living. The political/economic system called feudalism, was created in that way. Feudalism did not have its beginnings in England or France. It was Northern Italy that created the unwritten contract between the barely surviving and the strong men with their own armies. A power shift took place when the Roman army was called home to take care of business elsewhere. The Western Roman princeps were weak in the fifth century. And German dudes, leaders with fighting men willing to die for them, eyed the throne for themselves.
Shopkeepers and farmers could not thrive in the chaos of the constant invasions. They needed protection. The German dudes, and the Roman aristocrats that had not made the move to Constantinople, organized themselves by staking claim to large swaths of land. They included the nearby towns. Thus the townspeople gained some protection. Farmers continued to grow things, breed beasts, make cheese, and sheer sheep, sharing their bounty directly with their landlord. Their housing was on the land claimed by their lord, so if a band of ruffians crossed onto that land, the lord’s knights took on the invaders, not the farmer. The serfs, as we have come to know them, were protected. The lord of the manor had a vested interest in keeping them healthy. They supplied his table with food.
For nearly five hundred years, Europe was in chaos. The German’s proclivities to divide their land evenly among their sons often caused more fighting as the stronger sons tried to wrangle more land for themselves. When those chiefs became kings, the stakes were even higher, with the fighting among the brothers more intense as they wanted to be king, not a prince. The serfs didn’t like it, that the head honcho divided the land up. They wanted stability, not more disruption. Fathers begin to see the light, and thus was primogeniture created; all the estate or kingdom, going to the first born son. Under that system the other sons became priests, soldiers, or remained home in some capacity if the estate was large enough.
Clothing was rough among the peasants, finer for the elite. No surprise there. The silk road was open, but no sooner had things settled down, than here comes that 6th century guy from Arabia, spreading his religion with the help of plundering soldiers. Mohammad and his army were focused on world domination just as much as any dictator would be anywhere in the world. They swept across the ancient places, from Arabia to Assyria, to Phoenicia to North Africa. The ancient places had turned Christian. Now they would die or turn Muslim. (Read more.)