Tea at Trianon: A Door Shuts, A Door Opens

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, June 18, 2023

A Door Shuts, A Door Opens

From Laura Crockett at The History Desk:

My father fought in WW2. He was a medic, and worked to save lives. However, since he was stationed in the Pacific theatre, the enemy was Japan. The Japanese soldiers took aim at medics. The idea that medics were shot at whilst trying to save another man’s life, stressed my dad out a great deal. Many soldiers suffered during that war, and every war. PTSD is an old condition among soldiers everywhere, and throughout all time. My father also saw the aftereffects of war, from the losers perspective as he deployed to Japan after the surrender. The people of Japan, he said, were very quiet, and humble in a way that left him feeling uneasy.
Any nation’s people that is on the losing side of a war is uneasy and stressed. They have no idea about what is next for them. During the war, especially when it comes to one’s own land, the soldiers fight hard to save their nation. We Americans, however, have no perspective of a war on our land since the Civil War. Unless we call the Indian wars a struggle for a nation. But that would be a lie. Still, soldiers and warriors will feel the same stress as all fighters have felt. Each soldier is always fighting for their very life, and not knowing when the bullet they don’t hear will come their way. Or the arrow, or javelin or sword, it is all the same in war. The weapons are immaterial to the dead.
But it is the survivors in a losing war that I will address today.
Vergil’s Aeneid is rather like Homer’s Iliad: these are two stories about the destruction of the ancient city of Troy, and its aftermath. (Read more.)