Tea at Trianon: The Last French Invasion of Spain

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

Saturday, August 12, 2023

The Last French Invasion of Spain

From Atalayar:

If not the most majestic, the Trocadero Square in Paris is certainly the most grandiose, due to its size and its location in front of the immensity of the Eiffel Tower and the river Seine flowing between them. It is also certain that few of the many millions of Spaniards who visit it know both its origins and the history of what it commemorates.

Trocadero Island, four kilometres long and one kilometre wide, is located in the Bay of Cadiz, leaving between it and the mainland a tongue of water, known there as the Caño, of the same name as the island. It was the last stronghold of the Spanish liberals who, following the pronunciamiento of Lieutenant Rafael Riego in 1820, had re-established the Constitution approved by the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812, and abolished in 1814 by Ferdinand VII on his return from his exile-captivity in France.

The invasion of Spain by Napoleon's troops and the corresponding War of Independence, in addition to the immense destruction and looting of the country, would lead to the cornering of Spain in the European concert, enshrined in the Congress of Vienna (1815) following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the cascade of uprisings by Creole leaders in the Spanish viceroyalties of America, and the consequent impoverishment of the country and the withdrawal of its society into itself, giving rise to a century plagued by military pronunciamientos and three civil wars. The 19th century began badly for Spain with the naval defeat by the British at Trafalgar (1805), commemorated in another great square in London. It ended with the 1898 disaster in Santiago de Cuba and the corresponding loss of that island, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. (Read more.)