Tea at Trianon: The Swords of King Arthur

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 17, 2023

The Swords of King Arthur

From Ancient Origins:

Excalibur is another sword entirely. In the medieval Arthurian tales, Merlin takes Arthur to receive this marvelous weapon from a mysterious water nymph called the Lady of the Lake. And when the king ultimately lies dying on the field of battle, Excalibur is thrown into an enchanted pool, where the Lady of the Lake catches the weapon and takes it down into the watery depths. This theme probably developed from the ancient Celtic practice of casting prized belongings, such as swords, into sacred lakes and pools as offerings to a water goddess. Archaeologists have uncovered many such objects: for example, from the bed of the dried-up lake of Llyn Cerrig Bach on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. It is thought that warriors’ swords were thrown into such hallowed waters during funerals so as to assure the spirit’s safe passage to the afterlife.
Perhaps the most common mistake made by Hollywood in the portrayal of Arthur’s sword, be it Excalibur or the one connected with the stone, is to depict it as a long, medieval “arming sword,” commonly, but wrongly, referred to as a broadsword. Around the year 500, the period in which the story of Arthur is set, swords would have been much shorter, with a stunted cross-guard, such as the Roman-style cavalry sword, the spatha.
These were basically used for cutting down opponents from horseback, rather than for sword fights as depicted in the movies. The spatha seems to have been adopted as a sword of office by the post-Roman Britons, so if there was an historical Arthur then his sword would most likely have been one of these. (Read more.)