Tea at Trianon: Unimaginable Horror

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

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Unimaginable Horror

From The Daily Mai l:

He said his terrified 90-year-old grandmother's last moments were being dragged into her living room and shot twice in the head. A sobbing Israeli woman said she had to listen in helpless horror as her 12-year-old autistic daughter was kidnapped while clinging desperately to her grandmother. As vengeful Israel unleashes hell in military retaliation, stunned survivors are gathering at refugee hotels a safe distance from the front line – where they weep. Last night at the Leonardo Plaza Hotel on the Dead Sea, dozens were sat in the lobby and coffee shop, some carrying photos of loved ones butchered or kidnapped.
Galit Dan, 53, told how her daughter Noya, 12, went off for a sleepover with her grandmother Carmela, 80. As the sickening attack unfolded, Noya sent a harrowing voice message to her mother, whispering: 'Mummy, I'm scared. There are people in the house. Help me.'
Her mother said: 'These animals came for them. We have heard nothing from them and their bodies have not been found among the dead, so we believe they have been taken. I am living every parent's nightmare – every parent in the world will feel our pain.'
Hamas terrorists beheaded babies and gunned down entire families in their homes in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, the Israeli military said. Bodies there litter the streets among burnt-out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars. Yesterday Israeli soldiers going house to house removing the dead raged that innocents were killed 'not in war, not a battlefield, but in their beds'.
At nearby Kisufim kibbutz, a settlement of 375 peace-loving souls tending to avocado trees and herds of dairy cows, horror was unleashed at 6.20am on Saturday as the grenade-lobbing Hamas terrorists swept in. Kibbutz resident Mr Harel, 33, told me: 'They came to kill, and to abuse, and to desecrate. They came to my grandmother's house. She was 90.' Jina Semiaitz, who had lived on the kibbutz since she was a young woman, had heard the shots and gone into her armoured shelter, but did not lock the door, he said. (Read more.)