Tea at Trianon: During the French Revolution Most of the Country Did Not Speak French

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, January 1, 2024

During the French Revolution Most of the Country Did Not Speak French

From History Facts:

In the early years of the French Revolution, a revolutionary named Henri Grégoire conducted a survey of language throughout the fledgling republic and discovered a concerning truth: Most people living in France at the time didn’t actually speak French. On June 4, 1794, Grégoire reported the results of his survey to the revolutionary assembly, stating that there were no more than 3 million French speakers (11% of the population), and even fewer who were able to write it. In fact, the language was spoken more in the Netherlands and German states than it was in some parts of France.
Instead, a majority of French people spoke local dialects — for instance, a large southern population spoke Occitan, a Romance language influenced by Latin. This was seen as particularly embarrassing for the revolutionary cause, as three years earlier, diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand declared that “the multitude of corrupt dialects, the last remnants of feudalism, will be forced to disappear: necessity dictates so.” Grégoire’s survey only added fuel to the fire. Little more than a month after the survey, the revolutionary administration declared that “no public act may be written (or registered) other than in the French language, in any part of the territory of the Republic.” Luckily, France’s linguistic multiculturalism survived the prescriptive onslaught, and regional languages such as Occitan and Basque flourish to this day. (Read more.)