Tea at Trianon: Life in the Times of Montrose and Argyll

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 29, 2024

Life in the Times of Montrose and Argyll

From Mark Turnbull:

In the year of grace 1641, Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll, was to have his cake and eat it. He’d sliced out the bishops from the Committee of Estates and devoured the Lords of the Articles – all royal appointees. This left Argyll de-facto leader as well as chief of Scotland’s strongest clan. A placatory King Charles I topped it off by making him a marquis. So successful was Argyll at systematically stripping the King’s power that England’s Parliament followed his recipe. Nobody came close to stopping Argyll and his Covenanters (signatories of a national pledge to defend Presbyterianism) though James Graham, Earl of Montrose, spoke out against factional control. Argyll swatted aside any such naïve outrage and set about devastating those clans neighbouring his own Campbell estates. The Ogilvy’s castle burned before the eyes of their lady and her children, fanning Montrose’s vocal opposition, which eventually had him imprisoned. Argyll was unassailable.
Four years later a civil war between King and Parliament plagued England, and it wasn’t long before Scotland was infected. Argyll and the Covenanters despatched an army to Parliament’s aid, while the newly created Marquis of Montrose formed a royalist nucleus in the highlands. But for Scotland, allegiance cut deeper than two-horse politics; the conflict pitted King, Covenanters and Clans. After two victories, Montrose and his MacDonalds, Camerons and Ogilvys went for a knockout blow to the Campbells. (Read more.)