Tea at Trianon: The Birthplace of Jousting Steeds

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, April 3, 2024

The Birthplace of Jousting Steeds

From Science:

Excalibur and A Knight’s Tale got at least one thing right. Medieval English knights donned armor, mounted highly trained horses, and jousted with long lances in spectacular ritual combats. King Henry VIII was obsessed with jousting, until a 1536 spill from a horse during a tournament left him with traumatic injuries.

But the steeds used in these contests weren’t all home-grown, a new study finds. An analysis of dozens of medieval horses buried in an open field between the Thames River and Westminster Abbey reveals a far-flung European horse trading network, researchers report today in Science Advances, with some of the animals coming from as far away as northern Italy. The findings, experts say, open a new window into the life of medieval English elites and their favorite hobby.

“This paper’s enabling new stories to be told about these horses and the people who rode them,” says Richard Thomas, an archaeozoologist at the University of Leicester who was not part of the research.

Historical documents show England’s medieval elite took great interest in horses. A record of royal horses called the Equitium Regis, for example, lists hundreds of horses belonging to the royal family in the late 13th and early 14th century C.E., often by name and sometimes geographic origin. (Read more.)