Tea at Trianon: King Louis XV

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

Sunday, May 19, 2024

King Louis XV

From Once I Was a Clever Boy:

The historiography of his reign is very much in terms of his predecessors’ achievements and, inevitably, whether or to what extent he bares all, or much, or some, or none of the blame for the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Nineteenth century French writers, often sympathetic to the ideas of 1789, or hardline social and moral conservatives deeply opposed to them, seeking for the origins of revolution see them everywhere in the Ancien Régime. As Wikipedia points out a modern, if minority, trend is to be favourable to him.

I am definitely inclined to exonerate the King. Eighteenth-century Europe moved at different speeds - reforming and modernising systems that were old and slow - getting the balance right was difficult. An explosion of the entire political and social mechanism was always a risk, yet it did not happen until 1789, and then only in one country to then cause Europe-wide chaos.

I am inclined to see what happened in France as very much a typical failing of France or of the French political system. National folie de grandeur in 1848,1870, 1914,1940, 1958, and indeed in recent decades results in a great power with a self-belief out of touch with the real situation. Eighteenth century France was in advance of much of Europe and believing in what it had achieved did not always see the practical impact of or need for reform like its rival Austria faced with an existential crisis in the 1740s or Spain and Portugal later on realising they were slipping backwards. (Read more.)