Tea at Trianon: Uncovering a ‘Forgotten’ Massacre at Shelford House

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, June 16, 2024

Uncovering a ‘Forgotten’ Massacre at Shelford House

From The World Turned Upside Down:

The military history of the British and Irish Civil Wars has been dominated by the stories of the battles between the two field armies in England such as Marston Moor, Newbury and Naseby. But in reality, this was largely a conflict of relatively small-scale local conflicts, often around strongpoints such as fortified houses. These engagements were often bloody and hard-fought with important consequences for local communities. Yet, many of them have been forgotten or subsequently ignored as being of little or no national significance.
Until recently this was true of the shocking story of the attack by Parliamentarian forces on the Royalist garrison at Shelford House on the River Trent between Newark and Nottingham.

But now after years of investigation, distinguished Civil War historian, David J. Appleby has uncovered the realities of this attack which, as he tells publisher, Mike Gibbs, is a story of a massacre and a subsequent cover-up. (Read more.)