Tea at Trianon: The Men Who Would Be King

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

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

The Men Who Would Be King

From Air Mail:

On a bitingly cold morning in January, some 200 men and women, smartly attired in furs, wool coats, and fluffy pillbox hats, gathered at the Chapelle Expiatoire in Paris for a Requiem Mass. Who were the deceased? King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who had been executed 232 years ago.
The men overseeing the memorial service wore white armbands embroidered with the fleur de lys, while young women wearing penny loafers and prudishly long skirts handed out the order of service. The chapel itself was an auspicious choice for the occasion. “[Louis XVI’s] remains were found under the site,” whispered the 68-year-old Duc de Damas with some pride.
But the star of the service was Louis Alphonse de Bourbon, the Duke of Anjou, a direct descendant of Louis XIV—the great-grandfather of the decapitated king—and a pretender to the now nonexistent French throne. (Read more.)