Tea at Trianon: 'Lord of Sakar'

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, September 3, 2025

'Lord of Sakar'

From Live Science:

Archaeologists have unearthed a dazzling gold wreath in a 2,100-year-old burial mound of a Thracian warrior and his horse. The unique headpiece is part of a set of gold jewelry excavated from the grave of the "Lord of Sakar," named after the mountain range in southeast Bulgaria where he was found.
"The golden treasures discovered in our lands testify to high craftsmanship, rich spiritual life and prosperous societies," Evelina Slavcheva, president of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.
The ancient burial mounds were discovered during digging related to the installation of a solar park in 2024. A team of archaeologists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences excavated the burials and found that one contained the bones of a young woman and the other a middle-aged man. (Read more.)