Tea at Trianon: The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

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, July 14, 2026

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

From Gettysburg Connection:

By the mid-1700s, the ideas of the Enlightenment – social contract, natural rights, freedom of speech, religious toleration – had been in circulation for nearly 100 years. But the Declaration of Independence was the first time these thoughts had been translated into action. Within a few months of its adoption by the Continental Congress, the Declaration had spread throughout Europe. In Spanish-America, publication and circulation of the Declaration and other revolutionary documents was banned, but it was still translated into Spanish and continued to spread.

Veterans of the Revolution also spread the word. Tadeusz Kosciusko is a national hero in Poland for his efforts to promote human liberties and the end of feudal practices in that country. With the help of America’s ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was eventually approved by the French National Assembly and King Louis XVI. The two “Declarations” were read throughout the world and inspired independence movements. (Read more.)