Tea at Trianon: Why the American Revolution Brought Liberty — And the French Revolution a Reign of Terror

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

Saturday, July 4, 2026

Why the American Revolution Brought Liberty — And the French Revolution a Reign of Terror

From The National Catholic Register:

People are wrong to compare the two revolutions,” historian Reynald Sécher, one of France’s foremost scholars of the counterrevolutionary movements and author of A French Genocide: the Vendée, told the Register. “The American Revolution had for its sole aim to free itself from the tutelage of the king of England — a tutelage that expressed itself almost exclusively through fiscal obligations. Fundamentally, the insurgents did not call into question the nature of society.”
France was a very different matter, Sécher said.

“The revolutionaries had a specific program,” he explained, “which consisted of destroying the divine right monarchy and the traditional, ordered society, to replace them with a new world, a new order, a new man.”

He argued, moreover, that the American Revolution was political in nature — aimed at breaking away from a distant crown that had overstepped its rights — while the French Revolution was purely ideological. In Sécher’s view, it was a project of fundamental transformation that targeted everything beyond its control, including the faith of ordinary people. (Read more.)

Why France helped America. From France 24:

French support for the American Revolution began well before the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. King Louis XVI saw the rebellion in North America as an opportunity to weaken his British rival and avenge past defeats. FRANCE 24 looks back at how European colonial rivalry and Enlightenment ideals forged a decisive alliance between the nascent United States and its "oldest ally".
On July 4, 1776, 13 British colonies in North America broke with the British Crown and declared their independence in a momentous act of rebellion that would change the course of history. As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, FRANCE 24 looks back at France’s decisive – and often overlooked – role in the American Revolution.

Behind the fight for independence lies another story: that of a long-standing rivalry between Great Britain and France, the two great European powers at the time. When the Thirteen Colonies proclaimed their independence, they were still a long way from winning the war. Across the Atlantic, France watched the brewing rebellion with increasing interest. (Read more.)