Tea at Trianon: The Teutonic Knights

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, September 5, 2026

The Teutonic Knights

From The Collector:

Also known as the Deutscher Orden and the Brothers of the German House of St. Mary in Jerusalem, the Teutonic Order was a key player in the medieval expansion in Eastern Europe. During the Baltic Crusades in Prussia, present-day Latvia and Estonia, and Lithuania, the Teutonic Knights virtually wiped out the pagan population living in these areas, replacing the established authorities with a theocratic state. Read on to learn more about the Teutonic Order and its role in the Christianization of Europe’s last strongholds of paganism.

In 1189, the Crusading forces led by Guy of Lusignan were besieging the town of Acre, which was then controlled by Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria. In 1187, Saladin had also conquered the city of Jerusalem, leading to the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Crusader state established by the Crusaders in 1099 after the end of the First Crusade.

When news of the fall of Jerusalem reached Europe, Pope Gregory VIII initiated the Third Crusade to restore the city to Christian control. In 1190, during the siege of Acre, a number of German merchants, mostly from Bremen and Lübeck, decided to form a fraternity to care for the sick. A year later, after the Crusaders managed to capture Acre, the fraternity established its headquarters in a hospital in the town, and it became known as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem. (Read more.)