Tea at Trianon: Paris Was Burning

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

Friday, November 6, 2026

Paris Was Burning

From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:

The past few months have been exciting ones in France, and indeed throughout Europe. This current chapter may be said to have begun at the end of July, when 50,000 to over 70,000 mostly Moroccan migrants crossed the border into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta via swimming or the border facilities. This was set off by a previous ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court in June 2026, which ruled that migrants who had entered the country illegally could not be immediately sent back; this was of course exploited by criminal networks.
The scenes on the internet and television of hordes of foreigners overwhelming the Spanish town formed a perfect backdrop to the launch of the Save Europe Act (advocating Remigration) on August 1. The brainchild of Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Austrian activist Martin Sellner (both of whom are usually labeled as “far-Right” in the leftist European press), it had originally been proposed to the European Commission and quickly knocked down by that body. In response to Ceuta, youthful activists descended upon Ceuta to publicize the beleaguered enclave’s plight, and took to the streets to call for an end to immigrant-fueled crime, and for remigration. Demonstrations occurred in support all over Europe.

This initial excitement cast into stark relief the situation this writer described earlier in these pages. Most countries in Europe are governed by an establishment made up of Socialist and other leftist parties ruling in coalition with Conservative or Christian Democratic parties. The former know what they want, and so are constantly pushing these coalitions’ policies leftward; the latter have given up whatever doctrines they had, and are simply employment agencies—they happily move leftward if that is the price of a certified seat at the public feeding trough. They have presided over the flood of heavily Islamic immigration which has in turn sparked a tidal wave of crime and unrest. For the past decade or more they have been far more truculent with those that notice this than with actual criminals. Hence have emerged “Two Tier Policing” (light sentences for immigrants and others who murder, rape, and steal; throwing the book at those who complain about this) and “Lawfare” (harassing those who complain about it, seizing their bank accounts, denying them entrance to a given country, and the like). It did not escape ordinary Europeans’ notice that the abusers of life and limb did not receive anything like the police attention they themselves did for simply speaking or thinking in a way those in power dislike. Add to all of this the ongoing war in Ukraine. (Read more.)