The Flight to Montmédy

  On June 21, 1791, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their family were captured at Varennes after escaping from the Tuileries in Paris. The King begged the the grocer Sauce and his family not to hand them over to the authorities, saying:

I am your King; this is the Queen and the royal family. Surrounded in the capital by daggers and bayonets, I have come to the country, into the midst of my faithful subjects, to seek the peace and liberty you all enjoy. I could not stay in Paris; it would have been death to myself and my family. I have come to live among you my children, whom I will not forsake....Save my wife, save my children." (Webster, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the Revolution, p.149)

His entreaties fell on deaf ears; the royal family were sent back to Paris where they all, except for young Madame Royale, met their deaths. It was Corpus Christi; the Royal Family passed the small home altars all along their route back to Paris and prison.

Some people find it interesting how a quatrain in the prophecies of Nostradamus appears to allude to the capture of the royal family at Varennes.

De nuict viendra par le forest de Reines,
Deux pars, vaultorte, Herne la pierre blanche,
Le moyne noir en gris dcdans Varennes:
Esleu Cap. cause tempeste, feu, sang, tranche.

By night shall come through the forest of Reines
Two parts, face about, the Queen a white stone,
The black monk in gray within Varennes.
Chosen Cap. causes tempest, fire, blood, slice.

Whether the prophecy genuinely refers to the night of Varennes or not, it was indeed the night that spelled the end of the monarchy.

Vive la Reine on some common misconceptions. [Falsehoods are in bold type]

Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the royal family were fleeing to the town of Varennes

The intended destination of the royal family was actually the royalist fortress of Montmedy.

Louis XVI intended to flee France

Louis XVI firmly refused to leave the country and, according to biographers such as Fraser, Webster, Hardman and more, turned down several flight routes to Montmedy which would have been much faster and safer because they briefly took him across the French border.

The coach which carried the royal family was recognized because it bore their royal arms/was too extravagant

The coach, presumably ordered by Axel Fersen, was large but not unusually so and was in fact based upon previously drafted plans for a Parisian’ companies carriage. It was not decorated with the arms of the royal family and, on the outside, was nothing out of the ordinary. The coach featured a variety of traveling amenities often used by those who could afford them - including a larder, cooker, fold-up table and chamber pots - because it was necessary for the flight to eliminate the need for its passengers to stop or leave the carriage. (Read entire post.)

The Royal Family returns to Paris after being captured at Varennes

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Wes Moore Wants to Choose His Opponent

I have already voted for Hale, during early voting. From Direct Line News:

In the closing days before Maryland’s June 23 Republican gubernatorial primary, something unusual is happening on television, on Facebook, and in mailboxes across the state. Governor Wes Moore’s reelection campaign and the Maryland Democratic Party are spending real money on advertising aimed squarely at Republican voters. The ads attack the two leading GOP candidates, Dan Cox and Ed Hale Sr. The stated rationale from Democrats is simple: they say they are informing the public. Republicans say the operation is designed to pick Moore’s preferred opponent in November.

[...]

Republican candidates have had enough of it. Cox and Hale both publicly condemned the effort as Democratic interference. Their frustration is understandable. The 2022 cycle demonstrated the danger of this strategy, not because Democrats openly backed Cox, but because the amplification of his conservative credentials helped him consolidate a primary coalition. Cox’s nomination handed Moore exactly the general election opponent Democratic strategists wanted. The strategy worked. Now Democrats are running it again.

The key question is whether it will work a second time. Sam Novey, chief strategist at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland College Park, offered a candid assessment. The jury, he said, remains out on pied piper effectiveness. Is spending money to elevate a weaker candidate worth the risk that the ads fail to move primary voters, while the funds could have gone elsewhere? And then there is reputational backlash. Republican activists who feel their primary has been manipulated have a way of channeling that anger into November turnout.

Democrats ran this play in 2022 and it worked. Cox won the primary. Moore won the fall by 35 points. Maryland Republicans cannot afford to let history repeat itself.

What Republicans Must Understand

There is a lesson here that Maryland Republicans need to absorb, and absorb quickly. When an incumbent governor with the resources of a statewide campaign apparatus and the backing of his state party is spending money in your primary, it is not because he fears you. It is because he has done the math. Moore’s team has made a calculation about which Republican candidate poses the lesser challenge in November. The advertising campaign is the logical result of that calculation. (Read more.)

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An Irishman Against American Slavery

From A Catholic Bard:

Daniel O’Connell  (August 6, 1775 – 15 May 15, 1847) hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland’s Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Ireland, down to the poorest class of tenant farmers, secured the final installment of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in the United Kingdom Parliament to which he had been twice elected. –Wikipedia

Gentlemen:

We have read, with the deepest affliction, not unmixed with some surprise and much indignation, your detailed and anxious vindication of the most hideous crime that has ever stained humanity—the slavery of men of color in the United States of America.

We are lost in utter amazement at the perversion of mind and depravity of heart which your address evinces.
How can the generous, the charitable, the humane, the noble emotions of the Irish heart, have become extinct among you? How can
your nature be so totally changed as that you should become the apologists and advocates of that execrable system which makes man the property of his fellow-man destroying the foundation of all moral and social virtues—condemns to ignorance, immorality, and irreligion, millions of our fellow-creatures—renders the slave hopeless of relief, and perpetuates oppression by law ; and, in the name of what you call a Constitution!

It was not in Ireland you learned this cruelty and inhumane.
Your mothers were gentle, kind, Their bosoms overflowed with the honey of human charity. Your sisters are, probably, many of them still among us, and participate in all that is good and benevolent in sentiment and action.
How, then, can you be so depraved? (Read more.)

 

Another Communist invention? From Tierney's Real News:

Portugal and Britain were the biggest slave-trading countries in the world - providing about 70% of all Africans transported to the colonies to work. Britain sent some 3 million African slaves to its colonies in the Caribbean, North America and South America from 1610-1807. How did they get them? They paid African leaders to “capture” and enslave their own brothers and sisters and sell them to British slave traders.

Black Muslims, who sold their own, were the WORST and most prolific slavers in history. They enslaved MILLIONS and still traffic and enslave their own in Africa TODAY in open slave markets on the streets.

Among the first documented Africans in British North America were approximately 20 men and women who arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. They were seized by private slave traders from a slave ship bound for Mexico and traded in Virginia. The Africans worked the tobacco fields in Jamestown along with white indentured servants. Early Africans were also held as slaves by Native Americans, the original slave traders in North America, who enslaved other tribes as well.

The British were aided by loyal Native American tribes, slaves from Africa and Hessian troops from Germany to fight AGAINST American patriots.

IN OTHER WORDS, BLACK SLAVES WERE EXPORTED TO AMERICA BY THE BRITISH AND THEN BLACK SLAVES FOUGHT WITH AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE BRITISH AGAINST AMERICAN PATRIOTS.

In other words, black slaves and American Indians in America tried to STOP America from becoming a free and independent nation! They fought with their masters (the British) to try to defeat American patriots! That’s the truth that they refuse to tell us!

Therefore, the historical reality of the Revolutionary War directly challenges the idea that Juneteenth represents a more unifying national independence story than July 4th. IT DOES NOT.

During the Revolutionary war, thousands of enslaved individuals defected to the British military following Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, taking up arms against the American Patriots. By fighting alongside the British Crown, these individuals actively worked to defeat the American revolution and preserve British colonial rule over the continent.

Juneteenth should be celebrated as a milestone of freedom, but it cannot replace the holiday that marks the birth of the very Republic that made that freedom legally possible. (Read more.)

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The Jewels of Marie-Antoinette

It is well-known that Marie-Antoinette had a fondness for diamonds, although she never even thought of purchasing Boehmer's necklace of the scandal; she preferred the money to be spent on ships for the French navy. The diamond necklace was not to her taste, anyway, which tended towards light, aerial creations. 

In the famous ensemble painting by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, the queen is shown wearing only a few pearls, while sitting near the jewel cabinet. The symbolism of this has been discussed by J.M. Charles-Roux and by some art historians. It was to emphasize that for Marie-Antoinette her children were her true jewels. When the painting was begun in 1786, the queen was expecting baby Sophie; the gown she is wearing is a maternity gown, as can be seen by the open and adjustable front. The emphasis of the painting was supposed to be the other children getting the cradle ready for the new baby. However, by the time the picture was completed in 1788, little Sophie had been born and had died. Hence, the cradle is shrouded in mourning cloth.

After the death of her oldest son Louis-Joseph, Marie-Antoinette had the image hidden away; she could not bear the sight of it. Nevertheless, it was considered a highly accurate likeness of her. Louis XVI declared to the artist when first gazing at the portrait of his wife and children: "I do not understand much about painting, but you make me love it."

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Trump Changed the Math

 From Direct Line News:

We have an Iranian Peace framework deal that doesn’t sell out our allies, to judge every Iran agreement against the same standard: did it stop the bomb? That is the wrong question. The right question is simpler and far more revealing. Did it change Iran? By that measure, the 2015 Obama nuclear agreement was a polished failure wrapped in diplomatic ribbon. And by that same measure, the Trump framework now taking shape is something categorically different.

Critics of the emerging Trump deal have been quick to note surface similarities to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Both involve inspections. Both involve enrichment caps. Both involve sanctions relief. But this comparison confuses the instrument with the goal. The JCPOA was a transaction. The Trump approach is a transformation. Or at least it must become one, because anything less will leave America managing a threat it should have ended years ago.

Let us be honest about what the JCPOA was and was not. It was a nuclear agreement. Nothing more. Iran’s enrichment capacity was capped, its stockpiles were reduced, and international inspectors were invited to monitor compliance. Supporters argued, with some justification, that it extended Iran’s theoretical nuclear breakout time from months to roughly a year. That is not nothing.

But here is what the deal did not touch. Iran kept thousands of centrifuges spinning. It retained its enrichment infrastructure intact. The agreement included sunset clauses that would eventually expire, at which point Iran would be legally entitled to expand its nuclear activities far beyond pre-deal levels. Most critically, the JCPOA said precisely nothing about Iran’s ballistic missile program, and not a word about Hezbollah, Hamas, or the network of regional proxy forces that Iran used to destabilize Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. (Read more)

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The Christology of the Stairs: Medieval Raised Sanctuaries vs. Modern "Worship Spaces"

 From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

Visitors to the medieval churches of Umbria and Tuscany are often surprised by an architectural feature that is found surviving in great abundance in our area; raised or elevated sanctuaries in our most ancient churches. That is, the place where the liturgical actions happen, that we are used to seeing conducted right in front of us, is set on a high platform, sometimes as much as 15 feet above the level of the nave, and mostly impossible to see.

We’re used to the sanctuary part of the church being raised at least a few feet above the level of the nave, often with the altar raised again on a stepped platform, but several meters? So high the congregation can’t see anything?

Architecture always catechizes. We all know that Catholic church architecture is used to express particular beliefs about the nature of reality, Christology, man’s relationship with God and his proper place in creation. Most Catholic churches, until the middle of the twentieth century, were built on a cruciform floor plan. The church itself is the image of the crucified Christ; the faithful literally enter into the symbol. Medieval builders extended this symbolic language far beyond the floor plan. Every aspect of the building could be made to communicate theological truths. These ancient stone churches emerge from a worldview that understands reality itself as hierarchical, which the designers of the elevated sanctuaries took very literally.

 Why are so many ancient churches in Umbria and Tuscany built with sanctuaries raised high above the congregation, sometimes so high that much of the liturgy would have been difficult to see? It has very little to do with practicality and a great deal to do with how medieval Christians understood Christ, the Mass, heaven, earth and the structure of reality itself. (Read more.)

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The Queen's Market

Marie-Antoinette is frequently associated with shopping, but how did she shop? It is often forgotten that Versailles, being open to the public, was a place of commerce; vendors set up their stalls in the courtyards and galleries of the palace. As for the Queen, she would usually receive tradesmen in the morning while her hair was being dressed. However, she always sought ways to celebrate the life of the ordinary French people, particularly the peasants whose industry fed the nation. In September, 1777 Marie-Antoinette had a farmers' market in the park at Trianon to inaugurate the opening of her new gardens. The Queen wore peasant attire and served at an outdoor "tavern." Pierre de Nolhac describes the market thus:

A market-place was set up on the lawn...where the baker, the confectioner, and the purveyor of charcuterie dispensed their wares...and even the cook's shop was busy in the open air. All these stalls were connected by a garland of roses....

There were shows of all sorts....Actors...gave several performances on an improvised stage....The avenues leading to Trianon were lined with the booths of Paris shopkeepers who had been engaged to come, their expenses being paid.
(Pierre de Nolhac's Marie-Antoinette, 1905, pp.226-227)

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Scandal ‘Million Times Worse Than Epstein’ Explodes

 From the Daily BS:

For years, Britain’s political and bureaucratic elite insisted critics were exaggerating, stereotyping, or simply stirring up trouble. Now, thanks to a bombshell citizen-funded investigation and a megaphone provided by Elon Musk, one of the darkest scandals in modern British history is back in the spotlight — and the questions are getting harder to ignore.

Musk lit the fuse this week when he blasted Britain’s handling of the grooming-gang scandal and called for consequences not just for the predators, but for the officials who allegedly stood by while vulnerable girls were abused.

“The politicians who turned a blind eye to the Rape of Britain must go to prison,” Musk wrote on X after the release of a sprawling independent report commissioned by Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe. (Read more.)

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Signs of the Times – the Handwriting of Richard III

 From The New Murrey and Blue Blog:

I have recently reread an interesting book about analysing handwriting and have had fun playing about with my friends’ writing and seeing if their handwriting matches their characters; it mainly does. So, being interested in Richard III, I thought I would (just for fun) have a go at analysing his writing at different times in his life and see if I could get any insight into the man.

I know there have been others who analysed his writing, one of which I know concluded that he suffered with depression. I have used what I learned in the book (link to follow) but also added some of my own thoughts. There are some aspects which puzzle me and I will leave these open for discussion. First of all, let me make it clear, once again, that this is purely for fun. Also, you will understand that, as mediaeval writing differs quite a bit from modern writing, there are some aspects which might be confused or difficult to interpret because of that. For example, the letters are generally written in a more angular way, in that the rounded letters (a, o, p, d, etc) are squarer. Perhaps this is because of the writing implements used, but interestingly, the more sharp and angular the writing the less soft and more aggressive the character is. Well, we all know what a generally violent and aggressive period of history it was; maybe their writing reflected that.

Looking at Richard’s writing, let us first examine his earliest known signature, written in about 1465, with the motto ‘Tant le Desiree’ in one of his books on chivalry. (Read more.)

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