Requiem for His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVI, King of France

French American Friendship Foundation ^ | last week | unspecified

[ELS]

A $40+ round-trip! Yikes! Unfortunately, in the suburbs the fares are much higher than they would be in the city for traveling an equivalent distance. I assume the bus routes didn't work out, either.

[Loyalist]

I recall a CBC-TV show from the late 80's about an Ontario man, Charles de Bourbon, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Louis XVII (who supposedly didn't die in Temple Prison, but miraculously escaped and lived in obscurity thereafter) and pretender to the French throne.

While his claim is certainly nonsense, I remember one interesting tidbit: his son, the Duke of Normandy, worked on the assembly line at Chrysler and his daughter, the Duchess of Aquitaine, was a bank teller. How the mighty are fallen

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

I read an article within the last couple of years concerning a child who died in the custody of the Jacobin devils. He was alleged to have been the Dauphin and his heart was preserved in a little reliquary (by, I think, the attending physician)

Technology has allowed a DNA test to be run, and it was determined that the dead child was, in fact, the legitimate king of France.

[PJ-Comix]

Americans, who think la Marseillaise and the tricolour represent France, tend to forget that it was the royal victim of the revolutionaries who was the best foreign friend of the new American republic.

Actually la Marseillaise was written by a French Royalist. The lyrics were later changed after the French Revolution. I wrote an article about this once and will look it up again.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

I had read, so long ago that I may not remember correctly, that it was composed by one of the Garde Nationale volunteers who arrived in Paris from Marseilles. Napoleon is supposed to have outlawed it because he deemed it subversive (especially after that coronation deal in 1805), replacing it with Veillons au salut de l'Empire which was, therefore, actually the "first" French national anthem.

During the counter-revolution in the Vendée , there was a version called la Marseillaise des Blancs which I assumed was just an example of taking one of the enemy's tunes and setting your own words to it. This was and is such a common practice that the "rights" to the song generally go to the victor (e.g., "Yankee Doodle" was originally a British song; "Brüder im Zechen und Gruben" employed as the theme of the East German NVA was actually a Brownshirt song).

[annalex]

The reason why the American Revolution yielded a successful result is because it wasn't really a "Revolution" at all.

[...]

If anything, the real American Revolution started with the expansion of the franchise, the disestablishment of the state churches and the growing hegemony of the central government, culminating in the bloody 1860-65 assertion of federal absolutism

Very insightful. You should post your comment to Pursuit of Liberty -- American Revolution: a revolution? , if it is technically possible.

[B-Chan]

Wish I could be there. I'll say prayers for the souls of Their Majesties. Vive le Roi.

[B-Chan]

Next year, I mean.

[royalcello]

I believe you are thinking of L'Anglaise et le Duc.

[nicollo]

In the National Assembly Mirabeau had argued that a few must perish so that the mass of people might be saved. It turned out that more than a few would perish. Politicians who graduated from rhetoric to government found that rhetoric made government impossible. If patriotism was to triumph, politics had to end; liberty had to be suppressed in the name of Liberty; democracy had to be sacrificed so that Democracy should live. Speaking from the ruthless precinct of the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just, who is one of Mr. Schama's favorite antiheroes, insisted that the Republic stood for the extermination of everything that opposed it. And absence of enthusiastic support was opposition enough. [Homeland Security, anyone?]

[Homeland Security, anyone?]

Cute.

[american colleen]

bump for later reading

[Romulus]

Philippe Egalité was eaten by the tiger he'd gambled he could ride. Isn't that always the way?

[Romulus]

Cute.

"La patrie en danger." Grimly ironic, when you think about it.

[pbear8]

Is not the Duke of Paris the current pretender to the French throne? Let's rise up and replace Chirac with him.

Prayers for Their Majesties.

[metesky]

It is widely held that the expenses incurred in the prosecution of this war led to the financial crisis that ultimately caused the French Revolution and cost the lives of King Louis, his wife, and their children, and which plunged Europe into two decades of almost continual war.

The French royalty were tottering long before they coughed up the dough for Rochambeau and DeGrasse(sp?) to help out the American revelutionaries.

You should read Claude Manceron's multi-volume history, Age of the French Revolution. A lot of insight on exactly why the entire "Old Order" had to go.

It does not excuse the excesses of the Revolution.

[metesky]

Friday night drunk spelling is no excuse.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

I thought Joseph Schildkraut's portrayal of Philippe in the 1930's film Marie Antoinette was particularly enjoyable. A total sleaze.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

I don't really follow French royalist politics, but the last time I looked, the heir presumptive was Henri, Count of Paris.

There are two competing Bourbon claimants from different branches of the family, plus some sort of B(u)onaparte.

[royalcello]

Henri, C. of Paris, D. of France (b. 1933) is the most widely recognized pretender to the French throne. "Legitimists" insist on the superiority of the claim of Don Luis Alfonso ("Louis XX"), D. of Anjou (b. 1974), a great-grandson of both Francisco Franco and King Alfonso XIII of Spain. The Bonaparte claimant is Charles, Prince Napoleon (b. 1950).

[ELS]

St. Ann's Cathedral

Sorry to hear that St. Ann's will be closed, destroyed, and the property sold to the USPS. So much for Egan being conservative.