![]() The ‘Martyred Queen’ was circled with a romantic halo her spotless heroism was celebrated in aristocratic prose and verse. Memoir writers presumed successfully on royalist sympathy and credulity. But with the return of the Bourbons in 1815 the other side had its say. The ‘Austrian Woman’ was declared guilty of every crime: conspiracy, adultery, incest, and nymphomania. To send her as a scapegoat to the guillotine, no calumny was spared by party hatred. ![]() Adherents of the Revolution, in order to assail the Monarchy effectively, attacked the Queen, and in the Queen the woman, besmirching her character with the mud and blood of Revolutionary Paris. There have been other vivid and interesting pictures of Marie Antoinette, to be sure but they have tended to be passionately partisan. With the imagination of a poet, the skilled pen of an essayist, and the self-confidence of a psychiatrist, he has produced an exceedingly vivid and interesting picture of one of the most tragic figures in all history. That he has succeeded to a remarkable degree no one will deny. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |