Tea at Trianon

Marie Antoinette and the Stories We Prefer to Tell

2026-06-27T02:00:00.000-04:00

Dauphin Louis-Charles or Louis XVII

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine d'Autriche

Of course, Marie-Antoinette was never indifferent to the poverty of the people since some of her first recorded deeds as wife to the heir to the throne involved her efforts to relieve suffering. From Front Porch Republic:

The use of the dead Marie Antoinette as a republican icon is something that ought to be carefully considered. It is a willful simplification of the past in order to tell a gentler and more fun story to a modern nation. The French dislike of Marie Antoinette in the late 18th century is well documented and well deserved. Her lavish lifestyle and indifference to the poverty of the French people made her a public enemy when the revolutionary committee came to power. Her husband Louis XVI was executed for treason by guillotine, baptizing the revolution with the thrill of public blood. Marie and her children were imprisoned in the Concierge, initially together, and then forcibly separated. The revolutionary tribunal blamed her for the lavish expenditure of the royal court and for her ongoing communications with rival Austria. However, she was also accused and tried for a host of fabricated charges, including incest with her seven year old son (a false explanation for the wounds the boy suffered while in prison). The child signed an affidavit of this abuse by his mother after being visited in prison by radical members of the tribunal, certainly under pressure and possibly under compulsion. For these things, Marie was executed publicly at the guillotine. Her son spent three more years in prison, where he was tortured by his jailers and died of tuberculosis at age ten. He was not directly executed like his parents, but his death by abuse was a great convenience to the new republic, who feared that his royal blood might arouse sympathies in his powerful relatives across Europe.

The execution of Marie Antoinette and the treatment of her family is nothing for France to be proud of. Her punishment is the first evidence of a revolution run amok. The spirit of her trial was public vengeance and it can barely be considered a legal proceeding. Her child, age seven, was forced to testify under duress and in prison to incestuous rape by his mother. The effort put forth to bring this particular charge against Marie shows that the trial was not solely about her conduct of affairs of state, but rather about humiliating her publicly. Marie refused to answer the charge in the courtroom, saying it was beneath her dignity as a mother. Killing Marie was not an act of justice. It was extrajudicial public revenge and an act worthy of, if not outright condemnation, then at least very careful reconsideration. The imprisonment and death of her son is a clear example of cruelty and abuse to an innocent child for the sake of convenience and as an act of family retribution.

The Olympic torch traveled past the headless Marie and through a staging of Les Miserables’ famous barricades. The French opening ceremonies thematically tied all of these events together for the viewer. In their preferred story, Marie was justifiably killed by a righteous revolution, now remembered in heroic songs and glorified as a time of liberation for the people. Nobody should begrudge a nation’s desire to show the very best of their heritage and culture to the world. However, the conscious rewriting of an event and glorification of a national evil is troubling. A similar editing of national memory played out in the decades following the collapse of the Vichy government, France’s Nazi-collaborating wartime regime. (Read more.)

The Communists Aren't Coming - They're Here

2026-06-27T01:00:00.000-04:00

From Tierney's Real News:

Those of you who have been following me for a long time know that I’ve written about the threat of Communism, Islamo-Communism and the Red-Green axis countless times over the years. It’s always been a covert threat - now they are actually planning invasion (by flooding our country with bioweapons and even positioning themselves close enough to use ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons to take us out.)
Many people think the fake MAGA influencers like Tucker, Alex Jones, Candace, MTG, etc. are on our side - NOPE. I contend they are all Godless Communists paid off by Putin (former KGB Soviet spy) and his Islamo-Communist cronies in the CCP and Iran. JFK warned us about false prophets - so did Jesus!
How do Godless Communists and atheist, demonic tyrants take over a country? They come in many disguises and they come as false prophets. They infiltrate and divide and pretend to be your friends.
They boil the frog slowly. The premise is that if you put a frog into boiling water - he will jump out. But if you put him in tepid water and heat it slowly - he will happily boil to death. He will not realize he is in danger until it’s too late. (Read more.)

How the Phoenician Spoken and Written Language Shaped the Mediterranean

2026-06-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

From The Collector:

The Phoenicians were prolific merchants and explorers who traveled from their home in the Levant across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, planting colonies and trading outposts around the ancient world. Wherever the Phoenicians went, they took their language with them, and they were pioneers in this area too. They developed the first true alphabetic script. The useful tool was adopted by other cultures, including the ancient Greeks, who in turn influenced the ancient Latin alphabet, which is the basis of most modern Indo-European languages, including English.
The Phoenicians were Semitic-speaking people who primarily inhabited several coastal cities in the Levant, including Byblos, Tyre, Arvad, Berytus (Beirut), and Sidon. There was no Phoenician empire or unified state. Each city was an independent city-state. The Phoenicians never referred to themselves as “Phoenicians” in their own written texts but as members of their respective city-states.

The earliest recorded references to the Phoenicians date from the Late Bronze Age Egypt (c. 1500-1200 BC). The “Annals of Thutmose III” (c. 1479-1425 BC) mention Byblos extensively as a vassal of New Kingdom Egypt. The Egyptians called them “Asiatics.” Byblos was also mentioned in the “Amarna Letters” (1360-1332 BC) as an important city that was a source of contention between the Egyptians and Hittites. (Read more.)

The Paris Temple

2026-06-26T02:00:00.000-04:00

The former Temple enclosure in Paris

The tower of the original Paris Temple was used as a prison during the French Revolution to house Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their family. It was torn down by Napoleon in 1808 to discourage the pilgrims who were flocking to the site. From the BBC:

Their original estate has long since succumbed to the great march of history, but you can still visit the site on which it once stood on rue de Lobau, located just behind the Hôtel de Ville. Back in the day, surrounding the mansion were miles of uncultivated marshland. In order to make the land arable, the Knights Templar set about drying the marsh – a feat that they were able to fully achieve circa 1240. But though the wetlands have long since disappeared, the area is still referred to as ‘le Marais’ or ‘the Marsh’....

Surrounded by eight 10m-high crenelated walls reinforced by turrets and buttress, this gargantuan fortress once featured towers, a drawbridge, a gothic church, vast stables and homes for the knights. It was here that the Templars guarded mass portions of their treasure and created a powerful ‘state-within-a-state’ that was entirely sovereign from the kings of France.

While this system of sovereignty worked for a time, everything changed in 1303 when the Knights Templar were forced to move their base of operations from the Temple Mount to their European headquarters – the enclos du Temple – after Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim armies.

The king of France at the time, Philip the Fair, deeply resented the Knights Templar’s powerful ‘state-within-a-state’ and resolved to bring the order down by any means necessary. King Philip’s reasoning for destroying the order is speculated to this day, though many scholars believe his motivations were financial. “Philip could use the silver coin he acquired from the Templars' treasury in Paris to improve the quality of the heavily debased French coinage,” explained Dr Helen Nicholson, author of The Knights Templar: A New History and professor of medieval history at Cardiff University. (Read more.)

From Paris Marais:

To the north east lay stretches of marshland, remnants of the ancient branch of the Seine that had once flowed down from the heights of Belleville, east of Paris. It took the hardy Templars barely a century to turn it into the market garden (marais) of the capital, emulating the monks of Saint Martin des Champs who had dried up the swamps on the western fringe of the future arrondissement a century earlier. Having redeemed the land, they moved to its north-eastern edge, where they built a fortified compound, l'Enclos du Temple, which also served as their European headquarters.

Forget about Rennes-le-Château and other such fantasies - there was nothing mysterious about the Order. Rather, it was their sophisticated farming methods that enabled them to redeem the marshy land of the future Marais, and it was their acute business acumen that incited them to use their geographical dispersion to advantage and develop a kind of international deposit bank which contributed to the continual increase of their wealth. This, and their independence, were jealously kept behind the crenellated walls of the Enclos du Temple, roughly on the site of today's rue du Temple, rue de Bretagne, rue de Picardie and rue Béranger, south of Place de la République. It was complete with watch towers and a drawbridge that led to the Temple' only gate (now corner of rue des Fontaines-du-Temple and rue du Temple). (Read more.)

Banner honoring Louis XVII who died in the Temple

More HERE.

Election Integrity Fiasco in Maryland

2026-06-26T01:00:00.000-04:00

From American Thinker:

Maryland election officials are facing a serious test of public trust after a vendor coding error reportedly caused some voters to receive incorrect mail-in ballots during the 2026 gubernatorial primary.  The error involved ballots mailed before May 14, 2026.

Maryland State Board of Elections (SBE) administrator Jared DeMarinis said at the May 28, 2026 state election board meeting that more than 563,000 voters were included in the affected mailing but that the “vendor could not accurately identify” which voters had received the wrong ballot.  DeMarinis further clarified that there were “over 447,000 voters” whose ballots may have been affected.  The board identified the error and attempted to correct it by sending out hundreds of thousands of replacement ballots.  President Trump commented on the matter shortly after the issue became public.
Kate Sullivan, director of the SecuretheVoteMD, a volunteer election integrity organization, believes that the election board likely chose a remedy that was not only unnecessarily chaotic, but legally questionable under Maryland law:

The State Board of Elections had a simple, legal solution sitting right in front of them. They should have complied with Maryland Election Law §11-303.2 — the “first ballot” rule, which requires them to verify the original ballots as they come in, count the correct ones, and cure the incorrect ones while there was still time.

That is exactly what the law requires. Instead, they flooded the system with replacement ballots, locked the originals in a vault until certification day, and issued guidance that overrides the “first ballot” statute entirely. One has to ask, when an election authority ignores an obvious lawful remedy and chooses a legally questionable path that potentially disenfranchises voters, it is no longer sufficient to call it a mistake. Marylanders deserve a full accounting of why this approach was chosen — and by whom.

Now SecuretheVoteMD is demanding that the Maryland State Board of Elections take five concrete steps before the November 3, 2026 general election to protect voters from disenfranchisement.  In sum, the organization is asking election officials to address key questions on the record: how the original erroneous ballots are being identified, what adjudication standard is being applied, how many original-batch ballots were received, how many were rejected, what notification process will be used for affected voters, and how the chain of custody was maintained from receipt through counting. (Read more.)

The Textile Designers Behind Some of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s Most Memorable Interiors

2026-06-26T00:00:00.000-04:00

From Elle Decor:

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is remembered not only for her enduring influence on American style, but also for the homes she carefully shaped throughout her life. From the White House and the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port to her Fifth Avenue apartment and homes she shared with Aristotle Onassis in Greece, Kennedy approached interiors with the same elegance that defined her public image.
Newly surfaced, never-before-published letters exchanged between Kennedy and textile designers D.D. and Leslie Tillett reveal the depth of that involvement. While Kennedy worked with celebrated decorators including Sister Parish, Stéphane Boudin, and Albert Hadley, the Tilletts became her trusted collaborators whose textiles appeared over and over again. Together, the letters offer a rare glimpse into the creative partnership behind some of Kennedy’s most significant interiors.
By the time Kennedy arrived at the White House in 1961, D.D. and Leslie Tillett were already fixtures in American decorating circles. Founded in the 1940s, Tillett Textiles built its reputation on hand-screened fabrics and a customized approach to design, attracting decorators such as Sister Parish and Albert Hadley, as well as clients like Bunny Mellon. It was through Parish and her White House renovation that the Tillets connected with Kennedy. (Read more.)

The Red Cap of Hermetics

2026-06-25T02:00:00.000-04:00

Louis XVI was mocked with the "Red Cap of Liberty" which was recently displayed at the Paris Olympics. From Daily Sabah:

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Louis XVI, the last king of France, was depicted in many paintings with a "Bonnet Rouge" (Red Cap) on his head. However, what is the story of this red cap with its long apex bent over to the front, and why was it placed the head of the French constitutional monarch before he was executed?

[...]

In ancient Rome, freed slaves were dressed in a white cap called a pileus. Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, chose this cap, which symbolizes freedom, as an expression of Rome's return to the republic, and engraved it on the coin he minted. But this fez, which looks like the white cap worn by Albanians today, actually had nothing to do with the red Phrygian cap.

With the American Revolution, the pileus became an omen of revolutionaries, anarchists, and republicans. It resurfaced with the protests against the Stamp Act of 1765 when Britain imposed a direct stamped paper tax on the British colonies in America.

In particular, a figure of British parliamentarian John Wilkes – nicknamed the "Devil," and known for his support of the American rebels – with this cap became very popular among the rebels known as the "Sons of Liberty."

French anarchists, who inherited this symbol from the American Revolution, preferred the Phrygian cap instead of the pileus. Thus, this red hermetic cap became the symbol of the French revolutionaries and freedom from 1789 onwards. For example, in a sculpture made by French artist Joseph Chinard in 1794, representing the revolution and the republic, a Phrygian cap was placed on the head of a woman in Roman attire. (Read more.)

America Built USAID to Win the Cold War — It Turned on America Instead

2026-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

From Tierney's Real News:

While USAID has performed genuine humanitarian work, its core strategic role was as a tool for regime change and “color revolutions” abroad. It did this by systematically building interconnected networks of NGOs that create the preconditions and execution capability for political transitions aligned with Western liberalism.
DataRepublican outlined five interlocking pillars that, when funded together over years in a target country, create a self-reinforcing “political operating system:”
Media — Independent outlets, social media, journalism training, and funding to amplify Western-aligned narratives.
Legal infrastructure — Lawyers, rule-of-law programs, judicial reform to challenge governments legally and shape institutions.
Election monitoring and fraud — Observer training, voter rolls, and especially parallel vote tabulation (PVT) to contest official results with “independent” data.
Activist training — Youth leadership, civic engagement, protest organization, media comms, and “nonviolent” discipline training.
Governance data — Anti-corruption monitoring, budget transparency, FOIA-style tools to generate evidence for the other pillars.
“None of these looks like regime change in isolation. The system becomes visible only when you fund all five in the same country for a decade and the people running them all know each other.”
The 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia is the textbook case. Notably, in Latin America, after Trump cut USAID funding, right-wing candidates won in multiple countries — clear evidence of the network’s impact.
These same five pillars now operate inside the United States, funded by private foundations such as Open Society, Knight, MacArthur, and Arabella Advisors.
The language is softer — “civic engagement,” “democracy defense” — but the functions are identical. (Read more.)

The Sainthood of Sarah Miles

2026-06-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

From Word on Fire:

As we read Greene’s novel, we discover that the new love pursuing Sarah is not a would-be adulterer but a hound of heaven. We learn that in a moment of desperation—namely, when she thought her beloved Bendrix dead in a bombing raid—Sarah uncharacteristically prays to God, offering that she will end her affair if only the Lord will spare her lover’s life. When the bloodied Bendrix appears in her doorway moments later, alive and unmaimed, Sarah finds herself in the startling position of trying to keep a promise to a God she didn’t know she believed in, unmoored from the only man she loves. Like so many of us, she finds herself navigating a sometimes confusing and uncertain call to holiness amid her own very human pain and weakness.

And yet she slowly, imperfectly, allows God’s grace to work in her life, albeit in a state of earthly suffering. As Katy Carl tells us, “We find in Sarah that rarest of literary creatures: the believable saint—a character whose authentic holiness feels real to us, in part because we have also seen her at her lowest.”

This notion—the believable saint—is much more than simply a literary rarity. It is, in fact, a common reality, one that Pope Francis made sure to draw our attention to. In Gaudete et Exsultate, he reminds us that the communion of saints may include more than those we venerate as a Church. It “may include our own mothers, grandmothers or other loved ones.” It may include “our next-door neighbours,” patiently persevering in raising their children, in working for their families. It may include a “middle-class of holiness,” saints that “may not always have been perfect, yet even amid their faults and failings they kept moving forward and proved pleasing to the Lord.” This, of course, proves to be the case with Sarah Miles, as the characters in our novel find themselves witnesses to inexplicable miracles linked to her intercession after her untimely death. Mrs. Sarah Bertram Miles, with all her faults and failings, still made it to the communion of saints. (Read more.)

Titania

2026-06-24T02:00:00.000-04:00

From Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream:

Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices and let me rest.

(Artwork by Arthur Rackham)

Decline of Civility

2026-06-24T01:00:00.000-04:00

From Townhall:

Starting in the 1960s, the values that made for civility came under attack. Corporal punishment was banned. This was the time when the education establishment and liberals launched their agenda that undermined lessons children learned from their parents and the church. Sex education classes undermined family/church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passe, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortion. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions, often with neither parental knowledge nor parental consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette are behavioral norms, transmitted mostly by example, word of mouth and religious teachings. As such, they represent a body of wisdom distilled through the ages by experience and trial and error. The nation's liberals -- along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts -- have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many people have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what's moral or immoral is a matter of personal convenience, personal opinion, what feels good or what is or is not criminal.

We no longer condemn or shame self-destructive and rude behavior, such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dependency, cheating and lying. We have replaced what worked with what sounds good. The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden. This is seen by the decline in the percentage of black two-parent families. Today a little over 30 percent of black children live in an intact family, where as early as the late 1800s, over 70 percent did. Black illegitimacy in 1938 was 11 percent, and that for whites was 3 percent. Today it's respectively 73 percent and 30 percent. (Read more.)

The Madeleine Cemetery

2026-06-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

From Sortir à Paris:

In the 8th arrondissement, there is a discreet garden that is nonetheless steeped in history. It now stands atop the former Madeleine Cemetery and its mass grave where Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and hundreds of Revolution-era executions were originally buried, and today it houses the Expiatory Chapel.

In Paris, there are gardens that feel almost secret, yet they hide a grand history. This is one such verdant enclave with a macabre past. Nestled behind the sober façades of the 8th arrondissement, the Louis XVI Square, adjacent to the Expiatory Chapel, sits on the site of the former cimetière de la Madeleine, which during the Revolution became a burial ground for the victims of the guillotine. Behind its appearance as a small, discreet haven, this historic Parisian garden sits atop an old burial ground linked to Louis XVI, to Marie-Antoinette and to hundreds of victims of the Terror.

Originally, the cimetière de la Madeleine opened in the 18th century to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding neighborhood. But during the Revolution, its proximity to today’s Place de la Concorde—then the Place de la Révolution, where the guillotine stood—made it a particularly convenient burial site for the bodies of the condemned.

Approximately 500 guillotined were laid to rest there. Among them are famous names such as Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, and several Girondin deputies. King Louis XVI, executed on 21 January 1793, is buried there in an individual grave. Marie-Antoinette, executed on 16 October 1793, was also interred there. Both are said to have been covered with lime.

Following the Revolution and the Empire, Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, chose to mark the site with a commemorative monument. In 1815, the remains believed to be those of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette are transferred to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, after which a chapel is erected on the site of their former burial. The project, entrusted to Pierre Fontaine, gets underway in 1816 and is completed in 1826. The monument is designed in a neoclassical style and today hosts exhibitions open to the public.
The Louis XVI Square as we know it today was laid out later, in the 19th century, when Haussmann’s renovations reshaped the district. Its white floral decorationsecho royalty and the memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. But what has become of the mass grave? If the supposed remains of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were moved to the royal necropolis for the kings and queens of France in Saint-Denis, a common view persists that the bodies buried on this site were relocated to the Paris Catacombs, as was the fate of other former intra-mural Paris cemeteries.

In fact, Louis XVIII reportedly insisted that no land “saturated with victims” be taken away from the site. The remains of the old cemetery were thus kept in ossuaries. In other words, even after the monarchs were moved, the place remained a necropolis of the Revolution.

The confusion seems to stem from a Catacombs plaque mentioning another “old Madeleine Cemetery,” located on Laville-Lévêque Street, whereas the cemetery on which the Expiatory Chapel was built lay on Rue d’Anjou. Archaeological surveys conducted in 2018 even confirmed the presence of bones behind the walls of the lower chapel. (Read more.)

'Se lengsta dæg': The Anglo-Saxon Solstice

2026-06-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

St. John's Eve and St. John's Day were like a summery Christmas in past times. From A Clerk of Oxford:

The first comes from the Menologium, a poem composed probably in the second half of the tenth century. The Menologium catalogues the cycle of the year and the saints' feasts which occur in each month, but it's much more than just a functional list; it combines useful knowledge and Christian learning with the traditional images and language of Anglo-Saxon poetry. I translated part of the section about May, full of flowering meadows and noisy birds, in this post. The section quoted below (lines 106-119) describes the month of June - ærra Liða is the Old English name - as far as June 24th, the feast of John the Baptist and the traditional date of Midsummer Day. It follows on from the section on May - naturally! - and so begins by dating the first of June as the sixth day after the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury, May 26th.
[...]
Ælfric's description of the sun in his homily on Rogationtide, and 'O Earendel', the Old English version of the antiphon 'O Oriens', which falls on the winter solstice. The solstices and equinoxes were intimately connected with the medieval understanding of the church year: the spring equinox was crucial for the dating of Easter (as discussed here and here), and the solstices for celebrating the birth of Christ and of his herald, þeodnes dyrling, John the Baptist. Bede explains the symbolic relationship between the two solstices in his De temporum ratione:

very many of the Church’s teachers recount... that our Lord was conceived and suffered on the 8th kalends of April [25 March], at the spring equinox, and that he was born at the winter solstice on the 8th kalends of January [25 December]. And again, that the Lord’s blessed precursor and Baptist was conceived at the autumn equinox on the 8th kalends of October [24 September] and born at the summer solstice on the 8th kalends of July [24 June]. To this they add the explanation that it was fitting that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the increase of temporal light, and that the herald of penance, who must decrease, should be engendered and born at a time when the light is diminishing.
(Read more.)

Courtship Etiquette for Gentlemen

2026-06-23T01:00:00.000-04:00

From Geri Walton:

Before a gentleman could even consider courting a woman, he had to have already met her or finagled an introduction through society’s proper channels. This might be accomplished through a mutual friend. If not, then his first consideration was how to get acquainted with the young woman, and this is where a gentleman’s investigative skills came into use. He would have to ascertain where she lived and then make discreet inquiries, respecting her family and avoiding compromising her name by not even mentioning it in the course of his inquiry. Then, hopefully, he could somehow work towards an introduction.

If that proved unproductive, his only other option was to get the lady to notice him by attending places she frequented and judging for himself “without speaking to his fair conqueror, — whether his further attentions would be distasteful to her.” If his advances appeared acceptable, he could make “the first deliberate step on the Ladder of Matrimony,” by writing to the woman’s father or guardian and stating “his position in life and prospects, as well as mention his family, [and] request permission … to visit the family as a preliminary to paying his addresses to the object of his admiration.” (Read more.)

The Lost Basilica of Saint John at Ephesus

2026-06-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

From Liturgical Arts Journal:

This basilica was constructed by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century over what was said to be the site of tomb of the apostle John. It replaced another, even earlier church founded on this same site, a church that was already ancient and worn down by Justinian's time. This new church was constructed in a typical Eastern Roman, Byzantine style and, according to the Greek historian Procopius, it took its design inspiration from the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. The actual dates for its construction are A.D. 548-565 and the construction was overseen by the local bishop of Epheuus, Hypatius.

This basilica was cruciform in shape and included typical features such as a long, columned nave; a sanctuary surrounded by a balustrade, a ciborium covering the altar and tomb of St. John, and a synthronon located behind. There was also an octagonal baptistery attached to the basilica, as well as a forecourt.
The interior walls of the basilica were covered in polychrome marbles, as were the columns and there was a decorative stone pavement for the basilica's floor. Mosaic work ornamented the ceiling and at some point following the main construction of the church, iconographic paintings were also added, a few of which are still extant.
In short, it sounds like both familiar and noble, and between the basilica's imperial patronage and its connection with the Apostle John, it would go on to become one of the most important Christian sites in the region -- though one which, sadly, history would not be as generous toward. (Read more.)

The Storming of the Tuileries, June 1792

2026-06-22T02:00:00.000-04:00

Louis XVI dons the Bonnet Rouge

Madame Royale describes the storming of the Tuileries palace on June 20, 1792 and how her family escaped death:

On the 20th of June, about eleven o'clock in the morning, nearly all the inhabitants of the faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, where the populace chiefly lived, marched in a body to the National Assembly, to go from there to the garden and plant the liberty-tree. But as they were all armed, which gave reason to suspect bad intentions, my father ordered the gates of the Tuileries to be closed. The Assembly showed great dissatisfaction, and sent a deputation of four municipals to induce the king to order the gates to be opened. These deputies spoke very insolently; said they exacted the opening of the gates in order that those who had come to plant the tree, the sign of liberty, might return that way, inasmuch as the crowd in the rue Saint-Honoré was too great to allow them to pass. My father, however, persisted in his refusal, and they then went and opened themselves the gates of the garden, which was instantly inundated by the populace; the gates of the courtyards and the château still remained locked.

An hour later this armed procession began to defile before our windows, and no idea can be formed of the insults they said to us. Among others, they carried a banner on which were these words:

"Tremble, tyrant; the people have risen;" and they held it before the windows of my father who, though he was not visible himself, could see all and hear their cries of "Down with Veto!" and other horrors. This lasted until three o'clock, when the garden was at last freed. The crowd then passed through the Place du Carrousel to the courtyards of the Tuileries, but quietly, and it was generally thought they were returning to their faubourgs.

During this time our family were in the rooms on the courtyard side, absolutely alone and observing all that went on; the gentlemen of the suite and the ladies dined on the other side. Suddenly we saw the populace forcing the gates of the courtyard and rushing to the staircase of the château. It was a horrible sight to see, and impossible to describe–that of these people, with fury in their faces, armed with pikes and sabres, and pell-mell with them women half unclothed, resembling Furies.

Two of the ushers wishing to run the bolts of my father's door, he prevented it and sprang himself into the next room to meet the rioters. My aunt followed him hastily, and hardly had she passed when the door was locked. My mother and I ran after her in vain; we could not pass, and at that moment several persons came to us, and finally, the guard. My mother cried out: "Save my son!" Immediately some one took him in his arms and carried him off. My mother and I, being determined to follow my brother, did all we could against the persons who prevented us from passing; prayers, efforts, all were useless, and we had to remain in our room in mortal anxiety. My mother kept her courage, but it almost abandoned her when, at last, entering my brother's room she could not find him. The persons who, on her own order, had carried him away lost their heads, and in the confusion, took him up higher in the château, where they thought him in greater safety. My mother then sent for him and had him brought back to his room. There we awaited, in the silence of profound anxiety, for news of what had happened to my father.

Returning to him, I must resume at the moment when he passed through the door which was then locked against us. As soon as he thought the danger passed the king dismissed his suite, so that no one was with him but my Aunt Élisabeth, [Maréchal de Mouchy (who in spite of his 77 years and my father's order persisted in remaining), two old ushers, the brave Acloque, commander of the division of the National Guard, an example of fidelity in the uniform of rebellion], ¹ and M. d'Hervilly, lieutenant-colonel of the new King's-Guard, who, seeing the danger, ran to call the Guard and collected about twenty grenadiers, but on reaching the staircase he found only six had followed; the others had abandoned him. My father was therefore almost alone when the door was forced in by one sapeur, axe in hand raised to strike him, but [here] by his coolness and imperturbable courage my father so awed the assassin that the weapon fell from his hand,–an event almost incomprehensible. It is said that some one cried out: "Unhappy man, what are you about to do?" and that those words petrified him; for my part I think that what restrained that wretch was Divine Providence and the ascendancy that virtue always maintains over crime.

The blow having thus failed, the other accomplices, seeing that their leader had let himself be cowed, dared not execute their evil designs. Of all this mass of the populace, there were certainly very few who knew precisely what they were expected to do. To each had been given twenty sous and a musket; they were sent in drunk with orders to insult us in every imaginable way. Their leader, Santerre, had brought them as far as the courtyard, and there he awaited the success of his enterprise. He was desperate on learning that his stroke had missed, and he came near being killed himself by a man in the château, who aimed for him, and was prevented from shooting only by remonstrances as to the danger to which he exposed my father; for if Santerre were sacrificed the brigands would surely avenge him.

My father was nevertheless obliged to allow all these wretches to go through the rooms of the château, and, standing himself in a window with my aunt, he watched them pass before him and heard the insults with which they overwhelmed him. It was on this horrible day that my father and my aunt each made a memorable speech. At the moment of the greatest danger a soldier came up to the king and said to him, "Sire, fear nothing." My father took his hand and laid it on his own heart. "Does it beat hard, grenadier?" he said. Shortly before, my Aunt Élisabeth, being mistaken for the queen, saw herself exposed to the utmost fury of the brigands; some one near was about to make her known. "Do not undeceive them," cried my aunt with sublime devotion.

This dreadful situation lasted from half-past three in the afternoon till eight at night. Pétion, mayor of Paris, arrived, pretending to be much astonished on hearing of the danger the king had run. In haranguing the people he had the impudence to say: "Return to your homes with the same dignity with which you came." The Assembly, seeing that the stroke had missed, changed its tone, pretended to have been ignorant of everything, and sent deputation after deputation to the king expressing the grief it feigned to feel for his danger.

Meantime my mother, who, as I said, could not rejoin the king, and was in her apartment with my brother and me, was a long time without hearing any news. At last, the minister of war came to tell her that my father was well; he urged her to leave the room where we then were, as it was not safe, and we therefore went into the king's little bed-chamber. We were scarcely there before the rioters entered the apartment we had just left. The room in which we now were had three doors: one by which we had entered, another opening upon a private staircase, a third communicating with the Council Chamber. They were all three locked, but the first two were attacked, one by the wretches who were pursuing us, the other by men who came up the little staircase, where we heard their shouts and the blows of their axes.

In this close danger my mother was perfectly calm; she placed my brother behind every one and near the door of the Council Chamber, which was still safe, then she placed herself at the head of us all. Soon we heard some one at the door of the Council Chamber begging to enter. It was one of my brother's servants, pale as death, who said only these few words: "Madame, escape! the villains are following me." At the same instant, the other doors were forced in. In this crisis my mother hastily ordered the third door opened and passed into the Council Chamber, where there were, already, a number of the National Guard and a crowd of wretches.

My mother said to the soldiers that she came to take refuge with her son among them. The soldiers instantly surrounded us; a large table standing in the middle of the Chamber, served my mother to lean upon, my brother was seated on it, and the brigands defiled past it to look at us. We were separated from my father by only two rooms, and yet it was impossible to join him, so great was the crowd. We were therefore obliged to stay there and listen to all the insults that these wretches said to us as they passed. A half clothed woman dared to come to the table with a bonnet rouge in her hand and my mother was forced to let her [Page 236] place it on her son's head; as for us, we were obliged to put cockades on our heads. It was, as I have said, about eight o'clock when this dreadful procession of rioters ceased to pass and we were able to rejoin my father and aunt. No one can imagine our feelings at that reunion; they were such that even the deputies from the Assembly were touched. My brother was overcome with fatigue and they put him to bed. We stayed together for a time, the room being full of deputies. An hour later they went away, and about eleven o'clock, after having passed a most terrible day, we separated to get some rest . . . .

The next day Pétion came again to play the hypocrite, saying he had heard of more assemblings of the people and he had hastened to defend the king. My father ordered him to be silent; but as he still tried to protest his attachment, my father said: "Be silent, monsieur; I know your thoughts." (Read more.)


Marie-Antoinette, her children, and Madame de Tourzel face the mob

Louis XVI was mocked with the "Red Cap of Liberty" which was displayed at the Paris Olympics. From Daily Sabah:

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Louis XVI, the last king of France, was depicted in many paintings with a "Bonnet Rouge" (Red Cap) on his head. However, what is the story of this red cap with its long apex bent over to the front, and why was it placed the head of the French constitutional monarch before he was executed?

[...]

In ancient Rome, freed slaves were dressed in a white cap called a pileus. Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, chose this cap, which symbolizes freedom, as an expression of Rome's return to the republic, and engraved it on the coin he minted. But this fez, which looks like the white cap worn by Albanians today, actually had nothing to do with the red Phrygian cap.

With the American Revolution, the pileus became an omen of revolutionaries, anarchists, and republicans. It resurfaced with the protests against the Stamp Act of 1765 when Britain imposed a direct stamped paper tax on the British colonies in America.

In particular, a figure of British parliamentarian John Wilkes – nicknamed the "Devil," and known for his support of the American rebels – with this cap became very popular among the rebels known as the "Sons of Liberty."

French anarchists, who inherited this symbol from the American Revolution, preferred the Phrygian cap instead of the pileus. Thus, this red hermetic cap became the symbol of the French revolutionaries and freedom from 1789 onwards. For example, in a sculpture made by French artist Joseph Chinard in 1794, representing the revolution and the republic, a Phrygian cap was placed on the head of a woman in Roman attire. (Read more.)

Councils in UK Move to Ban Union Jack Flag

2026-06-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

From The Daily BS:

So here we are in modern Britain: the country is in the middle of a World Cup run, streets are draped in red-and-white St. George’s Cross flags, and instead of a bit of national pride, some local authorities appear to see… a public safety emergency.

According to reporting from LBC, residents in Bristol’s Knowle West area say Torrington Avenue has become something of a grassroots celebration zone during major football tournaments, with flags routinely hanging from lampposts and railings.

But not everyone is clapping along. The Green-led administration at Bristol City Council has moved to clamp down on the displays, with council leader Tony Dyer issuing guidance effectively banning flags from public infrastructure. (Read more.)

How Augustus’ Moral Laws Controlled Culture in Ancient Rome

2026-06-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not. From The Collector:

When Augustus emerged as the ultimate winner of the years of civil war that ended the Roman Republic, he set about rebuilding Rome. In truth, he was constructing a new city that reflected his new imperial regime, but this was dressed up as Rome restored to a mythical, glorious Republican past, before the destructive corruption of the late Republic. Augustus was focused on the physical city (turning a city of brick into one of marble) and the city’s soul: its people and traditions. Rome’s population and social norms had been decimated by years of conflict. Augustus tried to restore both through a series of legislation known as his “moral laws.”
When Octavian defeated Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, he was left the undisputed ruler of Rome. Years of strongmen battling for power in civil wars had left the Republic in tatters and had allowed one man to emerge as an absolute ruler. But while the Republican system may have been broken, it was still beloved, and the assassination of Julius Caesar just over a decade earlier showed that, despite everything, Rome was not ready to accept a king.

This placed Octavian in a predicament. How could he secure and codify his power without invoking the wrath of the fickle Roman people? He did so by cloaking his new position in the traditions of the Republic. He gave up his extraordinary powers and instead used twists on Republican traditions. For example, he was awarded permanent imperium, giving him ultimate control of Rome’s armies, and accepted tribunicia potestas annually, allowing him to propose and veto laws. For his “sacrifices,” Octavian was awarded the name Augustus in 27 BC. (Read more.)

The Flight to Montmédy

2026-06-21T02:00:00.000-04:00

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

Wes Moore Wants to Choose His Opponent

2026-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

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.)

An Irishman Against American Slavery

2026-06-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

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.)

The Jewels of Marie-Antoinette

2026-06-20T02:00:00.000-04:00

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."

Trump Changed the Math

2026-06-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

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)

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

2026-06-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

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.)

The Queen's Market

2026-06-19T02:00:00.000-04:00

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)