"Generalissima"--Queen Henrietta Maria and the English Civil War

From author Stephanie Mann:

This is the second volume in a trilogy of historical novels about Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I; mother of Kings Charles II and James II and therefore grandmother of the Old Pretender and great-grandmother of the Young Pretender and the Cardinal Pretender.

In this book the author traces the lives of the Queen and her family from 1640 to 1644, from the Royal palaces of Saint James, Wimbledon, Whitehall, Hampton Court, to The Hague in the Netherlands, the battlefields of the English Civil War, through betrayals--especially by Lucy Fairfax, one of her ladies-in-waiting--and attacks on Henriette (as she is called throughout the book) because she is a Catholic; storms and battles at sea, the death of her mother, pregnancies, separations, her efforts and love for her husband and her disappointments that he has not always fulfilled the promises of their marriage contract, times in York, Oxford, Cornwall, and France!

Throughout all these conflicts, dangers, and adventures, Vidal's narration, use of dialogue, and description are vivid, personal, and often poignant. (Read more.)

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The Insurrection Act, Voter Fraud and Venezuela

 

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The Unknown Crusaders of World War II

 From Catholicism:

For those who have read my recent series for Catholicism.org, The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right, the varied nature of the French Right in particular complicated the great question of the day. One thing that is important to remember is just how hated Communism was by the French Right in particular and the European Right in general: they had witnessed since 1918 the murder of the Russian Imperial Family; the horrors of the Russian Civil War; Communist atrocities in Hungary, Slovakia, and Bavaria during short-lived Soviet regimes in those countries; the Communist-inspired war on the Church in Mexico in the 1920s; the atrocities committed by the Communists in Spain during the 1936-39 Civil War there; and the collaboration with the invading Germans by the Communists subsequent to the 1939 Hitler- Stalin pact. It was only with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that Communists throughout the world suddenly remembered patriotism — and worked to take control of the Resistance Movements — and tried, with some success, to take them over.

As we chronicled in the earlier series, most of the French and European Right regarded the National Socialists as a movement of the left — “Brown-Shirted Bolsheviks.” But defeat at their hands forced the Men of the Right into all sorts of practical considerations. Who were the greater threat to what was left of old Christendom: the Soviets, or the National Socialists? This question divided the European and French Right, and its effect can be seen in the life of Fr. Georges Grasset, whom Gary describes in the following pages as “…the priest I most would have wanted as my spiritual director during my lifetime as a Catholic.” Fr. Grasset’s participation came about due to his devout allegiance to Count Pierre Louis de La Ney du Vair, a deeply anti-Nazi organiser of youth for Vichy France.

In the event, of course, given the vast numbers of Russians and other ex-Soviet citizens who joined the German ranks, had Hitler been sincere about a Paneuropean Crusade against Bolshevism, he would no doubt have won the war. But it was more important to him and the National Socialist leadership to follow out their racial doctrines on the Eastern Front than to defeat the enemy. Thus, to many Russians and Central Europeans, they made Stalin look like a preferable alternative.

In the long run, of course, those of the European Right who chose resistance against the Axis turned out no better than those who chose collaboration. In the new post-1945 Europe created by the Soviet-American Dyarchy, there would be no room for the kind of countries or the kind of Continent envisioned by such people before the War. It was for precisely that kind of Christendom forbidden by the victors of 1945 — which doubtless would equally have been forbidden had the Axis triumphed — that the staff and contributors of Triumph, of whom Gary was a prominent member, struggled. This present time of fog and vagueness could use a little more of Gary’s famous clarity. (Read more.)

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Church Windows Honoring Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette

"Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven!"

Today, the feast of Saint Agnes, is the anniversary of the murder of Louis XVI. Depictions in stained glass of the martyrdoms of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at the Church of La Boissière-de-Montaigu in the Vendée. We know that in reality the Queen wore white, and had no woman with her. Via Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Antoinette ascends the scaffold

And below is portrayed the Royal Family in the Temple prison in Paris. Of course, the crown and scepter were not there, but they are symbols of the royal duties and responsibilities that Louis never forgot.

Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Marie-Antoinette, Madame Royale, and Madame Elisabeth

I think the above picture is supposed to represent the Vow of Louis XVI to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart which he actually made at the Tuileries palace while under house arrest in the spring of 1791. He may have renewed the Vow while imprisoned at the Temple in 1792, as the picture appears to indicate. Below is a representation of Louis XVI making the Vow in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of Marie-Antoinette and their surviving children, assisted by His Majesty's spiritual director Père Hébert of the Eudist congregation.

Louis XVI consecrating France to the Sacré-Coeur, stained glass of the Church of Saint-Véran in Saint-Vran, in Brittany.

Here is a novena prayer in honor of Louis XVI (I have polished up the translation):

O my Jesus, who said, "Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you!" Behold, I knock, I seek, I ask for the grace of [insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

Oh my Jesus, who said, "Truly I say to you, whatever you ask of my Father in my name, he will give you!" Here only to you Father, in your name I ask for this grace of[insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

O my Jesus, who said, “Truly I tell you, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Behold, confident in the infallibility of your words, I ask you for this grace of [insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

O Heavenly King Consoling, Spirit of Truth, Thou who is omnipresent, and fills all, Treasure of good and Giver of Life: Come and dwell in us, cleanse us of all filthiness and save our souls, Thou who are Goodness. AMEN.

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America’s Woke Revolution

 From Chronicles:

s Burns’s new and arguably most ambitious documentary, which continues a 44-year career of sweeping, colorfully narrated, and lavishly illustrated treatments of vital swaths of American history and culture, something that can unite Americans? Many felt that way about his magnum opus, The Civil War (1990), which, long before the South and its heroes were condemned to racialized damnatio memoriae, humanized both Yankees and Confederates. It was a painstakingly rendered history that offered a moving and informed account of our country’s most challenging episode in a format that commanded near-universal appeal and won nearly unanimous praise.

Alas, in the intervening years, Burns, much like the formerly government-funded broadcaster that has reliably featured his work ever since, has succumbed to what Elon Musk has called “the woke mind virus.” Evidence of Burns’s politicization appeared as early as his lengthy 1994 series Baseball, which might have convinced some viewers that our erstwhile national sport was merely an open-air canvas for racial conflict and labor activism.

Some of Burns’s subsequent efforts leaned less on ideology—it is hard to ruin Jazz (2001) and National Parks (2009)—but the Age of Trump has clearly had a bad effect on the celebrated filmmaker. His jarring The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022), which recounts Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s failure to confront Nazi mass murder during World War II, invidiously ends with a film montage including President Trump calling for border security and, inexplicably, footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration at the Capitol. 

In a CNN interview around the time of that film’s release, moreover, Burns deplored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s chartered flight of a few dozen illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a self-proclaimed “sanctuary island.” He called it a worrisome exercise taken straight from what he called the “authoritarian playbook” and raised concerns about the end of democracy. In a curiously mixed metaphor for such an accomplished maker of historical nonfiction films, he later described other DeSantis policies as part of “a Soviet system or the way that Nazis would build a Potemkin village.” (Read more.)

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Bathing and Hygiene in the Middle Ages

 From Medieval History:

In wealthy households, bathing was carefully staged rather than casually undertaken. Servants prepared wooden tubs filled with heated water, hung tapestries for warmth and privacy, and supplied scented sponges, oils, and cloths. Bathing here was as much ceremony as hygiene. Monasteries also maintained bath facilities, though monks generally bathed infrequently, often only on feast days or for medical reasons.

For most people, bathing was simpler and more practical. Peasants washed in rivers during the warmer months or used basins at home when water could be spared. Heated baths were rare luxuries. Only nobles and prosperous townspeople enjoyed them regularly. Even so, kings were not exempt from the need to wash. King John travelled with his own bathtub, while Edward III installed hot and cold running water at Westminster Palace.

Across the Alps, bathing culture was even more deeply rooted. In Italy, long-standing spa traditions endured. A fourteenth-century physician, Pietro de Tussignano, laid down strict rules for visitors to an Alpine bath: bathers were to arrive fasting and shaved, swim daily, and abstain from sex in order to purge bodily impurities. Soldiers on campaign sometimes carried portable tubs, while retired clergy in France occasionally installed private baths of their own. The familiar image of a universally filthy Middle Ages becomes difficult to sustain when set beside such scenes of steaming water and scented herbs. (Read more.)

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The “Trial” and Martyrdom of Louis XVI: An American Memorial

 

From The New Digest:

That the trial of Louis was indeed a sham — a proceeding for which “one can find neither pretext nor means in any existing law,” as Louis put it in his testament — is not seriously contestable. David P. Jordan’s book on the trial, probably the best treatment available in English, details the copious violations of law by the revolutionary republican assembly, the National Convention. Those violations occurred at several levels. Even putting aside the ancien regime view that the King could not be tried and judged by any human power and is accountable only to God, the trial violated both the post-revolutionary Constitution of 1791 and the new Criminal Code enacted in 1791. The Constitution had made “the person of the King … sacred and inviolable” and specified that he could only be prosecuted as a citizen for acts posterior to his abdication, whereas Louis was charged with treason for acts taken when he was still the constitutional monarch. To be sure, the Constitution of 1791 had been de facto abrogated by the fall of the constitutional monarchy and proclamation of a republic in August-September of 1792. Yet the Constitution had not yet been replaced, and there was a serious legal argument that it still governed Louis’ acts at issue, which had occurred while it was in effect — an argument made by a number of the Girondin deputies at the trial.

As to the Criminal Code, it was still in effect at the time of the trial and was violated in countless ways. It required, for example, that the jury of accusation or grand jury should be different than the trial jury, and composed of different members, whereas the National Convention took on both functions, appointing itself judge and jury as well as lawmaker. Louis was also denied access to evidence before the trial (evidence whose provenance was not proven in valid form anyway); given no notice of the charges against him before he was interrogated; and given a hopelessly inadequate span of time to prepare such defense as he could. The Jacobins were in a sense more candid, or at least more logically consistent in their lawlessness, than the Girondins. They opposed holding any trial in the first place, arguing, as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just put it, that Louis was an enemy alien outside the revolutionary body politic, with whom the revolutionary state was at war, and who should be executed without any process at all, as one would shoot an enemy on the battlefield.

Saint-Just’s (in)famous speech is translated in a book by Michael Walzer that is quite prominent in the English-speaking world, and that gives a number of the leading speeches of both regicide and non-regicide deputies. Walzer’s agenda, however, is quite explicitly to justify Louis’ trial and execution as a revolutionary necessity, the only way to condemn and kill the King’s body politic along with his natural body. This mars the book, making it an unreliable guide to the events and legal arguments. Walzer, for instance, omits on some trifling pretext the speech for the defense (!), crafted by the great ancien regime lawyer Malesherbes (although delivered at the trial by another of Louis’ attorneys, de Sèze). A contemporaneous translation of the speech was provided in 1793 by a London publisher and is available here. Walzer, it may be added, preserves a discreet, ambiguous and doubtless tactical silence about whether revolutionary justice also required the later deaths of Marie-Antoinette by guillotine, and of the King’s eight year old son Louis-Charles by criminal neglect and starvation while in prison. On Walzer’s logic, it seems that they too had to die so that the Revolution might live, as Robespierre had said of the King; in a monarchy, the Queen and the King’s heir are also part of the King’s body politic, of one flesh with the crown. (Read more.)

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Maryland Needs a Real Watchdog: A Statewide Inspector General With Subpoena Power

 From Direct Line News:

Marylanders are tired of being told, year after year, that “the system is working” while audit after audit shows the system is bleeding money. At the opening of the 2026 legislative session, we’re again confronted with a simple question: who, exactly, is empowered to protect taxpayers when state agencies fail? Right now, Maryland’s answer is fragmented oversight, scattered audits, and a whole lot of finger-pointing after the damage is done.

That’s why Maryland needs an independent statewide Inspector General (IG), not another “task force,” not a glossy performance dashboard, and not a politically appointed office that answers to the same people it’s supposed to police. We need a true watchdog with one essential tool: subpoena power.

Let’s be blunt. The difference between an Inspector General and a press release is authority. An IG can compel the production of documents and testimony, put witnesses under oath, and refer evidence to prosecutors. Audits can spotlight problems; they usually can’t force accountability. That’s the heart of the debate unfolding in Annapolis right now: Maryland has identified enormous financial exposure across agencies, but its far less clear what consequences follow or whether anyone is ever held responsible. (Read more.)

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200 Years of 'Le Figaro'

 From The European Conservative:

In its early days, Le Figaro was classically liberal; royalist without being ultra. It was annoyed by the pettiness of Charles X as much as by the mediocrity of Louis-Philippe, the monarch of the barricades. After various editorial vicissitudes, it was vigorously taken over in 1854 by a certain Hippolyte de Villemessant. People spoke of a second birth for the newspaper. At the time, Le Figaro stood out above all as a literary and artistic newspaper. Its reviews were read and appreciated, setting the standard in the small Parisian world of arts and letters—which, at that time, meant the whole of Europe. Music was not excluded from its field of expertise. Villemessant was a close friend of Offenbach, whose work he fervently supported. In Paris in 1867, Le Figaro helped to promote the phenomenon that was Johann Strauss, thus paving the way for the international triumph of The Blue Danube. In a unique gesture in the history of the press, Strauss composed a Figaro Polka, a piece dedicated to the newspaper, as a token of his gratitude.

In the same year, Le Figaro became a political outlet, thanks to the liberalisation of Napoleon III’s empire. At the time of the Commune, the newspaper watched with horror as revolutionary madness raged in Paris. Under the Third Republic, it triumphed with the restoration of order. Its social conservatism and attachment to freedoms made it a model of balance in this troubled period when a leaderless France still did not know where its destiny lay. When Captain Dreyfus was unjustly convicted in a climate of antisemitism fuelled by rivalry with Germany, Le Figaro chose the side of justice. Émile Zola published several articles in Le Figaro defending the innocent officer before his indictment, “J’accuse,” published in a rival newspaper, L’Aurore, truly launched the ‘Dreyfus Affair.’

The newspaper weathered the First World War and the crisis of the 1930s by continuing to publish the most prestigious writers of the time, including Marcel Proust and Jean Giraudoux among its columnists.

When the international situation became tense, Le Figaro chose the side of the Francoists against the Republicans in Spain. At the time of Munich, like many other French people, its journalists were ‘unenthusiastic Munichites’ while Nazism aroused increasing mistrust and revulsion.

The Second World War marked a turning point in the history of the French press. The vast majority of French newspapers, which had continued to be published under the Occupation and the Vichy regime, disappeared or were bought out and renamed. Le Figaro, which first withdrew to the free zone before suspending publication in 1942, was an exception. A Gaullist publication, it rose from the ashes with the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, benefiting from its literary aura and the support of writers ranging from Louis Aragon to François Mauriac. The flow of publication, which had been interrupted for a time, resumed. (Read more.)

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