Author Topic: Queen Marie Antoinette, Part II  (Read 113208 times)

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Offline Превед

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Re: Queen Marie Antoinette, Part II
« Reply #150 on: May 30, 2014, 01:02:49 PM »
Imagine  the  scenario in  England... the mob  marching to    Windsor Castle   (  England's equiv of  Versailles  )   demanding  that  the  King and his family  get in a coach and return with them to London
...    I think the mob would have been cut to pieces by the Guards and a few other regiments to boot !

Are you not aware of the fact the English executed their King already in 1649 and the following monarchs had to bow to parliament in ways that were unthinkable in France untill 1789?

It's in Russia that the guards would have massacred the mob!
Берёзы севера мне милы,—
Их грустный, опущённый вид,
Как речь безмолвная могилы,
Горячку сердца холодит.

(Афанасий Фет: «Ивы и берёзы», 1843 / 1856)

Offline DNAgenie

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Re: Queen Marie Antoinette, Part II
« Reply #151 on: May 30, 2014, 06:02:06 PM »
Quote
Imagine  the  scenario in  England... the mob  marching to    Windsor Castle   (  England's equiv of  Versailles  )   demanding  that  the  King and his family  get in a coach and return with them to London
...    I think the mob would have been cut to pieces by the Guards and a few other regiments to boot !

There was a scenario enacted like this in England in 1848, when a gathering of thousands of Chartists met at Kennington Common and proposed to march into London to demand the franchise for all male citizens.

The government was so scared that the royal family might be targeted that they bundled Queen Victoria and her family off to the Isle of Wight for their safety. However they were also horrified at the thought of soldiers firing on their own people, so the army was kept in reserve, and special constables were sworn into the police force to deal with the situation. In the event, the "mob" listened to reason, and instead of hundreds of thousands of people invading London, the leaders were allowed to proceed to Parliament in a fleet of taxis to present a petition with hundreds of thousands of names. So the outcome was very different from the French Revolution, 50 years earlier.

Back in 1789 the English King was George III, who did not live at Windsor Castle but at Kew, where he lived a quiet life and did not antagonize his subjects.  Except possibly in America, where they were hardly in a position to invade Windsor Castle, or Kew, and that was the British governments' fault anyway, not King George's.

Offline Suzanne

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Re: Queen Marie Antoinette, Part II
« Reply #152 on: November 12, 2015, 01:24:15 PM »
My 2nd book, Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie Antoinette has been published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the Queenship and Power series

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/queenship-and-revolution-in-early-modern-europe-carolyn-harris/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137497727

All the best

Carolyn Suzanne Harris