L’AUTRICHIENNE / L’AUTRE-CHIENNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1755

November 2, Sunday: Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was born in the Hofburg Palace of Vienna, Austria, the 15th child of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, with the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I.

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS THAT A PARTICULAR INFANT WOULD BECOME AN ARCHDUCHESS OF AUSTRIA AND THEN THE DAUPHINE OF FRANCE AND THEN THE QUEEN OF FRANCE AND OF NAVARRE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1762

October 13, Wednesday: 6-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his older sister Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia “Nannerl” Mozart perform at Schönbrunn Palace before Emperor Franz I, Empress Maria Theresa, 6-year-old Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, and the music teacher to the imperial family, Georg Christoph Wagenseil. Their father Leopold Mozart would write home to Salzburg, “Everyone is amazed, especially at the boy, and everyone whom I have heard says that his genius is incomprehensible.”

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE OCTOBER 13TH, 1762 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1765

According to L. Baudry de Saunier’s HISTOIRE GÉNÉRAL DE LA VÉLOCIPÈDIE published in 1891, le Comte de Sivrac had in this year demonstrated, for the pleasure of 10-year-old Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna at Versailles, a two-wheeled bicycle vehicle called a vélocefère having a wooden frame resembling a horse and a horse saddle for its occupant to sit upon. This vélocefère had in fact been, however, a horse-drawn coach. There is no extant evidence of any vehicle with two wheels in tandem before Von Drais invented the swiftwalker in 1817. It appears that in all probability this “le Comte de Sivrac” was merely the Jean- Henri Sievrac who had obtained a French patent on a horse-drawn carriage he had imported from England.

FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

August: Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna’s father Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, died of a stroke.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1766

“Let them eat cake.” This remark has been attributed to Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, but at the time she was a mere 11 years of age and was not yet renamed Marie and did not as yet have any official connection with the nation of France. Also, the “cake” supposedly having been recommended would not have been the sort of sweetened fluffy pastry we know under that name –more expensive than regular bread– but would have been, very much to the contrary, an especially coarse and therefore less expensive form of foodstuff. To sum up: none of this makes any sense. It’s a just-so story. Interpretation of the meaning of such a remark cannot be straightforward and in any event there’s no chance in the world that it was her who made it.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1767

When the small pox struck the royal family in Vienna, Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna had already had this disease at an earlier age. Her brother Charles Joseph and her sister Maria Johanna had contracted small pox and died during previous years. Her sister Maria Josepha contracted the infection this time and died, and her mother Maria Theresa contracted the infection would suffer its effect for the remainder of her life. The small pox would leave 12-year-old Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna as the only available family match for 14-year- old Louis Auguste, who was a 2d cousin once removed. Her teeth were unacceptably crooked and therefore she needed a series of painful oral surgeries, performed over a period of three months, of course without anesthesia, before a marriage contract could be arranged and a dowry of 200,000 crowns set.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1770

April 19, Thursday: Austrian Archduchess Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna got married by proxy with Louis, le Dauphin before the Papal Nuncio in Vienna. Louis was proxied by one of Maria’s brothers. Maria would henceforward be known as , Dauphine of France.

Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were guests of Prince San Angelo of Naples, in Rome. They met the Scottish Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart.

Australia was “discovered” by the British (though the Dutch had already named the area New Holland and had experienced at least 15 landings since 1606). Captain James Cook had in 1768 set out on the Endeavor on a scientific mission, with the young naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Charles Solander (a pupil of Carl von Linné), as well as artists. On April 29, 1770, his ship stood into Botany Bay, which Cook originally called Sting Ray Harbor — but the great collection of new botanical materials by Banks and Solander provoked him to change the name.

BOTANIZING

JOURNAL: THURSDAY, 19th. In the P.M. had fresh Gales at South- South-West and Cloudy Squally weather, with a large Southerly Sea; at 6 took in the Topsails, and at 1 A.M. brought too and Sounded, but had no ground with 130 fathoms of line. At 5, set the Topsails close reef’d, and 6, saw land1 extending from North- 1. The south-east coast of Australia. See chart. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

East to West, distance 5 or 6 Leagues, having 80 fathoms, fine sandy bottom. We continued standing to the Westward with the Wind at South-South-West until 8, at which time we got Topgallant Yards a Cross, made all sail, and bore away along shore North-East for the Eastermost land we had in sight, being at this time in the Latitude of 37 degrees 58 minutes South, and Longitude of 210 degrees 39 minutes West. The Southermost point of land we had in sight, which bore from us West 1/4 South, I judged to lay in the Latitude of 38 degrees 0 minutes South and in the Longitude of 211 degrees 7 minutes West from the Meridian of Greenwich. I have named it Point Hicks, because Lieutenant Hicks was the first who discover’d this Land. To the Southward of this point we could see no land, and yet it was clear in that Quarter, and by our Longitude compared with that of Tasman’s, the body of Van Diemen’s land ought to have bore due South from us, and from the soon falling of the Sea after the wind abated I had reason to think it did; but as we did not see it, and finding the Coast to trend North-East and South-West, or rather more to the Westward, makes me Doubtfull whether they are one land or no.2 However, every one who compares this Journal with that of Tasman’s will be as good a judge as I am; but it is necessary to observe that I do not take the Situation of Vandiemen’s from the Printed Charts, but from the extract of Tasman’s Journal, published by Dirk Rembrantse. At Noon we were in the Latitude of 37 degrees 50 minutes and Longitude of 210 degrees 29 minutes West. The extreams of the Land extending from North-West to East-North-East, a remarkable point, bore North 20 degrees East, distant 4 Leagues. This point rises to a round hillock very much like the Ramhead going into Plymouth sound, on which account I called it by the same name; Latitude 37 degrees 39 minutes, Longitude 210 degrees 22 minutes West. The Variation by an Azimuth taken this morning was 8 degrees 7 minutes East. What we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand. HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. I HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. II

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

2. Had not the gale on the day before forced Cook to run to the northward, he would have made the north end of the Furneaux Group, and probably have discovered Bass Strait, which would have cleared up the doubt, which he evidently felt, as to whether Tasmania was an island or not. The fact was not positively known until Dr. Bass sailed through the Strait in a whale-boat in 1797. Point Hicks was merely a rise in the coast-line, where it dipped below the horizon to the westward, and the name of Point Hicks Hill is now borne by an elevation that seems to agree with the position. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

May 14, Monday: Leopold Mozart, the father, and young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived in Naples.

At the edge of the forest of Compiègne, Marie Antoinette, an archduchess of Austria, daughter of Maria- Theresa and sister to Emperor Joseph II, was handed over to King Louis XV of France. Then and there she first laid eyes on her husband, the Dauphin Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duc de Berry.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

May 16, Wednesday: Louis, le Dauphin (age 15) and Marie Antoinette, the archduchess of Vienna, got married in the chapel of the Palace of Versailles. That evening the worst fireworks disaster in history took place in the Place de la Concorde, 133 people being killed in the blast.

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

October 27, Saturday: At Fontainebleau, Les deux avares, an opéra bouffon by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry to words of Fenouillot de Falbaine, was performed for the initial time, as part of the wedding celebration of Louis le Dauphin and Marie Antoinette.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1774

April 19, Tuesday: By capturing the Avziano-Petrovsky metal works on the upper Belaya River, Emelian Pugachev revived his revolt. He added 400 men to the number of his effectives, and obtained badly needed provisions.

In France, at the Opéra, Iphigénie en Aulide, a tragédie opéra by Christoph Willibald Gluck to words of DuRoullet after Racine after Euripedes, was performed for the initial time. This had been scheduled for April 13th but a lead singer had a cold, and the members of the royal family obligingly adjusted their schedules. The work captivated the audience, which included the dauphin and his wife Marie Antoinette.

At King’s Theatre in London, Nitteti, an opera seria by Sacchini to words of Bottarelli after Metastasio, was performed for the initial time.

Edmund Burke’s speech on American taxation. He was elected for the 2-member seat of Bristol. He made a comment that would come to be recognized as definitive of the obligation that an Member of Parliament owes to his constituents: “Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”3

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.

May 10, Tuesday: King Louis XV of France died of the small pox so Louis le Dauphine became King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became Queen of France and Navarre.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

3. This reminds me, as a former Silicon Valley propeller-head, of the hostility that Steve used to express for the idea of using focus groups in product planning: “It’s not their job to know what they want — that’s my job.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1776

Marie Antoinette skated.

When Johann Friedrich Simon introduced gymnastics in German high schools, the more spectacular maneuvers were performed, for safety, over water (this would be creating, as a fringe benefit, a sport of high diving).

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO INSTANT HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1777

King Louis XVI confided in whispers to Marie Antoinette’s brother, Joseph II, that he had a sexual problem preventing normal intercourse. Within a couple of months, minor surgery corrected the problem, which was phimosis, a painful strangling of the head of the erect penis by an overtight ring of foreskin. Four years later, Marie-Antoinette would produce an heir to the throne of France.4

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

May 29, Thursday: Christoph Willibald Gluck arrived in Paris to produce Armide and was granted an immediate audience with his most ardent supporter in France, Queen Marie Antoinette.

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

4. The child she produced would die young, in a prison. One of the charges against its mother, at her trial, would be that she had taught him how to “diddle,” that is, to masturbate. Defiant to the end, the tutorial mother would inquire of her judges “Is such a crime possible?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1778

January 27, Tuesday: The crew of the USS Providence went ashore to spike the guns of the forts overlooking New Providence (Nassau) in the Bahamas of the Caribbean, in the process discovering military stores including 1,600 pounds of powder, and rescuing 30 American prisoners. They recaptured five prize vessels which had been brought in by the British, and seized a 16-gun British vessel.

Roland, a tragédie lyrique by Niccolò Piccinni to words of Marmontel after Quinault, was performed for the initial time, at the Paris Opéra. This was Piccinni’s first . The rehearsals had been so horrendous that Piccinni had made plans to leave for Naples on the following day. As it turned out, the performance, attended by Queen Marie Antoinette, was a success. Reviews would be generally positive.

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

December 19, Saturday:At the Palace of Versailles Marie Antoinette’s 1st child was born in the presence of members of the royal family, and of the royal court. This was the custom. The mother, however, almost died from suffocation. It seems that in the panic to get her breathing, some of the windows were shattered to introduce fresh air. Then the attending surgeon bled her. Shortly after the infant’s birth it was baptized as Princess Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchess of Angoulême. The mother would call it “Mousseline.”5

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT: ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC, PARTICULAR.

5. Per the Salic Law of King Clovis I (circa 466CE-511CE), females could not be in the line of succession to the throne. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1779

December 14, Tuesday: Amadis de Gaule, a tragédie lyrique by Johann Christian Bach to words of de Vismes du Valgay after Quinault, was performed for the initial time, at the Paris Opéra, before Queen Marie Antoinette. This was his last complete opera, and a failure. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1781

A landmark in biography, the CONFESSIONS of Rousseau, violating the convention which would later be uttered by Dostoevski, that there are “things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every man has a number of such things in his mind,” and amply justifying the judgment of Johnson, that Rousseau had been “one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been.” (The author had recalled, incidentally, an incident which had happened in Grenoble during the year 1740. He had recalled that “a great princess,” when informed that the peasants had no bread, replied: “Qu’ils mangent de la ” — this brioche being a dinner roll that was rather more costly than ordinary bread. Since the illustrious princess Marie Antoinette had not yet even been conceived in that year 1740, and since anyway Rousseau had already written this into his manuscript two years before she arrived in France, it is clear that if anyone ever did suggest, of starving peasants, that they ought to be fed dinner rolls, it could not have been her. The remark may have been merely a nonspecific gibe against the sort of well-meaning “liberal” aristocrats whose kind conceits veered toward the unworkable.)

August 1, Wednesday: British forces occupied Yorktown, Virginia.

Antonio Sacchini was presented to Parisian society at a ball given by Queen Marie Antoinette. Also present was the queen’s brother the Emperor Joseph II of Austria, who had urged her to bring Sacchini to Paris.

October 22, Monday: At the Palace of Versailles, Marie Antoinette’s 2d child Louis Joseph Xavier François, 26th Dauphin of France was born (this meant that his uncle Louis Stanislas Xavier, comte de Provence, was bumped out of the line of succession to the throne). HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1784

August 11, Wednesday: At about midnight on the grounds of the palace of Versailles, Louis, prince de Rohan, cardinal bishop of Strasbourg, had an encounter with a young woman he presumed to be Queen Marie Antoinette (who was in fact Nicole Leguay d’Oliva, a prostitute who had been hired by his mistress Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois, Madame de La Motte to impersonate the queen — and thus began the famed “Queen’s Necklace Affair”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1785

Antoine-Auguste Parmentier embarked on a campaign to persuade the French to rely upon the potato. King Louis XVI allowed him to plant potatoes on a hundred abandoned acres outside Paris, and he kept the field under heavy guard. Then, one night, this cunning fellow allowed this guard to go off duty — and so of course as expected the local peasants sneaked over and stole his entire crop, to plant on their own farms. He persuaded the king to throw a banquet at which only potatoes were served, and persuaded Marie Antoinette to put potato blossoms in her hair. What an operator! attended that banquet.

Humphry Marshall, cousin of William Bartram and the younger John Bartram, who had a large arboretum at Marshallton in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in this year published a catalog ARBUSTRUM AMERICANUM in which he accounted for many of the species in his collection. BOTANIZING

Beginning in this year André Michaux and his son François André Michaux were making their initial tour of the US, not only introducing plants from France and her colonies but also setting up nurseries from which they might export American plants to France. In southeastern North America they encountered wild populations of Cherokee rose, which were believed to be native. (The plant appears to have come to North America with early Spanish explorers or settlers, as it is native to China, and had been cultivated in Moslem countries. Similarly, when William Penn acquired Penn’s Woods from the Indians, he found they were already cultivating the peach, native to Persia, in their gardens.) This visit would continue into the year 1796.

March 27, Easter Sunday: At the palace of Versailles, Marie Antoinette’s 3d child, Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy was born. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

August 15, Monday: Thomas “De” Quincey was born in Manchester, England, son of Thomas Quincey, a textile importer, and Elizabeth Penson Quincey (it would only be at a later date that his parent would add this “De” into the family name).

Just over a year after the original assignation after midnight on the grounds of the palace of Versailles, the Queen’s Necklace Affair was brought into the open. Immediately before he was to say mass on Assumption Day, Louis, prince de Rohan, cardinal bishop of Strasbourg was detained and brought before King Louis to be questioned by him personally. He was then escorted to imprisonment in the Bastille. The Cardinal, duped by his mistress Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois, Madame de La Motte (who had been taking money from him in the name of Queen Marie Antoinette), had purchased in the name of the queen a diamond necklace worth 1,600,000 livres. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1786

It was noted that 5-year-old Louis Joseph Xavier François, 26th Dauphin of France had difficulty in walking trussed up in the little iron corset intended to correct his curvature of the spine.

July 9, Sunday: At the Palace of Versailles, Marie Antoinette’s 4th child, Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrice de France, Fille de France, Madame Sophie was born. The infant was quite large.

Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris to James Monroe: Dear Sir I wrote you last on the 10th. of May, since which your favor of May 11. has come to hand. The political world enjoys great quiet here. The King of Prussia is still living, but like the snuff of a candle which sometimes seems out, and then blazes up again. Some think that his death will not produce any immediate effect in Europe. His kingdom, like a machine will go for some time with the winding up he has given it. The King’s visit to Cherbourg has made a great sensation in England and here. It proves to the world that it is a serious object to this country, and that the King commits himself for the accomplishment of it. Indeed so many cones have been sunk that no doubt remains of the practicability of it. It will contain, as is said, 80 ships of the line, be one of the best harbours in the world, and by means of two entrances on different sides will admit vessels to come in and go out with every wind. The effect of this in another war with England defies calculation.—Having no news to communicate I will recur to the subjects of your letter of May 11. With respect to the new states were the question to stand simply in this form, How may the ultramontane territory be disposed of so as to produce the greatest and most immediate benefit to the inhabitants of the maritime states of the union? the plan would be more plausible of laying it off into two or three states only. Even on this view however there would still be something to be said against it which might render it at least doubtful. But it is a question which good faith forbids us to receive into discussion. This requires us to state the question in it’s just form, How may the territories of the Union be disposed of so as to produce the greatest degree of happiness to their inhabitants? With respect to the Maritime states nothing, or little remains to be done. With respect then to the Ultramontane states, will their inhabitants be happiest divided into states of 30,000 square miles, not quite as large as Pennsylvania, or into states of 160,000 square miles each, that is to say three times as large as Virginia within the Alleghaney? They will not only be happier in states of a moderate size, but it is the only way in which they can exist as a regular society. Considering the American character in general, that of those people particularly, and the inergetic nature of our governments, a state of such extent as 160,000 square miles would soon crumble into little ones. These are the circumstances which reduce the HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

Indians to such small societies. They would produce an effect on our people similar to this. They would not be broken into such small peices because they are more habituated to subordination, and value more a government of regular law. But you would surely reverse the nature of things in making small states on the ocean and large ones beyond the mountains. If we could in our consciences say that great states beyond the mountains will make the people happiest, we must still ask whether they will be contented to be laid off into large states? They certainly will not; and if they decide to divide themselves we are not able to restrain them. They will end by separating from our confederacy and becoming it’s enemies. We had better then look forward and see what will be the probable course of things. This will surely be a division of that country into states of a small, or at most of a moderate size. If we lay them off into such, they will acquiesce, and we shall have the advantage of arranging them so as to produce the best combinations of interest. What Congress has already done in this matter is an argument the more in favour of the revolt of those states against a different arrangement, and of their acquiescence under a continuance of that. Upon this plan we treat them as fellow citizens. They will have a just share in their own government, they will love us, and pride themselves in an union with us. Upon the other we treat them as subjects, we govern them, and not they themselves; they will abhor us as masters, and break off from us in defiance. I confess to you that I can see no other turn that these two plans would take, but I respect your opinion, and your knowlege of the country too much, to be over confident in my own. I thank you sincerely for your communication that my not having sooner given notice of the arrets relative to fish gave discontent to some persons. These are the most friendly offices you can do me, because they enable me to justify myself if I am right, or correct myself if wrong. If those who thought I might have been remiss would have written to me on the subject, I should have loved them for their candour and thanked them for it; for I have no jealousies nor resentments at things of this kind where I have no reason to beleive they have been excited by a hostile spirit, and I suspect no such spirit in a single member of Congress. You know there were two arrets, the first of Aug. 30. 1784. the 2d. of the 18th. and 25th. of September 1785. As to the first it would have been a sufficient justification of myself to say that it was in the time of my predecessor, nine months before I came into office, and that there was no more reason for my giving information of it when I did come into office than of all the other transactions which preceded that period. But this would seem to lay a blame on Dr. Franklin for not communicating it which I am conscious he did not deserve. This government affects a secrecy in all it’s transactions, whatsoever, tho they be of a nature not to admit a perfect secrecy. Their arrets respecting the islands go to those islands and are unpublished and unknown in France except in the bureau where they are formed. That of Aug. 1784. would probably be communicated to the merchants of the seaport towns also. But Paris having no commercial connections with them, if HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

any thing makes it’s way from a seaport town to Paris, it must be by accident. We have indeed agents in these seaports; but they value their offices so little that they do not trouble themselves to inform us of what is passing there. As a proof that these things do not transpire here, nor are easily got at, recollect that Mr. Adams, Doctr. Franklin and myself were all here on the spot together from Aug. 1784. to June 1785., that is to say 10. months, and yet not one of us knew of the Arret of Aug. 1784. On Sep. 18 and 25 1785. the second was passed and here alone I became responsible. I think it was about 6. weeks before I got notice of it, that is in November. On the 20th. of that month writing to Count de Vergennes on another subject I took occasion to remonstrate to him on that. But from early in November when the Fitzhughs went to America, I had never a confidential opportunity of writing to Mr. Jay from hence directly for several months. In a letter of Dec. 14.2 to Mr. Jay I mentioned to him the want of opportunity to write to him confidentially, which obliged me at that moment to write by post viâ London and on such things only as both post offices were welcome to see. On the 2d. January Mr. Bingham setting out for London, I wrote to Mr. Jay, sending him a copy of my letter to Ct. de Vergennes, and stating something which had passed in conversation on the same subject. I prayed Mr. Bingham to take charge of the letter, and either to send it by a safe hand or carry it himself as circumstances should render most adviseable. I beleive he kept it to carry himself. He did not sail from London till about the 12th. of March, nor arrive in America till the middle of May. Thus you see what causes had prevented a letter which I had written on the 20th. of November from getting to America till the month of May. No wonder then if notice of this arret came first to you by the way of the W. Indies; and in general I am confident that you will receive notice of the regulations of this country respecting their islands by the way of those islands before you will from hence. Nor can this be remedied but by a system of bribery which would end in the corruption of your own ministers, and produce no good adequate to the expence. Be so good as to communicate these circumstances to the persons who you think may have supposed me guilty of remissness on this occasion. I will turn to a subject more pleasing to both, and give you my sincere congratulations on your marriage. Your own dispositions and the inherent comforts of that state will ensure you a great addition of happiness. Long may you live to enjoy it, and enjoy it in full measure. The interest I feel in every one connected with you will justify my presenting my earliest respects to the lady, and of tendering her the homage of my friendship. I shall be happy at all times to be useful to either of you and to receive your commands. I inclose you the bill of lading of your Encyclopedie. With respect to the remittance for it, of which you make mention, I beg you not to think of it. I know by experience that proceeding to make a settlement in life, a man has need of all his resources; and I should be unhappy were you to lessen them by an attention to this trifle. Let it lie till you have nothing else to do with your money. Adieu my dear Sir and be assured of the esteem with which I am your friend & HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

servt., Th: Jefferson HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1787

June 19, Tuesday: Shays’ Rebellion had become a recurring topic during the debates among the framers of the new federal Constitution, encouraging some of them toward a “Virginia plan” which called for an unprecedented and powerful central government over a “New Jersey plan” which seemed too favorable to state sovereignty. “The rebellion in Massachusetts is a warning, gentlemen,” cautioned James Madison, proponent of the Virginia plan. On this day the Virginia plan carried by a vote of seven to three.

After five or six days of convulsions during the cutting of new teeth, Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrice, who like her brother Louis Joseph Xavier François, 26th Dauphin of France suffered from tuberculosis, died in Versailles at the age of 11 months. The body would be placed in the Royal Basilica of Saint Denis, north of Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1788

April 7, Monday: Court de Gébelin assisted at the Masonic lodge “Neuf Sœurs” in the initiation of his former critic Marie Arouet de . This would attract also such notable fellow masons as the astronomer Lalande, the naturalist Lacépède, the sculptor Houdon, and the American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin.

Ohio’s initial permanent settlement of white people began with 48 men of the Ohio Company of Associates led by General Rufus Putnam. Arriving at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, they began their “Marietta” across the Muskingum from a military outpost of three years prior, Fort Harmar (the naming was in honor of Marie Antoinette, queen of the nation with which we were allied against England). HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1789

June 4, Wednesday: Louis Joseph Xavier François, 26th Dauphin of France died of tuberculosis at the age of 7 (it is speculated that the disease had been transmitted to him by his wet nurse Geneviève Poitrine).6

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Prince Karl Lichnowsky arrived back in Vienna.

The Captivity of Judah, an oratorio by William Crotch to words of Schomberg and Owen, was performed for the initial time, at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where Crotch was a student.

October 6, Tuesday: The royal family of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette with their daughter Marie Thérèse Charlotte and their son Louis-Charles was forced to move from the palace at Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

October 10, Saturday: On the 2d day of the French Assembly’s debate about the Penal Code, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin submitted a humanitarian proposal which included a recommendation that death, without the accompaniment of torture and by means of head-chopping, should become the sole and standard form of capital punishment in modern France. HEADCHOPPING , I FRENCH REVOLUTION, II

6. The death would go virtually unnoticed — despite being “next” in the line of succession to the throne of France, nobody had ever taken him seriously in his little iron corset necessitated by curvature of the spine, and anyway he had a little brother Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy whose spine was straight who would instantly become 27th Dauphin of France. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1791

April 18, Monday: As King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette attempted to leave the palace for Saint-Cloud their way was blocked by a large crowd. National Guardsmen refused an order from the Marquis de Lafayette to clear a path. There was a standoff for an hour and 45 minutes during which the crowd hurled abuse at the royal pair, who finally gave up and returned to the palace.

June 21, Tuesday: The royal family, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette with their daughter Marie Thérèse Charlotte and their son Louis-Charles, attempted to flee secretly from the Tuileries Palace. The attempt would be detected and they would be returned to Paris.

There was a supremely deadly Caribbean hurricane that struck the island of Cuba. Over and above the enormous loss of human life, 11,700 head of cattle drowned in the associated floods HURRICANES

August 27, Saturday: The was promulgated by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia and Emperor Leopold II — this would supposedly guarantee the safety of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1792

August 10, Friday: Swiss mercenaries in the French army defended the Tuileries Palace in Paris against the revolutionary mob, and after resistance ceased approximately 500-900 of them (accounts vary) were chased down individually in their colorful uniforms:

They did not know it at the time, but they had been defending merely an ugly piece of architecture, King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, their daughter Marie Thérèse Charlotte, and their son Louis-Charles already having vacated the premises. This empty loss would be commemorated in 1821 in a sculpture outside one of the gates of Lucerne, Switzerland, after a model by Bertel Thorvaldsen: HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

August 13, Monday: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and little Marie Thérèse Charlotte and Louis-Charles became prisoners in the tower of the Temple (a 12th-Century fortress that had been erected by the Knights Templar in what is now the 3d arrondissement of Paris, no longer in existence). From this point forward the would understand their family name to be Capet. Here “M. Capet” takes the air in his prison: HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

Adelaide Amelia Louisa Theresa Caroline was born in Meiningen, the 1st of the daughters of George, Duke of Saxe-Coburg Meiningen.

WALDEN: As with our colleges, as with a hundred “modern PEOPLE OF improvements”; there is an illusion about them; there is not WALDEN always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

ADELAIDE HARRIET MARTINEAU

William Ellis got married with a woman of the Bedborough family who had been born in Reading, England (not much is known about her).

Thaddeus Mason Harris was made a resident member of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

September 3, Monday: 162 prisoners, hardly any of them political, were killed at Bicetre Prison. 70 were killed at Saint-Bernard Prison. 40 prostitutes were killed at La Salpetriere Prison. Princesse de Lamballe, friend of Queen Marie Antoinette, was forced into a back alley at La Force Prison and hacked to pieces, and her head was mounted on a pike and paraded through the city to the Temple for viewing by the royal family. (Only roughly half the prisoners in Paris would survive these “.” Over the following weeks similar events would take place across the nation.)

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

September 20, Thursday: The French met for the initial time. From this date, French documents would bear the inscription “Year One of French .”

At , although they were sustaining casualties at a rate of three for each enemy casualty, the revolutionary French managed to halt the troops of Brunswick and Conde, made up of Prussians, Austrians, and French refugee noblesse, preventing them from marching into Paris and stifling this experiment in democracy. The battle was witnessed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe accompanying his patron, Duke Karl-August of Weimar. “A little fire is quickly trodden out, Which being suffered, rivers cannot quench.” — Shakespeare. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

“Brilliant generalship in itself is a frightening thing — the very idea that the thought processes of a single brain of a Hannibal or a Scipio can play themselves out in the destruction of thousands of young men in an afternoon.” — Victor Davis Hanson, CARNAGE AND CULTURE: LANDMARK BATTLES IN THE RISE OF WESTERN POWER (NY: Doubleday, 2001) HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

A few miles distant from the little town of St. Menehould, in the north-east of France, are the village and hill of Valmy; and near the crest of that hill a simple monument points out the burial-place of the heart of a general of the French republic, and a Marshal of the French empire. The elder Kellerman (father of the distinguished officer of that name, whose cavalry-charge decided the ) held high commands in the French armies throughout the wars of the Convention, the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire. He survived those wars, and the empire itself, dying in extreme old age in 1820. The last wish of the veteran on his deathbed was that his heart should be deposited in the battlefield of Valmy, there to repose among the remains of his old companions in arms, who had fallen at his side on that spot twenty-eight years before, on the memorable day when they won the primal victory of revolutionary France, and prevented the armies of Brunswick and the emigrant bands of Conde from marching on defenseless Paris, and destroying the immature democracy in its cradle. The Duke of Valmy (for Kellerman, when made one of ’s military peers in 1802, took his title from this same battlefield) had participated, during his long and active career, in the gaining of many a victory far more immediately dazzling than the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the new levies, and the disorganized relics of the old ’s army, then opposed to the combined hosts and chosen leaders of Prussia, Austria, and the French refugee noblesse, determined at once and for ever the belligerent character of the revolution. The raw artisans and tradesmen, the clumsy burghers, the base mechanics and low peasant churls, as it, had been the fashion to term the middle and lower classes in France, found that they could face cannon- balls, pull triggers, and cross bayonets, without having been drilled into military machines, and without being officered by scions of noble houses. They awoke to the consciousness of their own instinctive soldiership. They at once acquired confidence in themselves and in each other; and that confidence soon grew into a spirit of unbounded audacity and ambition. “From the cannonade of Valmy may be dated the commencement of that career of victory which carried their armies to Vienna and the Kremlin.” One of the gravest reflections that arises from the contemplation of the civil restlessness and military enthusiasm which the close of the last century saw nationalized in France, is the consideration that these disturbing influences have become perpetual. No settled system of government, that shall endure from generation to generation, that shall be proof against corruption and popular violence, seems capable of taking root among the French. And every revolutionary movement in Paris HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

thrills throughout the rest of the world. Even the successes which the powers allied against France gained in 1814 and 1815, important as they were, could not annul the effects of the preceding twenty-three years of general convulsion and war. In 1830, the dynasty which foreign bayonets had imposed on France was shaken off; and men trembled at the expected outbreak of French anarchy and the dreaded inroads of French ambition. They “looked forward with harassing anxiety to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century of our era.” Louis Philippe cajoled Revolution, and then strove with seeming success to stifle it. But in spite of Fieschi laws, in spite of the dazzle of Algerian razzias and Pyrenees-effacing marriages, in spite of hundreds of armed forts, and hundreds of thousands of coercing troops, Revolution lived, and struggled to get free. The old Titan spirit heaved restlessly beneath “the monarchy based on republican institutions.” At last, four years ago, the whole fabric of kingcraft was at once rent and scattered to the winds, by the uprising of the Parisian democracy; and insurrections, barricades, and dethronement’s, the downfall of coronets and crowns, the armed collisions of parties, systems, and populations, became the commonplaces of recent European history. France now calls herself a republic. She first assumed that title on the 20th of September, 1792, on the very clay on which the battle of Valmy was fought and won. To that battle the democratic spirit which in 1848, as well as in 1792, proclaimed the Republic in Paris, owed its preservation, and it is thence that the imperishable activity of its principles may be dated. Far different seemed the prospects of democracy in Europe on the eve of that battle; and far different would have been the present position and influence of the French nation, if Brunswick’s columns had charged with more boldness, or the lines of Dumouriez resisted with less firmness. When France, in 1792, declared war with the great powers of Europe, she was far from possessing that splendid military organization which the experience of a few revolutionary campaigns taught her to assume, and which she has never abandoned. The army of the old monarchy had, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV, sunk into gradual decay, both in numerical force, and in efficiency of equipment and spirit. The laurels gained by the auxiliary regiments which Louis XVI sent to the American war, did but little to restore the general tone of the army. The insubordination and license, which the revolt of the French guards, and the participation of other troops in many of the first excesses of the Revolution introduced among the soldiery, were soon rapidly disseminated through all the ranks. Under the Legislative Assembly every complaint of the soldier against his officer, however frivolous or ill-founded, was listened to with eagerness, and investigated with partiality, on the principles of liberty and equality. Discipline accordingly became more and more relaxed; and the dissolution of several of the old corps, under the pretext of their being tainted with an aristocratic feeling, aggravated the confusion and inefficiency of the department. Many of the most effective regiments during the last HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

period of the monarchy had consisted of foreigners. These had either been slaughtered in defense of the throne against insurrections, like the Swiss; or had been disbanded, and had crossed the frontier to recruit the forces which were assembling for the invasion of France. Above all, the emigration of the noblesse had stripped the French army of nearly all its officers of high rank, and of the greatest portion of its subalterns. More than twelve thousand of the high-born youth of France, who had been trained to regard military command as their exclusive patrimony, and to whom the nation had been accustomed to look up as its natural guides and champions in the storm of war, were now marshaled beneath the banner of Conde and the other emigrant princes, for the overthrow of the French armies, and the reduction of the French capital. Their successors in the French regiments and brigades had as yet acquired neither skill nor experience: they possessed neither self-reliance nor the respect of the men who were under them. Such was the state of the wrecks of the old army; but the bulk of the forces with which France began the war, consisted of raw insurrectionary levies, which were even less to be depended on. The , as the revolutionary volunteers were called, flocked, indeed, readily to the frontier from every department when the war was proclaimed, and the fierce leaders of the shouted that the country was in danger. They were full of zeal and courage, “heated and excited by the scenes of the Revolution, and inflamed by the florid eloquence, the songs, dances, and signal-words with which it had been celebrated.” But they were utterly undisciplined, and turbulently impatient of superior authority, or systematical control. Many ruffians, also, who were sullied with participation in the most sanguinary horrors of Paris, joined the camps, and were pre-eminent alike for misconduct before the enemy and for savage insubordination against their own officers. On one occasion during the campaign of Valmy, eight battalions of federates, intoxicated with massacre and sedition, joined the forces under Dumouriez, and soon threatened to uproot all discipline, saying openly that the ancient officers were traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff, and an escort of a hundred hussars. “Fellows,” said he, “for I will not call you either citizens or soldiers, you see before you this , behind you this cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels amongst you charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from amongst you, or denounce them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct.” One of our recent historians of the Revolution, who narrates this incident, thus apostrophizes the French general: — “Patience, O Dumouriez, this uncertain heap of shriekers, mutineers, were they once drilled and inured, will become a phalanxed mass of fighters; and wheel and whirl to order swiftly, like the wind or the HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

whirlwind; tanned mustachio-figures; often barefoot, even barebacked, with sinews of iron; who require only bread and gunpowder; very sons of fire; the adroitest, hastiest, hottest, ever seen perhaps since Attila’s time.” Such phalanxed masses of fighters did the Carmagnoles ultimately become; but France ran a fearful risk in being obliged to rely on them when the process of their transmutation had barely commenced. The first events, indeed, of the war were disastrous and disgraceful to France, even beyond what might have been expected from the chaotic state in which it found her armies as well as her government. In the hopes of profiting by the unprepared state of Austria, then the mistress of the Netherlands, the French opened the campaign of 1792 by an invasion of Flanders, with forces whose muster-rolls showed a numerical overwhelming superiority to the enemy, and seemed to promise a speedy conquest of that old battle-field of Europe. But the first flash of an Austrian saber, or the first sound of an Austrian gun, was enough to discomfit the French. Their first corps, four thousand strong, that advanced from Lille across the frontier, came suddenly upon a far inferior detachment of the Austrian garrison of Tournay. Not a shot was fired, not a bayonet leveled. With one simultaneous cry of panic the French broke and ran headlong back to Lille, where they completed the specimen of insubordination which they had given in the field, by murdering their general and several of their chief officers. On the same day, another division under Biron, mustering ten thousand sabres and bayonets, saw a few Austrian skirmishers reconnoitering their position. The French advanced posts had scarcely given and received a volley, and only a few balls from the enemy’s field- pieces had fallen among the lines, when two regiments of French dragoons raised the cry, “We are betrayed,” galloped off, and were followed in disgraceful rout by the rest of the whole army. Similar panics, or repulses almost equally discreditable, occurred whenever Rochambeau, or Luckner, or La Fayette, the earliest French generals in the war, brought their troops into the presence of the enemy. Meanwhile, the allied sovereigns had gradually collected on the a veteran and finely-disciplined army for the invasion of France, which for numbers, equipment, and martial renown, both of generals and men, was equal to any that Germany had ever sent forth to conquer. Their design was to strike boldly and decisively at the heart of France, and penetrating the country through the Ardennes, to proceed by Chalons upon Paris. The obstacles that lay in their way seemed insignificant. The disorder and imbecility of the French armies had been even augmented by the forced flight of Lafayette, and a sudden change of generals. The only troops posted on or near the track by which the allies were about to advance, were the twenty-three thousand men at Sedan, whom La Fayette had commanded, and a corps of twenty thousand near , the command of which had just been transferred from Luckner to Kellerman. There were only three fortresses which it was necessary for the allies to capture or mask — Sedan, Longwy, and . The defenses and stores of HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

these three were known to be wretchedly dismantled and insufficient; and when once these feeble barriers were overcome, and Chalons reached, a fertile and unprotected country seemed to invite the invaders to this “military promenade to Paris,” which they gaily talked of accomplishing. At the end of July the allied army, having completed all preparations for the campaign, broke up from its cantonments, and marching from Luxembourg upon Longwy, crossed the French frontier. Sixty thousand Prussians, trained in the school, and many of them under the eye of the Great Frederick, heirs of the glories of the Seven Years’ War, and universally esteemed the best troops in Europe, marched in one column against the central point of attack. Forty-five thousand Austrians, the greater part of whom were picked troops, and had served in the recent Turkish war, supplied two formidable corps that supported the flanks of the Prussians. There was also a powerful body of Hessians and, leagued with the Germans against the Parisian democracy, came fifteen thousand of the noblest and bravest amongst the sons of France. In these corps of emigrants, many of the highest born of the , scions of houses whose chivalric trophies had for centuries filled Europe with renown, served as rank and file. They looked on the road to Paris as the path which they were to carve out by their swords to victory, to honor, to the rescue of their king, to reunion with their families, to the recovery of their patrimony, and to the restoration of their order. Over this imposing army the allied sovereigns placed as generalissimo the Duke of Brunswick, one of the minor reigning princes of Germany, a statesman of no mean capacity, and who had acquired in the Seven Years’ War, a military reputation second only to that of the Great Frederick himself. He had been deputed a few years before to quell the popular movements which then took place in Holland; and he had put down the attempted revolution in that country with a promptitude and completeness, which appeared to augur equal success to the army that now marched under his orders on a similar mission into France. Moving majestically forward, with leisurely deliberation, that seemed to show the consciousness of superior strength, and a steady purpose of doing their work thoroughly, the Allies appeared before Longwy on the 20th of August, and the dispirited and dependent garrison opened the gates of that fortress to them after the first shower of bombs. On the 2nd of September the still more important stronghold of Verdun capitulated after scarcely the shadow of resistance. Brunswick’s superior force was now interposed between Kellerman’s troops on the left, and the other French army near Sedan, which La Fayette’s flight had, for the time, left destitute of a commander. It was in the power of the German general, by striking with an overwhelming mass to the right and left, to crush in succession each of these weak armies, and the allies might then have marched irresistible and unresisted upon Paris. But at this crisis Dumouriez, the new commander-in-chief of the French, arrived at the camp near Sedan, and commenced a series of movements, by which he reunited the dispersed and disorganized forces of his country, checked the Prussian columns HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

at the very moment when the last obstacles of their triumph seemed to have given way, and finally rolled back the tide of invasion far across the enemy’s frontier. The French fortresses had fallen; but nature herself still offered to brave and vigorous defenders of the land, the means of opposing a barrier to the progress of the allies. A ridge of broken ground, called the Argonne, extends from the vicinity of Sedan towards the southwest for about fifteen or sixteen leagues. The country of L’Argonne has now been cleared and drained; but in 1792 it was thickly wooded, and the lower portions of its unequal surface were filled with rivulets and marshes. It thus presented a natural barrier of from four or five leagues broad, which was absolutely impenetrable to an army, except by a few defiles, such as an inferior force might easily fortify and defend. Dumouriez succeeded in marching his army down from Sedan behind the Argonne, and in occupying its passes, while the Prussians still lingered on the north-eastern side of the forest line. Ordering Kellerman to wheel round from Metz to St. Menehould, and the reinforcements from the interior and extreme north also to concentrate at that spot, Dumouriez trusted to assemble a powerful force in the rear of the south- west extremity of the Argonne, while, with the twenty-five thousand men under his immediate command, he held the enemy at bay before the passes, or forced him to a long circumvolution round one extremity of the forest ridge, during which, favorable opportunities of assailing his flank were almost certain to occur. Dumouriez fortified the principal defiles, and boasted of the Thermopylae which he had found for the invaders; but the simile was nearly rendered fatally complete for the defending force. A pass, which was thought of inferior importance, had been but slightly manned, and an Austrian corps under Clairfayt, forced it after some sharp fighting. Dumouriez with great difficulty saved himself from being enveloped and destroyed by the hostile columns that now pushed through the forest. But instead of despairing at the failure of his plans, and falling back into the interior, to be completely severed from Kellerman’s army, to be hunted as a fugitive under the walls of Paris by the victorious Germans, and to lose all chance of ever rallying his dispirited troops, he resolved to cling to the difficult country in which the armies still were grouped, to force a junction with Kellerman, and so to place himself at the head of a force, which the invaders would not dare to disregard, and by which he might drag them back from the advance on Paris, which he had not been able to bar. Accordingly, by a rapid movement to the south, during which, in his own words, “France was within a hair’s breadth of destruction,” and after with difficulty checking several panics of his troops, in which they ran by thousands at the sight of a few Prussian hussars, Dumouriez succeeded in establishing his head-quarters in a strong position at St. Menehould, protected by the marshes and shallows of the river Aisne and Aube, beyond which, to the north- west, rose a firm and elevated plateau, called Dampierre’s Camp, admirably situated for commanding the road by Chalons to Paris, and where he intended to post Kellerman’s army so soon as it came up. [Some late writers represent that Brunswick did not HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

wish to church Dumouriez. There is no sufficient authority for this insinuation, which seems to have been first prompted by a desire to soothe the wounded military pride of the Prussians.] The news of the retreat of Dumouriez from the Argonne passes, and or the panic flight of some divisions of his troops, spread rapidly throughout the country; and Kellerman, who believed that his comrade’s army had been annihilated, and feared to fall among the victorious masses of the Prussians, had halted on his march from Metz when almost close to St. Menehould. He had actually commenced a retrograde movement, when couriers from his commander-in-chief checked him from that fatal course; and then continuing to wheel round the rear and left flank of the troops at St. Menehould, Kellerman, with twenty thousand of the army of Metz, and some thousands of volunteers who had joined him in the march, made his appearance to the west of Dumouriez, on the very evening when Westerman and Thouvenot, two of the staff- officers of Dumouriez, galloped in with the tidings that Brunswick’s army had come through the upper passes of the Argonne in full force, and was deploying on the heights of La Lune, a chain of eminence’s that stretch obliquely front south- west to north-east, opposite the high ground which Dumouriez held, and also opposite, but at a shorter distance from, the position which Kellerman was designed to occupy. The Allies were now, in fact, nearer to Paris than were the French troops themselves; but, as Dumouriez had foreseen, Brunswick deemed it unsafe to march upon the capital with so large a hostile force left in his rear between his advancing columns and his base of operations. The young King of Prussia, who was in the allied camp, and the emigrant princes eagerly advocated an instant attack upon the nearest French general. Kellerman had laid himself unnecessarily open, by advancing beyond Dampierre’s camp, which Dumouriez had designed for him, and moving forward across the Aube to the plateau of Valmy, a post inferior in strength and space to that which he had left, and which brought him close upon the Prussian lines, leaving him separated by a dangerous interval from the troops under Dumouriez himself. It seemed easy for the Prussian army to overwhelm him while thus isolated, and then they might surround and crush Dumouriez at their leisure. Accordingly, the right wing of the allied army moved forward, in the gray of the morning of the 20th of September, to gain Kellerman’s left flank and rear, and cut him off from retreat upon Chalons, while the rest of the army, moving from the heights of La Lune, which here converge semi-circularly round the plateau of Valmy, were to assail his position in front, and interpose between him and Dumouriez. An unexpected collision between some of the advanced cavalry on each side in the low ground, warned Kellerman of the enemy’s approach. Dumouriez had not been unobservant of the danger of his comrade, thus isolated and involved; and he had ordered up troops to support Kellerman on either flank in the event of his being attacked. These troops, however, moved forward slowly, and Kellerman’s army, ranged on the plateau of Valmy, “projected like a cape into the midst of the lines of the Prussian bayonets.” A thick autumnal mist floated in waves of vapor over the plains and ravines that lay HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

between the two armies, leaving only the crests and peaks of the hills glittering in the early light. About ten o’clock the fog began to clear off, and then the French from their promontory saw emerging from the white wreaths of mist, and glittering in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry which were to envelope them as in a net if once driven from their position, the solid columns of the infantry that moved forward as if animated by a single will, the bristling batteries of the artillery, and the glancing clouds of the Austrian light troops, fresh from their contests with the Spahis of the east. The best and bravest of the French must have beheld this spectacle with secret apprehension and awe. However bold and resolute a man may be in the discharge of duty, it is an anxious and fearful thing to be called on to encounter danger among comrades of whose steadiness you can feel no certainty. Each soldier of Kellerman’s army must have remembered the series of panic routs which had hitherto invariably taken place on the French side during the war; and must have cast restless glances to the right and left, to see if any symptoms of wavering began to show themselves, and to calculate how long it was likely to be before a general rush of his comrades to the rear would either hurry him off with involuntary disgrace, or leave him alone and helpless, to be cut down by assailing multitudes. On that very morning, and at the self-same hour, in which the allied forces and the emigrants began to descend from La Lune to the attack of Valmy, and while the cannonade was opening between the Prussian and the Revolutionary batteries, the debate in the National Convention at Paris commenced on the proposal to proclaim France a Republic. The old monarchy had little chance of support in the hall of the Convention; but if its more effective advocates at Valmy had triumphed, there were yet the elements existing in France for a permanent revival of the better part of the ancient institutions, and for substituting Reform for Revolution. Only a few weeks before, numerously signed addresses from the middle classes in Paris, Rouen, and other large cities, had been presented to the king expressive of their horror of the anarchists, and their readiness to uphold the rights of the crown, together with the of the subject. And an armed resistance to the authority of the Convention, and in favor of the king, was in reality at this time being actively organized in La Vendee and Brittany, the importance of which may be estimated from the formidable opposition which the of these provinces made to the Republican party, at a later period, and under much more disadvantageous circumstances. It is a fact peculiarly illustrative of the importance of the battle of Valmy, that “during the summer of 1792, the gentlemen of Brittany entered into, an extensive association for the purpose of rescuing the country from the oppressive yoke which had been imposed by the Parisian demagogues. At the head of the whole was the Marquis de la Rouarie, one of those remarkable men who rise into pre-eminence during the stormy days of a revolution, from conscious ability to direct its current. Ardent, impetuous, and enthusiastic, he was first distinguished in the American war, when the intrepidity of his conduct attracted the admiration of HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

the Republican troops, and the same qualities rendered him at first an ardent supporter of the Revolution in France; but when the atrocities of the people began, he espoused with equal warmth the opposite side, and used the utmost efforts to rouse the noblesse of Brittany against the plebeian yoke which had been imposed upon them by the National Assembly. He submitted his plan to the Count d’Artois, and had organized one so extensive, as would have proved extremely formidable to the Convention, if the retreat of the Duke of Brunswick, in September, 1792, had not damped the ardor of the whole of the west of France, then ready to break out into insurrection.” And it was not only among the zealots of the old monarchy that the cause of the king would then have found friends. The ineffable atrocities of the September massacres had just occurred, and the reaction produced by them among thousands who had previously been active on the ultra-democratic side, was fresh and powerful. The nobility had not yet been made utter aliens in the eyes of the nation by long expatriation and civil war. There was not yet a generation of youth educated in revolutionary principles and knowing no worship save that of military glory. Louis XVI was just and humane, and deeply sensible of the necessity of a gradual extension of political rights among all classes of his subjects. The Bourbon throne, if rescued in 1792, would have had chances of stability, such as did not exist for it in 1814, and seem never likely to be found again in France. Serving under Kellerman on that day was one who experienced, perhaps the most deeply of all men, the changes for good and for evil which the French Revolution has produced. He who, in his second exile, bore the name of the Count de Neuilly in this country, and who lately was Louis Philippe, King of the French, figured in the French lines at Valmy as a young and gallant officer, cool and sagacious beyond his years, and trusted accordingly by Kellerman and Dumouriez with an important station in the national army. The Duc de Chartres (the title he then bore) commanded the French right, General Valence was on the left, and Kellerman himself took his post in the center, which was the strength and key of his position Besides these celebrated men, who were in the French army, and besides the King of Prussia, the Duke of Brunswick, and other men of rank and power, who were in the lines of the Allies, there was an individual present at the battle of Valmy, of little political note, but who has exercised, and exercises, a greater influence over the human mind, and whose fame is more widely spread, than that of either duke, or general, or king. This was the German poet, Gothe, who had, out of curiosity, accompanied the allied army on its march into France as a mere spectator. He has given us a curious record of the sensations which he experienced during the cannonade. It must be remembered that many thousands In the French ranks then, like Gothe, felt the “cannon fever” for the first time. The German poet says,— “I had heard so much of the cannon-fever, that I wanted to know what kind of thing it was. Ennui, and a spirit which every kind of danger excites to daring, nay even to rashness, induced me to ride up quite coolly to the HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

outwork of La Lune. This was again occupied by our people; but it presented the wildest aspect. The roofs were shot to pieces; the corn-shocks scattered about, the bodies of men mortally wounded stretched upon them here and there; and occasionally a spent cannon-ball fell and rattled among the ruins of the tile roofs. “Quite alone, and left to myself, I rode away on the heights to the left, and could plainly survey the favorable position of the French; they were standing in the form of a semicircle, in the greatest quiet and security; Kellerman, then on the left wing, being the easiest to reach. “I fell in with good company on the way, officers of my acquaintance, belonging to the general staff and the regiment, greatly surprised to find me here. They wanted to take me back again with them; but I spoke to them of particular objects I had in view, and their left me, without further dissuasion, to my well-known singular caprice. “I had now arrived quite in the region where the balls were playing across me: the sound of them is curious enough, as if it were composed of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water, and the whistling of birds. They were less dangerous, by reason of the wetness of the ground; wherever one fell, it stuck fast. And thus my foolish experimental ride was secured against the danger at least of the balls rebounding. “In the midst of these circumstances, I was soon able to remark that something unusual was taking place within me. I paid close attention to it, and still, the sensation can be described only by similitude. It appeared as if you were in some extremely hot place, and, at the same time, quite penetrated by the heat of it, so that you feel yourself, as it were, quite one with the element in which you are. The eyes lose nothing of their strength or clearness; but it is as if the world had a kind of brown-red tint, which makes the situation, as well as the surrounding objects, more impressive. I was unable to perceive any agitation of the blood; but everything seemed rather to be swallowed up in the glow of which I speak. From this, then, it is clear in what sense this condition call be called a fever. It is remarkable, however, that the horrible uneasy feeling arising from it is produced in us solely through the ears; for the cannon-thunder, the howling, and crashing of the balls through the air, is the real cause of these sensations. “After I had ridden back, and was in perfect security, I remarked with surprise that the glow was completely extinguished, and not the slightest feverish agitation was left behind. On the whole, this condition is one of the least desirable; as, indeed, among my dear and noble comrades, I found scarcely one who expressed a really passionate desire to try it.” Contrary to the expectations of both friends and foes the French HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

infantry held their ground steadily under the fire of the Prussian guns, which thundered on them from La Lune; and their own artillery replied with equal spirit and greater effect on the denser masses of the allied army. Thinking that the Prussians were slackening in their fire, Kellerman formed a column in charging order, and dashed down into the valley, in the hopes of capturing some of the nearest guns of the enemy. A masked battery opened its fire on the French column, and drove it back in disorder, Kellerman having his horse shot under him, and being with difficulty carried off by his men. The Prussian columns now advanced in turn. The French artillerymen began to waver and desert their posts, but were rallied by the efforts and example of their officers; and Kellerman, reorganizing the line of his infantry, took his station in the ranks on foot, and called out to his men to let the enemy come close up, and then to charge them with the bayonet. The troops caught the enthusiasm of their general, and a cheerful shout of Vive la nation! taken by one battalion from another, pealed across the valley to the assailants. The Prussians flinched from a charge up-hill against a force that seemed so resolute and formidable; they halted for a while in the hollow, and then slowly retreated up their own side of the valley. Indignant at being thus repulsed by such a foe, the King of Prussia formed the flower of his men in person, and, riding along the column, bitterly reproached them with letting their standard be thus humiliated. Then he led them on again to the attack, marching in the front line, and seeing his staff mowed down around him by the deadly fire which the French artillery re- opened. But the troops sent by Dumouriez were now cooperating effectually with Kellerman, and that general’s own men, hushed by success, presented a firmer front than ever. Again the Prussians retreated, leaving eight hundred dead behind, and at nightfall the French remained victors on the heights of Valmy. All hopes of crushing the revolutionary armies, and of the promenade to Paris, had now vanished, though Brunswick lingered long in the Argonne, till distress and sickness wasted away his once splendid force, and finally but a mere wreck of it recrossed the frontier. France, meanwhile, felt that she possessed a giant’s strength, and, like a giant, did she use it. Before the close of that year, all Belgium obeyed the National Convention at Paris, and the kings of Europe, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military Republic. Gothe’s description of the cannonade has been quoted. His observation to his comrades in the camp of the Allies, at the end of the battle, deserves citation also. It shows that the poet felt (and, probably, he alone of the thousands there assembled felt) the full importance of that day. He describes the consternation and the change of demeanor which he observed among his Prussian friends that evening. He tells us that “most of them were silent; and, in fact, the power of reflection and judgment was wanting to all. At last I was called upon to say what I thought of the engagement; for I had been in the habit of enlivening and amusing the troop with short sayings. This time I said: ‘From this place, and from this day forth, commences HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

a new era in the world’s history; and you can all say that you were present at its birth.’

September 21, Friday: Marie Antoinette was no longer Queen of France and Navarre. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

1793

January 21, Monday (the 1st of Pluviose in the Year One): In Paris, at what is now known as the Place de la Concorde, Louis Capet, who had been King Louis XVI of France, became a victim of the new improved “machine.” HEADCHOPPING LA GUILLOTINE I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.

Louis’s neck was thick and the blade needed to be drawn back up and again released for the severing to be complete.

The entire corpse would be reduced by quicklime to nothingness, to ensure that there would never be any claim that anyone was in possession of a relic (due to the doctrine of the divine right of kings, Louis had been posturing for awhile as a Christ figure more or less in the manner in which Timothy McVeigh would starve himself in order to gain the appearance of a victim while awaiting federal execution in Terre Haute). THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS

Who would have guessed? The cross-section of the neck of this French monarch of the 18th Century, Louis, turned out to seem rather more similar than not in appearance to the cross-section of the neck of the English HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

monarch of the 17th Century, Charles: HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRICHIENNE L’AUTRE-CHIENNE

The event would be commemorated with a medallion:

FRENCH REVOLUTION, I FRENCH REVOLUTION, II

As of 2012 there are plans afoot to construct a £180,000,000 “NapoleonLand” theme park on the Montereau- Fault-Yonne site, just south of Paris, of the Emperor Napoléon I’s final meaningless victory — and here is an artist’s rendition of what that theme park may come to look like: HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

M. Yves Jego, who is backing this project, hopes to have construction work underway in 2014 and an opening date during the Year of Our Lord 2017. The theme park is charted to include a museum, a hotel, shops, restaurants, and a congress. One of the exhibits is being planned as a reprise of this beheading of King Louis XVI that had taken place in the Place de la Concorde,7 and also they are scheming to enable visitors to “ski” around frozen corpses of soldiers and horses on a “wintry” slope. Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 7. Since this is the last thing in good taste, can I have the FreedomFries concession? HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

“The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

1681 Headman Ockanickon of the Mantas are the “Leaping Frogs” “Be plain and fair to all, both Indian the Mantas group of the Lenape tribe and Christian, as I have been.”

1692 Massachusetts Bay being pressed to death for refusing to “Add more weight that my misery colonist Giles Corey cooperate in his trial for witchcraft may be the sooner ended.”

1777 John Bartram during a spasm of pain “I want to die.”

1790 Benjamin Franklin unsolicited comment “A dying man can do nothing easy.”

1793 Louis Capet, being beheaded in the Place de la Con- “I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my King Louis XVI of corde charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned France my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.”

1793 Jean-Paul Marat reviewing a list of names “They shall all be guillotined.”

1793 Citizen Marie Antoinette stepping on the foot of her executioner “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.” ... other famous last words ... HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

August 2, Friday: Joseph Sturge was born in Elberton, in Gloucestershire in England.

In the middle of the night former Queen Marie Antoinette was separated from her son in the tower of the Temple and taken to the Conciergerie.

The French government issued a decree calling for the closing of any theater showing works. Theaters were going to be required to show works “by and for the people.”

October 6, Sunday: The National Convention of France ordered destroyed to the last drop together with its vial, in public with witnesses, and ordered to be certified as destroyed, the entirety of the remainder of the Holy Oil of Rheims which had allegedly been given to Saint Remi by a dove from Heaven for the coronation of King Clovis in the 6th Century (without such oil it would never again be possible to sanctify a French monarch).

Jean-Nicolas Pache, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Jacques René Hébert, and others visited 8-year-old Louis- Charles in the Temple and obtained corroborations of various of the infamous accusations that had been made against his mother Marie Antoinette, and had him affix his signature to a list of her alleged crimes since her entry in the Temple.

October 7, Monday: 8-year-old Louis-Charles was allowed to be with his 15-year-old sister Marie Thérèse Charlotte for the final time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

October 12, Saturday: A newly reconstituted Republican authority in Lyon decreed that henceforth the city’s name would be “Ville-Affranchie” (Liberated Town). The homes of rich people were to be demolished.

Former Queen Marie Antoinette was interrogated before a .

Here is the Reverend J. Henry C. Helmuth’s notation for this day per his SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA FOR THE REFLECTING CHRISTIAN: “P. Schmidt, Fridrich and Gotfried were better, also Georg Keppel. Drove to Camptown — Mrs. Weiser was dead — the young Strauss better, also Schneider and Walter and his wife. Sturmfels still sick — Janus better, but his child dying — Michael Hay and his wife dying, also Stahlin. The young and Mrs. Stuckard dead. Walter in 4th Str. still very sick. Becker and his wife better. Ries better, his daughter very sick and son’s wife sick, too. Burkhard very sick — his wife almost well. Daum better, his wife dying. Schiller better — Mrs. Buss in Campt. very sick. Rain in the evening. Feeling not as well as yesterday, afraid that I will become sick, too.” In the margin of the sheet, the notation: “Buried 17 today. 130 were buried in our congregation during the last week.

October 16 (the 24th of Vendemiaire in the Year One): Publication of two works by Jan Ladislav Dussek was announced in The Times of London (these were the Sonata for piano, flute and cello C.94 and the Rondo for piano C.95).

“Publication of Universal Praise,” an anthem by William Billings, was advertised in Boston’s Columbian Centinel.

French troops halted the Austrian advance at Wattignies south of Lille.

Nine months a widow, the corpse of her husband having been reduced to nothingness by means of quicklime, Citizen Joséphe Jeanne Marie Antoinette Habsburg Bourbon, a German noblewoman who had been the queen of the French, also took a ride in an open cart to become a victim of the “machine” in the Place de la Révolution (Place de la Concorde) of Paris. She would say to the crowd “Farewell, my children, forever — I go to your Father,” but those would not be her final words. HEADCHOPPING Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

“The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

1681 Headman Ockanickon of the Mantas are the “Leaping Frogs” “Be plain and fair to all, both Indian the Mantas group of the Lenape tribe and Christian, as I have been.”

1692 Massachusetts Bay being pressed to death for refusing to “Add more weight that my misery colonist Giles Corey cooperate in his trial for witchcraft may be the sooner ended.”

1777 John Bartram during a spasm of pain “I want to die.”

1790 Benjamin Franklin unsolicited comment “A dying man can do nothing easy.”

1793 Louis Capet, being beheaded in the Place de la Con- “I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my King Louis XVI of corde charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned France my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.”

1793 Jean-Paul Marat reviewing a list of names “They shall all be guillotined.”

1793 Citizen Marie Antoinette stepping on the foot of her executioner “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.” ... other famous last words ... HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

The event would be commemorated with a medallion:

October 27, Sunday: Empress Ekaterina II of Russia proclaimed six weeks of mourning for former Queen Marie Antoinette.

Here is the Reverend J. Henry C. Helmuth’s notation for this day per his SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA FOR THE REFLECTING CHRISTIAN: “Eight buried yesterday at Fischer’s. One corpse today, Rieb. Visited Peter Gabels wife after church in Campt. and the widows. Muff better, daughter in law dying. Buried Rieb after the service. Very cold, but no rain.” In the margin of the sheet, the notation: “one corpse.”

December 13, Friday: Publication of three piano works by Jan Ladislav Dussek was announced in The Times of London. They were the Piano Concerto C.97, Variations on Within a Mile of Edinburgh, and The Sufferings of the Queen of France: A Musical Composition, Expressing the Feelings of the Unfortunate Marie Antoinette, During her Imprisonment, Trial, &c. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1794

October: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey issued a tragedy, “The Fall of Robespierre.” Coleridge was at this point full of radical political fervor.

From this point forward, little Louis-Charles in his prison cell would maintain an obdurate silence (this refusal to communicate would be explained, by others, as having arisen out of his having been induced to make that deposition against his mother Marie Antoinette).

December 19, Friday: When little Louis-Charles was visited in his prison cell by three commissioners of the Committee of General Security, they failed to induce him to utter a word. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1795

March 31, Tuesday: Ludwig van Beethoven performed a Mozart piano concerto at a production of La Clemenza di Tito, to benefit Mozart’s widow Constanze.

Étienne Lasne was posted as the guard over little Louis-Charles in his prison cell. (There are all sorts of stories about the treatment of the former Dauphin in prison –most of them presumably invented– but it is abundantly clear that no-one was striving officiously to keep this unpleasant and inconvenient child alive.)

May 31, Sunday: In his prison cell, Louis-Charles became obviously ill and an anatomist and surgeon who had seen him before, Dr. Pierre-Joseph Desault, was asked to visit (this doctor would not in fact visit because he was himself dying).

June 8, Monday: It was announced that Louis-Charles had died in his prison cell (over the years may would profess to disbelieve this). Doctors Pelletan and Dumangin, who inspected the body, determined that it was that of a male of approximately ten years of age, who had died of a scrofulous infection of long standing (scrofula is a disease of the lymph nodes of the neck, Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, that is caused in children with an immune system compromised by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium scrofulaceum, or Nontuberculous mycobacterium).8

8. Recently a DNA test of the preserved heart from this corpse has confirmed it as the heart of the Dauphin, and on June 8, 2004 it was deposited in the royal Basilica near the tombs of the paternal grandparents. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1796

André Michaux was shipwrecked during his return from his American journeys to France and lost all his personal property. Nearly all his collections, however, were salvaged. He would be received with honor and distinction but no considerable sum of money, although they did pay him a small proportion of his 7 years’ arrears of salary. He found that many of his American trees had been sent by Marie Antoinette to her father’s gardens at Schonbrunn. BOTANIZING TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1814

May 14, Saturday morning: A diary entry: “Early Saturday morning, the British flotilla sailed from Split Rock and attempted to enter Otter Creek to force their way to Vergennes to destroy the shipping, but were prevented by the fire from the works at the entrance, commanded by Captain Thornton of the artillery and Lieutenant Cassin of the navy.”9

There was a service in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris in memory of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. All allied leaders attended with the exception of Tsar Alyeksandr I of Russia.

9. THREE CENTURIES IN THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY: A COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS. Tercentenary Edition, 1909. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

August 24, Wednesday: Viscount Castlereagh arrived at Paris, where he would be meeting with King Louis XVIII and Talleyrand before traveling on to Vienna.

As part of a conflict that was essentially a continuation of the American Revolution by way of a dispute over the seas and over the border of Canada, on this day and the following one a British army defeated hastily assembled defenders of Washington DC at Bladensburg, Maryland just north of the capital. The British would go on to burn Washington, including the White House and most of the 3,076 books and 53 maps, charts, and plans of the Library of Congress, along with paintings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by Madame Vigee Lebruin. They would also put the chambers of the House and the Senate to the torch — but beware, it is sheer mythology that the books were used as kindling for the fire in the legislative chambers.10

Waldo Emerson would reminisce in his journal in about April or May of 1856 about a British-invasion-of- Boston scare that had occurred in about this period of his childhood:11

I have but one military recollection in all my life. In 1813 or 1814, all Boston, young & old, turned out to build the fortifications on Noddle’s Island; and, the Schoolmaster at the Latin School announced to the boys, that, if we wished, we might all go on a certain day to work on the Island. I went with the rest in the ferry boat, & spent a summer day; but I cannot remember that I did any kind of work. I remember only the pains we took to get water in our tin pails, to relieve our intolerable thirst. I am afraid not valuable effect of my labor remains in the existing defences.

Because of the perceived danger that the English navy would besiege Boston, the Emerson family then moved to Concord. Ralph Waldo attended the wooden schoolhouse in Concord square. He recited not only in school but also from the top of the sugar barrel in Deacon John White’s store nearby. Here is a silhouette of the “pilgrim profile” of Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who would loom large in his life though she stood

10.There is a patriotic or accommodative story in which the invading British army is persuaded not to burn the Library of Congress, by being reminded of the ignominy of the burning of the Library of Alexandria in antiquity. This story sacrifices historical accuracy to patriotism or to accommodationism. Contrast this with another story which has a much greater likelihood of having been the truth, that the British were retaliating to the 1812 burning of the Canadian congressional library in York (Toronto) by an American expeditionary force. 11. We do not know whether Emerson was referring here to Head Master William Bigelow or to his successor Benjamin Apthorp Gould, a senior at Harvard College, for during 1814 after nine trying years Head Master Bigelow was being replaced in an attempt to restore order and scholarship (many features of the Boston Latin School of today –among them the “misdemeanor mark” and the practice of declamation– would be initiated during this disciplinary period.

I (Austin Meredith) have my own recollections similar to this, from World War II in San Diego CA. Have you seen the movie “1943”? –It is exceedingly accurate to the spirit of the times, while the necessary task of routing all Americans of Japanese ancestry into the new concentration camps in the inland desert was still going on, and the utter cooperation of the civilian (white) population, real Americans, was vitally needed by our government authorities. As a 6-year-old my parents had me in a class digging lines of foxholes across a football field, and marching around the parade ground of a religious school where my father was Chaplain, named Brown Military Academy, with a wooden rifle. I lost my first baby tooth when I Left-Ho’d in formation when I should have Right- Ho’d –because the butt of the “rifle” of the boy next to me in formation slapped me up alongside the head– and I sat down on the parade ground and began to cry and was afraid I was going to be courts-martialed. The vicious little yellow Japs were going to invade, the Hearst newspapers were reporting that already they might be lurking offshore in their submarines, just out of sight, and in a port city on the Pacific Ocean we were on the front lines and we needed to be utterly ready to defend our soil with our blood. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

at most 5 feet 0 inches tall, as she appeared in her youth, probably before her return to Malden MA:

THE DEACONS OF CONCORD Joshua Barney was wounded and captured at Bladensburg, Maryland. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1821

On August 10, 1792, Swiss mercenaries had attempted to defend the Tuileries Palace. They had been unaware that they were defending merely an ugly piece of architecture, King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their children having already vacated the premises. After resistance ceased approximately 500-700 (accounts vary) had been chopped down by the Paris mob. Putting a nice face on the incident, their empty sacrifice was in this year commemorated in a sculpture of a wounded stone lion after a model by Bertel Thorvaldsen, outside one of the gates of Lucerne:

One might have thought it to have been more appropriate, to depict this mercenary lion as moribund atop a pile of coins he had earned while loyally defending his French employer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

1997

July 11, Friday: Judith H. Dobrzynski wrote in the New York Times about the emptied and dilapidated Eastern State Penitentiary structure on Cherry Hill near downtown Philadelphia as “a valued and threatened historical site” with “a fascinating history and some manifest charms,” a “welcome antidote for those tired of the ersatz, theme-part quality of many tourist attractions.”

She pointed out that in the century following its erection at truly enormous cost in the 1820s, some 300 prisons around the world were modeled upon its credo of totally solitary confinement, such major institutions as the one in the “stone city” of Joliet, Illinois, a good place to be from, far from. The one full-time year-round employee who remained, Program Director Sean M. Kelley, spoke of the need for funding in order to refurbish the multidenominational chapel and movie theater so as to be able to sponsor discussions of “issues of criminal justice and the development of prisons.” Ms. Dobrzynski indicated in her article that to commemorate , residents of the upscale Victorian residential neighborhood which now adjoins the former prison were going to dress up as French revolutionaries and, armed with muskets and cannon and singing , were intending to storm the dilapidated gatehouse. Someone attired as Marie Antoinette was to be on the roof, the plan was, “tossing Tastykakes and Twinkies into the crowd” in accordance with that old “Let Them Eat Cake” canard. The good gray Times, our newspaper of record, of course indicated no official displeasure at the prospect of using this site of such incredible anguish as the venue for a toney neighborhood frolic.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

L’AUTRE-CHIENNE L’AUTRICHIENNE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: November 8, 2015