Thursday - March 18, 2010

The Lion of Lucerne, The Swiss and a EuroSeptic rant from Mary Ellen Synon

My postings today may be very lite to nil. Never expected such a busy day when we got up early this morning. Busy with old documents and papers and shredding, and all due to an old lady who died 14 months ago.  We thought we were done finally, a month or two ago. Ha.  I guess the old dame had other plans for us.

I read the following late yesterday and didn’t get to post it. It’s quite interesting.  For example,

the cowardly royal family fled the palace

Just exactly what were they supposed to do?  After all, there’s a baying bloodthirsty mob outside just itching to rip you apart.  What are you gonna do if you’re an over indulged royal who probably isn’t in any shape to fight anyone, and a queen with no military training?  Isn’t run for your life the normal instinct in their particular case? 

EuroSeptic, Matty Ellen Synon
The Mail

Now Brussels says the loyalty and the bravery of the Swiss isn’t European

On Tuesday the European Commission proposed widening an existing ‘European heritage’ label, which they stick onto sites which the eurocrats decide are part of European ‘common history.’ The idea is to feed propaganda about how we all have a ‘common yet diverse cultural heritage.’

Problem is, when the scheme was set up four years ago, some eurocrat (clearly off-message) let Switzerland join the scheme. Three sites in blissfully-non-EU Switzerland are listed as part of European heritage.

Now however the Swiss will be cut out from adding more to the list.

Such a gesture is a disgrace. While on the one hand I welcome any distance Switzerland can put between itself and the undemocratic empire of Brussels, the idea of insulting the Swiss and their history in order to feed the lie that ‘Europe is the EU and the EU is Europe’ is shameful.

So, I shall nominate a Swiss site which ought to be added to anyone’s list of European history. It is the Lion of Lucerne, which commemorates the Swiss Guards who were slaughtered by French revolutionaries on August 10, 1792.

The Swiss were posted at the Tuileries Palace. Their duty was to protect Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their children from the revolutionary forces taking over the streets of Paris. Even as the cowardly royal family fled the palace, the Swiss stayed true their oaths as soldiers. They knew their duty. They fought to the end.

And what an end it was, with more than 600 hundred Swiss dead on the day and hundreds more dead later of wounds or butchery in prison.

Simon Schama describes it this way in his history of the revolution, ‘Citizens.’ The Swiss Guards ‘were given neither shelter nor quarter. Hunted down, they were mercilessly butchered: stabbed, sabered, stoned and clubbed. Mutilators hacked off limbs and scissored out genitals and stuffed them in the gaping mouths or fed them to the dogs.’

In reply to this barbarity, Robespierre called it ‘the most beautiful revolution that has ever honoured humanity.’ Which tells you almost all you need to know about the French.

And in reply to this barbarity, the Swiss built a magnificent and heart-breaking monument, the Lion of Lucerne. Which tells you almost all you need to know about the Swiss.

Here is how the American writer, Mark Twain, described it after a visit in 1880: ‘The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff—for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking into his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France...’

‘Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion—and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.’

Above the lion is the Latin inscription: ‘Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti ‘-- The loyalty and bravery of the Swiss.

The rest of Europe is unworthy of such a nation.

the swiss source

Posted by peiper     on 03/18/2010 at 12:18 PM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons •  
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