Sixteen martyrs

Yesterday was the feast day of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiegne, France. They died on the guillotine on this day in 1794 in Paris. They offered up their lives for the sake of the ending of the Revolutionary Reign of Terror and it did indeed come to an end shortly after. I visited Compiegne a few years ago with friends, there is still a Carmelite monastery there, though in more modern premises on another site. One reason that these Carmelites incurred particular hatred among the Revolutionaries was that Compiegne had special connections with the French monarchy. Members of the royal family used to visit the nuns and bring their children. I sometimes think of that when I drive through villages in my locality, the villages of Naseby and Edge Hill, sites of one of the crucial battles of our seventeenth-century Civil War. Victory for the revolutionary religious radical Oliver Cromwell led to the eventual execution of King Charles I. Later the son of Charles I became King Charles II and was received into the Church secretly on his deathbed. Historians have seen in the Civil War and the death of King Charles I a precursor of the French Revolution. Strange that we now have a King Charles III.