When James II made his Catholicism too ostentatious for seventeenth century Protestant politicians to stomach, a successful conspiracy was made to remove him from the throne he had…
Category: Dutch History
Two proud Dukes of Buckingham (too proud perhaps?)
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham was born around 1454 in Salisbury, Wiltshire. He was a member of the House of Lancaster, being a descendent of Edward III,…
Gibraltar in the news again
President of the Spanish Government Mariano Rajoy spoke to the United Nations recently. He explained the country’s economic situation, which is disastrous, though no fault of his…
Great War Commanders: Hans von Seeckt: who?
I am not being frivolous. If you were to ask even German or Austrian nationals of below a certain age, say seventy, who Hans von Seeckt was, you…
Tory, Conservative; Whig, Liberal
The term ‘party’ for a political group has been around in Britain for centuries. The Tory Party was a political group that was spoken of in the 1680s….
Great War Leaders: Kitchener needs YOU!
Horatio Herbert Kitchener was born in 1850. At school in Switzerland he learned perfect French, and later went to Palestine where he picked up near-perfect Arabic. After military…
The Continental System (Blockade)
When I was a schoolboy (the Punic Wars q.v.), Bonaparte’s genial idea was called ‘The Continental System’, a good name but implying a kind of applied plan to…
Philippe II & Felipe II: two successful Philips
There were nearly two hundred years between the births of these two triumphant kings of France and Spain respectively. I shall use the anglicised version of their names….
A tangled skein: the War of the Spanish Succession
Not even Frodo trying desperately to cut his way out of Shelob the Spider’s thick cobwebs is like my trying to explain the War of the Spanish Succession….
Charles ‘the Bold’, Philip ‘the Good’ & Philip ‘the Bold’ (of Burgundy)
Burgundy was an important former duchy in south-central France, originally settled by a German tribe called the Burgundii, there in the 5th century. It was first under Merovingian…