Born into a French middle-class family in 1763, Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte got into the royal army as a private soldier in 1780 when he was seventeen; as he…
Category: French History
The battle of Austerlitz
Map of the Battle of Austerlitz Anyone living at the beginning of the nineteenth century might have thought that the battle of Trafalgar, fought in October 1805…
Field-Marshal Radetzky
Josef Wenzel, Count of Radetz was born in Austria in 1766. He became a soldier aan fought the Turks at the age of twenty-two in one of…
Metternich
Of all the great statesmen and diplomats whose many different names have managed to confuse so many history students in the last century or two, this one is…
The Kaiser (Wilhelm II of Germany)
The future King of Prussia and German Emperor was born in 1859, the eldest son of the then Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (he later became Emperor…
A brief history of spectator sports
Most (but not all) of the sports which are super-popular with the public today were invented, improved and regulated in the independent private schools of Victorian Britain;…
The Seven Years War
Most of the eighteenth century featured wars in Europe, as rulers came and went and tried to dominate other rulers. Nearly always the same countries were…
John of Gaunt
The man who would be king – though not of England John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster was a son of an English king. He was the father…
The time when there were THREE Popes
At this very moment the cardinals gathered in the Vatican are arguing about who shall be the next Pope, following Benedict XVI’s resignation on grounds of health….