The ‘Resistance’ was a term coined for underground movements that fought a courageous but sometimes useless battle against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The movements aided…
Category: French History
Jean Monnet: turning in his grave?
Monnet (1888 – 1979) was, if not the progenitor, at least the clever uncle of the European Union. He was an able administrator and economist who devised and…
Ancient gods at these Olympics
I suppose we are about half way through the London Olympics of 2012 – sad for some, radiant news for others. I suppose I will be accused of…
The Marquis who survived the French Revolution
Marie-Joseph, Marquis de LaFayette, was born in 1757, into a firmly established aristocratic family in a large European country whose people had been spoiling for a rebellion since…
Figures in a Revolution: Jacques-René Hébert & the Sans-Culottes
This French journalist and revolutionary was born in 1757, just thirty-two years before the French Revolution exploded on an astonished and cowed world. Hébert was not just a…
What was the Committee of Public Safety?
The term is self-contradictory, but the committee’s founders could hardly call it the ‘Committee of Public Danger’. It lasted only from 1793 to 1795 but greatly damaged France’s…
The Fall of France: “for you, the war (of 42 days) is over!”
For many, if not all, of our seasoned history-lovers, the fact that the Second World War might have been over by the middle of 1940 is unknown. But…
Hiroshima and later
Hiroshima had a population of roughly 300,000 in 1945. It was a military base, port, and popular seaside resort in the western part of Honshu Island, Japan. The…
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…
What is Isolationism?
Well, very soon we will know what it is. And I might add it is a great pity there is not more of it around. Loss of it…