The future Tsar was born in 1777, a son of the supposedly mad Tsar Paul. Contemporary chroniclers have it that young Alexander was implicated in the murder of…
Category: French History
Georges Boulanger (1837 – 91)
If Georges had been, as his surname suggests, a pastrycook by profession instead of a wholly political general, his patisserie would have been the pride of Paris. Indeed,…
The Franco-Prussian War (1870/71)
These modern days of a loving relationship between Germany and France force a wry smile. First we watched with a certain quantity of concealed amusement as Frau Merkel…
The Vichy Government (Vichy France)
Three-fifths of France fell to Nazi Germany soon after World War II was declared, though the French army and navy were larger than those of the aggressive Germans….
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….
What was that Eastern Question?
Turkey was known by the unfriendly sobriquet of ‘The Sick Man of Europe’ during most of the 19th century; the Eastern Question is a collective term for the…
Two very bad English kings
Two of the worst of a bad bunch of English kings were a father and a son. John I was a son, however, of a Good King and…
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…