History Today

The last Huguenot to become a Marshal of France, Schomberg died in exile, fighting for William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne. By C.R. Boxer.

‘Give me truth: cheat me by no illusion’ demanded this intrepid American enthusiast, who, during her early middle age, landed in Europe for the first time. There, writes Joyce Clark Follet, she found love, adventure, hardship and the revolutionary cause she needed.

The ungainly princess from the Palatinate was an unlikely bride for Louis XIV’s brother, writes Nis A. Petersen, but her frank nature and resourceful intelligence commended her to the King.

After centuries of Habsburg rule, writes Elka Schrijver, the Grand Duchy came under the Orange-Nassau dynasty in 1815 and, in reduced size, is still independent.

William Seymour describes the fifty-four years Harry Smith served as a Rifleman, with service at Buenos Aires, Badajos, and in India and South Africa.

Aram Bakshian Jr. profiles a true Venetian, Lorenzo Da Ponte, who, like his associate Casanova, had an extravagant and boldly adventurous career.

Odo Russell, writes Alec Randall, was Britain’s unofficial diplomatic agent at the Vatican during the years when Italy was unified and when the controversy took place over the Papal Syllabus.

For thirteen years, writes Alec Randall, Odo Russell was British Ambassador in Berlin where he was an appreciative critic of Bismarck’s policies.

On June 9th, 1774, a fête champêtre, magnificent even by eighteenth-century standards, attracted an appreciative concourse of the English nobility and gentry. Olive Fitzsimmons describes the event.

Frances Austin reads the lively late eighteenth century letters of a great surgeon’s apprentice to his family in Cornwall.