Europe

Norman Bentwich recalls the official meetings in Paris of 1946, which were concerned with the future of Germany’s former allies in Europe. At these protracted sessions the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers gradually came into the open.

E.R. Chamberlin recounts the Babylonian captivity, as Petrarch described it, which lasted in Avignon for seventy-four years.

E.A. Smith describes how, immediately after the Seven Years’ War, the young Earl Fitzwilliam became a grand tourist of Europe in the eighteenth-century style.

Just when the great merchant-banker had reached the zenith of his career, writes A.R. Myers, Jacques Couer was suddenly disgraced and imprisoned. Three years later, he was able to escape and took refuge, first in Provence, then in Rome with a sympathetic Pope.

Sidney Z. Elher describes how, for a decade, during the Thirty Years War, Wallenstein dominated the scene in the Holy Roman Empire.

C.T. Allmand describes the economy of medieval military history, and how Chaucer’s “parfit gentil knight”, on his pilgrimage to Canterbury, was probably sustained by the prizes won in foreign wars.

David Francis Jones describes how, among primitive peoples encountered by the Romans, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Celts made a particularly deep impression.

Described by Bossuet as “a Protestant in friar's clothing,” Sarpi was an historian who saw that religion might be a cloak for political designs and, as Peter Burke describes, organised his historical writings around this point.

Josef Bradac introduces some regal Bohemians who enjoyed medieval English hospitality on their visit to the southeast and hazards a guess at the purpose of their visit.