France

The recent killing of a French teenager by fascist sympathisers recalls the tensions and divisions of the 1930s, says Chris Millington.

It is difficult to estimate how many English During the resplendent reign of Louis XIV, many English travellers explored Versailles—among them a philosopher, a famous bishop, a great architect and a gifted diplomatist-poet. Claire-Elaine Engel describes how each has left some vivid personal impressions of the court that revolved around the Sun King.

On March 9th, 1762, in Toulouse, a Huguenot merchant was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed. “It is because I am a man,” declared Voltaire, that he undertook the defence of the unhappy Calas family. His efforts, writes Edna Nixon, produced a drastic reform of the French judicial system.

Dorothy Margaret Stuart gives the political background of the career of Joan of Arc, when France was enfeebled by foreign invasion and civil strife, and the Duchy of Burgundy had almost achieved the status of an independent European power.

France we know, but French governments perplex us, writes J.H.M. Salmon. Mazarin’s was one of the oddest regimes that France has undergone. This Italian “condottiere in diplomacy” ruled France, despite recalcitrant noblemen and civil war, for nearly twenty years.

J.H.M. Salmon introduces a Machiavellian despot, as well as the gallant leader of a gay and brilliant court. Francis had the good fortune to embody the aspirations of France in his own ambition.

Save at the Arthurian Court, writes Dorothy Margaret Stuart, such splendid scenes had never before been witnessed as accompanied the marriage of Edward IV’s sister to the Duke of Burgundy.

A.H. Burne analyses the key factors that led to what would be a major victory in the Hundred Years' War.

In 1794, at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, 'the nation wanted a victory'. It was provided by Admiral Howe.

John Roberts sees the Dreyfus Affair not only as the representative of the sordid politics of the Third Republic, but as a belated effect of the French Revolution.