France

R.J. Knecht looks at the ­practical considerations behind the smooth operation of the huge courts of the Valois kings of France.

On January 5th, 1757, Robert-Francois Damiens attempted to assassinate Louis XV.

Richard Wilkinson, Louis XIV’s new biographer, searches for the real Sun King.

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of a great fortress being sacked, on August 15th, 1209.

Martin Evans looks at the events of 1956 and the French war on terror, both at home and elsewhere, and how this was a turning point for French fortunes in the Algerian War of Independence.

The life and career of one of the most vilified men in history.

Charles Stephenson introduces a plan for chemical warfare in the Napoleonic navy, devised by Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald, the model for Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code both drew from pseudohistory linking France’s Merovingian dynasty to the bloodline of Jesus Christ.

Peter Furtado on one of the most traumatic places in British military history.

In welcoming a new publication of the collected numbers of The Wipers Times, Malcolm Brown wonders why we find the idea of humour in the trenches so shocking.