Entrée des Français à Bordeaux repris sur les anglais le 23 juin 1451

by Auguste Vinchon

The Count of Dunois receiving the keys to the city after the siege of Bordeaux in 1451.

Matalaz, a Basque hero

On a day like today [Nov. 8th] in 1661 Basque priest Bernard Gohienetxe aka Matalaz was beheaded in Lextarre. His head was kept at the entrance of the city until its rotting.

What was his hideous crime? Defending Basque peasants way of life.

During that time king Louis XIV was implementing more centralist politics that reduced Zuberoa autonomy and rights. Also, the new laws converted communal lands into lands for the nobility, leaving peasants without food.

On June 1661, priest Bernard Gohienetxe lead a revolt against the nobility along with ~5,000 rebels that burnt down the town of Sohüta, attacked Lixtarre, sieged the castle and set it on fire. In that siege there were more than 7,000 armed rebels already and the nobles had to escape and ask for the help of the Bordeaux army.

In the meantime, Matalaz was organizing the lands for the peasants and how they should share them. But the French army reached Lixtarre in October and 100 mounted soldiers and 400 infantrymen easily defeated the rebels who had no chance.

Matalaz was arrested and executed, Zuberoa lost its old laws and ways, but we don’t forget what Matalaz and his rebels did. Here’s a folk song about him:

Dolü gabe hiltzen niz, I die without mourning,

bizia Ziberoarentako emaiten baitüt. for I give my life for Zuberoa.

Agian, agian, egün batez Maybe, maybe, someday

jeikiko dira egiazko Ziberotarrak, the real Zuberotarrak [citizens of Zuberoa] will rise up,

egiazko eüskaldünak, the real Basques,

tirano arrotzen ohiltzeko to throw the forgein tyrants out

eta gure aiten aitek ützi daikien lurraren popüliari erremetitz. and to give back to the people the land the fathers of our fathers gave us.

Book Review: Siege Warfare During the Hundred Years War

In writing Siege Warfare during the Hundred Years War, which was published in 2018 by Pen & Sword Books, Peter Hoskins sought to correct what he perceived as an overemphasis on the role of pitched battles in the Hundred Years War. The author argues that, while not insignificant, the effects of the major field battles for which the Hundred Years War is known (Poitiers, Crecy, and Agincourt being the most famous examples) were ephemeral compared to the many sieges which brought towns and castles under a force’s control.

Hoskins begins his work with a preface, which helps to contextualize his intentions for the book, and glossary of terms, which provides a useful vocabulary to anyone unfamiliar with the finer points of late medieval warfare. From this point, the work is divided into nine chapters, the first of which provides a brief overview of the Hundred Years War, examining the underlying causes and beginning of the war and discussing each section through to the Treaty of Tours and the final English defeat.

The second chapter contextualizes siege warfare. Here the author outlines the fundamentals of a siege: when one occurs, how it is conducted from the points of view of both strategy and medieval convention, and the costs associated with a siege. The third chapter provides further context, discussing the particulars of the attack and defense of fortifications. Techniques employed by both the attackers and defenders feature heavily in this chapter, as does the organization of siege warfare.

Chapters four through nine cover many of the more important sieges of the war in great detail, advancing chronologically from the Siege of Cambrai in 1339 to the Siege of Bordeaux in 1453. These chapters discuss “The English Ascendancy, 1337-1360”, “The French Recovery, 1369-1389”, “From Harfleur to the Death of Henry V, 1415-1422”, “From the Death of Henry V to the Siege of Orleans, 1422-1429”, From Orleans to the Truce of Tours, 1429-1444”, and “The Expulsion of the English from France, 1449-1453” respectively. In all, these six chapters cover over 80 sieges which occurred over the course of the Hundred Years War.

Over these chapters one of the essential changing elements of sieges that is emphasized is the development and growing importance of gun-powder artillery. This point is reaffirmed in the book’s conclusion, which reiterates the author’s view of the importance of sieges over pitched battles and re-emphasizes the role of artillery. The conclusion is followed by two appendices which provide a series of graphs which show the outcomes of the sieges discussed in the book and provide a discussion on the duration of sieges in the period.

One odd decision the author makes is to include his notes on each chapter in a separate appendix at the end of the book. Additionally, this is where the author’s discussion on sources is included. This decision, while ensuring the flow of the primary text is not interrupted, makes examining the author’s text in the context of his use of the sources challenging. Hoskins does make clear, however, that he utilized a number of English and French primary sources, with a particular emphasis on the works of prominent chroniclers such as Jean Froissart.

Hoskins relies most heavily on secondary source material, however. The bibliography which he includes at the end of the book includes an impressive array of scholarship in both English and French and includes scholarship published as recently as 2017, and as far back as 1727.

While this work is thorough and well written, its reliance on secondary scholarship and lack of explicit historiographical discussion renders it of limited use to historians. However, students at both the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as enthusiasts with an interest in the Hundred Years war, will likely find this book and its insights into siege warfare extremely useful.

Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi is an 1826 oil painting by French painter Eugène Delacroix, and now preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. This painting was inspired by the Third Siege of Missolonghi by the Ottoman forces in 1826…

Please follow link for full post

Eugène Delacroix,Zaidan,Paintings,Arthistory,Biography,Patrick Caulfield,History,fineart,Artists,footnotes,

02 Paintings, The art of War, Eugène Delacroixand Patrick Caulfield 's Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, with footnotes

Whats the difference between the north and south of France, culturally

To be honest, France can't be divided between North and South. France is a very unique country because it's on the crossroad of Mediterranean Europe, Northern Germanic & Celtic Europe. Even our language is the hybrid result of all these cultures.

France's population is literally the result of a great replacement mixing of Gallic (natives - who themselves were super diverse) with Romans who invaded them coming from the Mediterranean pool.

Every French kid learn how the last Gallic warrior (Vercingétorix) surrendered to Julius Cesar

After that, for a good chunk of french History, kings worked to unify the kingdom because regions didn't speak the same language. French as we know is actually "parisien" language and all the other languages slowly fell into irrelevancy (although the last decades the government is trying to revive/protect them after being pressured to do so - some region are VERY defensive of their culture and language ex. the Bretons, Basques, Corses...)

Now to explain the main difference with France that don't solely abide in north/south division, I made you a little drawing

Northern France - violet : super poor. It's a region that historically hosted the country textile manufacturers and fell off because of the deindustrialization. Known for being lovely & homely people (which is true). They eat Camembert with coffee in the morning............

Has a stigma of being inbred and pedophiles because of the many incestuous & pedoscandals and child abduction gravitating this region. The fact that it's on the frontier of Belgium and Netherlands (the capital of childp*rn) has definitively something to do with it

Upper West coast - green : super famous for its cows and milk products (cheese, butter, etc.) and bad weather. Bretons are known to be extremely proud of their cultural heritage and had some terrorist movements against the French government to defend them from their erasure 💀

Paris zone - brown : Paris & the banlieues. Extremely socially diverse. Extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Political & cultural capital of France.

Upper east zone - blue : (I was born there <3) like the north of France, use to be an industrial centerfold of the country (metallurgy - they use the metal from that region to build the Statue of Liberty) and then fell off after deindustrialization.

Its closeness to Luxembourg allows many professional opportunities to work abroad (especially in the banking system). The European Parliament has one of its siege here (Strasbourg) because it's on the crossroad of other European countries

This region used to be German between the two WW therefore many cities have German sounding names (the region became French again after Germany lost WWII).

Growing up there as a kid, I remember there was still a HUGE influence of German culture. I learned German before English (I lost everything though lol)

believe me or not, all of those cities are in France🫡

Lower East coast - black : CULTURED FRANCE. That's where Champagne comes from (région Champagne). Bordeaux is the biggest city of that zone and is known to be a more cultured version of Paris for real connoisseurs 👀

Cote d'Azur - red : zone where the far right makes its highest score. Super rich old people go retire there. Cannes festival. Incredible beach. Most Mediterranean zone of France.

....But there's also Marseille which stands out like a sore thumbs because it's a city a lot of corruption and a HUGE North African/Muslim population. EXTREMELY DIRTY and dangerous (lots o gang violence). Lots of corruption too...

Corsica - pink : they fought for decade for their independence against France lol Still do this day hate France lmao Famous for its anti-France terrorism and killing a French préfet 💀 Are known to bomb the holiday house of French people who constructed there because they don't want "foreigners" to invade their island💀💀

When was the last time you were truly thankful? (And what was it for?)

I am quite frequently deeply thankful. I have a great deal more good fortune than I would have any right to expect. We came out of the siege intact, and I even arguably emerged in a stronger position than I went in. Mia was able to safely extricate herself from her stay in Bordeaux.

If it were merely my safety or stability I had to feel thankful for, that would be quite enough. But I also have the good fortune to feel thankful for happiness and progression, as well.

Kurz wenden und frisch zum Sieg galoppieren - Steve Guerdat siegt im Weltcup von Bordeaux mit Is-Minka

Nur sechs im Stechen und der Europameister galoppierte mit Is-Minka am schnellsten Steve Guerdat und Is-Minka Im Parcours des LONGINES FEI JUMPING WORLD CUP™ von Bordeaux blieben nur sechs Reiterinnen und Reiter ohne Abwurf. Darunter waren mit Isabella Russekoff (ISR) und der jungen Französin Jeanne Sadran   zwei Amazonen, die das Publikum durch ihre tollen Runden im Umlauf begeisterten. Der…

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Events (before 1900)

306 – Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops. 315 – The Arch of Constantine is completed near the Colosseum in Rome to commemorate Constantine I's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. 677 – Climax of the Siege of Thessalonica by the Slavs in a three-day assault on the city walls. 864 – The Edict of Pistres of Charles the Bald orders defensive measures against the Vikings. 1137 – Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Prince Louis, later King Louis VII of France, at the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux. 1139 – Battle of Ourique: The Almoravids, led by Ali ibn Yusuf, are defeated by Prince Afonso Henriques who is proclaimed King of Portugal. 1261 – The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire. 1467 – The Battle of Molinella: The first battle in Italy in which firearms are used extensively. 1536 – Sebastián de Belalcázar on his search of El Dorado founds the city of Santiago de Cali. 1538 – The city of Guayaquil is founded by the Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana and given the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil. 1547 – Henry II of France is crowned. 1554 – The royal wedding of Mary I and Philip II of Spain celebrated at Winchester Cathedral. 1567 – Don Diego de Losada founds the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas, modern-day Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela. 1591 – The Duke of Parma is defeated near the Dutch city of Nijmegen by an Anglo-Dutch force led by Maurice of Orange. 1593 – Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. 1603 – James VI and I and Anne of Denmark are crowned in Westminster Abbey. 1609 – The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, is deliberately driven ashore during a storm at Bermuda to prevent its sinking; the survivors go on to found a new colony there. 1668 – A magnitude 8.5 earthquake strikes eastern China, killing over 42,000 people. 1693 – Ignacio de Maya founds the Real Santiago de las Sabinas, now known as Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Mexico. 1718 – At the behest of Tsar Peter the Great, the construction of the Kadriorg Palace, dedicated to his wife Catherine, begins in Tallinn. 1722 – Dummer's War begins along the Maine-Massachusetts border. 1783 – American Revolutionary War: The war's last action, the Siege of Cuddalore, is ended by a preliminary peace agreement. 1788 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550). 1792 – The Brunswick Manifesto is issued to the population of Paris promising vengeance if the French royal family is harmed. 1797 – Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain). 1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte defeats a numerically superior Ottoman army under Mustafa Pasha at the Battle of Abukir. 1814 – War of 1812: An American attack on Canada is repulsed. 1824 – Costa Rica annexes Guanacaste from Nicaragua. 1837 – The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated in London by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. 1853 – Joaquin Murrieta, the famous Californio bandit known as the "Robin Hood of El Dorado", is killed. 1866 – The United States Congress passes legislation authorizing the rank of General of the Army. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to be promoted to this rank. 1868 – The Wyoming Territory is established. 1869 – The Japanese daimyōs begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869). 1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War begins when the Japanese fire upon a Chinese warship. 1897 – American author Jack London embarks on a sailing trip to take part in the Klondike's gold rush, from which he wrote his first successful stories. 1898 – Spanish–American War: The American invasion of Spanish-held Puerto Rico begins, as United States Army troops under General Nelson A. Miles land and secure the port at Guánica.

Tchouameni ist einer der besten jungen Mittelfeldspieler Europas

Real Madrid verfolgt Aurelien Tchouameni seit Monaten und hat mehrmals Scouts geschickt, um den französischen Nationalspieler zu beobachten. Der 22-Jährige gilt als einer der besten jungen Mittelfeldspieler Europas und hat das Interesse mehrerer Vereine geweckt. Der Youngster kam 2020 von Bordeaux zu Monaco und hat bereits fast 100 Spiele für seinen aktuellen Verein absolviert. Seine Leistung im fußball trikot ist unbestreitbar.

Tchouameni ist bereits einer der weltbesten Spieler im fußball trikot, und er baute seinen Ruf mit einem Doppelpack aus, der Monaco am vergangenen Freitag zu einem 2: 1-Sieg gegen Lille führte, wobei er sieben Interceptions und andere beeindruckende Statistiken zu den Toren hinzufügte.

Tchouameni hat sich in den letzten Monaten auf internationaler Ebene mit Frankreich als Stammspieler etabliert und soll vor dem bevorstehenden Transferfenster keinen Mangel an Bewunderern aus ganz Europa haben. Auch Liverpool wurde mit dem Spieler in Verbindung gebracht. Letzten Monat berichtete Sportsmail, dass Jürgen Klopp ein großer Fan des Spielers sei und dass die Roten einen Wechsel für den Franzosen erwogen.

Angesichts der Prioritäten von Antonio Rüdiger und Mbappe für den Sommer könnte Monacos hohe Preisvorstellung ein Stolperstein sein. Auch wenn Real Madrid immer noch interessiert ist, ist ein Wechsel in diesem Sommer nicht in Sicht. Der mögliche Preis würde die 30 Millionen Euro weit übersteigen, die Real Madrid im August 2021 für Camavinga gezahlt hat, was für die Blancos ein Knackpunkt ist. Real Madrid trikot vielleicht nicht seine Wahl dieses Jahr.

Laut dem französischen Fernsehsender Telefoot gilt Liverpool auch als Spitzenreiter bei der Verpflichtung von Tchouameni. Tchouameni zu einem Schnäppchenpreis zu bekommen, wird nicht einfach, da Top-Klubs aus der Premier League und Monacos Ligue-1-Rivale PSG großes Interesse an dem defensiven Mittelfeldspieler haben.

„Ich habe einen Vertrag bis 2024 mit einer Option bis 2025“, sagte er Anfang dieser Woche. „Wir werden sehen, was die Zukunft für mich bereithält. Im Transferfenster kann viel passieren.“

Favorite History Books || The Black Prince: England’s Greatest Medieval Warrior by Michael Jones ★★★☆☆

The Prince’s martial exploits were the stuff of legend even in his own lifetime. On 26 Au- gust 1346, at the age of sixteen, he fought heroically with his father in an army that crushed the French at Crécy. Ten years later, on 19 September 1356, by now a commander in his own right, he turned the tables on his numerically superior opponent, capturing King John II of France in battle at Poitiers, one of the great English victories of the Hundred Years War. In 1362, he became prince of Aquitaine, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility and drew them like moths to the flame of his cause. Five years later, he led a great Anglo-Gascon army across the Pyrenees into Spain (crossing by the mountain pass at Roncesvalles, where Count Roland had fought a valiant rearguard action to save Charlemagne’s army seven centuries earlier), winning a stunning victory against the odds at Nájera that restored to the throne King Pedro of Castile, who had been ousted by his bastard half-brother. Edward’s meteoric military rise captured the imagination of Europe. The chronicler Jean Froissart saw him – at the outset of his career at least – as a model of chivalric virtue.

Edward became known to posterity as the ‘Black Prince’, a soubriquet that was not in existence when the Chandos Herald wrote a long poem (circa 1385) on La Vie et Faites d’Armes d’une très noble Prince de Wales et Aquitaine (The Life and Feats of Arms of the most noble Prince of Wales and Aquitaine), a tribute to a man seen as a paragon of chivalry, and in fact was used only from the sixteenth century. It is found in notes of the antiquary John Leland in the early 1540s and first appeared in print in Richard Grafton’s Chronicle in 1569. More than twenty years later, in William Shakespeare’s Henry V (Act 2, Scene 4) the French ruler Charles VI says that his countrymen fear King Henry because of his ancestry, his ‘heroical seed’... That ‘black name’ is now the standard way of describing the man. Some have suggested that the ‘Black’ is an allusion to the black armour that he wore at his first battle (although the evidence for this is scanty); others, that it is derived from the cruel way he waged war in France. When I inspect the tomb itself, I notice that the heraldic backdrop to his tournament badges is black – the colour forms part of a show of jousting prowess. Whatever the explanation for this knightly soubriquet, it was synonymous with a single-minded dedication to the warrior ethos, and the fighting fraternity of Europe’s elite.

In 1688 the antiquary Joshua Barnes wrote a historical biography of Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, praising the prince’s feats-of-arms; some seventy years later David Hume, in his History of England, also extolled his martial virtues. Indeed, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this ‘Black Prince’ was seen in straightforward, heroic terms. On 16 September 1903 a mounted statue of the Prince was unveiled in City Square, Leeds, proclaiming him as ‘the flower of England’s chivalry’. However, modern scholarship has been more critical of him, criticizing his lack of administrative ability and also his failures of political judgement. He is seen as fixated on his military career, inflexible in his approach to government and limited in his broader abilities. As I gaze on the tomb, I wonder if French manuscript collections, many of them underexploited, can cast fresh light on this fascinating figure.

The chronicler of the abbey of Moissac, Aymeric de Peyrac, for example, showed that the Prince could be engaging, humorous and pleasingly direct. He recalled the Prince asking one of the monks, who was famed for his melodious singing voice, to take Mass. At its end, the Prince greeted the man, thanked him and said: ‘I am sorry so much misfortune has be- fallen you – and that your good friends are no longer with you.’ The monk looked a little surprised and asked him why he had said that. ‘Well,’ the Prince replied, ‘I noticed that in the service you rushed through the Office for the Living but seemed to spend an eternity on the Office for the Dead.’ The monk looked at the Prince for a while, smiled, and then said: ‘I feel that the living can more easily look after themselves; it is those souls trapped in purgatory who really need my assistance.’ This was an age of violence and frequent visitations of the plague, a horror that struck communities rapidly and without warning; an age that demanded the warrior should prepare to face death, at any time or place. For a moment the Black Prince seemed lost in his own thoughts. Then he smiled back, and thanked the monk for his answer. The two men became friends.

The last years of the Prince’s life were blighted by sickness and he was only able to attend his final military engagement, the siege of Limoges, in 1370, carried on a stretcher. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, the Black Prince – increasingly frustrated by his own debilitating sickness and the deteriorating war situation – sacked the town and put its civilian population to the sword. This striking image of a chivalric hero falling below the standards that had made him admired throughout Europe has lodged itself in the popular imagination, but I find myself wondering whether it really happened in the way that Froissart described it. Whatever the truth of Limoges, there was now a cloud hanging over English fortunes. The Prince relinquished his duchy of Aquitaine due to ill health and spent his last years con- fined to his sickbed. He died on 8 June 1376, aged only forty-five. Nine years later the Black Prince’s magnificent tomb was completed by his son, now ruling the kingdom as Richard II. There was no more appetite for foreign war; the realm was divided by internal dissension and unrest. The Prince’s memorial at Canterbury became a memorial to a bygone era.

2 March 1770–Louis-Gabriel Suchet, future Marshal of France, is born in Lyon.

A new Marshal was created in 1811 when Louis Gabriel Suchet received a baton on July 8th, 1811. Suchet was the son of a silk-manufacturer of Lyons, and at the time of his promotion was forty-one years old. He first came into some sort of prominence in 1799, when he commanded the defence of the line of the river Var while Masséna was holding Genoa, but he made no real mark beyond acquiring a reputation of being a skilful commander of a division. Suchet’s first big chance came when he was appointed in 1809 to command a corps which had just been battered to bits in the siege of Saragossa. The start of his command was unfortunate. He arrived to find 10,000 depressed, exhausted, and sulky men. Their pay was in arrears, their rations were only procurable by looting, and there was a general feeling that the rewards for the capture of Saragossa had all been given to Mortier’s Corps. Worse was to follow very quickly. Within two days of reaching his headquarters, Suchet had to march out with this miserable body of men to meet the Spaniards, and on the 23rd of May, 1809, he had the mortification of seeing veteran Frenchmen panicking in front of Spaniards, and his new command being heavily defeated. But this defeat was practically his only set-back in five years of fighting. In a very short time the new commander proved himself an able and resolute soldier in the field, a skilful and benevolent administrator, and a genial and popular leader. “If Napoleon had had two Suchets,” said Madame Campan, “he would have captured and kept Spain.”

***

In 1820 Suchet ought to have been one of the witnesses at the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux. But unfortunately he was so punctilious about putting on the correct uniform when he was awakened for the event at three o’clock one morning, that by the time he arrived the royal baby had been born.

Suchet had settled down to a quiet, unambitious life in Paris; and it is recorded of him that he used to give many musical parties, and was greatly distressed at the chatter of the guests through the music. The soldier who had made short work of the guerillero bands of Aragon, could not cope with the fashionable ladies of Paris.

—Excerpts from Napoleon and His Marshals, by A.G. MacDonnell

“After the coronation ceremony in December 1154, Eleanor and Henry II both remained in their new kingdom for over a year until, in January 1156, the king left for France to contend with his brother Geoffrey’s rebellion in Anjou. Eleanor, often parted from her husband for long periods when he was fighting on England’s frontiers or on campaigns in his French lands, may have experienced feelings of isolation in England from time to time. Adding to the queen’s loneliness was her inability to have the company of more than a handful of her fellow Poitevins serving in her household. 

Eleanor, living in the midst of foreigners withholding from her the admiration accorded their earlier queens and whose language she never learned to speak, may have faced her days in England with some foreboding. Henry’s frequent absences from his kingdom would become a cause of concern for his English subjects. In a letter addressed to the king by the archbishop of Canterbury in spring 1160, he was urged to return to England, and reminded of his offspring, “those children from the sight of whom scarce even the hardest-hearted father could any longer withhold his gaze.”

While in England, Henry had much work to do, taking him away from his queen’s side in his task of reversing the diminution of royal rights during the civil war under King Stephen. Not long after his coronation, he headed for the north to reassert royal power there, while Eleanor remained behind at Bermondsey in the last stage of her second pregnancy by the English king. When Eleanor gave birth to their second son on 28 February 1155, Henry II was in Northampton. This was their first child “born to the purple,” and he was named Henry to commemorate his great-grandfather King Henry I of England, linking the boy to the Anglo-Norman royal line. 

At the end of March, the king returned from his northern expedition in time for the Easter festivities at Merton Abbey, and afterward he held a great council at London, where Eleanor had a prominent part in the festivities as the mother of two young princes. Two weeks later another council took place at Wallingford, where little William and his month-old brother were presented to the assembled magnates. The king, mindful of the uncertainty about the succession that had caused years of civil war, 1139–53, insisted that his barons swear their fealty to William and to his infant brother Henry. 

By June, Henry had left his wife’s side again to go on campaign, this time in the west country, conducting sieges of castles at Bridgnorth, Wigmore, and Cleobury. Eleanor would be separated from her husband for much of 1156, for Henry II crossed the Channel to Normandy in January on his first visit to his Continental lands as English king. He would be absent from his kingdom for the entire year, not returning to England until April 1157, while Eleanor remained in England acting as regent. Some time during Henry’s absence, William died at the age of three, although the date of his death is not known. 

Henry had left Eleanor pregnant for a third time, and in June 1156 she gave birth to a daughter, christened Matilda. The name linked the child to her Anglo-Norman ancestors, honoring her grandmother, the former German empress, whose own mother, William the Conqueror’s wife, had also borne the name Matilda. Eleanor’s first two children born in England were both christened by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury at Holy Trinity, Aldgate, a London house of Augustinian canons founded by Henry’s grandmother, Henry I’s queen. Eleanor joined her husband at Angers in the summer of 1156, following William’s death. On that Continental sojourn, she took with her both Young Henry and the infant Matilda, no more than three months old. 

The following autumn the royal couple would make a tour together of Eleanor’s duchy of Aquitaine, her first visit to her people in over two years. On this first visit since their coronation as king and queen of England, they revisited Limoges. Henry II intervened again in the Limousin to enforce his lordship, this time in the succession to the territory, enforcing his right as lord to guardianship over the deceased viscount’s minor son, even though previous count-dukes had not exercised such a privilege. He claimed custody of young Aymar V, and placed the viscounty in the hands of two Norman officials, despite the boy’s paternal uncles’ claim that tradition gave them the guardianship by their right as his closest kin. 

Later Henry would take advantage of his lordship to arrange the young viscount’s marriage to a daughter of his uncle, the powerful Earl Reginald of Cornwall. Such “feudal” prerogatives of lordship were not customary in Eleanor’s lands, and Henry’s attempted introduction of them would not be appreciated by her nobility. From Limoges, Eleanor and Henry continued south, visiting Bordeaux at the invitation of her former guardian Archbishop Geoffrey du Loroux. The state visit to Eleanor’s lands culminated with a Christmas court at Bordeaux, where Henry proclaimed his peace to the nobility and people of Gascony. 

This ceremony marked the end of Eleanor’s autonomy as ruler of her duchy. The five surviving documents issued by her as duchess during her 1156 visit reveal the limits of her authority over her ancestral lands, for three are merely confirmations of Henry’s acts. The two documents that Eleanor issued, evidently without Henry’s sanction, are routine orders to her Poitevin local agents to observe her father’s grants of privileges to religious houses. After this visit, Eleanor’s name disappears from Aquitanian charters, and none recording her as grantor, either alone or jointly with her husband, is found until her return over a decade later. 

During those years, Henry was issuing charters for his wife’s subjects in Poitou with no mention of her consent, although many of them were likely confirmations of grants originally made by her. Following the Christmas court at Bordeaux, the queen returned to England with her children early in 1157, pregnant once more, to resume her duties as regent until Henry’s arrival in April. Neither Eleanor nor Henry would visit her duchy again until 1159 at the beginning of the failed Toulouse campaign. Prolonged visits to Eleanor’s lands by Henry were rare, and most were no more than a month long. 

Two years after the 1156 visit, Henry would tangle with the viscount of Thouars, the most important noble in the northern and western parts of Poitou with territory stretching from his ancient fortress at Thouars, guarding the Poitevin frontier below the River Loire south of Saumur to the Atlantic coast near the Île d’Oléron. Henry took the castle of Thouars in 1158 after a three-day siege and then sent the viscount into exile, ruling his territory through Angevin or Norman appointees. Supposedly Henry had moved against the viscount of Thouars because of his support for Henry’s rebellious younger brother, Geoffrey count of Nantes; but according to some accounts, he acted out of a desire to please Eleanor, who considered the viscount a quarrelsome vassal. 

She counseled Henry to forceful action, urging him to raze the castle and its walls just as earlier she had pressed her first husband for strong measures against the Poitevins. Whatever the cause, Henry’s brutality toward the viscount only alienated the nobles of Eleanor’s duchy. The Poitevin nobility viewed Henry Plantagenet as tampering with their traditional “liberties” in his attempt to transform vague ties that had bound them to Eleanor’s predecessors into defined duties owed to him as lord. As usual, the instigators of resistance were the lords along Poitou’s southern frontier in the lower Charente and upper Vienne valleys, most prominent among them the counts of Angoulême. 

Despite the English king’s success in taking custody of the minor viscount of Limoges, the great men of Poitou rejected his “feudal” right to wardship and marriage, and Henry would never succeed in imposing on them the obligations owed by his Norman and English nobles. Nor would they admit that they held their lands of him as count-duke conditionally in return for payments and services; they only acknowledged a longstanding duty as landowners to perform ancient “public” services. Eleanor had urged Louis VII to strong measures against her subjects, but eventually she would come to see Henry’s authoritarian actions against the Poitevin aristocracy as contrary to her homeland’s traditions and her sympathies would shift toward her own people. 

After Eleanor’s return from Poitou, she would remain in England throughout the summer and autumn of 1157, and on 8 September she was at Oxford, where another son Richard was born. The source of Richard’s name is uncertain; it had been borne by several Norman dukes, but Robert was also a common name in the ducal lineage of Normandy. Henry on rejoining his family in England in April 1157 would remain in his island kingdom for fifteen months, except for a Christmas visit to Normandy with Eleanor for the Christmas court at Cherbourg. In mid-August 1158, the king left again for a long absence of four and a half years, not returning until late January 1163. 

Eleanor would recross the Channel to join her husband for the 1158 Christmas court at Cherbourg, leaving her infant son Geoffrey behind in England little more than two months after his birth on 23 September 1158. Geoffrey’s name, of course, honored Henry’s own father, Count Geoffrey of Anjou. The name Fulk that alternated with Geoffrey as a male name in the comital family of Anjou was also available for one of the sons, but never selected. Eleanor’s own ancestors afforded no additional choices, since all dukes of Aquitaine took the name William.”

- Ralph V. Turner, “Once More a Queen and Mother: England, 1154–1168.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England

Before the Siege of Jerusalem, Yusuf al-Kaysani thought he’d been blessed with the life he’d always wanted. He’d explained to his friends, just that winter, that having his heart broken has taught him that the truest love of his life was travel; and wasn’t he travelling? Hadn’t be been trusted with a ship of his own, and a cargo to take to Jerusalem?

His heart had been broken the year before, when he’d accompanied his uncle’s ship of glassware and silver to Cádiz. Not that he blamed his uncle’s ship or the voyage itself–his first time out of the Mediterranean, first time glimpsing the vast Altantic. His heart had been stolen in that port late one night, over coffee.

"We’re sending three ships of silk to Bruges and London next,” one of his uncle’s friends had said. “Our pilot has guided three trips to Bordeaux now, but he knows the coast as far north as anyone could want. He says he’s from an island so far north from Britain, it’s covered in ice, even in the summer. They don’t freeze to death because hot springs come out of the ground, apparently.”

Yusuf’s mouth had gone dry. His heart beat in his throat. “He comes from Thule?”

The man had turned to his uncle, mouth crooked in a smile. “Ptolemy? You said your nephew wasn’t a scholar.”

“Oh, he’s not, the lazy boy,” his uncle had said, which hurt, a little. Yusuf was twenty-two, which wasn’t young anymore; and he’d learned everything his tutor set in front of him and excelled in geometry, mathematics, and cartography, all of which a merchant needed. He just wasn’t studying the scriptures in Cairo like his cousin Nasr, and he’d enjoyed reading for pleasure more than the cultivation of his soul, so his uncle was barely willing to grant him the achievement of literacy. “Unless it’s old pagan legends or geographies. Silly, irreligious tales.”

“He should meet my pilot,” the merchant said wryly. 

That night, on the way back to their lodgings, and the next morning in the warehouse, as often as he prayed, Yusuf argued with his uncle to let him go. They weren’t getting the prices they wanted; further north their wares would be rarer, more precious. He needed more experience of the world. The ships would already be well-armed and well-guarded. Why shouldn’t he go? 

He’d almost flown apart with happiness when he got grudging permission to go ask, with grim assurances that he was to return and personally explain to his father if he somehow died along the way. He’d made a spectacle of himself in the street, running to his uncle’s friends house.

“Oh,” the man said, his face falling. “Oh, I am sorry. The ship sailed this morning.”

That, Yusuf had told his friends, was when his heart broke, more than it ever had for any woman. The moment he had not been able to sail. And he intended his next trip–his own, a voyage by sea to Jaffa and then to Jerusalem to negotiate the deal himself–to begin to make up for it. They had better get used to his letters, because he intended to travel as much as he could.

He had thought he’d known what his life was supposed to be.

But he did live to see Iceland.

In the Shadow of the Fire by Hervé Le Corre 🇫🇷

In The Shadow Of The Fire

By Hervé Le Corre

Translated by Tina Kover

Europa Editions

Publication Date: 10 June 2021

In The Shadow Of The Fire by Hervé Le Corre had been a highly anticipated novel for me. I’ve always had an interest in French history and culture which perhaps partly stems from being born on Bastille Day. I spent two memorable years living in Paris at the turn of the millennium. So I do have familiarity with the city and its geograpical layout and relished looking forward to a novel set in the past where I might recognise references to its arrondissements, boulevards and rues. In France it was awarded winner of the French Voices Prize.

The author Hervé Le Corre is a Paris born teacher now based in Bordeaux. I first encountered his name through a recommendation to read his novel Talking With Ghosts by a local crime fiction reading group. This was a contemporary police procedural which was released in the UK by MacLehose Press. This was followed by After The War set in 1950s Bordeaux which I have not yet read.

150 years after the Paris Commune, Hervé Le Corre strongly evokes the memories, the passion and the bloodshed of this seminal event in European history. The story focuses on eleven days as the Commune is eventually suppressed by the national French Army culminating with La semaine sanglante (The Bloody Week) beginning on 21 May 1871.

Reading historical novels can be a daunting prospect if linguistically the reader is unfamiliar with unfamiliar older words used but there were no such issues with this book. Translated by Tina Kover, who has translated Antoine Compagnon’s A Summer With Montaigne and Negar Djavadi’s award winning Disoriental, the translation is very clear and the language is captivating. The descriptions of Paris are rich with very detailed descriptions of the appearance and behaviours of the characters and the city landscapes. Not only does the novel succeed in realistically capturing the appearance of the era but it also appears to accurately portray the various mindsets and predudices of that time.

The Communards created the first proletarian dictatorship in the world and within the city its population is initially boisterous with most of the proletariat in good spirits. Over two months they had begun to establish policies that tended toward a progressive system of social democracy, including the separation of church and state, become self-policing, the remission of rent during the siege, the abolition of child labour, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner. This story is largely told from the perspective of those supportive of the Commune. Three months of seige during winter and famine are challenging but the greatest fear and later realisation was that the French Government forces wouid regroup and advance following their evacuation to nearby Versailles.

Le Corre brings us a large cast of fictionalised and well developed characters. Principal to the story are long term friends Nicholas and Joseph (known as Red) with the younger Adrien. They are 3 soldiers of the 105th Federated Battalion of the Commune. Nicholas has just been promoted to Sargeant and the three are fully signed up to protect the city from the "Versaillais."

We also meet Caroline who is in a relationship with Nicholas. She is a seemstress who has volunteered at a first aid station in the city working for the dedicated Doctor Fortaine. He ominously predicts "we've proclaimed a republic of words that will soon become a republic of the dead." She works diligently despite the horrors she sees with hopes of being with Nicholas once the conflict has ended.

We encounter less virtuous characters such as Monsieur Charles Gantier who takes suggestive photos of young females and aspires to be the photographer to capture history as the Commune is defeated. Then there is the sinister Henri Pujols, a former government soldier who abandoned the war against the Prussians but has developed a bloodthirsty taste. The mysterious Clovis coach driver for Pujols is more of an enigma who talks little of his background.

In the Shadow of the Fire is a literary historical fiction but it is also a sociological drama and a crime fiction thriller. Former bookbinder Antoine Roques had been appointed a policeman by the Commune authorities just one month earlier. When a triple murder by a disfigured killer leads to the discovery that young females are disappearing, he starts to investigate. Progress is slow as he talks to reluctant witnesses with split loyalties. He is lead onto the trail of Clovis and Pujols initially with some enthusiasm while his senior Inspector Loubert appears keen to do some real police work again.

It becomes increasingly clear that Paris is deeply divided with most of the bourgeois enthusiastically but often silently awaiting a return to normality. The braver ones decry the "government of beggars, led by nobodies.. paradise for lowlifes and prostitutes."

They are not the only ones unhappy. While the Commune appears good for the workers, it is a different matter for criminals whose usual activities have been impacted by the separations within the city and closure of more lucrative markets. They have "no desire to be caught up between the bullet of a mitrailleuse and the point of a bayonet."

As you can imagine there are many grisly deaths and injuries inflicted throughout the novel. It’s revealing that initially the soldiers try to persevere the bodies of the companions but later they are unable to do so as the bodies of the dead outnumber the living as Paris burns. With each progressive day the situation for each of the key protagonists becomes direr and the body count rises further. The questions that will keep the reader gripped to the end are whether Nicholas and his friends will survive the impending Versaillais forces and continue to fight or try to stay alive, whether Pujols be brought to justice by Roques or escape to Prussian occupied territory and if anyone will ever see their loved ones again. Around them those residents who have been suppressed by the Commune become more outspoken and outwardly hostile towards the Federates who become like game to be picked off one by one. The kindness or hostility of strangers will be critical to each of their survival while former colleagues are shown to become enemies.

Much dispair is visualised through the pages, but a ray of hope also remains, particularly that some of the ideals of the Communards might remain even as their bricks and mortar is being destroyed. Certainly they have shown the whole world that the old guard can be overthrown. There is plenty of moral considerations as to whether it was the Commune that produces upright and wise men - and could it change all men - or whether it is that type of man who produced the Commune.

In The Shadow Of The Fire clocks in at just over 500 pages but is fascinating and highly emotive read. It should in time become recognised as one of the key literary fiction novels based on this brief but turbulent period. At times it can be very descriptive, other times tense and there are plenty of fast moving chases, escapes and gun battles. Yet at its heart there is a human story about the endeavours of the key characters and the motivations behind their actions, whether through kindness, ideology or self interest. I read the book in 4 days and like all the best stories its words will enthral, excite and move you.

Many thanks to Daniela Petracco at Europa Editions Uk for an advance copy of In the Shadow Of The Fire.

Harrry Charles und Billabong du Rumois triumphieren in Bordeaux

Der Sieg im Prix FFE GENERALI geht an Harry Charles Im 5*-Springen beim Jumping International de Bordeaux am Freitagabend konnte sich Harry Charles (GBR), der Sohn  von  Peter Charles, dem Einzeleuropameister von 1995, in dieser Springprüfung souverän durchsetzen. Mit Billabong du Roumois war er so schnell unterwegs, dass es keinem Reiter gelang, diese Zeit zu unterbieten. Als einziger Teilnehmer…

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Events 6.13

313 – The decisions of the Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius, granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire, are published in Nicomedia. 1325 – Ibn Battuta begins his travels, leaving his home in Tangiers to travel to Mecca (gone 24 years). 1381 – In England, the Peasants' Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, comes to a head, as rebels set fire to the Savoy Palace. 1514 – Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, is dedicated. 1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns. 1625 – King Charles I of England marries Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France and Navarre, at Canterbury. 1740 – Georgia provincial governor James Oglethorpe begins an unsuccessful attempt to take Spanish Florida during the Siege of St. Augustine. 1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina, in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army. 1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: Scouting ahead of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four companions sight the Great Falls of the Missouri River. 1855 – Twentieth opera of Giuseppe Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes ("The Sicilian Vespers"), is premiered in Paris. 1881 – The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack. 1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia. 1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president's death. 1895 – Émile Levassor wins the world's first real automobile race. Levassor completed the 732-mile course, from Paris to Bordeaux and back, in just under 49 hours, at a then-impressive speed of about fifteen miles per hour (24 km/h). 1898 – Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital. 1917 – World War I: The deadliest German air raid on London of the war is carried out by Gotha G.IV bombers and results in 162 deaths, including 46 children, and 432 injuries. 1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker tape parade up 5th Avenue in New York City. 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Villers-Bocage: German tank ace Michael Wittmann ambushes elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, destroying up to fourteen tanks, fifteen personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns in a Tiger I tank. 1944 – World War II: German combat elements, reinforced by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, launch a counterattack on American forces near Carentan. 1944 – World War II: Germany launches the first V1 Flying Bomb attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs strike their targets. 1952 – Catalina affair: A Swedish Douglas DC-3 is shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 fighter. 1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their Fifth Amendment rights before questioning them (colloquially known as "Mirandizing"). 1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. 1971 – Vietnam War: The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers. 1973 – In a game versus the Philadelphia Phillies at Veterans Stadium, Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Ron Cey and Bill Russell play together as an infield for the first time, going on to set the record of staying together for 8+1⁄2 years. 1977 – Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before. 1977 – The Uphaar Cinema Fire took place at Green Park, Delhi, resulting in the deaths of 59 people and seriously injured 103 others. 1981 – At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager, Marcus Sarjeant, fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II. 1982 – Fahd becomes King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid. 1982 – Battles of Tumbledown and Wireless Ridge, during the Falklands War. 1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune. 1990 – First day of the June 1990 Mineriad in Romania. At least 240 strikers and students are arrested or killed in the chaos ensuing from the first post-Ceaușescu elections. 1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages. 1996 – The Montana Freemen surrender after an 81-day standoff with FBI agents. 1996 – Garuda Indonesia flight 865 crashes during takeoff from Fukuoka Airport, killing three people and injuring 170. 1997 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. 1999 – BMW win 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans. 2000 – President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea meets Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang. 2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. 2002 – The United States withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 2005 – The jury acquits pop singer Michael Jackson of his charges for allegedly sexually molesting a child in 1993. 2007 – The Al Askari Mosque is bombed for a second time. 2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth by landing in the Australian Outback. 2012 – A series of bombings across Iraq, including Baghdad, Hillah and Kirkuk, kills at least 93 people and wounds over 300 others. 2015 – A man opens fire at policemen outside the police headquarters in Dallas, Texas, while a bag containing a pipe bomb is also found. He was later shot dead by police. 2018 – Volkswagen is fined one billion euros over the emissions scandal. 2021 – A gas explosion in Zhangwan district of Shiyan city, in Hubei province of China kills at least 12 people and wounds over 138 others.