Showing titles in France

Joan's story almost feels like a novel instead of a part of history. She was a shining savior on a warhorse, waving her white banner and calling her soldiers forth to victory; but she was also painfully and intensely human, a young girl who wept and bled just the same as the rest of us. In the same breath, it is as easy to relate to Joan as it is to be awed by her incredible character. She may have been beatified as a saint, but Joan of Arc was in many ways a very ordinary human being, a person who felt pain and fear, a person who made mistakes, and who had moments of weakness.

Combining impeccable scholarship and literary elegance, David Wetzel depicts the drama of machinations and passions that exploded in a war that forever changed the face of European history.

From its opening amid the horrors of the French Revolution, to its unexpected ending on the shores of the English Channel, The Scarlet Pimpernel fizzes with excitement and wit. Dominating the action is the apparently limp-wristed fop, Sir Percy Blakeney, the most unlikely, though the most gentlemanly of heroes. With a happy countenance Sir Percy outwits all the machinations of Chauvelin, the zealous Revolutionary official, to help nobles escape.

Nearly 50 years after Napoleon met his Waterloo, generals across the West continued to study his tactics and engage their armies the same way armies fought during the Napoleonic Era. Despite advances in military technology and the advent of railroads for transportation, all of which made defensive warfare more effective, acclaimed military geniuses like Robert E. Lee used flank attacks and infantry charges against superior numbers in an effort to win decisive victories.

The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson’s pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his Fourteen Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations, but while his points were mostly popular amongst Americans and Europeans alike, leaders at the Peace Conference largely discarded them and favored different approaches.

Ranging from the early Middle Ages to the present, this is one of the broadest and most up-to-date studies of French history available in English. Among its central themes are the relationships between state and society, the impact of war, competition for power, and the ways in which power has been used.

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George...

Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating alongside perfect strangers in a loud and crowded room to be an enjoyable pastime? To find the answer, Rebecca Spang takes us back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a quasi-medicinal bouillon not unlike the bone broths of today.

The Guillotine. Its very name recalls scenes of horror during the French Revolution, as nobles lost their heads while gangs of people cheered and Madame Defarge knitted. Some of history's most famous people lost their heads at the guillotine, including Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI of France, and Robespierre, and the apparatus is immediately recognizable across the world, not just for its appearance but for all the stories in which it featured prominently.

While D-Day is one of the most famous events of the war, it is widely overlooked that about two months after the landings in Normandy, there was a second Allied landing in France. On August 15, 1944, a combined US-French force landed in southern France on the beaches of the Côte d'Azur as part of Operation Dragoon. In just over four weeks of fighting, the Allied landing led to the liberation of most of southern France and to one of the most audacious and successful Allied operations of World War II. What followed remains a controversial part of the end of the war in Europe.

Discover the remarkable history of the Napoleonic Wars. The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought between France and various coalitions in Europe between 1803 and 1815 (though some put the start date at 1799). The prelude to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic Wars is the French Revolution, and the conflicts that continued after Napoleon seized power would radically affect Europe and indeed political philosophies not confined by artificial boundaries.

An important chapter in history is that in which the Catholic Church was being questioned by the commoners. People were standing up against tyranny and illogical rules. They had had it with hypocrisy and double standards. The abuse in the church wasn’t representing the text in the Bible. Too much corruption had crept into the clergy, or so the narrative went about across the entire European continent.

The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk.

Est-il vraiment nécessaire de présenter Charlemagne ? C'est l'un des rares personnages connus du Moyen Age. Si l'Empereur nous est si familier c'est que son héritage a été revendiqué depuis la dynastie carolingienne, jusqu'à la construction de l'Union Européenne en passant par les rois de France, le Saint Empire, ou encore Napoléon. Mais au-delà du personnage de légende mobilisé et remodelé à travers les âges au gré des besoins politiques, qu'en est-il du personnage historique ?

It was with horror and sadness that the people of the world opened their social media or switched on their televisions on April 15th, 2019, only to see terrifying pictures of smoke and flames roaring around one of the most iconic outlines in France: That of Notre-Dame de Paris. There is more to Notre-Dame, however than just a tragic fire. Almost nine centuries of history lie behind its weathered towers, and its history is closely interlinked with that of France and its people. Its story has rung out through the ages as one of hope and survival.

Napoleon is regarded as one of history’s greatest generals, and Austerlitz was his greatest victory. Napoleon’s French army would still be well outnumbered at Austerlitz by a joint Russo-Austrian army. The Battle of Austerlitz was a tactical masterpiece that saw Napoleon actually invite an attack on his army by the bigger Coalition army. The result was a decisive victory that virtually annihilated the Third Coalition’s army and made Napoleon the master of the European continent.

Les Français ? Ils sont plus de quarante millions en juin quarante lorsque les Allemands occupent la France. Et ce livre raconte leur vie quotidienne. Au moment d'entamer le longues recherches, Henri Amouroux s'est aperçu, lorsqu'il évoquait les années d'Occupation, que ceux-là mêmes qui doutaient de l'opportunité d'un tel travail étaient très vite emportés par leurs souvenirs et qu'ils multipliaient alors les anecdotes. L'entreprise valait donc d'être tentée.

The Congress of Vienna, which took place over several months during 1814 and 1815, was an attempt to resolve the numerous challenges presented by Napoleon’s expansion and his subsequent defeat. The talks have been seen as a critical moment in European history, and depending on the point-of-view, the results were either a diplomatic breakthrough or the last gasps of the continent’s conservative elites. It was also a crucial step toward German unification, although this was not clear at the time.

Napoleon in Egypt: The History and Legacy of the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria chronicles one of the legendary French leader’s most forgotten campaigns. You will learn about Napoleon’s time in Egypt like never before.

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" - one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery".