Download or read book The Man Who Believed He Was King of France written by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Replete with shady merchants, scoundrels, hungry mercenaries, scheming nobles, and maneuvering cardinals, The Man Who Believed He Was King of France proves the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction—or at least as entertaining. The setting of this improbable but beguiling tale is 1354 and the Hundred Years’ War being waged for control of France. Seeing an opportunity for political and material gain, the demagogic dictator of Rome tells Giannino di Guccio that he is in fact the lost heir to Louis X, allegedly switched at birth with the son of a Tuscan merchant. Once convinced of his birthright, Giannino claims for himself the name Jean I, king of France, and sets out on a brave—if ultimately ruinous—quest that leads him across Europe to prove his identity. With the skill of a crime scene detective, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri digs up evidence in the historical record to follow the story of a life so incredible that it was long considered a literary invention of the Italian Renaissance. From Italy to Hungry, then through Germany and France, the would-be king’s unique combination of guile and earnestness seems to command the aid of lords and soldiers, the indulgence of inn-keepers and merchants, and the collusion of priests and rogues along the way. The apparent absurdity of the tale allows Carpegna Falconieri to analyze late-medieval society, exploring questions of essence and appearance, being and belief, at a time when the divine right of kings confronted the rise of mercantile culture. Giannino’s life represents a moment in which truth, lies, history, and memory combine to make us wonder where reality leaves off and fiction begins.
Download or read book The Sun King at Sea written by Meredith Martin and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This richly illustrated volume, the first devoted to maritime art and galley slavery in early modern France, shows how royal propagandists used the image and labor of enslaved Muslims to glorify Louis XIV. Mediterranean maritime art and the forced labor on which it depended were fundamental to the politics and propaganda of France’s King Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715). Yet most studies of French art in this period focus on Paris and Versailles, overlooking the presence or portrayal of galley slaves on the kingdom’s coasts. By examining a wide range of artistic productions—ship design, artillery sculpture, medals, paintings, and prints—Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss uncover a vital aspect of royal representation and unsettle a standard picture of art and power in early modern France. With an abundant selection of startling images, many never before published, The Sun King at Sea emphasizes the role of esclaves turcs (enslaved Turks)—rowers who were captured or purchased from Islamic lands—in building and decorating ships and other art objects that circulated on land and by sea to glorify the Crown. Challenging the notion that human bondage vanished from continental France, this cross-disciplinary volume invites a reassessment of servitude as a visible condition, mode of representation, and symbol of sovereignty during Louis XIV’s reign.
Download or read book King of the World written by Philip Mansel and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louis XIV was a man in pursuit of glory. Not content to be the ruler of a world power, he wanted the power to rule the world. And, for a time, he came tantalizingly close. Philip Mansel’s King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography in English of this hypnotic, flawed figure who continues to captivate our attention. This lively work takes Louis outside Versailles and shows the true extent of his global ambitions, with stops in London, Madrid, Constantinople, Bangkok, and beyond. We witness the importance of his alliance with the Spanish crown and his success in securing Spain for his descendants, his enmity with England, and his relations with the rest of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We also see the king’s effect on the two great global diasporas of Huguenots and Jacobites, and their influence on him as he failed in his brutal attempts to stop Protestants from leaving France. Along the way, we are enveloped in the splendor of Louis’s court and the fascinating cast of characters who prostrated and plotted within it. King of the World is exceptionally researched, drawing on international archives and incorporating sources who knew the king intimately, including the newly released correspondence of Louis’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon. Mansel’s narrative flair is a perfect match for this grand figure, and he brings the Sun King’s world to vivid life. This is a global biography of a global king, whose power was extensive but also limited by laws and circumstances, and whose interests and ambitions stretched far beyond his homeland. Through it all, we watch Louis XIV progressively turn from a dazzling, attractive young king to a belligerent reactionary who sets France on the path to 1789. It is a convincing and compelling portrait of a man who, three hundred years after his death, still epitomizes the idea of le grand monarque.
Download or read book The Chronicles of Froissart written by Jean Froissart and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1895 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Queen of Fashion written by Caroline Weber and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2007-10-02 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dazzling new vision of the ever-fascinating queen, a dynamic young historian reveals how Marie Antoinette's bold attempts to reshape royal fashion changed the future of France Marie Antoinette has always stood as an icon of supreme style, but surprisingly none of her biographers have paid sustained attention to her clothes. In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion—the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs—was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.
Download or read book The Life of King Henry the Fifth written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Reign of Louis XIV written by Paul Sonnino and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Man in the Iron Mask written by Alexandre Dumas and published by First Avenue Editions ™. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The courageous musketeers—Athos, D'Artagnan, Aramis, and Porthos—return to sword fighting in the final installment of the D'Artagnan Romances. When Aramis visits the Bastille, an infamous French prison, he meets a mysterious man who wears an iron mask and claims to be the King of France's secret twin brother. While France suffers under King Louis XIV's rule, Aramis initiates an elaborate plan to free the prisoner and overthrow the corrupt king with the masked man's help. Will the musketeers survive their most daring adventure yet, filled with nefarious politics, deceitful royals, and clashing loyalties? This is an unabridged English translation of French author Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling historical novel, which was first published in serial form between 1847 and 1850.
Download or read book History of England written by John Oldmixon and published by . This book was released on 1735 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint−Exupery and published by Aegitas. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Little Prince and nbsp;(French: and nbsp;Le Petit Prince) is a and nbsp;novella and nbsp;by French aristocrat, writer, and aviator and nbsp;Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the US by and nbsp;Reynal and amp; Hitchcock and nbsp;in April 1943, and posthumously in France following the and nbsp;liberation of France and nbsp;as Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the and nbsp;Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, and nbsp;The Little Prince and nbsp;makes observations about life, adults and human nature. The Little Prince and nbsp;became Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the and nbsp;best-selling and nbsp;and and nbsp;most translated books and nbsp;ever published. and nbsp;It has been translated into 301 languages and dialects. and nbsp;The Little Prince and nbsp;has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera.
Download or read book When the King Took Flight written by Timothy Tackett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a June night in 1791, King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette fled Paris in disguise, hoping to escape the mounting turmoil of the French Revolution. They were arrested by a small group of citizens a few miles from the Belgian border and forced to return to Paris. Two years later they would both die at the guillotine. It is this extraordinary story, and the events leading up to and away from it, that Tackett recounts in gripping novelistic style. The king's flight opens a window to the whole of French society during the Revolution. Each dramatic chapter spotlights a different segment of the population, from the king and queen as they plotted and executed their flight, to the people of Varennes who apprehended the royal family, to the radicals of Paris who urged an end to monarchy, to the leaders of the National Assembly struggling to control a spiraling crisis, to the ordinary citizens stunned by their king's desertion. Tackett shows how Louis's flight reshaped popular attitudes toward kingship, intensified fears of invasion and conspiracy, and helped pave the way for the Reign of Terror. Tackett brings to life an array of unique characters as they struggle to confront the monumental transformations set in motion in 1789. In so doing, he offers an important new interpretation of the Revolution. By emphasizing the unpredictable and contingent character of this story, he underscores the power of a single event to change irrevocably the course of the French Revolution, and consequently the history of the world.
Download or read book Joachim Murat Marshal of France and King of Naples written by Andrew Hilliard Atteridge and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A first-rate biography of the famed Marshal Murat, the most famous cavalry leader of the Napoleonic Wars. Joachim Murat was born in Gascony, the department of Lot, and although his father was relatively affluent, no-one realized the spectacular rise that would lead him to a the crown of Naples and an indelible imprint on the history of his native France and all of Europe. Atteridge wrote a number of books on the men who worked as satellites to Napoleon, Emperor of the French, his commanders on the battlefield and the brothers he placed, or tried to place in power as a buffer to a vengeful Europe. Marshal Murat has often been caricatured as a dashing cavalry commander with little more brains than the horse he rode, however the portrait here painted is much more complex than the simplistic view carted out by some other historians. More than a superlative leader of cavalry, in the short campaigns of the emergent French army, he grew distant from Napoleon due to constant goadings and rebukes, he was a varied man, vain and pompous, a dedicated family man, yet possibly also cuckold. He was to find a ignominious grave, for firing squad, at Pizzo having attempted to emulate his former master’s march on Paris in his adopted Naples. Highly recommended. Atteridge’s book forms a companion to his other single volume biography of Marshal Ney and his work on the varied personalities on Napoleon’s Brothers. Author- Andrew Hilliard Atteridge (1844–1912) Linked TOC and 7 Illustrations and 3 maps.
Download or read book A dialogue between the King of France and the late King James occasioned by the death of the Queen i e Queen Mary Written originally in French A political satire written by and published by . This book was released on 1695 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cobbett s Parliamentary History of England written by William Cobbett and published by . This book was released on 1809 with total page 854 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The King s Esquires Or The Jewel of France written by George Manville Fenn and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This captivating novel transports readers to the royal court of France during a bygone era. The story follows a young man anxiously awaiting the arrival of an important person at the Palace of Fontainebleau. As he practices his fencing skills, he becomes increasingly restless and frustrated, attempting to hit a marked-out heart on a wooden figure. Little does he know, someone has entered the room behind him, watching his every move. With its lush descriptions and intriguing characters, this novel offers a vivid and immersive glimpse into a bygone era of French history.
Download or read book Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King written by Matthew Glozier and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of Scottish soldiers in France in the age of the Sun King provides fascinating information about the visicitudes suffered by the brave personnel of the regiment of George Douglas, Earl of Dumbarton. Hardly the heirs of an 'auld' alliance amity, they became the playthings of a king intent on transforming the nature of war in his era.
Download or read book The Nation written by and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
