France

During the nineteenth century French taste reflected the social and political trends of the period; but it was also much influenced, writes Brian Reade,  by the work of English craftsmen.

The canal in Languedoc, between the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean, was one of the remarkable achievements of Louis XIV’s reign, writes Roger Pilkington.

Cross-Channel relations were cordial during the reign of the Emperor Napoleon III, writes Joanna Richardson.

“How different were our feelings” wrote a Scottish sergeant, “from many of our countrymen at home, whose ideas of the French character were drawn from servile newspapers and caricatures in print shops.”

J.L. Carr describes how, in revolutionary France, the debonair delights of civilization were replaced by a more virtuous albeit often stale cultural climate.

In the reign of Francis I, writes Desmond Seward, the first modern and last medieval poet attended the French court.

John Terraine studies the effects of Napoleonic doctrine upon the leadership of mass armies in the Industrial Age.

‘Why not seize Malta?’ Napoleon asked Talleyrand, ‘We could be masters of the Mediterranean’. By Christopher Hibbert. 

Harold Kurtz describes how for nearly ten years, in two spells of office, the Republican Fouché was the virtual head of the internal government of France under the increasing Traditionalism of Napoleon’s rule.

Former terrorist, responsible for some of the bloodiest excesses of the Revolution, Joseph Fouché, thanks to his intellect, his ruthlessness, his political flair and his unequalled “knowledge of men and circumstances,” lived on to play an important role under both Napoleon I and Louis XVIII. By Harold Kurtz.