French History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘French History’
Edmund Burke would not congratulate the French revolutionaries on their ‘liberty’ until he knew what they would do with it.
In 1789, the French Parliament relieved King Louis XVI of his constitutional privileges, and amidst chaotic scenes proclaimed that henceforth ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ would define their Government. Some believed that France was becoming more like England, and that Louis would be retained to add, like England’s George III, regal pomp to a liberal democracy. Edmund Burke wasn’t convinced.
Richard the Lionheart told Philip, the martial Bishop of Dreux, to decide whether he was a bishop or a knight.
During the Third Crusade, Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, spread the rumour that Richard the Lionheart had procured the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat; and after Richard was taken prisoner in Austria in 1192 he tried to make his detention as long and unpleasant as he could. In 1197, three years after his release, Richard stumbled across an opportunity for payback.
When Richard I heard that the town of Verneuil in Normandy was under threat, he made a vow that few could be expected to take so literally.
On March 20th, 1194, Richard I returned to England after two years of captivity to Leopold of Austria, with whom he had quarrelled on the Crusades. Richard’s brother John, who had tried to keep him locked up as long as possible, fled to the protection of Philip II of France; but barely a month had passed before Richard quitted his capital yet again, and was on his way back to Normandy.
Victor Hugo berates the general public for crediting everything they do themselves to their supposedly wonderful Government.
L’Homme Qui Rit (1869) is a novel by Victor Hugo, who took as his theme the miseries set in train by acts of arbitrary power; though his story was set in England during the reign of King James II (1685-1688), France in his own day, under Napoleon III, was uppermost in his mind. In this passage, Hugo takes a moment to reflect ruefully on the way that the public idolises the Power of the State.
Guy de Maupassant reflects on the way that a statesman’s place in history has so often been defined not by deeds or character but by his one-liners.
Guy de Maupassant is looking back over the sayings of some of France’s most famous rulers. Some sayings were witty, some heroic, some fatuous; many, he admitted, probably spurious. But all fixed the speaker in the mind, even making up for a humiliating defeat or an oppressive reign. It shows that what every statesman chasing a place in history really needs is a glib one-liner.
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, was kind to children and animals but Kings merited firmer handling.
Hugh of Avalon (?1135-1200) was a Frenchman from Burgundy who was appointed Abbot of the Charterhouse at Witham in the reign of Henry II. In 1186, he was raised to the See of Lincoln, where he gained a reputation for kindness towards the sick, to children and to animals, but Henry’s son Richard found that his indulgence did not extend to Kings.