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Aristocracy · Monarchies · Observations · People
Gaston of Orléans, brother of Louis XIII, his revolts and loss of the regency
In royal history I like the heroes of the supporting roles. Gaston d'Orléans (1608-1660), for example, who was called the only brother of the king, Louis XIII. In fact Marie de' Medici had another son, Nicolas, or the prince without a name, who lived for four
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Observations · People
At Woodstock, Elizabeth scratched with a diamond on a window pane: "much suspected by me, nothing proved can be, quoth Elizabeth the prisoner"
At Woodstock, Elizabeth scratched with a diamond on a window pane: "much suspected by me, nothing proved can be, quoth Elizabeth the prisoner". I have not seen it myself, but this is what the autograph of Elizabeth I looks like
London · Monarchies · People
In 1554 Mary the Bloody sent the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth to the Tower on a charge of crimes against the queen
In 1554 Mary the Bloody sent the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth to the Tower on a charge of crimes against the queen. The prisoner's fate was long in the balance, and the partisans of Charles V insisted on an execution. Fortunately, Mary decided otherwise. Two months later
Monarchies · Mores · People
How Many Horses Served Napoleon in His Lifetime and on Campaign
It has been calculated that over his whole life Napoleon was served by some six thousand horses, including those harnessed to the carriages that accompanied him and those ridden by his retinue. Every day he had at his disposal more than a hundred horses, divided into ten brigades, and on
NB! · Monarchies · Museums · People · Nature
The horse Marengo, on which Napoleon fought at Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram
The horse Marengo, on which Napoleon fought at Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram. Napoleon fled Waterloo, leaving behind Marengo, wounded in the leg; the horse was seized and carried off to England as a trophy
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Monarchies · Paris
The Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World's Fair stood on the Avenue Nicolas II, which ran from the bridge of Alexander III, whose foundation stone the Emperor had laid, to the Champs-Élysées
NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Monarchies · Mores
A touching detail from a fifteenth-century Utrecht Bible: beside the sickbed of an ailing queen hangs a tiny portrait of the king
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations
The portrait of Marie-Antoinette with her children was commissioned in 1785 from the fashionable portraitist Vigée Le Brun for 18,000 livres, a sum equivalent to more than 6 kg of 917-fineness gold, if I have not erred in my calculations
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Rome
French passport of 1830 issued to a Corsican student travelling to Rome
Authentic passport of a Corsican student in Rome, 1830. As is only proper, the king is mentioned in every document
NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Paris
I remember how, at the house of Georges Clemenceau, a lady could not make out who it was with the salamanders
I remember how, at the house of Georges Clemenceau, a lady could not make out who it was with the salamanders. Whereupon I, in short trousers, explained that the salamander is the emblem of Francis I, and that it often lurks in his portraits
Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · People
Princess Gunhild, whose eye disease was cured by Saint Wulfstan, had a younger sister: Gytha
Saxo Grammaticus reports that after Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings, Gytha of Wessex fled to Flanders, then to her uncle, King Sweyn of Denmark, and a few years later married Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Smolensk. Gytha bore six sons: Mstislav the Great (Prince of Kyiv), Izyaslav