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Louis-Philippe supports Talleyrand. As you can see, the old man is wearing orthopaedic footwear. The injury sustained at the age of 4 was to become emblematic of the life of a courtier who would come to be called the lame devil
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The future Emperor Nicholas I wrote of Alexander I, on the occasion of his wife Alexandra Feodorovna's pregnancy with their daughter Maria: "The Sovereign began to say that he saw our family bliss with joy... That he had never known this happiness, blaming himself for a liaison
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Saint Charles the Martyr, executed as a tyrant, traitor and enemy of his country. Do pass this on to Poklonskaya, in case things don't work out for her with Nicholas II
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The tale of the duelling nuns may derive from an episode in the life of the French opera singer and fencer Mademoiselle Maupin. She is said to have dressed as a nun in order to abduct her beloved from a convent, where the girl had been sent by her family&
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Timoclea, a noblewoman of Thebes raped after the city's capture, is said to have lured the commander of the Thracians into her garden with a promise to show him treasure in a well. And show him she did, pushing her assailant in and heaping stones upon him. Alexander
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Timoclea of Thebes throws her rapist into a well. Elisabetta Sirani, 1659. The Bolognese painter produced a whole series of pictures on historical and mythological subjects devoted to avenging women and women of strength
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Pius VII wore this hat in 1814 during his captivity in Savona: the pontiff was shut up in confinement for refusing to submit to Napoleon. In the end Pius not only returned to Rome, but outlived Bonaparte
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Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and from 1821 Marquess of Londonderry, had been British Foreign Secretary since 1812 and in 1822 was to have represented his country at the Congress of Verona, had it not been for an unfortunate incident. One of the minister's ill-wishers learned of his
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The women met in 1768, when Sarah was 13 and Eleanor 29. Ten years later they left their native parts together, setting off on a journey through Wales and, a little later, settling in Llangollen. They turned their house into a veritable pearl of local architecture and, given their way
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Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were for most of their lives known as the Ladies of Llangollen. The romantic friends lived together in the Welsh backwoods for 50 years; today their union would be called a same-sex marriage