The slapping of Pope Boniface VIII

King Philip IV of France (reigned 1285 to 1314) is known to history as Philip the Fair, on account of his blonde hair and good looks, but whether he acted fairly towards the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Boniface VIII (Pope from 1294 to 1303) is a matter for debate.

Philip and Boniface shared certain character traits, such as arrogance, cunning and ruthlessness. Boniface had shown his true character by the way he became Pope, namely by forcing Pope Celestine V to resign and then taking his place, after which Celestine was imprisoned and died ten months later. 

Philip was keen to gain some of the wealth of the Church for himself, so he levied taxes on the clergy and imprisoned a French bishop as a means of gaining secular control over the clergy. Boniface’s response was to excommunicate Philip.

Philip reacted with fury and dispatched a small army, under Guillaume de Nogaret, to confront the Pope at his summer palace at Anagni, which is about 45 miles south-east of Rome. Nogaret was joined along the way by Sciarra Colonna, who had his own quarrel with Pope Boniface.

Nogaret and Colonna reached the palace on the night of 7^th September 1303, and had no trouble the following morning in breaking down the barricaded doors in order to confront Pope Boniface. The cornered Pope, now effectively a prisoner of King Philip, expected to be killed on the spot, but Nogaret preferred to humiliate Boniface instead.

Nogaret and Collona openly discussed in front of Boniface and his papal court what they should do with him, including executing him on the spot, which reduced the elderly man to a quivering wreck. They then read out a list of charges that Boniface should answer, including heresy, idolatry and sodomy, slapping him across the face as each one was announced. They then left the room.

Boniface was now a broken man, having been mortified and treated with contempt. The excommunication of Philip was promptly forgotten about and Boniface returned to Rome. He died there only a month later.

This was a rare instance in medieval times of a Pope who tried to impose his will on a civil ruler but was then thoroughly put in his place.

© John Welford

The Jacquerie: France's Peasants' Revolt

Most British people have at least heard of the Peasant’s Revolt – the uprising in 1381 that was put down violently after the intervention of King Richard II, then aged only 14. However, they are much less likely to have heard of the earlier “Jacquerie”, a French Revolution that took place in 1358 and led to much more savagery than was to accompany the English version more than 20 years later.

In the late 1350s the French peasantry was having a terrible time. France had lost a third of its population to the Black Death and the countryside was being ravaged by bands of marauding mercenaries called the Great Companies. The nobility – who employed the peasants in conditions akin to slavery – had been humiliated by military defeat at the hands of the English at Poitiers in 1356, leading to the capture of King Jean II. They were in no mood to listen to demands from the peasants for relief from their desperate poverty.

The first outbreak of violence occurred on 28^th May 1358 when a band of about 100 peasants, armed with pitchforks, knives and other weapons, attacked the home of a noble at St Leu, about 25 miles north of Paris. They murdered the noble and all his family.

The revolt only lasted for a month, but during that time around 150 castles and manor houses were destroyed and their inhabitants tortured and butchered. On one occasion the word “butchered” was particularly apt, as the noble was roasted on a spit with his wife and children forced to watched. Not only that, but they were made to eat his cooked flesh afterwards.

The leaders of the Jacquerie, Guillaume Callet and Etienne Marcel, were followed by up to 100,000 peasants.

Not surprisingly, the rampaging bands were no match for organized armed forces, and two army brigades crushed the peasants in actions early in June. The revolt was all over by late June, after which the surviving nobles took their revenge.

It is estimated that up to 20,000 peasants were killed in the reprisals, and these included the two leaders mentioned above. Guillaume Callet, who had styled himself the peasants’ king, was crowned with a red-hot iron brand and then decapitated. Etienne Marcel was killed by one of his own men who had suspected Marcel of selling out to the enemy.

It would be more than 400 years before the French underclass would again feel emboldened to assert themselves against their rulers, but on that occasion they would be much more successful.

© John Welford

The Paris Commune of 1871

The Paris Commune of 1871 was a revolt by the people of Paris against the French government, following the defeat of France under Emperor Napoleon III by Otto Bismarck’s Prussia.

Paris under siege

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 the city of Paris had been besieged by the Prussians for four months and the people reduced to near starvation, with cats, rats and the animals in the zoo being killed for food.

Paris was staunchly Republican and had already declared the Second Empire of Napoleon III to be at an end in September 1870. However, it was not until 28^th January 1871 that an armistice was signed and arrangements made for an election to provide France with a government that had authority to negotiate with the conqueror. The new assembly met in Bordeaux, in south-west France, and set up a provisional government, under Adolphe Thiers, in February.

An unpopular solution

However, the assembly and government were overwhelmingly monarchist and only represented the wealthier classes of France. Some of them hoped to establish a new Bonapartist empire headed by the son of Napoleon III. The move of the assembly from Bordeaux to Versailles, the seat of the old French monarchy, aroused suspicions on the part of the Parisians that a restoration of the monarchy was being planned.

Another cause for revolt was the triumphant German procession through the city that took place in March 1871, this having been one of the demands acceded to by the Versailles assembly, although they actually had no choice in the matter. However, the assembly made matters far worse by a move that was within their control, which was to demand payment, with full interest, of all the rents and debts that had been suspended during the siege of Paris the previous year when the people had been eating rats from the sewers.

The establishment of the Commune

Things came to a head when the government ordered the Paris National Guard to disband and sent a small band of soldiers to remove the guns stationed on the heights of Montmartre. This move was resisted and the negotiators sent by Versailles were murdered. Shortly after this the people of Paris set up their own council (or Commune) of 92 elected members.

The word “Commune” might imply that these were early Communists who followed the teachings of Karl Marx. However, although they did include some members who had Socialist leanings, they were by no means all inspired by left-wing politics and included many middle-class business people who wished to carry on their trades on purely capitalist lines but without interference from a government they had no cause to trust.

During its existence the Commune did carry out some economic organisation along what might be thought to be Socialist lines, such as setting up work schemes and taking steps to control the price of foodstuffs to prevent profiteering, but its main energies were devoted to the struggle for survival against the forces sent by the Versailles government.

The defeat of the Commune

The assault against the Commune was led by Marshal MacMahon, under instruction from Adolphe Thiers. An artillery barrage was levied against the city from mid March to early May. The German occupation force stood aside as Frenchman fought Frenchman, with their only contribution being the permission given by Bismarck to Thiers for the assault forces under MacMahon to be increased.

Once a breach had been made in the western defences of Paris, a week of fierce hand-to-hand street fighting took place, with the communards setting up barricades that were overrun one by one. The last stand of the defenders was in the cemetery of Père Lachaise with men taking cover behind the gravestones.

The aftermath and consequences of the Commune

The government was severe in its reprisals against the survivors, with many being executed by firing squad and up to 7,000 being transported to overseas penal settlements. With some 20,000 people having been killed and many more fleeing the city, it is estimated that the population of Paris fell by as many as 100,000 people during the rebellion. Many parts of the city were left as smoking ruins.

  

Apart from the material damage, the most important long-term consequence of the Paris Commune was the wedge driven between the government and the working class, not only in Paris but other major cities in France (communes had also been established in Lyons and Marseilles, for example). Divisions between the wealthier and poorer classes in France became almost unbridgeable, with a section of the working class being driven towards Marxism. Even to this day, French politics has been marked by the strength of its extremes, with the parties of the far left and far right always doing much better in elections than their equivalents in most other European nations.

The support given by the wealthier classes to the Thiers government increased to the extent that the huge sums demanded by Bismarck as indemnity for the Franco-Prussian War could be paid off far sooner than Bismarck had expected or wished, and the French army could be rebuilt. This was to have consequences in the following century as France continued to believe that she could withstand German aggression, although the two World Wars were to prove this belief to be ill-founded.

As for the internal government of France, the communards were eventually to get their way, with a republic being established under a constitution, agreed in 1875, that was to last until the German invasion of France in 1940.

The Paris Commune was therefore one of the most violent and tragic episodes of recent European history, an event that has left a deep mark on the political life of France ever since.

© John Welford

The Battle of Verdun, 1916

At 7.00am on 21^st February 1916 German artillery began a barrage that signalled the beginning of the most protracted, and one of the bloodiest, encounters of World War I, namely the battle of Verdun.

The aim of the Germans was to “bleed the French to death” by pummelling their defensive positions north of the historic city of Verdun. On each day of the battle a massive bombardment, from more than a thousand artillery pieces, was followed by an infantry advance to which the French were forced to respond.

This went on for day after day until the French defences began to give way. On 25^th February they lost control of Fort Douaumont, which had been thought to be impregnable, after which the French supply lines came under severe threat.

The tide began to turn when Major-General Philippe Petain was put in charge of defending Verdun. He reorganised the supply route, as well as the French artillery, and rotated his troops so that nobody spent too long in the front line. This latter move had a massive impact on morale.

By the 23^rd of June German resources were beginning to ebb as French counter-attacks took effect. Fort Douaumont was retaken on 24^th October and by December the battle had fizzled out into the stalemate of continuous trench warfare.

The Battle of Verdun lasted for ten months and caused some 700,000 casualties (killed, missing and wounded). Nobody won, although some reputations were enhanced and others diminished. An early casualty of the battle, in that he was taken prisoner, was a young infantry captain named Charles de Gaulle. He spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp and was therefore saved for much more important roles later in the century. Petain, the hero of Verdun, was to take a much less heroic part in World War II when he led “Vichy France” as a puppet state of the Nazis.

© John Welford

The Battle of Poitiers, 1356

On 19^th September 1356 the English won a notable victory against the French at the Battle of Poitiers.

This was one of many battles fought at various times during the period that has become known as the Hundred Years War. This is something of a misnomer because it actually lasted for 120 years and it was not a single war but a series of eight separate conflicts between the royal houses of England and France.

Poitiers was fought during the third phase of the war, which had been interrupted for seven years by the ravages of the Black Death, which had had devastating consequences in both England and France.

In 1355 King Edward III of England launched a three-pronged attack on France. He led an army into northern France while one of his sons, John of Gaunt, raided Normandy and his eldest son and heir, Edward (also known as the Black Prince) raided south-western France from English-held Bordeaux.

In August 1356 Prince Edward began a raid into central France with the deliberate aim of attacking soft targets and gathering as much booty as possible.  His force, consisting of cavalry, infantry and archers, numbered around 12,000 men in total.

Opposing Edward was the French King Jean II, who began pursuing Edward on 8^th September. King Jean could move faster because of the huge amount of booty that Edward was taking with him. The chase was on, but neither side was aware of where the other actually was and the routes they took were somewhat confused. On the late afternoon of 17^th September the English advance guard accidentally ran into the French rear guard, three miles east of Poitiers, and Edward realised that battle was inevitable. He therefore sought a good defensive position.

18^th September was a Sunday, on which a truce was arranged. However, Edward used this breathing space well by arranging his troops above a gentling sloping vineyard with his left flank protected by a marsh and a creek. He stationed his cavalry behind a hedge on his left flank, but dismounted them. He left a force of mounted cavalry on his right flank, which was more exposed. Archers were posted in hiding along a front 1,000 yards long.

The French force was more than three times the size of the English one, divided into four divisions each of around 10,000 men. In three of these divisions Jean dismounted his cavalry, in the belief that this was the way to defeat the English who had adopted the same tactic. Jean’s plan was to attack the English in a frontal assault, launching each division at them in turn.

The battle began early on the morning of 19^th September, with the only mounted French division making its attack. However, they did so prematurely, which took the French crossbowmen out of the action. The cavalry charge was easily beaten back by the English archers.

The second French division was also met by a hail of English arrows but had more success than the first. Edward was forced to bring most of his reserves into the battle, and only just managed to hold on. Both sides suffered heavy losses.

However, had the French appreciated just how exposed Edward’s right flank was at this stage, they could have won the battle. Instead, the third division, led by the King’s brother, was so alarmed by the French losses that they fled the field before getting in range of the English archers, whose numbers were now much depleted.

This only left the largest French division, led by King Jean himself. Although they had marched for a mile in heavy armour to reach the point of attack, Prince Edward also knew that his men were exhausted and were heavily outnumbered. He therefore brought his last reserve of 400 men to the front of his force. He ordered a “do or die” frontal attack that included his archers who had by now run out of arrows. He also sent 200 light cavalry to encircle the French division and attack its rear.

There was fierce hand-to-hand combat in the vineyard and the battle was still in the balance when the French realised that they were being encircled by the English cavalry. They then either fled or gave themselves up to capture. Among the prisoners was King Jean himself.

The losses at Poitiers were about 2,500 French and 1,000 English dead, but the French also had more than 2,500 of their finest fighting men captured. King Jean was taken to London, where he spent four years in captivity, although he was treated more like a royal guest than a prisoner.

Edward did not advance further at this stage but returned to Bordeaux, safe in the knowledge that the French would not meet him again in open battle. For the next few years he was free to range all over France and raid as and where he wished.

The Peace of Bretigny in October 1360 recognised English land claims in France, but King Edward gave up his claim to the French throne. King Jean was allowed to return to France, after a ransom of three million gold crowns was paid.

© John Welford

Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow, 1812

18^th October 1812 was the day on which Napoleon Bonaparte began his retreat from Moscow, realising for the first time that his dream of dominating the whole of Europe was not going to come true. There were two great turning points in the fortunes of Napoleon’s Empire – the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 had shown that France would no longer rule the roost at sea; the Retreat from Moscow made it clear that the same now applied on land.

Napoleon had marched his army 500 miles into Russian territory from the relative safety of Vilnius (in Lithuania). It had taken twelve weeks across territory laid waste by the Russian peasants who had destroyed anything of use to the French before they abandoned their farms and moved elsewhere.

When the French eventually reached Moscow they found that the same policy had been adopted. This had been a thriving city with a population of 250,000 but now only 15,000 remained. The Russians had set fire to much of the city before leaving, and Napoleon was now the conqueror of piles of smoking ruins that contained very little food or anything else of value.

Napoleon sought to do a deal for a truce with the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, but the latter would not even reply to Napoleon’s letter. After 35 days in Moscow, Napoleon had no choice but to order a retreat. The whole Russian campaign had been a complete waste of time, resources and lives.

The Retreat was worse than the advance because Napoleon’s demoralised army now had to march through the devastated Russian territories in the depths of winter. They also came under attack from marauding Cossacks and gangs of guerrillas who were properly equipped for the conditions, which the French were not. Every fresh raid was another defeat.

The men and horses that died, whether from cold, starvation or enemy action, were left where they fell, their bodies becoming food for wolves.

90,000 men began the Retreat from Moscow but only 20,000 returned to Vilnius. Napoleon could only comment that it was but a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous. He had been defeated not so much by the Russians as by Russia.

© John Welford

The Albigensian Crusade, 1208

On 14^th January 1208 a Papal legate was murdered, thus triggering one of the most terrible demonstrations in history of what happens when people use their religion as an excuse to commit evil deeds.

The medieval Church, led by the pope in Rome, was on the lookout for heresy in all its forms. Any group or sect that did not toe the line was not to be tolerated. This is an unfortunate consequence of religion in all its forms – once you have convinced yourself that you are right, everyone else must therefore be wrong, and if you are fanatical enough there is only one punishment for being wrong, which is that the heretics must not be allowed to live.

The target in 13^th century France was the group of Christian puritans known as the Cathars, who were concentrated in the cities of Toulouse and Albi in the southwest. The problem with the Cathars was not so much their devotion to a peaceful and saintly life in which the distractions of the world were set to one side, but the fact that they dared to criticise the Catholic Church for its greed and corruption and their refusal to pay the papal taxes that were part of that corruption.

Pope Innocent III (see picture) sent his legate, Pierre de Castelnau, to Toulouse to demand that Count Raymond suppress the Cathars on pain of excommunication. The Count gave in to the demand and sent the legate on his way, but de Castelnau had not gone far before he was set upon and murdered by a knight in the service of Count Raymond.

It is unlikely that Count Raymond had ordered the killing, but that did not affect the reaction of Pope Innocent who ordered, in effect, the destruction of the entire Cathar community.

This campaign became known as the Albigensian Crusade, because the town of Albi was one of its main targets, and ironically it was by far the most successful (in terms of outcome matching aim) of all the Crusades launched by the Church at that period in history.

The task of wiping out the Cathars was assigned to a French nobleman named Simon de Montfort, who set about his task with ruthless efficiency. City after city was laid waste and the population slaughtered down to the last man, woman and child, although some did manage to escape.

When it was pointed out to Simon that not every inhabitant of a city under siege was a Cathar, and many were loyal Catholics, his response was that everyone should be killed anyway, and the task of sorting out good from bad should be left for God to sort out when their souls got to the Pearly Gates.

Even after the crusade had succeeded in destroying the supposed threat from the Cathars, Simon carried on with the genocide and was only stopped by a rock that was projected from a mangonel on the walls of Toulouse, a weapon which legend states was operated by a group of young women who were desperately trying to defend their city after most of the men had been killed.

The whole episode was a revolting example of what happens when fanaticism holds sway. Examples from much more recent times bear witness to the fact that the worst atrocities seem to occur when religion is a motive.

© John Welford

The murder of John the Fearless, 1419

On the 10^th of September 1419 the Duke of Burgundy was murdered on a bridge at Montereau, about 40 miles upriver from Paris.

France was in turmoil. The king, Charles VI, was known as “Charles the Mad” for good reason. Being unable to provide firm rule, he was largely under the control of the powerful House of Burgundy, but opposing this influence was the equally powerful House of Armagnac. The two families controlled huge resources in terms of wealth, land and armed men, and fought what amounted to a civil war that continued, with varying degrees of animosity, from 1407 to 1435.

While all this in-fighting was going on, the English were able to take advantage by capturing large swathes of northern France. King Henry V had achieved an overwhelming victory at Agincourt in 1415 and was ready and willing to make further gains.

The Duke of Burgundy was known as John the Fearless for his bravery. He had captured Paris in 1418 and was therefore the virtual overlord of King Charles. However, the King’s son and heir (known in French parlance as the Dauphin) had escaped and was in the hands of the Armagnacs.

There were therefore three powerful forces at large in France, the Burgundians, the Armagnacs and the English. The English could only be kept at bay if the Burgundians and Armagnacs could make common cause, and it was to that end that a meeting was arranged on the bridge at Montereau.

The Dauphin, with his Armagnac bodyguards, was already on the bridge when Duke John arrived. He knelt to show respect to the 16-year-old Dauphin, but as he rose his hand touched the hilt of his sword in a way that alarmed one of the bodyguards, in that it appeared as though the Duke was about to draw his sword. He said to the Duke: “Would you put your hand on your sword in the presence of the Dauphin of France?”

It is almost certain that nothing was further from the Duke’s mind, and the touch of his hand on the sword was purely accidental, but that did not stop another of the Armagnacs, named Tanneguy, from lunging forward and hitting the Duke in the face with an axe, thus killing him.

The murder served nobody’s purpose apart from the English. As their revenge, the Burgundians signed an alliance with King Henry which was the forerunner to the 1420 Treaty of Troyes by which the French throne was to be ceded to Henry on the death of King Charles, with the Dauphin being disinherited. Henry was also given Charles’s daughter, Catherine, as his wife and queen. The only reason why Henry V did not become the King of France was that he died in August 1422, two months before Charles. Henry’s son, who was only nine months old when his father died, therefore became the infant King of France before his first birthday.

A prior from Dijon summed up the situation well when he said that “The English entered France through the hole in the Duke of Burgundy’s head”.

© John Welford

The Battle of Tours, 732

10^th October 732 was the day on which Charles Martel, leader of the Franks, earned his nickname of Charles the Hammer, by virtue of his decisive victory over the Moors at the Battle of Tours.

The Moors had crossed from North Africa into Spain in 711 to begin their occupation that would last for nearly 800 years. However, they had ambitions to cross the Pyrenees into what is now France, in a bid to conquer the whole of Europe if at all possible. They were led by the governor of Spain, Abd ar-Rahman.

Their first victory was at Bordeaux where they easily defeated Eudo, the Duke of Aquitaine, before heading north towards Tours which they had heard was full of treasure just waiting to be plundered.

Eudo fled hot-foot to Paris where he urgently sought help from Charles Martel. The two had hardly been best buddies in the past, so Charles only agreed to help if Eudo would swear to be Charles’s vassal in future. Eudo had little choice, so the two leaders assembled an army of 30,000 men, divided between infantry and cavalry.

They met the Moorish army somewhere between Tours and Poitiers (the battle is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Poitiers). The Moors had an army that was about 80,000 strong, composed entirely of cavalry, the men being lightly armoured and armed with scimitars and lances.

The two armies spent the next six or seven days watching each other warily and manoeuvring for position, with the occasional skirmish. The Moors were particularly keen to protect the booty that they had already plundered during their advance from Spain.

One advantage that Charles had was that the Franks had been fighting against the Moors for about twenty years and therefore knew a great deal about their preferred battle tactics, which consisted primarily of mounting massive cavalry charges and sweeping all before them. Charles knew that he had to defend against such an approach, and that was the secret of his success in this instance.

The Moors mounted charge after charge but could not break the defensive wall that Charles had set up, formed into squares in a manner used to great success more than a thousand years later by the British army during the Napoleonic wars. The Franks, their cavalry dismounted, threw javelins and axes at the Moors when they got within range and the latter’s casualty rate grew alarmingly.

A rumour then got around that the wagons containing the Moors’ booty were under attack. They had to be defended at all costs, so the horsemen turned away from attacking the Franks to the more important task of defending their treasure. However, the rumour turned out to be false. Whether it had been planted by the Franks as a psychological ploy is open to debate, but it would have been a good tactic to use.

However, when the Moors returned to their camp they realised that another rumour was entirely true, namely that Abd ar-Rahman had been killed. There was nothing for it but to abandon their mission and head back to Spain, leaving all their booty behind.

The Muslim threat to western Europe was thus averted for the foreseeable future, with the next major advance coming from the direction of Turkey in the 16^th century.

Charles the Hammer was able to assert his dominance by taking over Aquitaine after Eudo died two years later, and to lay the foundations for the even greater empire that would be created by his grandson, Charlemagne, in the 9^th century.

© John Welford

The French Foreign Legion

10^th March 1831 was the day on which the French Foreign Legion was founded by King Louis-Philippe of France. It proved to be one of the world’s most iconic fighting forces, and it is still in existence today.

The Legion was originally recruited for the purpose of fighting a revolt in Algeria, and it was stated at the outset that it would never be used on home soil. Throughout its history it has played a major role in fighting France’s colonial wars, particularly in Africa but also in other parts of the world including Mexico and Vietnam.

The structure of the Legion, which it has always maintained, is that the officers are French but the junior ranks are from other countries. The original officers were remnants from Napoleon’s Army who had been doing very little since Waterloo, while the men were drawn from all over Europe.

The reputation of the French Foreign Legion for being a bolt-hole for wanted men was well deserved. Many criminals from all over the world soon found that they could escape from justice by enlisting in the Foreign Legion, where they would gain not only anonymity but considerable respect as a member of an elite fighting brigade. There was, of course, the danger of getting killed in the process, but for some recruits this merely transformed a probability of dying on the gallows into a mere possibility of being killed in battle.

Today, the French Foreign Legion is about 9,000 strong, with around 100 countries represented in its ranks. However, any ne’er-do-well who thinks that a career in the Legion is there for the asking might be in for a shock. Every year there are around 500 applications to join, but only 10% are successful. It must also be stressed that the vast majority of the Legion’s members are professional soldiers with not the slightest trace of a criminal past!

©John Welford

The Battle of Borodino, 1812

7^th September is the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino in 1812, which marked the beginning of the end of the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte as the most powerful man in Europe.

Napoleon had marched east into Russia at the head of an army of 530,000 men, but by the time he was within a day’s march of Moscow that number had been reduced to 130,000. The Russians refused to face him in battle until he reached the village of Borodino, to the west of Moscow.

The battle lasted all day, by the end of which the Russians had lost 45,000 of their original force of 120,000, but these were numbers that could always be replaced. On the other hand, the French losses of 30,000 were irreplaceable, as they were 1,500 miles from where they started.

The Russians retreated, but this was a French victory only on paper. Moscow had been evacuated and largely destroyed by the Russians, so there was nothing left for the French to capture and no supplies to be looted. There was nothing for it but to head for home.

The retreat from Moscow, through countryside that had been laid waste so as to offer nothing to the French, and in the depths of winter, made clear to Napoleon that Borodino was his greatest defeat. 

Out of more than half a million men that set out on this venture, no more than 10,000 returned.

7^th September is therefore a very important date in European history.

© John Welford

Chateau Gaillard is captured, 1204

On 6th March 1204 King Philip Augustus of France finally captured Château Gaillard, a massive fortification at Les Andelys, 55 miles north-west of Paris, that had been built by England’s late King Richard the Lionheart.

Richard built the castle in 1196 to defend the territories in northern and western France that he had inherited from his father King Henry II. The castle boasted walls that were eight feet thick, 17 towers, and a moat that was 45 feet deep. It looked impregnable, but Philip Augustus swore to take it, saying that he would do so even if the walls had been made from steel. Richard replied that he would defend it even if the walls had been made from butter.

Richard died in 1199 and was succeeded by his far less competent brother John. In 1203 Philip Augustus decided that the time was right for capturing the castle and so laid siege to it. This became a protracted affair, partly because John was so worried about his position on the home front that he did not dare to try to raise an army to lift the siege, and partly because the castle had enough supplies to withstand a siege of at least a year’s duration.

Philip Augustus therefore had no choice but to mount an assault on Château Gaillard. His soldiers began by filling in part of the moat so that they could reach one of the walls and literally “undermine” it, which caused a partial collapse.

However, this was not enough, so a party of soldiers was given the unenviable task of crawling up one of the castle’s latrines and lowering the drawbridge to allow the French troops to get inside the walls. The garrison surrendered on 6th March 1204, which was the start of the dismantling of England’s empire in France.

© John Welford

Napoleon Bonaparte's whiff of grapeshot, 1795

On 5^th October 1795 an ambitious young man named Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a massacre that would start his rise to fame as one of the dominant figures of European history.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s early service to France

Napoleon Bonaparte, who was born in 1769 on the French island of Corsica, had distinguished himself from a young age as a military commander by defending the French Revolutionary government against internal and external threats. In particular, in 1793 Colonel Bonaparte successfully lifted the siege of the port of Toulon by the British Navy. For this service he was promoted to Brigadier General.

The National Convention

From 20^th September 1792 the government of France was in the hands of the National Convention, which was an assembly elected by universal male suffrage. This body underwent a number of changes during its three-year existence and a major change was proposed in 1795 that would create a second chamber and a system of checks and balances.

A rule was proposed which meant that two-thirds of the current deputies must be returned to the new assembly. This was presumably to ensure a degree of continuity in that the new Convention would contain a good number of experienced people who knew how to get things done. However, the move did not prove popular in Paris, where an unlikely assemblage of hard-line monarchists and equally hard-line left-wing revolutionaries formed a mob of around 30,000 people who threatened to march on the Tuileries, the former royal palace that was now the home of the Convention.

Bonaparte to the rescue

The commander of the Army of the Interior and the police was Paul Barras, who was responsible for the security of the Convention. He called upon Napoleon Bonaparte, who was otherwise unemployed, to organise a military defence. Bonaparte’s strength was in artillery, so he ordered Major Joachim Murat to gather 40 cannon and spread them around the outside of the building.

The rabble approached the Tuileries on the afternoon of 5^th October (or 13^th Vendemaire, Year 4, according to the new Revolutionary calendar). When the crowd was within close range Bonaparte announced “We’ll give them a whiff of grapeshot” and ordered the cannons to fire. More than 200 protestors were killed and twice as many were injured.

The aftermath

There were no more such threats to the Convention, although it did not last much longer. After a period known as the “Directory” during which real power was held by five men, a coup d’etat in 1799 resulted in ultimate power belonging to just one man, a certain Napoleon Bonaparte.

The whiff of grapeshot produced some other interesting consequences. Paul Barras, who brought Bonaparte to the fore and invited him to his home, had a mistress named Josephine de Beauharnais who was to become Bonaparte’s wife within a year, and Barras, as the leading Director, would eventually be sent into exile by Bonaparte.

However, better fortune befell Major Murat who would become one of Bonaparte’s greatest generals and eventually acquire the title of King of Naples.

© John Welford