A power-mad dictator sends agents to kidnap the pope, plunder his palace and force him to resign in disgrace on trumped-up charges. That may sound like the plot line of a contemporary action thriller. But it actually happened in 1303—a real-life drama featuring King Philip IV of ...read more
Huguenots were French Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who followed the teachings of theologian John Calvin. Persecuted by the French Catholic government during a violent period, Huguenots fled the country in the 17th century, creating Huguenot settlements all over ...read more
When British writer William Crackanthorpe visited the Mediterranean island of Elba in 1814, he was wildly curious about its most famous resident: the disgraced emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Months earlier, Napoleon had been exiled to Elba in one of history’s greatest ...read more
Artists throughout history have found inspiration in their surroundings, from Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s Edo-era woodblock studies of Mt. Fuji to French post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin’s Technicolor explorations of Tahiti. But specific structures have also served as ...read more
Cubism is an artistic movement, created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which employs geometric shapes in depictions of human and other forms. Over time, the geometric touches grew so intense that they sometimes overtook the represented forms, creating a more pure level of ...read more
Bastille Day is a holiday celebrating the storming of the Bastille—a military fortress and prison—on July 14, 1789, in a violent uprising that helped usher in the French Revolution. Besides holding gunpowder and other supplies valuable to revolutionaries, the Bastille also ...read more
On the night of May 21, 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh touched down at France’s Le Bourget Field, having completed history’s first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Upon exiting the Spirit of St. Louis, the 25-year-old American was mobbed by a crowd of 150,000 people ...read more
A Born Rebel Lucie Bernard was born in 1912 in the small commune of Châtenay-sur-Seine in north-central France, southeast of Paris. As a teenager, she rebelled against her parents’ wishes by refusing to train as a primary school teacher, a solid position that would have helped ...read more
The series of intermittent conflicts between France and England that took place during the 14th and 15th centuries wasn’t classified as the “Hundred Years’ War” until 1823. Traditionally, the war is said to have begun in 1337 when Philip VI attempted to reclaim Guyenne (part of ...read more
On March 17, 1431, the interrogators returned to Joan of Arc’s dank prison cell. The ecclesiastical court had repeatedly grilled the teenaged peasant girl who had led the French army against the English invaders about everything from her virginity to her attire. Now, as the trial ...read more
As protests and strikes continued to rattle France in the wake of recent pension reforms, the city of Rennes faced an explosive situation of its own—literally. On Sunday, October 24, 10,000 people were evacuated as workers defused a bomb dropped by British forces on the Brittany ...read more
In France, the May 1968 crisis escalates as a general strike spreads to factories and industries across the country, shutting down newspaper distribution, air transport, and two major railroads. By the end of the month, millions of workers were on strike, and France seemed to be ...read more
The Alien and Sedition Acts were a series of four laws passed by the U.S. Congress in 1798 amid widespread fear that war with France was imminent. The four laws–which remain controversial to this day–restricted the activities of foreign residents in the country and limited ...read more
