Una McIlvenna

The facts about Napoleon Bonaparte’s life— his awesome military achievements against the united powers of Europe, his sweeping reforms of law and bureaucracy across an entire continent—are extraordinary. But Napoleon Bonaparte's final years were just as extraordinary, with ...read more

The French Revolution changed Europe forever, as centuries of oppression under an absolute monarchy saw France's "Third Estate" rise up in violent protest in July 1789. On July 14, Parisians stormed the Bastille, the fortress that stood as a symbol of royal oppression, and would ...read more

One of the world’s most instantly recognizable cultural icons, Napoleon Bonaparte is usually depicted with one hand in his waistcoat—and short and aggressive. His supposedly small stature and fiery temper has inspired the term the Napoleon Complex, a popular belief that short men ...read more

Voltaire once remarked that Parisians required only “the comic opera and white bread.” But bread has also played a dark role in French history and, namely, the French Revolution. The storming of the medieval fortress of Bastille on July 14, 1789 began as a hunt for arms—and ...read more

Between the hours of 2 and 3 on the morning of July 6, 1809, French troops under the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte scaled the walls of the gardens of the Quirinal Palace in Rome and penetrated into the part of the palace occupied by papal servants. After an hour of violent ...read more

It is a story whose characters and actions are so implausible that at times it seems like the wild invention of a work of fiction. But the Diamond Necklace Affair was a scandal that was all too responsible for the eventual execution of Marie Antoinette—the last Queen of France ...read more

She ruled over all of Russia for more than three decades, expanding its borders and making it one of the most powerful players in global politics. But that power is what made Catherine the Great the victim of notorious misogynistic myths ever since. Nymphomania, bestiality, ...read more

He was a celebrated soldier, a hero on land and sea. He was responsible for the first ever English colonies in the New World. And he wrote poetry that ranks with some of the finest in early modern England. Yet at the age of 66 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed for treason. What ...read more

She was the first-ever Queen of England to rule in her own right, but to her critics, Mary I of England has long been known only as “Bloody Mary.” This unfortunate nickname was thanks to her persecution of Protestant heretics, whom she burned at the stake in the hundreds. But is ...read more

Few women in history have inspired as many myths as Marie-Antoinette, the last queen of France, typically portrayed as the embodiment of excess and debauchery. Many of those myths are based on the vicious and often pornographic Revolutionary propaganda that poured from French ...read more