The bestselling author of Catherine de Medici returns to sixteenth-century Europe in this evocative and entertaining biography that recreates a remarkable era of French history and brings to life a great monarch—Francis I—who turned France into a great nation.Catherine de Medici’s father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement’s exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, diplomat par excellence, and contemporary of Machiavelli, Francis was the founder of modern France, whose sheer force of will and personality molded his kingdom into the first European superpower. Arguably the man who introduced the Renaissance to France, Francis was also the prototype Frenchman—a national identity was modeled on his character. So great was his stamp, that few countries even now are quite so robustly patriotic as is France. Yet as Leonie Frieda reveals, Francis did not always live up to his ideal; a man of grand passions and vision, he was also a flawed husband, father, lover, and king.With access to private archives that have never been used in a study of Francis I, Frieda explores the life of a man who was the most human of the monarchs of the period—and yet, remains the most elusive.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Many are familiar with the story of the much-married King Henry VIII of England and the celebrated reign of his daughter, Elizabeth I. But it is often forgotten that the life of the first Tudor queen, Elizabeth of York, Henry' s mother and Elizabeth...
New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba explores a devastating period in Paris's history and tells the stories of how women survived—or didn’t—during the Nazi occupation.Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggressio...
From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against ...
Narrator: Frederick Davidson Published: 01/01/1990
This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction.
A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprov...
The spellbinding and revealing chronicle of Nazi-occupied Paris On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a silent and nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Subsequently, an eerie sense ...
Duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was a French soldier, diplomat and noted diarist. A French courtier during the 18th century, today he's best known for the comprehensive multi-volume memoirs, which depict life in France at the time. H...
Spanning the Middle Ages to the present,How the French Invented Loveexplores a love-obsessed culture through its great works of literature, interlacing the authors charming personal anecdotes. This fascinating history will particularly delight fans ...
Narrator: Christine Williams Published: 10/23/2012
This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burkes opinion on whether Frances new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious o...
A riveting true story of murder and detection in 15th-century Paris, by one of the most brilliant medievalists of his generation. On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paral...
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