It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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Robert Francois Damiens (1715-57) before the judges at the Chatelet, Paris, 2nd March 1757
Robert-François Damiens (9 January 1715 – 28 March 1757) was a French domestic servant whose attempted assassination of King Louis XV of France in 1757. He was the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty used for regicides.
He was tortured first with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted assassination, was burned using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. He was then remanded to the royal executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, who harnessed horses to his arms and legs to be dismembered. But Damiens’ limbs did not separate easily: the officiants ordered Sanson to cut Damiens’ joints with an axe. Once Damiens was dismembered to the applause of the crowd, his reportedly still-living torso was burnt at the stake.
Représentation d’une famille caraïbe par John Gabriel Stedman/
Carib family (by John Gabriel Stedman)
The Carib Expulsion was the French-led ethnic cleansing that removed most of theCarib population in 1660 from present-day Martinique. This followed the French invasion in 1635 and its conquest of the people on the Caribbean island that made it part of theFrench colonial empire.
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Ingres & Delacroix
[Caricature by Bertall (Detail): ‘La Musique, la Peinture, la Sculpture’, from Le Diable à Paris, vol. 2, 1846]
In this print, a sort of caricatural group portrait of artistic and musical luminaries which appeared in the second volume of Le Diable à Paris in 1846, the rivalry between Ingres and Delacroix assumes its standard form as a dispute between line and colour. Delacroix, planted defiantly beside a shaggy tipped paint brush with a placard proclaiming line to be a myth, dangles before his antagonist a bulging sack labelled ‘law of colours’. Ingres counters with a banner suspended from a finely tipped porte-crayon (pencil holder) declaring himself the prophet of greyness (‘Il n’y a de gris que de gris et M. Ingres est son prophète’). He also points with authority to a wiry, serpentine line drawn on the ground at his feet inscribed ‘ligne de Raphaël revue, corrigée et supplémentée par Monsieur Ingres.’](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_medutqlyD51ql4m2so1_500.jpg)
Ingres & Delacroix
[Caricature by Bertall (Detail): ‘La Musique, la Peinture, la Sculpture’, from Le Diable à Paris, vol. 2, 1846]
In this print, a sort of caricatural group portrait of artistic and musical luminaries which appeared in the second volume of Le Diable à Paris in 1846, the rivalry between Ingres and Delacroix assumes its standard form as a dispute between line and colour. Delacroix, planted defiantly beside a shaggy tipped paint brush with a placard proclaiming line to be a myth, dangles before his antagonist a bulging sack labelled ‘law of colours’. Ingres counters with a banner suspended from a finely tipped porte-crayon (pencil holder) declaring himself the prophet of greyness (‘Il n’y a de gris que de gris et M. Ingres est son prophète’). He also points with authority to a wiry, serpentine line drawn on the ground at his feet inscribed ‘ligne de Raphaël revue, corrigée et supplémentée par Monsieur Ingres.’
Les premiers convives de la société du Caveau. A droite : Pierre Gallet.XVIIIème siècle
A Goguette was a singing society in France and Belgium, and its members were called goguettiers. As well as providing venues for informal solo and ensemble singing, goguettes also served as places for drinking, socialising, and recreation.
Goguettes can trace their history back to 1729 and the “Société du Caveau” in Paris, founded by poet and chansonnier Pierre Gallet (1698-1757), but their heyday was in the years 1818-1900. They can still be found today.
A goguette was a place for drinking, singing (both solo and ensemble) and socialising. It tended to draw its members from the locality, and would have a formal structure of committee meetings, officials, minutes etc., as well as social events. Membership was usually open to all - men, women and children, of any social class. Some tended to attract certain types like artists or intellectuals, such as the “Gnoufs-Gnoufs”, “Poulet sauté” or “Frileux” in Paris. Apart from the capital, goguettes could be found in many French provincial towns and cities (Bordeaux, Marseille, Rouen, Toulouse etc.) as well as in rural areas.
Abbé de L’Epée (1712‐1789)
Abbé Charles-Michel de l’Épée (November 24, 1712, Versailles - December 23, 1789, Paris) was a philanthropic educator of 18th-century Francewho has become known as the “Father of the Deaf”.
Charles-Michel de l’Épée was born to a wealthy family in Versailles, the seat of political power in what was then the most powerful kingdom of Europe. He trained as a Catholic priest but was denied ordination as a result of his refusal to denounce Jansenism, a popular French heresy of the time. He then studied law but, soon after joining the Bar, was finally ordained as an Abbé—only to be denied a license to officiate.
Épée turned his attention toward charitable services for the poor, and, on one foray into the slums of Paris, he had a chance encounter with two young deaf sisters who communicated using a sign language. Épée decided to dedicate himself to the education and salvation of the deaf, and, in 1760, he founded a school. In line with emerging philosophical thought of the time, Épée came to believe that deaf people were capable of language and concluded that they should be able to receive the sacraments and thus avoid going to hell. He began to develop a system of instruction of the French language and religion. In the early 1760s, his shelter became the world’s first free school for the deaf, open to the public.
Though Épée’s original interest was in religious education, his public advocacy and development of a kind of “Signed French” enabled deaf people to legally defend themselves in court for the first time.
Abbé de l’Épée died at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, and his tomb is in the Saint Roch church in Paris. Two years after his death, the National Assembly recognised him as a “Benefactor of Humanity” and declared that deaf people had rights according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In 1791, the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris, which Épée had founded, began to receive government funding. It was later renamed the Institut St. Jacques and then renamed again to its present name: Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris. His methods of education have spread around the world, and the Abbé de l’Épée is seen today as one of the founding fathers of deaf education.
After his death, he was succeeded by the Abbé Sicard, who became the new head of the school.
Fete des travailleurs indiens /Hiindu festival at the Réunion
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, French immigration to the Réunion, supplemented by influxes of Africans, Chinese, Malays, and Indians gave the island its ethnic mix.
Fatal jousting tournament between Henri II and Gabriel Montgomery, Lord of Lorges, artist unknown, 16th century, German print. King Henry was mortally wounded by the lance of Montgomery, captain of the King’s Scottish Guard. Henry suffered a mortal head wound from a lance fragment and, despite the efforts of royal surgeon Ambroise Paré, he died on 10 July 1559 from septicemia and was buried in a cadaver tomb in Saint Denis Basilica. Henry’s death was a factor in the end of jousting as a sport.
Le cimetière des Saint-Innocents vers 1550, gravure, fin XIXème siècleEngraving depicting the Saints Innocents cemetery in Paris, around the year 1550
The Saints Innocents Cemetery (French: Cimetière des Saints-Innocents or Cimetière des Innocents) is a defunct cemetery in Paris that was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was the oldest and largest cemetery in Paris and had often been used for mass graves. It was closed because of overuse in 1780, and in 1786 the bodies were exhumed and transported to the unused subterranean quarries near Montparnasse known as the Catacombs. The place Joachim-du-Bellay in the Les Halles district now covers the site of the cemetery.
The cemetery took its name (referring to the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents) from the attached church of the Saints Innocents that has now also disappeared.
“L’Homme au Masque de Fer” (“The Man in the Iron Mask”). Anonymous print (etching and mezzotint, hand-colored) from 1789.
The Man in the Iron Mask (French: L’Homme au Masque de Fer) is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669 or 1670, and held in a number of jails, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol (today Pinerolo). He was held in the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for a period of 34 years. He died on 19 November 1703 under the name of Marchioly, during the reign of Louis XIV of France (1643–1715). The possible identity of this man has been thoroughly discussed and has been the subject of many books, because no one ever saw his face, which was hidden by a mask of black velvet cloth.
In the second edition of his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (French for “Questions on the Encyclopedia”), published in 1771, the writer and philosopher Voltaire claimed that the prisoner wore an iron mask and was the older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV. In the late 1840s, the writer Alexandre Dumas elaborated on the theme in the final installment of his Three Musketeers saga: here the prisoner is forced to wear an iron mask and is Louis XIV’s twin brother.
What facts are known about this prisoner are based mainly on correspondence between his jailer and his superiors in Paris.
Scene of the Battle of Vertières during the Haitian Revolution, engraved in 1845 by French anonymous
The Battle of Vertières (in Haitian Creole Batay Vètyè) was the last major battle of the Second War of Haitian Independence, the final part of the Haitian Revolution under François Capois. It was fought between Haitian rebels and French expeditionary forces on 18 November 1803 at Vertières. By the end of October 1803, Haitian rebels had already taken over all the territory from France. The only places left to France were Mole St. Nicolas, held by Noailles, and Cap-Français, where, with 5000 troops, Rochambeau was at bay.
