Dossiers
The figures, events and works of French general knowledge, defined and sourced.
France
- The Dreyfus affair: the facts, the documents, the argumentsThe Dreyfus affair is the judicial and political crisis that arose in France from the conviction, on 22 December 1894, of captain Alfred Dreyfus for spying for Germany. He was innocent and was deported to Devil’s Island; the real author of the incriminating document was shielded, and an officer manufactured another. The Court of Cassation quashed everything on 12 July 1906.
- Alesia: where the siege was, and what was found thereAlesia is the Gallic oppidum where Julius Caesar besieged and captured Vercingetorix in 52 BC, the episode that closes the account of the Gallic War. The site is identified as Mont Auxois, at Alise-Sainte-Reine in the Côte-d’Or, where excavation has recovered both Roman lines of fortification. It became a prosperous Gallo-Roman town and was abandoned in the fifth century.
- Charlemagne: what is known, and who told usCharlemagne (c. 748-814) was king of the Franks from 768, then emperor in the West: on 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned him in Rome. He ruled from Aachen over an empire covering today’s France, Germany and northern Italy. Almost everything known about him comes from one book, Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, written after his death by a man of his own court.
- Charles de Gaulle: what he did, and what is argued overCharles de Gaulle (1890-1970) was a French general and statesman. On 18 June 1940, from London, he called for the war to go on and founded Free France, then led the provisional government until he resigned on 20 January 1946. Voted in by the Assembly on 1 June 1958, he had the Constitution of the Fifth Republic adopted and was president from 8 January 1959 to 28 April 1969.
- Charles Martel: the master of the Franks who was never kingCharles Martel (c. 688-741) was a Frankish leader, the son of the mayor of the palace Pepin. Pushed aside when his father died, he imposed himself by force and governed the Frankish kingdoms in the name of Merovingian kings he chose himself. In 732, between Poitiers and Tours, he beat an army from al-Andalus. He died in 741 without ever having worn a crown.
- Clovis: who he was, and why France claims himClovis (c. 466-511) was a Frankish king. Around 481 he succeeded his father Childeric, eliminated the other Frankish kings, beat Syagrius at Soissons and crushed the Visigoths at Vouillé in 507. Baptised a Catholic at Reims by bishop Remigius, on a date historians still argue over, he died in Paris in 511. Almost everything known about him comes from Gregory of Tours, a century later.
- Hugh Capet: an elected king, a dynasty of eight centuriesHugh Capet (c. 941-996), duke of the Franks, was elected king in 987 by the magnates of the kingdom meeting at Senlis, after Louis V, the last Carolingian, died childless. From his father he held Neustria, carved up by principalities, and the duchy of France. By having his son Robert crowned in his own lifetime he founded the Capetian dynasty, which would rule France until 1792.
- Joan of Arc: who she was, and how we knowJoan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) was a girl from Domrémy, in Lorraine, who persuaded Charles VII to send her to Orléans, where the siege was lifted on 8 May 1429, and who then led him to be crowned at Reims. Captured at Compiègne in 1430 and tried for heresy by a Church court at Rouen, she was burned on 30 May 1431 and cleared in 1456.
- Louis XIV: 72 years on the throne, and what he never saidLouis XIV (1638-1715) became king of France and Navarre at four and a half, governed in his own name from 1661, and died on 1 September 1715 after seventy-two years on the throne. He moved the Court to Versailles on 6 May 1682, revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and left the throne to his five-year-old great-grandson Louis XV.
- Napoleon: what he founded, what he restoredNapoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a Corsican general who became First Consul through the coup of 18-19 Brumaire, Year VIII, then Emperor of the French in 1804. His regime gave France institutions still standing (the Banque de France, the prefects, the lycées, the Civil Code) and restored slavery in the colonies on 20 May 1802. Beaten at Waterloo, he died on Saint Helena.
- The French Revolution: what is known, what is arguedThe French Revolution is the period that, from 1789 to 1799, abolished absolute monarchy and the society of orders in France. It opens with the Estates General of 5 May 1789, proclaims the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 26 August 1789, abolishes the monarchy on 21 September 1792, and ends with the coup of 18 Brumaire, on 9 November 1799.
- Vercingetorix: what is really known about himVercingetorix was an Arvernian nobleman who in 52 BC led the revolt of the Gallic peoples against Julius Caesar. He drove Caesar back at Gergovia, then surrendered the same year at Alesia. One ancient author alone, Cassius Dio, says he was later displayed at a triumph and put to death. No Gallic account survives: everything comes from the Romans.
Portugal
- The Azores: volcanic archipelago and autonomous regionThe Azores are a Portuguese archipelago of nine volcanic islands and a few islets, far out in the Atlantic, 1,815 kilometres from mainland Portugal. Spread in three groups over about 600 kilometres, they form an autonomous region of the Portuguese Republic, with its own parliament and government. Their name also belongs to the anticyclone that makes the weather over part of Europe.
- Azulejo: what it is, and where the word comes fromAn azulejo is a ceramic tile, usually square, glazed on one face and painted, laid by the hundred to clad a wall, a vault or a façade. In Portugal it became an art of national identity, from the churches of the seventeenth century to the metro stations. The word does not come from azul, blue, but from the Arabic spoken in Spain.
- Luís de Camões: what is known, and what is toldLuís de Camões was a sixteenth-century Portuguese poet, author of Os Lusíadas, the epic printed in Lisbon in 1572 that tells in ten cantos the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India. A soldier for more than sixteen years in North Africa and Asia, he died in Lisbon on 10 June 1580, a day that became Portugal’s national holiday.
- The Barcelos cockerel: the legend and what is documentedThe Barcelos cockerel is a painted ceramic figure, modelled by the potters of Barcelos, in northern Portugal, and turned in the twentieth century into one of the country’s tourist emblems. Its name comes from a local legend: a pilgrim bound for the gallows is saved when a roast cockerel stands up on the judge’s table and crows.
- Fado: what it is, where it comes from, who sings itFado is a sung genre from Lisbon combining music and poetry: a solo voice, male or female, accompanied by a wire-strung acoustic guitar and the Portuguese guitarra, a twelve-string instrument unique to Portugal. It took shape in the capital in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and UNESCO inscribed it in 2011 on its list of intangible cultural heritage.
- Fátima: what the sources say about the apparitions of 1917Fátima is a parish in central Portugal where three shepherd children, Lúcia de Jesus and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, said they saw the Virgin Mary six times between 13 May and 13 October 1917. The bishop of Leiria declared those visions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930 and authorised the cult of Our Lady of Fátima. The sanctuary built there receives millions of pilgrims.
- The Lisbon earthquake of 1755: what it changedThe Lisbon earthquake is the quake that struck the Portuguese capital on Saturday 1 November 1755, All Saints’ Day. The sea then came into the lower town, and a fire burned for several days. The death toll and the magnitude are still argued over. The rebuilding that followed drew the Baixa Pombalina, and the disaster crossed European thought, from Voltaire to Kant.
- Pastel de nata: what is in it and where it comes fromThe pastel de nata is a small Portuguese tart: a shell of puff pastry filled with an egg-yolk custard and put through a very hot oven until the top scorches. It is eaten at any hour, sometimes dusted with cinnamon or icing sugar. The name pastel de Belém is not a synonym: it is a registered trade mark belonging to one house in Lisbon alone.
- Sebastian I of Portugal: the king and SebastianismSebastian I, called the Desired, was king of Portugal from 1557 to 1578. The posthumous son of the Infante John, born in Lisbon on 20 January 1554, he was king at three and died at twenty-four at the battle of Alcácer Quibir, in Morocco, on 4 August 1578, without an heir. His death delivered Portugal to Philip II of Spain in 1580 and founded Sebastianism, the waiting for his return.
- Saudade: meaning, etymology and the history of a wordSaudade is a Portuguese word naming at once the happy memory of an absent person, place or time and the pain that absence causes. It comes from the Latin solitas, solitude, and is written soidade as early as the thirteenth century. It is often called untranslatable: the philologist Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos judged that claim an illusion as early as 1914.
- Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): what it says, what it is worthThe Treaty of Tordesillas is the agreement signed on 7 June 1494 by the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, Ferdinand and Isabella, and by John II of Portugal. It divides the ocean from pole to pole by a line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands: east of it the lands go to Portugal, west of it to Castile. It is where Portuguese Brazil comes from.
- Port wine: what it is and how to read the labelPort is a fortified wine from the demarcated Douro region, in northern Portugal. During fermentation a wine spirit at 77 per cent alcohol is poured in: fermentation stops, part of the grape sugar stays in the wine, and the finished strength falls between 18 and 22 per cent. It is a protected designation of origin.