A fairy, a beast and a horn

The lessons in this chapter

1. 1Mélusine, the Saturday serpent fairyCursed by her mother, Mélusine is a serpent on Saturdays. Raimondin swears never to see her then, looks anyway, then betrays her before everyone: she flies off. The Duke of Berry and the lords of Parthenay claimed her as an ancestor.9 min
2. 2The Beast of Gévaudan, a three-year huntFrom 1764 to 1767, a beast kills children and women in the mountains of the Gévaudan. The press turns it into a serial, the king sends his hunters, two animals are shot. What it really was is still debated.9 min
3. 3Roland at Roncevaux, one name that became four thousand linesIn 778, Basques wipe out Charles’s rearguard in the Pyrenees, and Éginhard names Roland just once. Three centuries later, a poem of 4,002 lines makes him the betrayed nephew who sounds the horn too late.8 min

The dossiers of this chapter

Free to read: a definition, a timeline, the sources.

• 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.