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On 8 May 1945, millions of people rejoiced in the news that Germany had surrendered: after nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. Second World War historian Keith Lowe brings you the facts about this momentous day in history
What does VE Day stand for? VE Day – which stands for ‘Victory in Europe’ Day – is the day in 1945 when the German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender, and the Second World War in Europe finally came to an end. When is VE Day? On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, the British prime minister Winston Churchill made the radio announcement that the world had long been waiting for. “Yesterday morning,” he declared, “at 2.41 a.m., at General Eisenhower’s headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Dönitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe.” After nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-152242830-0f9cc7d-e1778199304496.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Crowds gather in a city street during VE Day celebrations as couples dance among scattered confetti and paper. In the foreground, a smiling woman in a dark dress holds hands with a serviceman while spectators and uniformed personnel watch and celebrate around them." title="The celebrations on VE Day began almost immediately. Here, people dance on the streets of London (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The celebrations began almost immediately. However, there was still one last technical detail to be taken care of. Since the Soviet authorities had not yet given their approval to the surrender document, a second, definitive document was signed in Berlin. The official time when this final document was signed was 23.01, Central European Time (although in reality it was not signed until almost a quarter to one the next morning). By Moscow time, however, the official time of signing was already after midnight. As a consequence, America and western Europe consider VE Day to have taken place on 8 May, while Russia and some eastern European countries celebrate it on 9 May. Read more | The week the Second World War ended in Europe Where did VE Day take place and how was it celebrated? Although VE Day was strictly speaking a continental European event, it was celebrated all over the world. In London, more than a million people took to the streets and huge crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace to see Churchill standing on the balcony alongside King George VI. In Paris and New York, similar crowds gathered along the Champs Elysée and in Times Square. According to Alexander Werth, the Moscow correspondent for the BBC and the Sunday Times, the fireworks display over the Kremlin on 9 May “was the most spectacular I have ever seen”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-3071856-2456393-e1778199146179.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A huge crowd fills Trafalgar Square in London during VE Day celebrations in 1945. Thousands of people surround Nelson’s Column, which is decorated with a large sign reading “Victory Over Germany 1945”, while streets and buildings around the square are packed with spectators." title="Trafalgar Square on VE Day. In London, more than a million people took to the streets (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Not all of the celebrations went exactly as planned. In the Canadian city of Halifax, for example, riots broke out when thousands of soldiers and sailors began looting liquor stores. In Australia and New Zealand, the celebrations were a little more sober: such countries were glad to know that their soldiers would soon be coming home from Europe, but were more concerned about the war in the Pacific, which was still going on. Read more | “The war without an end”: what happened in Europe after VE Day? What events led to VE Day? The final collapse of Nazi Germany began in January 1945, when the Soviet Red Army launched a series of offensives across a front that ran all the way from the Baltic Sea to the borders of Yugoslavia. By the end of March they had reached the River Oder, just 60km from the German capital. At around the same time, British and American armies also began crossing the Rhine. By the end of April Berlin was encircled, and the situation looked hopeless for Germany. In Italy, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini was captured and executed, and his body put on display before jeering crowds. In order to avoid the same fate, Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, along with his wife, Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler had nominated as his successor, began negotiations with the Allies just a few days later. A series of partial surrenders took place at Lüneberg Heath in northern Germany, and at Haar in southern Germany – but in the east, the fighting would continue right up until VE Day itself. Indeed, in some places – for example in Prague, and in parts of northern Yugoslavia – German troops would continue fighting even after the final surrender had been signed. Read more | Did Britain really ‘stand alone’ during WW2? What is the difference between VE Day and VJ Day? While VE Day marked the end of the Second World War in Europe, fighting in the far east would continue for another three-and-a-half months. As a consequence, there was always a slightly solemn undercurrent to the celebrations of VE Day. “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” said Churchill during his VE Day broadcast, “but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued.” Japan was not finally defeated until after the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese emperor announced his unconditional surrender – and this date is remembered in the UK as VJ [Victory in Japan] Day. However, the official surrender documents were not signed until 2 September, which is considered VJ Day in the USA. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-2161023745-b531e2c-e1778199023600.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A Japanese military representative signs the formal surrender documents ending the Second World War while Allied officers stand nearby in uniform. The ceremony takes place around a table covered with papers and microphones, with rows of servicemen gathered in the background watching the proceedings." title="The official documents of Japan's surrender were not signed until 2 September, aboard the USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Did the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret attend VE Day celebrations? King George VI and his queen, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, made a total of eight appearances on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day. Their daughters, Princess Elizabeth – the future Queen Elizabeth II – and Princess Margaret, appeared alongside them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-912524312-cf867d5-e1778199678383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Four members of the British royal family stand on a balcony during VE Day celebrations in 1945. King George VI, dressed in naval uniform, waves to crowds below while Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret stand beside him in front of large stone columns draped with ceremonial fabric." title="King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made eight appearances on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day (Photo by Getty Images)" /> That evening, however, in an unprecedented and spontaneous breach of protocol, the two young women slipped out of the palace in order to join the revellers. They were accompanied by two Guards officers, but in the darkness easily blended in with the crowds. Princess Elizabeth was a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and like many others on the streets that night was dressed in uniform. Later, she recalled: “We stood outside and shouted ‘We want the King’… I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.” Read more | In pictures: jubilant VE Day celebrations Is VE Day still celebrated today and why? How do the different countries celebrate? Most nations in Europe still celebrate the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in one way or another. The war was probably the most destructive event in European history. It involved the devastation of hundreds of cities, and the deaths of at least 35 million people, most of them civilians. The end of this conflict, and the dawn of a new era of peace, are universally considered events worth celebrating. Different countries mark the anniversary in different ways, and on different days. In Italy, for example, ‘Liberation Day’ is celebrated on 25 April – the day in 1945 when Italian partisans proclaimed a general uprising against the German occupiers of their country. In the Netherlands, Liberation Day falls on 5 May, because this is when the German forces capitulated there. But VE Day on 8 May is generally recognised as the single day that unites the vast majority of countries in Europe. What is the significance of VE Day? VE Day signified several things at once. First and foremost, it brought a symbolic end to organised violence across the continent. Europe remained in turmoil for many years after May 1945, but at least the era of pitched battles between huge armies was over. In Britain it meant the end of bombing, and the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to their loved ones. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-97318949-b8513b5-e1778198646306.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A huge crowd of civilians and sailors celebrates in the streets at the end of the Second World War, with people cheering, waving and climbing above the crowd. In the centre of the image, two sailors raise trumpets while surrounded by smiling men, women and children packed tightly together in the summer heat." title="Two sailors are raised on shoulders as crowds celebrate VJ Day in Manhattan, September 1945 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Secondly, it marked the liberation of several countries from foreign occupation. Although France had already been liberated many months earlier, most of Europe was not finally freed from Nazi rule until the spring of 1945. Many countries, including Norway, Denmark, and parts of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were occupied right up until VE Day itself. Finally, in western Europe at least, VE Day marked the end of totalitarianism, and the beginning of a new era of democracy. With the Nazis gone, European countries were free once more to choose their own governments. In eastern Europe, which fell under communist rule after 1945, the people would have to wait a further four decades before democracy was restored. Read more | “Hooray! The war is ended”: 5 people’s recollections of VE Day Does Germany recognise or celebrate VE Day? For many years after the war, VE Day was regarded by many in Germany as a day of shame rather than one of celebration. In East Germany, which became communist after 1945, ‘Liberation Day’ was a public holiday for many years, but it was not generally celebrated with much enthusiasm. Today, however, VE Day is remembered in a much more favourable light. Germans suffered terribly during the war, not only beneath Allied bombs, but also at the hands of their own rulers. Tens of thousands of Germans were imprisoned or executed by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, often for the most insignificant misdemeanours. As a consequence, the defeat of the Nazis is now universally regarded as a blessing. In Germany, VE Day is not a day of celebration as it is in other countries. Rather it is regarded as a day of sombre commemoration, when the dead are remembered, and the promise is renewed never to allow such terrible events to repeat themselves. Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024) This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2020
Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
As German aircraft attacked Paris during WWI, one man had an idea: what if you could fool the enemy into dropping their bombs elsewhere? Gavin Mortimer tells the story of an audacious wartime ruse...
Tucked away in a British newspaper called The Globe in its edition of 4 October 1920 was a short story with an intriguing headline: “A Mock Paris: French Plan to Hoodwink German Raiders.” The ruse, explained the paper, had only just come to light, and it was almost too fantastical to be true. “Camouflaged streets, factories, dwelling houses, railways, with stations and trains complete, and in fact a camouflaged capital, was the gigantic task on which French engineers were engaged when the Armistice put an end to military operations,” ran the report. It was the brainchild of an electrical engineer called Jacopozzi; a way to draw German aircraft away from the capital and onto a fake conurbation where bombs could fall without causing death and destruction. But the Germans sued for peace as the city began to take shape and Jacopozzi’s ingenuity was never put to the test. Paris was first bombed by German aircraft on 30 August 1914, the first time that a capital city had been attacked in such a manner. Four small bombs were dropped from the hands of Ferdinand von Hiddessen and his observer from their Rumpler Taube monoplane. The casualties were minimal, but the wider psychological damage was profound. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers had made the first brief flight in an airplane, the Americans’ invention was a new and terrifying weapon of war. The home front was now a battlefront, and women and children were no longer safe from enemy fire. Death from above There were other sporadic attacks in the 18 months that followed, including the first attack by Zeppelins (named after their inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin) in March 1915. The airships came from their bases in Belgium, but none caused serious casualties. However, on 29 January 1916, two Zeppelins appeared in the grey winter sky over the French capital. Their bombs wreaked havoc, killing 24 and wounding 30. The funerals of the dead were held on 7 February 1916 in a service that brought Paris to a standstill. Thousands of mourners lined the streets as six gun carriages carried the coffins to the Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, and politicians and other dignitaries walked behind. The service was conducted by Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette, the archbishop of Paris, who delivered what one British newspaper described as a “moving oration”. “Before you lie the victims of German barbarity, who fell on no field of battle,” he proclaimed. “Their death will help the cause of mankind and will strengthen the vigorous determination to conquer, to reduce the enemy to impotence, and to prevent a repetition of his crime.” But the impotence was all French as the air attacks increased in the months that followed. Paris had a respite in 1917 when the Germans switched the focus of their air attacks to London, using their latest bomber aircraft, the Gotha. One raid in June left 162 Britons dead. The French knew their turn would come. But how could they defend themselves? How Fernand Jacopozzi built a fake Paris A man who thought he had a solution was an electrical engineer called Fernand Jacopozzi. A Florentine by birth, Jacopozzi had previously worked on the Paris International Exposition in 1900, a world’s fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century and looked forward to what the next 100 years held. Jacopozzi believed it would be a century of progress, one which could prove lucrative for an electrical engineer such as himself. He remained in Paris and, according to one contemporary newspaper, “made a special study of electric lighting”. How Jacopozzi became involved in this secret project is unclear - for obvious reasons. But at some point in late 1917, he was commissioned by the DCA [Défense contre Avions, the War Office department charged with protecting France from air attacks] to build a fake Paris in order to fool German bombers. As outlandish it sounds to modern minds, the plan made sense at the time. Enemy aircraft navigated their way to the capital at night not by technological aids but by topography. They simply followed the River Seine and then dropped their bombs. But the Seine is a meandering river that, once it cuts through the heart of Paris, under its famous bridges and past landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, then doubles back on itself not once, but twice, like the humps of a camel. It was on the second of these ‘humps’, in the suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, that the French instructed Jacopozzi to construct his phoney city. However, there were to be two other “zones of false objectives”: a fake industrial zone would be created at Vaires-sur-Marne, situated 10 miles east of the capital, while the suburb of Saint-Denis would be relocated to Villepinte in the northeast. Light railway system Jacopozzi began his work at Villepinte in 1918, constructing a replica of the Gare de l’Est railway station - one of Paris’ busiest - and even fabricating a moving train. Drawing on his years of study of electrical lighting, the Italian used wooden boards for the train’s carriages, and for the interior lights he rigged up an ingenious system of lights on a conveyor belt. From the air it appeared that the train was moving. The industrial zone was next. Jacopozzi once again used wooden boards for the shell of the factories and for the roofs he used canvases craftily dappled with various hues of paint. With a clever combination of different coloured lamps – whites, yellows and reds – he recreated the fires and vapours emitted by a factory during the manufacturing process. The key was subtlety; he didn’t want to arouse the Germans’ suspicion by lighting up his fake creations like a Christmas tree. It was painstaking work but Jacopozzi had all but finished when German Gotha aircraft raided the capital on 16 September, dropping 22,000 kilos of bombs that left six dead and 15 wounded. Next time the bombers returned the subterfuge would be put into operation. But there wasn’t a next time. Two months later the war ended and Jacopozzi was denied the chance to see if his ingenuity had outsmarted the German pilots. Nonetheless, the French government believed they had created an important form of defence should enemy bombers appear over Paris in a future war. A veil of secrecy was thrown over Jacopozzi’s creation, one which was lifted in 1920 when the British press got hold of the story. The Globe had the scoop at the start of October, but it was The Illustrated London News in its edition of 6 November 1920 that really brought Jacopozzi’s invention to life in a photo essay headlined: “A False Paris Outside Paris — a ‘City’ Created to be Bombed.” There were photographs, maps and explanations, all of which amounted to what the newspaper called “remarkably interesting revelations”. Read more | Moustaches, Cossacks and an inland lighthouse: a brief history of the Royal Air Force Towering achievements What they didn’t disclose, however, was the name of the man behind the sham city. But Jacopozzi was honoured by the French government with the presentation of the Legion d’Honneur, and he enjoyed great success in the 1920s. Having illuminated the Eiffel Tower, he also installed floodlights on the Place de la Concorde and lit up several other popular landmarks in the city. The corporate world spotted the potential in Jacopozzi’s talent and Citroën hired him to create a large luminous advertisement of one of their motor cars on the Eiffel Tower. Jacopozzi died in Paris in 1932. “He attracted world interest by his illumination of the Eiffel Tower, and did much to make Paris the City of Light,” remarked The People newspaper in a short paragraph about his passing. There was no mention of Jacopozzi’s contribution to the French war effort but no news is better than fake news. Or in his case, a fake city. Gavin Mortimer is a historian and author. His books include Guidance from the Greatest (Constable, 2020) and David Stirling: The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS (Constable, 2022) This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed Magazine
Emma of Normandy: not just a two-time queen consort of England
Emma of Normandy was queen consort to two of England’s best known pre-Conquest kings, Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great. But she was also a savvy political player who came into her own as queen mother, writes Dr Cat Jarman
Emma of Normandy is best-known as being queen consort to two kings – Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great – and the mother of two more, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. She was the daughter of Richard I (the Fearless) of Normandy and the Danish-descended Gunnor. She is also a pivotal character in King and Conqueror, the BBC's Norman Conquest drama, which paints Emma as a dominating force over her son King Edward – which leads to a very ahistorical demise – and in Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla, where she is portrayed as a politically-savvy queen wielding quiet power in the English court, often working to subvert the machinations of the ever-grasping Earl Godwin. Who was Emma of Normandy? Emma was one of nine children and most likely born in the AD 980s. A daughter of the Norman dukes, she was the great-granddaughter of the Viking warrior Rollo, the founder of Normandy who hailed from either Norway or Denmark. This made her of Scandinavian ancestry on both sides of the family. She was also the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. In the words of Godfrey, prior of Winchester’s cathedral monastery, writing in the 11th century: “She had kings as sons and kings as husbands; she shone forth in the glory of her progeny of kings; she excelled in virtue even the ranks of her glorious ancestors.” Emma of Normandy's first marriage: Æthelred the Unready In 1002, probably aged in her late teens or early 20s, Emma was sent to England to marry King Æthelred, as his second wife. The marriage was clearly a strategic one, aiming to strengthen an alliance between England and Normandy in light of harrowing attacks on both English and Norman shores by Scandinavian raiders. Æthelred had apparently accused Emma’s brother, Duke Richard II, of harbouring the Vikings and enabling their attacks, and the marriage was designed to ensure his allegiance. Read more | Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? Their union was an unusual one, as although several English princesses had been married off to French and German rulers historically, no English king had married a foreign wife for almost 150 years. Upon her arrival in England, Emma was given the name ‘Ælfgifu’. The marriage resulted in three children: two sons, Edward (later known as Edward the Confessor) and Alfred, and a daughter, Godgifu. Few sources say much about Emma’s political activity in these years, and it seems her role was mainly one of being a wife and a mother: the most common description of her at the time was as the conlaterana regis: “she who is at the King’s side”. This first decade of her career was the one in which she was the least powerful, and one source, William of Malmesbury, suggests that she and her husband were never on good terms. The England that Emma found herself at the beginning of the 11th century was one marked by ongoing trouble and threats of Scandinavian attacks. In 1013, this came to a head when the Dane Swein Forkbeard successfully invaded England. Emma and her children were sent into exile in Normandy, later followed by her husband. Swein’s rule of England was to be short as he died the following year, and a messy two years of political disputes ensued even after Æthelred was restored to the throne. Emma of Normandy's second marriage: Cnut the Great In 1016, Æthelred died. More turbulence was to follow, and later that year England fell to Swein Forkbeard’s son, the Danish King Cnut. The following year, he is reported to have asked for Emma to be fetched to be his wife. Emma became queen of England, once again, but this time also of Denmark and Norway. As with her first marriage, this was a strategic one as it cemented Cnut’s role as king of England. Taking the widow of one of his predecessors as his own wife no doubt helped mark his superiority. At the same time, the union might be seen as symbolising friendship and alliance. While it is unclear what Emma herself really thought of it at the beginning, she later stressed that not only did the marriage bring peace but it was an equal union that she entered into with her own consent. Read more | Cnut’s invasion of England: setting the scene for the Norman conquest Her ancestry may well have affected her feelings. After all, her mother was the daughter of recent Danish settlers in Normandy, and northern origins were a key part of Norman self-identity. Emma likely spoke Danish from childhood and apart from her family connections, she was clearly important to Cnut – not least because of her knowledge of English politics. It seems likely that the partnership between the two grew over time, helped by the fact that they were more or less of the same age. In a document from the New Minster in Winchester, illustrating the monastery’s loyal benefactors, the two are depicted either side of an altar as a double act. This depiction – one of several – emphasises Emma’s political importance. Their marriage lasted until Cnut’s death in 1035. Emma of Normandy's children As well as the two sons and one daughter Emma had with Æthelred, she went on to have two more children with Cnut: Harthacnut and Gunnhild. Cnut also had two sons by his first wife, Ælfgifu (confusingly, the same name that was given to Emma), Swein and Harold Harefoot. At the time of Cnut’s death, Swein had been sent to rule in Norway along with his mother, while Harthacnut was ruling in Denmark. That left Harold as the only of Cnut’s sons still in England. Emma remained at Winchester, where Cnut’s military household was based, and was left in charge of the Royal Treasury and in a position of power. Read more | Norman women: the power behind the thrones Harthacnut was the legitimate heir and should have ascended the English throne, but he could not return from Denmark to claim the crown so Harold ruled in his stead as either regent or co-ruler. Competition for the throne was to continue. Emma’s sons with Æthelred – Edward and Alfred – had been in exile in Normandy and returned to England in 1036. Alfred was soon killed, after being captured and blinded under suspicious circumstances, and Edward may have briefly joined his mother in Winchester before returning again to Normandy. Eventually, Harold was recognised as sole king in 1037. Emma was exiled to Flanders, where she stayed with a distant relative, Count Baldwin and his wife Adela. But her ambitions for herself and her sons remained. Read more | Are women at the heart of the action in the Norman Conquest? Emma of Normandy as England’s queen mother Emma’s career in England can be divided into three distinct parts: the first two relating to her marriages, and the third to this period after Cnut’s death. Now, Emma worked to manoeuvre her sons into kingship, taking an active part in the political sphere as queen mother. When Harold died in 1040, Emma returned from Flanders and Harthacnut finally took the throne. The role as queen mother was clearly an important one, and she was recognised as an authority: she is listed as mater regis in witness lists during these years. Emma may have learnt about queenship from her mother, Gunnor, who was later hailed as the matriarch of the Norman aristocracy, dubbed the ‘mother of the dynasty’ in the 12th century. Harthacnut ruled for only two years, with Emma by his side, until his death in 1042. He was succeeded by his half-brother Edward. But the new king appears to have turned against his mother, arriving in Winchester a few months after his coronation and taking away her treasures of silver and gold, as well as most of the land she owned. Emma was allowed to stay in Winchester and eventually regained her position at court, though without her former status. The precise reasons for this are unclear: Emma was later accused of having been too harsh on Edward; of offering aid to Magnus of Norway for an invasion of England; and even of having had an affair with Ælfwine, the bishop of Winchester. It seems none were true. Edward most likely wanted to reduce her political involvement back to a simple status as the widow of the former kings, leaving him to rule independently. As far as we know, she lived the rest of her life in Winchester. What was Emma of Normandy’s legacy? Our actual information about Emma’s life is sparse, Much of what we know comes from the Encomium Emmae reginae, the Praise of Queen Emma. This narrative was written down in 1041/2 by a monk from St Bertin, in what is now France, and was commissioned by Emma herself. The Encomium, however, is not a straightforward biography, but an account – modified in several later versions – of the role she played in English politics during the reign of Cnut and his successors. A famous illustration shows her seated on a throne, a kneeling character handing the book to her, with her sons Harthacnut and Edward watching from the wings. The Encomium conjures the position she was in at the height of her power, aimed at her sons and written to influence the future. Despite her remarkable political career, her best known legacy is no doubt her Norman link to William the Conqueror, enabling the events of 1066 to run their course. In the words of 12th-century historian Henry of Huntingdon, describing her marriage: “From this union… the Normans were justified according to the law of peoples, in both claiming and gaining possession of England.” How and when did Emma of Normandy die? Emma died of an unknown cause on 6 March 1052. She was buried next to Cnut and Harthacnut in Winchester Cathedral. In 2019, a team from the University of Bristol announced that among the 1,300 bones mixed up in six mortuary chests from Winchester Cathedral were the remains of a woman who matched both the date and age of death of Emma. There are no records of other women of similar status buried there at the time and DNA work is in progress in an attempt to identify the remains more definitively. 1066: The battle for England Member exclusive | The year 1066 is the most famous in English history, but there's a lot more to the story than one bloody battle at Hastings. In this four-part series, medievalist Marc Morris talks David Musgrove through the full story of the Norman Conquest. Watch all episodes now Dr Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, broadcaster and author of River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads (HarperCollins, 2021) King and Conqueror is streaming on BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year
With the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK confirmed, David Musgrove explains the historical significance of the embroidery’s potential arrival on British soil…
The Bayeux Tapestry – the near 70-metre long, 11th-century embroidery that tells the story of the Norman Conquest – looks set to be finally coming to Britain, loaned from France in exchange for a loan of the Lewis Chessmen and the treasures of Sutton Hoo. The embroidery is expected to be displayed in the British Museum between September 2026 and July 2027, and holds the promise of being one of the biggest historical exhibitions ever staged on these shores, rivalling the blockbuster Tutankhamun show at the British Museum in 1972. Many scholars are in agreement that the Tapestry was originally made in the 11th century, not too long after the Norman Conquest in 1066, in England, and likely by English seamstresses in Canterbury. It has, however, been in Bayeux since at least the 15th century. Today, the artefact is the property of the French state. The news that British and French authorities had agreed that the Tapestry would come to the UK was initially made public in January 2018, and, speaking on 5 May 2025, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told HistoryExtra and BBC History Magazine that civil servants were still working on the loan. "The Bayeux Tapestry is a unique treasure,” said the Prime Minister, “and a symbol of the deep ties between Britain and France." "The conservation and protection of it is obviously crucial, and I know that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport continues to work closely with their counterparts in France on the planned loan." The loan coincides with the temporary closure of the Bayeux Tapestry's permanent home in Normandy, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum, while it undergoes refurbishment. That work includes an exciting plan to add an extension to the current 17th-century seminary building in which the Tapestry has been housed since 1983, and is scheduled to be completed by autumn 2027 – in time for the millennial commemorations of the birth of William the Conqueror. Following the announcement of the loan, the director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, added: “The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world, which illustrates the deep ties between Britain and France and has fascinated people across geographies and generations. It is hard to overstate the significance of this extraordinary opportunity of displaying it at the British Museum." Three requests were made for the Bayeux Tapestry to be loaned to Britain in the 20th century: first in 1931, for an exhibition on French art at Burlington House in London, then in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and finally in 1966 on the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, when both the Victoria and Albert Museum and Westminster Abbey hoped to display the Tapestry. None of the requests were granted. Unravelling The Bayeux Tapestry Member exclusive | Expert historians unpick some of the biggest questions surrounding the Bayeux Tapestry, from its creation and purpose, to the incomplete story it recounts and its modern-day legacy Listen to all episodes now
The first ‘catastrophic’ Dunkirk: why the British Army fled to the sea in a deadly 19th-century retreat
During the harsh winter of 1808, a small force of British soldiers found itself strategically outflanked by a French army commanded by none other than Emperor Napoleon. Under the leadership of Sir John Moore, they embarked on a desperate retreat across the snow-laden and icy landscapes of northern Spain, seeking safety and survival. Matthew Doherty tells their story…
On Christmas Eve 1808, a British army in Spain was marked for annihilation. For the past week, around 25,000 British soldiers had been skirmishing against elements of the French Grande Armée, and had got the better of their opponents during the series of small engagements. But now their commander, General Sir John Moore, ordered them to run away. It was a tough pill to swallow for the proud British. The grumbling began almost immediately. “Why won’t Moore let us fight them?” was the cry heard by many a British officer from his men. But Moore had the full picture and knew that even his tough little army could never hope to take on the masses of French troops storming towards him. Worse still, the dreaded Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was at their head, eager to destroy the hated British. A relentless pursuit For Napoleon, Spain was a backwater – a minor player in modern European politics. Yet it could not simply be ignored. Sharing a border with France made it an ideal staging post for British military expeditions aimed at bringing down his imperial rule, and so in the winter of 1808, Napoleon attempted to conquer Spain and eject the British army from the continent. Napoleon knew that making a terrible example of Moore’s force would further isolate his Spanish adversaries and bring their uncooperative junta government to heel. What was the Peninsular War? The Peninsular War (1808-1814), a key part of the Napoleonic Wars, saw British, Spanish, and Portuguese forces fight against the invading First French Empire in the Iberian Peninsula, ultimately contributing to Napoleon's downfall. Sir John Moore was a veteran of several hard-fought campaigns in the Caribbean and Ireland. He had a deep love for the British army. Indeed, it is Moore’s humanity that shines through much of his personal correspondence. Historian Arthur Bryant described him as a man who held true to the belief that “the British soldier could be made perfect by evoking all that is finest in man – physical, mental and spiritual.” Now as commander of His Majesty’s forces in Spain, Moore had just taken an almighty risk. By marching towards Madrid, he had brought the Grand Armée down upon him. As he had said before ordering the advance: “I mean to proceed bridle in hand, for if the bubble bursts, and Madrid falls, we shall have a run for it.” But on Christmas Eve 1808, the bubble had well and truly burst. Now the army that Moore loved so much would flee. In Spain, an old saying goes: large armies starve, and small ones get beaten. Napoleon, for all his might, could not afford to dally with his Grand Armée – especially in winter. Marshalling his forces in Madrid, he was convinced that Moore and his men were falling back on Lisbon. To that end, he directed his Imperial Guard and most of his other forces west towards the Portuguese border. Only at the last minute did intelligence reach him that the British were north of the Spanish capital. Read more | What was the global impact of the Napoleonic Wars? Despite the failure of his normally excellent reconnaissance system, Bonaparte reacted with characteristic speed and ruthlessness, issuing new orders for the army to concentrate on Moore’s last reported position in a bid to overwhelm the comparatively puny British force. Desperate measures As the British fell back, they began to suffer. Their supplies had not reached them, and they began to starve. Worse still, the relentless pace of the retreat caused many men to fall behind with exhaustion – making them easy prey for French cavalry. A retreating army is rarely a happy one, and a soldier was overheard grumbling that Moore wanted to “march [us] to death first and to fight after.” The army marched at a frantic pace to Astorga and reached it on 29 December. Moore expected to find 25,000 Spanish regulars there. Instead, he found 9,000 Spaniards looking “more the appearance of a large body of peasants, driven from their homes, famished, and in want of every thing, than a regular army”. Worse still, fever was raging in the Spanish ranks, and most of the soldiers were already half-starved, making them appear like “spectres issuing from a hospital.” Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know Plans for defence were drawn up by the Spanish general in command, La Romana. Moore diplomatically looked them over, even though one British officer called them “wilder than the dreams of Don Quixote!” Over the next hours, all thoughts of making a joint stand at Astorga evaporated. As at Dunkirk the following century, the British commanders realised they would have to cut and run to the sea, abandoning their allies to their fate. The army would make headlong for the Galician port of La Corunna, where the Royal Navy could evacuate them by sea. All manner of equipment previously built up at Astorga had to be abandoned. This included food, weapons, and fresh shoes (despite a quarter of the men marching barefoot). The British army that left Astorga did so in extremely low spirits. In no mood to distinguish friend from foe, undisciplined bodies of redcoats began plundering the surrounding Spanish villages and before long, most of the battalions marched with an advanced guard of marauders bent on personal profit. Read more | 9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirk On their route north west, at Bembibre, there was widespread looting. British soldiers broke into the houses of locals in search of food, warm clothes, and alcohol. General Paget, riding through the town with the French hot on his heels, described the place as resembling the aftermath of a battle, with prostrate redcoats passed out in the streets. Attempts were made to force these men on but with little effect. French dragoons arrived almost as soon as the British cavalry rear-guard had left and began slashing into the drunken men, many of whom were incapable of defending themselves. New Year’s Day saw most of the disintegrating British army reach Villafranca, where 14 days’ worth of stores and 100 barrels of rum were stockpiled. With no wagons to carry the supplies, Moore ordered the whole lot burnt. But some battalions in the army refused to obey, the men instead choosing to destroy the liquor by imbibing it. Disorder in the town became so great that Moore (a man who detested even flogging) called the conduct “infamous beyond belief” and ordered one soldier to be shot in the town square. However, this did little to help matters. Captain Gordon of the cavalry remembered, “parties of drunken soldiers were committing all kinds of enormities, several houses were in flames. The gutters were overflowing with rum… and a promiscuous rabble were drinking and filling bottles in the street.” By the time the British left, according to Blakeney of the 28th, “the whole town seemed on fire.” Elsewhere, events in the French empire diverted attention. Rumours of an anti-Bonapartist plot in Paris and the need to mobilise against Austria caused Napoleon to leave the pursuit of Moore to one of his most capable commanders – Marshal Soult. But the British did not yet have intelligence of this development that could mean salvation. Plunkett’s shot On 3 January, the oncoming French caught up with the rearguard at the bridge of Cacabelos. Half the 95th Rifles were placed forward of the bridge, while the remaining men held the British side of the river. About one o’clock in the afternoon, the French cavalry vanguard appeared, led by the dashing young Brigadier Auguste François-Marie de Colbert-Chabanais. One of France’s rising military stars, Colbert was tipped for great things. Getting the drop on the British, his horsemen rode down two companies of the 95th, taking 40 prisoners and cutting others to pieces. It was then that Colbert made a fatal mistake. Flushed with success, he ordered his men to gallop for the bridge, intending to charge the infantry on the other side. Tom Plunkett was an Irish soldier fighting in the ranks of the 95th. As such, he carried a Baker rifle – a weapon which was accurate to 200 yards, far beyond the range of the muskets most soldiers carried. Described as “bold, fit, [and] athletic” Plunkett was a superb soldier save for his one Achilles’ heel – drink. One sergeant commented that he was “a noted pickle”. Nevertheless, in a failed expedition to South America in 1807, Plunkett had used his rifle to deadly effect in a skirmish against the Spanish (who were at the time allied with France). Standing up and taking careful aim, Plunkett “literally shot down every Spaniard who ventured to show himself”. Read more | The top 10 military blunders in history Now, at the Bridge of Cacabelos, Plunkett had just witnessed many of his comrades butchered. When he spotted the French general, he raced forward and threw himself down, placing the muzzle of his rifle across his legs and arching his head to aim. Colbert was still riding forward, attempting to marshal his men at the bridge. No doubt, he believed he was out of range of any British bullets. Plunkett’s first shot hit Colbert in the chest, cartwheeling him off his mount. Colbert’s Trumpet Major bravely came up. In the meantime, Plunkett had reloaded at record speed. Just as the man knelt to render assistance to his commander, he too was hit. The general and his aide lay dead in the snow. Various figures are given for the range of Plunkett’s sharpshooting. Estimates of 300-400 yards are not uncommon. Some popular literature even fixes it at an unbelievable 800 yards. But whatever the true range, Plunkett’s two shots were made against distant targets by a man whose hands must have been numb with cold, and all without the benefit of modern telescopic sights. A "consummate scene of horrors" For all Plunkett’s achievements, in the days that followed, the situation of the army went from bad to catastrophic. As the lines of grumbling redcoats ascended the long climb to the plains of Lugo, the sky ominously darkened. Then it began to snow. One eyewitness called the 15-mile ascent up Monte del Cebrero a “consummate scene of horrors”. There was no shelter and wounded soldiers were left in carts to perish. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/GettyImages-804449278-82a6795.jpg" width="1024" height="668" alt="Death of Sir John Moore, La Coruna, Spain. Moore commanded the British forces at the battle of Corunna (La Coruna) during the Peninsular War. Retreating from a much larger French army commanded by Marshal Soult, the British were able to hold the French off long enough to be evacuated by sea. Moore was mortally wounded in the battle, and was buried at midnight in La Coruna Citadel. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Death of Sir John Moore, La Coruna, Spain. Moore commanded the British forces at the battle of Corunna (La Coruna) during the Peninsular War. Retreating from a much larger French army commanded by Marshal Soult, the British were able to hold the French off long enough to be evacuated by sea. Moore was mortally wounded in the battle, and was buried at midnight in La Coruna Citadel. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Everywhere were “wretched people who lay on all sides expiring, from fatigue and the severity of the cold... their bodies reddened in spots the white surface of the ground.” The horses too were dying in huge numbers. Heavy rains caused many of the carcasses to swell and burst, leading one man on the retreat to complain that “the infected air hovers so rancorously about our heads, that it is almost impossible to pass in any direction without feeling violent convulsions of stomach”. And still the retreat would continue at an even more frantic pace. On 5 January, Moore ordered the entire army to execute a 36-hour continuous forced march – news that put the fear of God into every man. As they slogged along, even soldiers who had kept their discipline to this point suffered. Steady old veterans on starvation rations could not keep up with the gruelling pace and began to straggle. Physician Adam Neale called these hours “this time of horrors”. Yet more sick and wounded men were simply left to freeze. One officer, with perfect British understatement, called it “that unpleasant march”. Read more | Operation Hannibal 1945: the Germany evacuation that dwarfed the 'miracle of Dunkirk' Under such strain, the army that reached Lugo was something of a mob. Moore felt it necessary to issue a proclamation, appealing “to the honour and feelings of the army.” Read out to those in the ranks who were still alive and had bothered to turn up for parade, the speech was described by one British officer as “formidable yet pathetic”. It took another few days to make Corunna. When the exhausted British army staggered into the city on the night of the 11th, their horrific ordeal was far from over. From the hills overlooking the port, they quickly realised that the transports they all longed for were nowhere in sight. In front was the open water of the Atlantic and a 500-mile swim back to England. Behind was Soult. Corunna’s citizens were shocked at the appearance of the redcoats. Sick, emaciated, their clothes in rags, they cannot have been an encouraging sight. Some even made the sign of the cross as the wrecked men filed past. In all, three weeks of hard marching had reduced Moore's army to a shadow of its former self. He realised he had too few men to hold all the ridges south of town, so was forced to choose an imperfect position with an exposed right flank overlooked by higher ground. Soult quickly occupied that higher ground and dragged cannons up there. But then the British caught a break – Soult felt he was too weak to mount an attack. The two armies eyeballed each other until the Royal Navy transports finally came into view late on 14 January. But it would take time to embark the whole British expeditionary force. Read more | Britain’s war on the slave ships: how the Royal Navy policed the Atlantic in the 19th century Moore now faced every commander’s worst nightmare – attempting a staged amphibious withdrawal in the face of a determined enemy. Soult, forced into action, pressed home an attack on the 15th, but it proved indecisive. With part of his force already embarked, the remnants of Moore’s army faced the main French assault the following day. On 16 January, the French threw a mass of soldiers against the British right flank, attempting to turn it and cut the rest of the army off from the ships. Moore ordered two battalions of Foot Guards into the melee. As the Guards advanced, the badly mauled Black Watch began to withdraw. Seeing this, Moore rode forward, personally rallying them. But on horseback in his bright scarlet full-dress uniform, he proved a highly conspicuous figure. While leading the Scots forward, a French roundshot struck Moore in the shoulder, throwing him from his horse. Soldiers rushed to where he lay and were greeted with a grim sight. The ball had almost severed Moore’s left arm and torn his chest wide open, breaking his ribs and lacerating part of his lungs. Nevertheless, he was conscious and composed, appointing General Hope to command the army. A final duty Confused fighting followed on the ridges, with the British managing to hold on until the French assaults died away in the early evening. The remaining redcoats embarked the following day, but not before performing a final duty to Moore. As the last troops were leaving the town, Moore’s body – wrapped in a military coat and blanket – was solemnly lowered into a newly dug grave at the bastion of the citadel amid the roar of a French bombardment. The army that arrived back in England was shattered. One soldier commented that their appearance was “squalid and miserable in the extreme. There was scarcely a man amongst them, who had not lost some of his appointments, and many, owing to the horrors of that celebrated retreat, were even without rifles. Their clothing too was in tatters, and in such an absolute state of filth as to swarm with vermin.” One soldier, Green of the 95th, simply stated that “Such a lot of rag-a-muffins never landed at Portsmouth before”. Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history? The newspapers were quick to turn against the army, with the Times calling the whole campaign “a shameful disaster”. Returns for the sick certainly bore out this claim. The mortality rate for those who landed back in England was a terrifying 17 per cent, caused mostly by fever and the lingering effects of dysentery. So what, if anything, did this deadly retreat achieve? It was Winston Churchill who said that wars are not won by evacuations. Yet if Moore had not made his initial move against the Grand Armée, Napoleon might have had the time and resources to crush the “Spanish Ulcer” before it became terminal for his empire. The cost was about 4,000 irreplaceable British soldiers, including Sir John Moore. Wellington, perhaps Britain's greatest general and a man who never issued praise lightly said after the war that “we’d not have won, I think, without him.” Matthew Doherty is a military historian, writer and teacher
Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?
The Baron of Retz and veteran of the Hundred Years’ War confessed to monstrous crimes of torturing and murdering children. Arrested in 1440, he was found guilty, and executed. So is there reason to believe he was innocent?
Sometimes referred to as one of history’s first recorded serial killers, Gilles de Rais, the Baron of Retz, was executed in October 1440 for the murders of at least 140 children. Whether he was actually guilty, however, remains a matter of debate. Who was Gilles de Rais? Born in c1404, Rais came into his title while still a child, making him one of the most powerful nobles in Brittany and among the wealthiest in all of France. And if a fortune built from the combined wealth of the House of Laval on his father’s side and House of Croan on his mother’s was not enough, he would also marry an extremely wealthy distant cousin. In his youth, he embarked on a military career and was thrust into fighting the English in the Hundred Years’ War. Building a reputation for himself, he served side-by-side with none other than Joan of Arc, including at her famous lifting of the siege of Orleans in 1429. Later that year, whilst still in his twenties, Rais was appointed Marshal of France by the newly crowned King Charles VII. In the aftermath of Joan of Arc’s execution, Rais stepped away from the army and returned to his estate in Brittany. He reportedly spent huge sums of money on maintaining his household, and as a patron to musicians and writers. His family feared that he was emptying the coffers so much that they sought help from the king, who passed a decree preventing Rais from selling his lands. What were Gilles de Rais’ crimes? It was also around this time that he supposedly committed his horrific crimes. He became fascinated with the occult and befriended a cleric named Prelati, who helped in Rais’ attempts in alchemy and the summoning of demons. More disturbingly, rumours began to swirl about missing children in his lands. Some had even been seen approaching the gates of his castle in order to beg for food or coins, never to be seen again. Upon investigation, Rais was arrested in September 1440, accused of – among other crimes, such as heresy and sodomy – the abduction, torture and murder of dozens of children; at least 140, according to his trial. He was brought before both an ecclesiastical and civil court, where he confessed and was sentenced to death, alongside two of his servants who assisted in his butchery. It was deemed that hanging would not be enough for the execution of someone so evil – as Rais swung from the gallows in Nantes, a fire was lit under his feet. Rais has gone down in infamy. His name is synonymous with other heinous killers of history and his story possibly inspired the murderous villain of the French folk story, Bluebeard, who according to dark legend had a predilection for slaughtering his wives. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now Yet it is possible to see similarities between the case of Rais and the witch hunts of the early modern period, which saw hundreds of innocent people killed. There was no physical evidence of Rais’ crimes, and he made his confession only after being threatened with torture. Was he the victim of a conspiracy by his enemies – including the Duke of Brittany, who was directly involved in the trial – so that they could seize his lands and riches? This theory has gained traction in the last few decades, leading to a mock retrial run by the writer Gilbert Prouteau in 1992, which found Rais not guilty. (It must be noted that no one participating in the trial thoroughly researched primary documents and the defense attorneys fabricated evidence for the event. Prouteau himself called the mock trial “an absolute joke.”) However, there is still widespread belief among medievalists that – even if the numbers of his victims were grossly exaggerated – Rais was indeed guilty of the murder of children. The sheer volume of testimonies presented against him was damning, and his reputation endures as history’s first recorded serial killer.
England’s forgotten medieval hero: how John, Duke of Bedford carried on Henry V's fight
When the Hundred Years’ War was reaching a climax, one man was fighting tenaciously to secure the English claim to the French crown. So why, asks Joanna Arman, is Henry V’s formidable brother, John, Duke of Bedford, not better known?
As black skies faded to grey, and dawn broke on that fateful day in the early 15th century, an English army gazed across a field in northern France. What their eyes encountered was a vastly superior force: some 15,000 French-led troops glared back – their numbers nearly double those of England’s men-at-arms and archers. The English had faced seemingly insuperable odds before, and emerged victorious. But could they really triumph over this well-armed force bolstered by fearsome international allies? The Hundred Years’ War had been raging for close to a century already, with negotiations between England and France coming and going – but all ultimately failing to decisively end the conflict. The balance of military success had swung one way and then the other in clashes on land and, occasionally, at sea. Read more | Jonathan Sumpton on the Hundred Years’ War: “It was Joan of Arc who persuaded the French that they could win” Many confrontations had ended with English longbowmen proving decisive. But as morning ebbed and the afternoon rolled on, the outcome remained uncertain. Finally, battle commenced – and the English won a great and memorable victory against the odds. Sounds familiar? No, this is not a description of the battle of Agincourt, Henry V’s famous victory of 1415. Instead, it’s the story of the clash fought on 17 August 1424 – nearly nine years after Agincourt, and two after Henry’s death – outside the town of Verneuil-sur-Avre in Normandy. Here, the English army led by Henry’s younger brother John, Duke of Bedford, hammered a combined force of French and Scottish solders plus 2,000 Milanese heavy cavalry, killing perhaps 6,000 enemy troops while suffering minimal losses. Historians refer to the battle of Verneuil as ‘the second Agincourt’ – yet that clash, like John himself, is largely forgotten today. Why has such a heroic victory faded from memory? And what part did John play in that tumultuous period of English and French history? Born to battle We’ll return to the battle later, but to answer those questions, we must first turn the clock back 25 years. In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster – better known today as Henry IV – usurped the English throne from his cousin Richard II. John was just 10 years old at the time and, as Henry’s third son, would be unlikely to inherit the throne. Read more | The tyrant and the usurper: Richard II v Henry IV Yet the young man quickly proved himself a highly capable leader during his father’s turbulent reign. In 1403, aged just 14, John was made Warden of the East March, the region on the Scottish border around Berwick-on-Tweed. He soon proved his mettle defending England’s northern borders against Scottish incursions alongside his older cousin Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. After his brother succeeded to the English throne as Henry V in 1413, John was trusted with the rule of England during his warlike sibling’s many expeditions abroad, and was created Duke of Bedford in May 1414. The new king was closer to John than to any of his other brothers – even Thomas, Duke of Clarence, who was next in line for the throne. Henry was absent from England for almost half of his nine-year reign, and allowed Bedford to act as regent in all but name during most of that time. John appears to have discharged his growing responsibilities with aplomb. Yet nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. In August 1422, Henry V died while on campaign in France, possibly from dysentery. England had lost its indomitable warrior king. It was a perilous moment. With the crown now passing to Henry’s nine-month-old son, Henry VI, and England embroiled in war with the French, the nation urgently needed someone to shepherd it through the dangerous months ahead. Read more | Alternate history: what if Henry V hadn't died in 1422? Luckily, Henry V had realised that Bedford was up to the task, and appointed his brother as regent of France just before he died. For 13 years, Bedford effectively held together the English presence in the country. Ten months after his brother’s death, John married Anne, sister of Phillip, Duke of Burgundy. Unusually for medieval noblemen, a picture of John created during his lifetime survives in the Bedford Hours, a beautifully illuminated manuscript given by John to Anne as a wedding present and containing images of both him and his wife. It reveals that John bore a striking resemblance to his father and brother: tall, with a beaked nose and dark hair cut in a pudding-bowl style. A son’s guerrilla war John’s marriage to Anne cemented England’s alliance with the Duchy of Burgundy – and that alliance was to grow ever more crucial as relations between England and France continued to plumb the depths. In 1420, Henry V had been nominated as the heir of Charles VI of France by the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. This created a ‘dual monarchy’, by which the kings of England were entitled to rule both England and France. The biggest loser from the Treaty of Troyes was Charles VI’s disinherited son, also called Charles – and, in the early 1420s, he waged a sort of guerrilla war against the English, bolstered by aid from Scotland. It was in the younger Charles’s name that, in 1424, the French Count of Aumerle (along with John Stewart, Earl of Buchan and Archibald Douglas, Earl of Douglas) joined battle with the English outside Verneuil, which had recently been taken by trickery. After brutal hand-to-hand fighting, English longbowmen and crossbowmen turned the course of the battle, and the French were routed. John then determinedly finished off the Scottish contingent, reportedly crying out the name of Clarence – an act of vengeance for his brother, who had been killed three years earlier by a largely Scottish army at the battle of Baugé. Read more | What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War? John took seriously his promise to uphold his nephew Henry VI’s claim to the French throne and continued to defend the English territories in France over the years that followed. The fortunes of his forces oscillated in this war – not helped by the ill-advised marriage of his youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to Jacqueline of Hainault, cousin of the Duke of Burgundy. This union threw the alliance with Burgundy into jeopardy, as Humphrey clashed with the duke, and John spent valuable time and effort building diplomatic bridges with England’s longstanding ally. Then, in 1429, a French peasant girl named Joan arrived on the scene. John and Joan of Arc’s paths crossed only a few times, and his relationship to the saintly French warrior is much misunderstood. In movies about Joan, John is typically cast as the villain, even the man responsible for her fate. In reality, the two never met, though Joan addressed two irate letters to him. “You, Duke of Bedford who call yourself Regent of France… make satisfaction to the king of Heaven,” she demanded in one missive. “Surrender to the Pucelle [maiden], who has been sent here by God, the king of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns that you have taken and violated in France… I am commander of war, and in whatever place I come upon your men in France, I will make them leave, whether they wish to or not. And if they do not wish to obey, I will have them all killed; I have been sent here… to drive you out of all France.” At first, John wasn’t too troubled by Joan’s declamations. Within five months of her arrival on the scene, however, she had relieved the siege of Orléans, and on 17 July had the younger Charles crowned King Charles VII of France in Reims Cathedral. By summer 1429, then, John was worried and annoyed. Like most of his English contemporaries, he considered Joan a witch – and he wasn’t going to allow her to threaten the dual monarchy. So he devised a plan to stop her in her tracks. First, he sent word to England to have Henry VI crowned king of France (though he’d succeeded his father in 1422, his coronation hadn’t yet taken place). Then, as his next gambit, he lured Joan and Charles to Paris, forcing them to expend time and resources in taking the capital instead of focusing on weak spots such as Orléans. John shored up Paris for a long siege that summer, and set about winning hearts and minds. His plan worked remarkably well. When Joan arrived in August, she was forced to wait outside the city, failing in her attempts to draw her enemies into open battle. John had learned from observation of Joan’s previous engagements not to take the bait, preferring to fight her on his own terms. Following a siege, the French took the small suburb of Saint-Denys, but Paris itself eluded them. Eventually, in frustration, Joan of Arc appeared before the walls, screaming that all inside should surrender – or, she threatened, she would bring down the wrath of God upon them and kill everybody. The defenders of Paris were not impressed: an English soldier reportedly shot her with a crossbow, calling her a “bloody tart”. Joan had to be dragged away from the gate, bleeding and humiliated, and Charles’s army withdrew from Paris. In 1430, Joan was captured – but John wasn’t able to enjoy this moment. As Henry VI was now in France, the council didn’t technically need a regent and so it threatened to fire John. As a result, he spent much of that year in limbo, unable to do much politically or militarily. He did not play a role in determining Joan’s fate; by then, she had been condemned for heresy, so the matter was left almost entirely in the hands of the church. John was not even present in Rouen on 30 May 1431, when Joan was burned at the stake. Instead, he was bringing supplies to Paris, which continued to suffer frequent attacks. Their fortunes at that moment contrasted starkly: while the young woman who became France’s potent and enduring figurehead was being brutally executed in Rouen, John of Bedford was being greeted as a hero in Paris. Yet the situation then was not as clear-cut as it may seem today. Timeline: the remarkable life of John, Duke of Bedford 20 June 1389 Mary de Bohun, wife of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, gives birth to her third son, probably at Kenilworth Castle. He is named after his paternal grandfather, John of Gaunt. 30 September 1399 John’s father is proclaimed King Henry IV after deposing his cousin Richard II. 1403 In the aftermath of the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July, John is appointed Warden of the East March, aged just 14, marking the beginning of his military training. 1414 At the second parliament of his oldest brother, Henry V, John is made Duke of Bedford and Earl of Kendal. October 1422 Just weeks after Henry V’s death, John takes up the office of regent of France. May 1423 John marries Anne, younger sister of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, one of England’s most important allies. 17 August 1424 John leads an English army to victory against combined Franco-Scottish forces near Verneuil-sur-Avre, Normandy. The battle becomes known as the ‘Second Agincourt’. August – September 1429 In response to a challenge by John, Joan of Arc and Charles VII of France attempt to take Paris, starting a fruitless siege. Bedford’s careful preparations ensure that the city does not fall. 13 November 1432 Anne of Burgundy dies in Paris, possibly of plague. John marries Jacquetta of Luxembourg the following April. 14 September 1435 John dies in Rouen, aged 46, one week before the Congress of Arras ends the alliance between England and Burgundy. A family at war Henry VI crossed the channel to France in the summer of 1430, and for the next 18 months rivalry simmered between John and various members of the council, especially his paternal uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, who was determined to assert his own primacy. These tensions resulted in the regency being removed from John, and for a time Henry’s council took charge of the war effort in France. Yet John had always had a good relationship with the young king. He had been in England when his nephew was born in late 1421, while Henry V was away in France. And his campaigns in France had been undertaken, it seems, not only to preserve his brother’s legacy but also to advance the interests of the young English monarch. Read more | How Henry VI's love of peace cost him the throne – and his life He must, then, have looked on with some satisfaction when – on 16 December 1431, at the tender age of 10 – Henry VI was crowned King of France at Notre Dame de Paris. The coronation proved something of a turning point for both Henry and John. The king would soon depart for England, never to set foot on French soil again. As for John, he was immediately reinstated as regent – reflecting overwhelming trust in his abilities, even if some in the English court didn’t want to admit it. He immediately set about reversing some of the policies Henry VI’s council had put into place. Then, in 1432, John lost the love of his life and his greatest ally: his wife, Anne. She was only in her late 20s, possibly succumbing to an outbreak of plague in Paris. Though John remarried the following year, he never produced any legitimate children. Anne’s death proved the final nail in the coffin for the alliance between England and Burgundy, though John managed to hold it together for almost three more years. During this time he had to return to England because he was the only person considered trustworthy enough to mediate between the rival factions forming in Henry VI’s government. His brother Humphrey and uncle Cardinal Beaufort were at odds – not for the first time – and the division was tearing the government apart. John had another problem: the continuing conflict in France was becoming increasingly unpopular in England. In the words of medieval historian Jonathan Sumption, John was “the only statesman who truly understood the demands of the dual monarchy and in the end truly believed in it”. That belief was stretched to breaking point in the summer of 1435 at the Congress of Arras. This summit saw Charles VII and Philip, Duke of Burgundy embarking on a series of negotiations that threatened to conclude with both of them rejecting English claims to the French throne. A young and healthy John, Duke of Bedford might have better represented English interests at the summit. But John, who hosted the English delegation at the congress, was not young and healthy. He was in his mid-forties, exhausted and on the edge of death. In fact, John died before the summit reached its end, breathing his last in Rouen Castle on 14 September 1435. One week later, Philip and Charles came to terms, ending the alliance between Burgundy and England that had endured for almost 15 years. John was buried not in England but in Rouen Cathedral. Today, nothing remains of his tomb nor any other memorial. Though England clung on to control of Normandy for 15 years after John’s death, the nation had been deprived of its most loyal, capable and dedicated leader. After his demise, commitment to the war in France waned, and the divisions in Henry VI’s government became increasingly virulent. By 1453, England had lost almost all of its remaining French possessions. In death, as in life, John’s reputation remained untarnished. The English would look back on the days of his regency as a golden age. He was even respected and admired in France. Read more | The miraculous afterlife of Henry VI One cannot help but think that if he had lived longer, the course of Henry VI’s reign might have run differently. Would the king’s famous and beloved uncle have helped to heal divisions – perhaps even persuading his nephew to go to France and fight? If John had produced a legitimate heir, would Henry have had a loyal cousin by his side when the House of York rose to challenge his throne? We can only guess at the answers to those conundrums. But we can, at least, remember and honour the valour and loyalty of this long-forgotten prince. This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“The reverberations lasted for generations” | Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry on the civil war of Charlemagne's grandsons
David Musgrove talks to Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry about the ninth-century civil war among Charlemagne’s grandsons, which shook the empire to its core and reshaped Europe
David Musgrove: Let’s begin with the battle of Fontenoy in AD 841. What happened there and why was it so important? Matthew Gabriele: Fontenoy is nowadays just a small village lying a little south-west of the city of Auxerre in central France. Even in the 840s, it wasn’t particularly significant. But it was there that a civil war erupted between the grandsons of Charlemagne, who were fighting about the fate of the Carolingian empire. After the death of their father, Louis the Pious, on 20 June 840, the three surviving brothers gathered at Fontenoy. Lothar, the eldest and the Frankish co-emperor, was trying to stitch the partitioned empire back together; his younger brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, had their own claims. Lothar was joined by his nephew, Pepin II of Aquitaine, the son of another brother, also Pepin, who had died in 838. The three brothers and their nephew basically argued about the form that the empire should take. Should it be coherent and unified under Lothar, or would Charles and Louis be able to function as independent kings in their own domains? This dispute boiled over into a massive, bloody battle fought on 25 June 841. For most medieval battles, we have just a sense of where and when they were fought. For this clash, though, we have very specific details of the day and the time when the battle started, as well as the location. That’s because – as we argue at the start of our new book – it was so horrifying for everybody involved. It shook the empire and its participants to their core, creating reverberations that lasted for generations. What’s the backstory to the dispute? Matthew Gabriele: The Franks rose to power in the fifth and sixth centuries when, after interacting with the Romans for a long time, they were finally able to establish their own realm. The resulting empire was ruled for several centuries by a dynasty called the Merovingians. They were supplanted in 751 in a coup d’état by high nobles who started a new dynasty that, over time, came to be named for one of their progenitors, Charles Martel – Charles being Carolus in Latin, hence the dynastic name ‘Carolingian’. The apogee of that empire came under Charlemagne, who ruled for a substantial length of time, taking power in 768 and dying in 814. He expanded the Frankish empire to encompass most of western and central Europe, from Denmark in the north down to central Italy, across the Pyrenees into Catalonia and east into Saxony. Read more | The legacy of Charlemagne: how the king of the Franks continues to cast a shadow over Europe But what’s really interesting to us is how quickly it fell apart – within just two generations. This myth of unity that the Franks constructed for themselves – this great empire that Charlemagne had created – was built, as we say in the book, on a foundation of lies. They weren’t just lies that the Franks told to other people, but lies they told themselves about their place in the world and the way that their empire was organised. What we find so interesting is not just the things that happened but also the stories these people told themselves about those events. How did tensions escalate after Charlemagne’s death? David M Perry: Charlemagne had a lot of sons, and Louis was the only legitimate one who happened to survive. He had to work hard to build loyalty across his dad’s empire – it was not just handed to him. Some of that was done through persuasion and gifts, but some of it was achieved through violence and torture – in particular, the blinding of his nephew, Bernard of Italy, who then died. That caused great upset and upheaval in the court. Louis tried to kick out the old guard and bring in the new. However, it turned out that the nobles comprising the old guard were still very powerful – and not super-thrilled about being kicked out. So there were these tensions right from the start. Then Louis remarried, taking as his wife a younger woman. The old guard weren’t thrilled with that, either, because she brought in her own power centres. So Louis’ was not a stable reign, suffering from various internal problems, but it was also a moment at which the Franks started losing battles on the edges of the empire. And that was a whole other crisis of legitimacy. Matthew Gabriele: The stability and greatness of Charlemagne is often contrasted with the instability and fecklessness of Louis the Pious. But if you look at Charlemagne, he actually had a lot of problems governing, too. We talk about the coups of the 830s against Louis the Pious, but Charlemagne himself faced several attempted coups. One such attempt in 792 was led by his own eldest son, Pepin, known to later historians as Pepin the Hunchback, though he certainly wasn’t called that at the time. It seems baked into the way the Carolingians ruled their empires that they had to rely upon powerful nobles around them. So when these nobles got angry about their loss of status, that was a real problem for the kings. And just because only a few coups were successful, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other coups plotted and executed along the way. What were Charlemagne’s grandsons trying to achieve at Fontenoy? Matthew Gabriele: They were trying to decide the fate of the empire. Lothar was trying to beat his brothers into submission, and ideally to restore the empire as it had been under his father and his grandfather. Charles and Louis wanted something different: they wanted their own functional kingdoms within the empire. They wanted to be free from the meddling of the emperor in their lands – Charles the Bald’s realm lying to the west, Louis the German’s to the east – and the right to act as independent Carolingians. They had, they argued, the same blood as Lothar’s flowing through their veins. Looking back, this event became – especially for 19th-century historians – the moment that made France and Germany. It was seen as the final division of Charlemagne’s empire, and the birthplace of the modern state. But today it seems clear that the debate was much more nuanced. Nobody was arguing that Lothar shouldn’t be emperor, they were just arguing about what his role should be there. It was an argument that was so important that they were willing to kill each other: brothers fought against brothers, and cousins, uncles and nephews were divided between the armies. These armies were camped across a field from each other, almost literally staring at each other. From all available sources, it seems that they exchanged emissaries, and decided that they would fight at 8 o’clock the following morning: Saturday 25 June 841. How did the battle play out? David M Perry: Lothar had a well-equipped army and probably slightly larger numbers of men, supported by Pepin’s forces. Charles the Bald had a quite large army, drawn from all over the Frankish heartland. Louis had a smaller army, but it was battle-hardened. Pepin and Charles met in the middle, Louis and Lothar met on the left, and there was a third division led by major nobles on the right. We know little about what actually happened in the battle, but it’s clear that Lothar’s forces engaged Louis and were beaten back, and then Pepin’s forces in the centre collapsed. After that, there was a pursuit that resulted in horrific killing, but Lothar got away. He headed north-east to Aachen with the imperial treasury – and, once there, he spent wildly. He launched a rumour campaign saying that one of his brothers was wounded and the other was dead, neither of which was true, and he immediately started rebuilding political support. This went on for some time. Eventually, Louis and Charles once again brought their armies together – and now they had clear military superiority, there was no dividing them again. So they brought Lothar to the negotiating table. That brings us to the Treaty of Verdun in 843. What happened then? David M Perry: I remember very clearly learning about the Treaty of Verdun while I was an undergraduate in my first medieval history class – and being taught a number of things that are not correct. I believed that there was a treaty – a document, like the Treaty of Versailles – that was written in Latin, German and French, and that it showed the division of France and Germany. I don’t want to call out my undergraduate medieval history professor, because he’s the reason I’m talking to you today – he was a wonderful professor – but I remember learning these things, and they’re just not true. We have no document. There is absolutely nothing surviving from that meeting in 843 that lays out the division of the empire explicitly. The year before the treaty, Louis and Charles travelled to the city of Strasbourg and undertook a public oath-taking. That was the moment when they came together and really made it clear they were going to sit down and talk until they reached an agreement – and where they confirmed their opposition to Lothar ruling the entire empire. As a result, Louis and Charles brought Lothar to the negotiating table, where they agreed that they would split up the empire into three parts. Then they had the problem that no one knew exactly how big the empire was, so they sent out nobles to do the accounting. Nine months later they met in Verdun, really just because it’s a convenient place where those nobles could come together. We can figure out exactly how the empire was divided up only by looking at what happened over the next couple of years – where the brothers went, and which allies got which bits of land. How did this civil war make medieval Europe? Matthew Gabriele: The nostalgia for Charlemagne’s empire animated the vast majority of continental European history through to the 15th or 16th century. The kings of France as they emerged, the emperors in what is now Germany, the rulers of Italy, even the Christian Iberian rulers, all tried to tie themselves in some ways – and in many ways it was accurate – back to the Carolingians through some bloodline that emerged there. In the 830s and 840s, there were just too many Carolingians. Whereas there had only been one Charlemagne, and then only one Louis the Pious, after that, there were too many legitimate children of Louis, and then their children, and then their children, all of whom had potential to rule. That tension, I think, was ultimately part of the problem that led to the civil war. But then, in the centuries thereafter, there was a dream of empire – and especially the dream of a sense of election, of being God’s chosen people – that never disappeared. This view guides many of the actions that these men’s descendants took, including the push for the kingdom of France to expand beyond the Île de France and to reunite with the Carolingian bloodline. Read more | Books interview with Janet Nelson: "The only way this huge regime could work was by Charlemagne trusting his own instincts" The desire to go on crusade in 1095, for example, was driven by the idea that these guys were all Franks and that they were fighting to reclaim Charlemagne’s claims to Jerusalem, which was another legend that evolved in the 10th and 11th centuries. These medieval realms were different from what we think of as modern nation states such as France and Germany – they were different things aiming for different ends. Those modern states have sought justification for their formation in these events of the European Middle Ages, but the reality is different. David M Perry: I just want to jump back into the oaths of Strasbourg, this famous moment on 14 February 842 for which we have a source written in Latin, but also French and German versions, because the men involved spoke all of these languages. Importantly, this was the first documented use of the French and German vernaculars. It’s not that there was a French troop and a German troop, and a linguistic divide between different peoples. The whole point is that there were a lot of languages spoken across this huge land mass, and the men involved wanted to make sure that everyone understood everything. In the Carolingian empire, people were able to speak all of these languages – that was just normal. It was a big, complicated empire, and people talked to each other. It was only 1,000 years later that this point became symbolic; a way of creating a narrative that linked the new French and German nation states and nationalistic identities back to that moment when the oaths were sworn. Looking at how people in the 19th century viewed events in the Middle Ages is something that Matt and I do a lot. We can definitely say that what they read into the situation was not what was actually happening in the ninth century. Did that mid-ninth-century civil war conclusively fracture the Carolingian empire? Matthew Gabriele: The short answer is: yes. The empire was never stitched back together, though there were attempts to do so, especially in the later ninth century and the 10th century. In the first and second generations after the battle of Fontenoy, these attempts failed because of the bad blood that was generated there. That wasn’t just because of the bloodiness of the battle itself, or the resentments on either side about who deserved what, but the way that the battle was pursued – the fact that Louis’ and Charles’s armies followed Lothar’s and cut down his men in their pursuit. It seems to have been a real massacre that people remembered for generations. Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech and David M Perry is a journalist and historian. They are the co-authors of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (HarperCollins, 2022) and Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe (Harper, 2024) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The madcap Paris Olympics: the chaos that nearly derailed the 1900 Games
As Paris prepares to stage the Summer Olympics, David Goldblatt describes how the 1900 Games – the first held in the French capital – almost defeated the Olympic ideal before it was even out of the starting blocks
To treat these events as world’s championships would be really an insult to the important events they are supposed to be. They are treated by most of the competitors as A HUGE JOKE.” That was the verdict of Australian sprinter Stanley Rowley on the Paris Olympics of 1900 – and he’d just won four medals. This summer, the world’s finest athletes will converge on the French capital once again for the latest edition of the sporting behemoth that is the Summer Olympics. In many ways, the competition will be returning home: the French capital may not have hosted the first modern Games, but it was unquestionably its birthplace. And, as Rowley’s words reveal all too clearly, that birth was a painful one. Read more | A history of unsporting conduct at the Olympics In 1892, Pierre, Baron De Coubertin – then a little-known French sports administrator – organised a symposium at the city’s Sorbonne University, where he called for the revival of the ancient Greek Olympic Games in modern form. Two years and a lot of hustling later, De Coubertin held a full-blown conference, again in Paris, at which leading figures in the world of gentlemanly amateur sports gathered. It was here that they agreed to create an International Olympic Committee (IOC) and stage the first modern games, to be held in Athens in 1896. Just 241 athletes made it to the Greek capital, competing in only nine sports. But that those Games happened at all after a hiatus of 1,500 years was remarkable. De Coubertin had rather higher hopes for the second edition of the modern Olympics, to take place in 1900, when the host city would be the French capital. De Coubertin had long envisaged that the Paris Games would serve as the triumphant sporting component of the Exposition Universelle – the greatest of the world’s fairs of the belle époque – held that year in the city. What transpired instead was a shambolic melange of spats, misunderstandings, false starts and apathy that almost crushed the Olympic ideal before it had got out of the starting blocks. In an early draft of plans for an ‘Athletic Exposition’, the baron had proposed staging the Paris Games “in an enclosure exactly reproducing the Altis at Olympia, in so far as the excavations and discoveries made up to that point had made it possible to recreate it”. He also suggested a programme of events similar to that of the 1896 Athens Olympics as the sporting component of the fair. Alfred Picard, the civil servant in charge of the Exposition Universelle, thought differently. He considered the pagan neo-Hellenism of De Coubertin’s proposals to be an “absurd anachronism”, and that those games – exclusively for amateur gentlemen athletes – would be “cheap and unfit to represent the nation”. The Olympics that wasn’t Instead, the Exposition decided to put on its own sporting festival, the Concours Interna- tionaux d’Exercices Physiques et des Sports (International Competition of Physical Exercises and Sports). This featured national schools sports championships, popular pastimes such as angling and pigeon racing, new crazes including motorboat and motorbike racing, and professional events (with prize money) in shooting and cycling. That’s not to mention mass gymnastic and archery displays, plus firefighting and life-saving contests. De Coubertin would be permitted to stage a few amateur events around the city as a sideshow, but nothing more. Undaunted, the baron continued to lobby his French political contacts to intervene, and tried to manoeuvre himself into a position of authority over at least some of the Concours’ events. But he was blocked at every turn. In fact, he had been so marginalised by the organisers that, during the summer of 1900, he and other members of the IOC were reduced to running or cycling between events that others had organised, trying to deter- mine which ones could plausibly be considered ‘Olympic’. The Parisian public were not enthusiastic. Crowds were thin everywhere; at the croquet competition, according to the official report, “Spectators were not at all numerous; al- though I must mention an English lover of the game who made the journey from Nice to Paris... unless I am very much mistaken, however, this gentleman was the only paying spectator.” The press was just confused, referring to these occasions as the “festival games”, “international games” and “the Olympian festival”. Read more | 5 unusual Olympic sports from the past To all intents and purposes, as far as the world was aware, there was no 1900 Olympics Games. Or, rather, there was something approximating the Games, but without an opening ceremony, laurels or any mention in the official Exposition programme, and few medals (though these were awarded retrospectively several years later). The final sporting schedule did, though – and contrary to De Coubertin’s preferences – feature women. His stated position was that “an Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper”. Having lost control of the agenda of Paris 1900, however, De Coubertin and the IOC were not able to exclude women from the games as they had done, in effect, at Athens in 1896, where all 241 participants had been men. Of 997 athletes in Paris, 22 were women, competing in golf, tennis, equestrianism, croquet and sailing – albeit some by unlikely routes. In 1899, like many wealthy Americans of the era, Mary Abbott and her daughter Margaret, then living in Chicago, set sail for Paris. There, Mary, a novelist and journalist, would write, Margaret would study art, and both would attend the Exposition. Olympic competition was not part of their plans. However, both were keen golfers – Margaret had been recognised in the Chicago press for winning local competitions and possessing a “classy backswing” – so when they saw the competition announced in 1900 both signed up. Margaret shot a 47 and won the nine-hole tournament, receiving a large por- celain bowl, while Mary carded 65 to finish seventh. They were the first mother-daughter duo to compete in an Olympic event. Ad hoc at best Briton Charlotte Cooper, who had already won three times at Wimbledon, took first place in the women’s singles tennis event. At least two Frenchwomen competed in croquet, and Italian Elvira Guerra and Frenchwomen Jane Moulin and Blanche de Marcigny took part in the hacks and hunter equestrian competition, a mix of simple dressage manoeuvres and low jumps. The team sport competitions were ad hoc at best. The cricket event, originally slated to be contested by teams representing Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain, was reduced to a single match after those first two teams withdrew. In effect, it proved to be a match between Britons – the Great British team being the touring Devon and Somerset Wanderers, and the French team largely comprising British expats living in Paris. Players were awarded miniature statues of the Eiffel Tower for their troubles. Football was a three-way affair between English amateurs Upton Park, Club Français and a bunch of Belgians – university stu- dents and players from various clubs – though there was not enough time for them to all play each other. Moseley Wanderers, the English entrants in a similarly tiny rugby competition, arrived, played and left on the same day without even being aware that they were competing in the Olympics. Gold went to France, whose centre, the Haitian-French medical student Constantin Henriquez, was the first black athlete to compete at the Olympic Games, and the first to win a gold medal. Team composition was even more laidback for the polo event: four of the teams mixed Irish, British, Mexican, American and French players, and players were even permitted to compete for more than one team. Marathon mayhem The organisation of the marathon was emblematic of the overall chaos that characterised the Games. The event was poorly signed and virtually unmarshalled, and runners had to compete for space with the bikes, coaches and trams that thronged the streets of Paris. When the hot favourite, American Arthur Newton, crossed the finishing line he believed that he’d won the race. It soon transpired, though, that a Swede and three French athletes had finished ahead of him – despite the fact he said no other athlete had overtaken him. Rumours circulated that the winner, named Michel Théato, was a local baker’s delivery boy who had used his knowledge of the city’s backstreets to gain an unfair advantage. Ion Pool, a British competitor, certainly had his doubts. “The marathon turned out to be a dismal fiasco,” he later recalled. “The whole conduct of the race... and the entire absence of precautions to ensure fair play can only be characterised by the one word: Preposterous – with a capital P.” Dick Grant, a Canadian who finished sixth, even mounted a legal case against the IOC, claiming that at a crucial point in the race he had been run over by a cyclist. The pole vault proved equally contentious. Initially scheduled for a Sunday, the presence of many devout Christian US competitors who wouldn’t compete on the sabbath persuaded organisers to reschedule the event for Monday. However, the decision was then taken to shift the event back to Sunday – without telling those sabbatarians. So it was held without them, and was won by another American, Irving Baxter. Unsurprisingly, the irate churchgoers protested, and further pole vault competitions were staged on the Monday and Thursday, won by two of those sabbatarians, Bascom Johnson and Dan Horton. The controversy didn’t end there, however; officials refused to recognise these later events, and confirmed Baxter as champion. They did, though, offer Horton a compensation prize – an umbrella. The coxed four rowing competition also encountered problems. Three semi-finals were held, with the winners and one runner- up going through to compete in the final. However, two teams eliminated in the second and third semi-finals recorded faster times than the winner of the first semi-final – un- surprisingly, again, they protested vociferously. The organisers then planned to stage a final with six boats – but, because the course was designed for just four, this was clearly impossible. The compromise decision was to stage two finals, each with just three boats – with the result that all six competing teams won medals of one colour or another. Publicity gold The IOC did, though, enjoy one PR triumph and showcase one real star at these games: the American Alvin Kraenzlein. He won four gold medals, in the 60-metre sprint, the 110-metre and 200-metre hurdles, and the long jump. Kraenzlein pioneered the modern technique for hurdling, leading with one leg lifted over the hurdles before the other, instead of using the existing mode of leaping with both legs tucked under the body. He was also noted for his dress sense: in Paris he wore an Eton collar, a silk cravat and a rakish cap. Over the following decades, the IOC never fully resolved which of the events that had taken place over the summer of 1900 should be considered Olympic; nor did it establish consistent criteria for making this decision. In his 1998 book on Paris 1900, Bill Mallon – a leading authority on the history of the Games – suggested that for an event to be considered Olympic, it had to be fully amateur, with international participation, and open to all without handicapping. Only after Mallon’s pronouncement was a final medal table for the 1900 Games compiled. Things were marginally better four years later. The 1904 Games were held, much to De Coubertin’s irritation, in St Louis, Missouri as a small athletic appendage to the giant World’s Fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. De Coubertin had planned for the games to be staged in Chicago, hosted by his blue-blooded friends at the university there, but the organisers of the exposition refused to countenance a competing event being staged in the US in the same year. (In 1906, though, the Greek royal family collaborated with a few renegade members of the IOC to hold an alternative Olympic Games in Athens.) De Coubertin refused to attend these events in St Louis and Athens, and focused instead on the fourth modern Games, staged in London in 1908. Now firmly under his control, and graced by the British royal family, this edition was much more to the baron’s liking. However, it was, like earlier iterations, subsumed into another spectacle – the popular Franco-British Exhibition at what is now White City in London. It wasn’t until 1912, and the fifth Games in Stockholm, that the Olympics stood alone as a spectacle, and its ascent to global sporting domination could begin. Not surprisingly, De Coubertin later looked back on the chaos of 1900, and remarked: “It’s a miracle the Olympic movement survived these Games.” Wacky races: 5 more Olympic events that encapsulate the chaos of Paris 1900 Tug of war: American pulling power The Paris edition of the New York Herald was outspoken, to say the least, in its criticism of the organisation of the tug of war competition in the 1900 Olympics, citing it as “an object lesson in how not to do a thing”. The event should have been a contest between Racing Club de France and a US team. However, three of the Americans were also hammer throwers and, with their event clashing with the tug of war, the team withdrew. At the last minute, a Scandinavian team comprising Danes and Swedes was assembled, beating the French in a best-of- three competition. The US press, however, considered their team the winners after the Americans beat the Scandinavians in an unofficial contest a few days later. The French press reported that the American victory was questionable: a group of their supporters came onto the field and joined the team, ensuring victory. Swimming: The fast lane This summer, we won’t see aquatic obstacle racing or competitive underwater swimming – both of which featured at the 1900 Games. In the former, competitors had to climb over a wooden obstacle, then swim to a line of rowing boats into which they had to clam- ber then dive off, before swimming under a second row of boats. The race was won by Australian Frederick Lane, who received a large bronze statue of a horse. The subaquatic athletes were awarded points according to how long they stayed underwater, and how far they travelled. Frenchman Charles Devendeville won gold by staying under for one minute and eight seconds after reaching the maximum distance of 60 metres. Jumps: The human frog The extraordinary American athlete Ray Ewry (right) won three gold medals in a single day, competing in the now-discontinued standing jump events. Eschewing a run up, and with their feet placed firmly on the ground, competitors took on the high jump, long jump and triple jump. Ewry, dubbed ‘the human frog’, soared an amazing 1.65 metres in the high jump and 3.30 metres in the long jump. His achievements seem even more astonishing when you consider that in childhood Ewry used a wheelchair after a bout of polio, before rebuilding his strength and mobility through athletics. He won seven more gold medals: at St Louis in 1904, the Intercalated Olympic Games in Athens in 1906, and London in 1908. Ballooning: Flying into trouble Considered at the time to be an Olympic discipline, and certainly the province of amateurs, the 1900 ballooning competitions (or exhibitions) proved an epic affair. Participants beneath gas-filled balloons set off from Le Parc d’aerostation in Paris, attempting to fly as far as possible, for as long as possible or as high as possible. In the long-distance event, second-placed Jacques Balsan made it to a spot south of Warsaw in what’s now Poland. But the winner was the French aeronautical pioneer Henry de la Vaulx who, flying with Georges Castillon de Saint-Victor, flew around 1,200 miles to land near Kiev (now Kyiv), at the time in tsarist Russia, in nearly 36 hours. On landing he was taken into police custody, having failed to file a passport request with the Russian government. Pigeons: ... dead or alive Pigeons featured in the competitions at the Exposition Universelle not once but twice. There was a huge and popular pigeon-racing competition for the bird lovers, and a live pigeon shooting contest for the hunters, won by Belgian Léon de Lunden. The IOC has, retrospectively, declined to classify pigeon shooting as an Olympic event – not, it seems, for ethical reasons, but because there was a very considerable cash prize for the contestants who could blast the most birds out of the sky, making it a professional sport. More than 300 pigeons met their ends during that event in the 1900 Olympics and, to the relief of animal welfare advocates, it was replaced at the 1904 Olympics by clay pigeon shooting. David Goldblatt is a sports writer, broadcaster and journalist. His books include The Games: A Global History of the Olympics (Macmillan, 2016) This article was first published in the August 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Catherine de Medici: the ‘Serpent Queen’ who became one of France’s most powerful 16th-century rulers
Often regarded as brutal and calculating, the powerful Catherine de Medici is much maligned. But how should we regard her actions and power? Estelle Paranque considers the life and legacy of the fascinating royal, from her historical unpopularity to her influence on the history of Europe…
Catherine de Medici was never meant to be queen. The ‘orphan of Florence’ suffered more losses during her childhood than most people do in a lifetime. Yet fate struck, and the ‘duchessina’ – as she went on to be called by the Florentine people – ended up marrying into the French royal family. Little did she know that, one day, she would become queen of France. We bring you the key facts about the woman who became known as 'the Serpent Queen'… Who was Catherine de Medici? Born: 13 April 1519, Republic of Florence Died: 5 January 1589, France Parents: Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne Known for: Being the queen mother of France during the reign of her three sons Husband: Henry II of France Children: 10, including Francis II of France; Charles IX of France; Henry III of France; Margaret of Valois and Francis, Duke of Anjou Legacy: Catherine de Medici’s legacy is controversial. On the one hand, she is remembered for being one of the most powerful French queens of the early modern period. On the other, none of her sons were able to secure the dynasty and, ultimately, she was blamed for many of the atrocities that occurred during their reigns. Catherine de Medici’s family and upbringing Catherine was born in Florence on 13 April 1519 to Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of the kingdom of Florence, and his wife Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne. Within three weeks of her birth, Madeleine died from a violent fever and Catherine was left without a mother. Shortly afterwards, her father, who was also the Duke of Urbino, had to defend the region after it was attacked by Francesco Maria, a former duke of Urbino who had plotted his revenge during a vulnerable time for Lorenzo’s family. Lorenzo sustained injuries in the town’s defence and died of his wounds amid other disease complications in May 1519. Despite relatives who stepped in to look after Catherine after the death of her parents, the little duchess was now alone in the world; nothing could replace parental love and protection – or, at least, almost nothing. Initially, Catherine was looked after by her paternal grandmother, Alfonsina Orsini, but when Alfonsina died in 1520, Catherine was left with her aunt, Clarice de Medici. By 1527, the ruling Medicis had been overthrown by a faction that opposed Giulio de Medici, who had been elected as Pope Clement VII in 1523. Catherine was then raised in several convents until peace was reached, at which point Clement summoned her to go and live with him in Rome. He cared for her and also arranged her union to Henry, Duke of Orléans, the second son of King Francis I of France, in early 1533. The young couple were married in Marseille on 28 October 1533. Aged just 14, Catherine had now entered into the French royal family – a life-changing experience. Catherine de Medici's marriage: was it happy? Catherine’s marriage to Henry II was not a happy one. As queen consort following the death of Francis I in 1547, Catherine was fully devoted to her husband, but in reality, she was the third wheel in the relationship; Henry II was profoundly in love with his royal favourite, Diane de Poitiers, who exercised enormous influence over Henry’s life. There were three people in this union and, as a result, Henry spent very little time with his wife – to the point where courtiers gossiped that the queen was infertile (after all, Henry had illegitimate children with other mistresses). But after nearly a decade of further humiliations, Diane actually helped the royal couple conceive. Worried that she could lose her position and influence at court if the king were to remarry a younger and more enticing wife to sire an heir, Diane made sure that Henry frequented the royal bedchamber; Catherine was no threat to her, even with heirs, as Diane had secured the king’s affection and sexual attraction. From 1544 onwards, Catherine and Henry had a total of 10 children – seven of whom survived to adulthood. The Serpent Queen: STARZ’s Catherine de’ Medici drama offers "myths and caricature" STARZ drama The Serpent Queen portrays Catherine de’ Medici as a queen who will do anything to survive and retain power. But, writes Dr Estelle Paranque, we shouldn’t entirely believe in her ‘dark legend’... How did Catherine de Medici become governor of France? When Henry II died following injuries sustained during a jousting tournament in 1559, Catherine’s situation at court changed in an instant. At first, she acted as a political advisor to her eldest son, Francis II of France. Though Henry had allowed her little influence as queen consort, she had previously been made regent by her husband in 1552 while Henry was absent at the siege of Metz, and she used this brief political experience under Francis II. Then, when Francis died of illness on 5 December 1560, her 10-year-old son, Charles IX, became the next king of France. In an attempt to prevent Catherine from taking control, a regency was put into place, but she overcame it and was made ‘governor of France’, ruling alongside Antoine de Bourbon, the king of Navarre. Although Antoine was a prince of the blood (a legitimate male heir to the French throne) and had been declared the ‘official’ regent, the arrangement was ultimately approved by parliament. It was through her sons that Catherine built up her own political power. When Charles IX became of age to rule on his own, she took the title of ‘queen mother of France’, imposing herself on all governmental meetings and using the influence she had over her son to remain in power. She continued this strategy – though less successfully – with her next-youngest son, Henry III, who became king upon Charles’s death in 1574. Read more | Henri III: Elizabeth I’s unlikely ally Catherine de Medici and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre The long regency of Catherine was marked by the French Wars of Religion, a period of war between Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants). Many urban legends depict Catherine as a murderer who hated Protestants, but it is important to note that the reality is quite different. In fact, Catherine spent a lot of her time in power trying to find peace compromises between Catholics and Protestants. Was she a fervent Catholic? Yes. Would she have preferred it if all her country was Catholic? Of course. But she also knew the importance of preserving stability in one’s realm in order to secure the dynasty. View Green Video on the source website Catherine spent months negotiating a potential marriage between her daughter, Marguerite of Valois, to the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, son of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret. Once the marriage was agreed, the wedding was arranged for 18 August 1572. But in the days following the union came one of the bloodiest events of early modern French history. With tensions already high in Paris, an assassination attempt was made on Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots, and the event sparked days of bloodshed, not just in Paris but all over France: it later became known as the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. How did Catherine react that night? She tried to save Coligny – the leader who had been targeted by the powerful Catholic Guise family – by sending for the royal doctor, Ambroise Paré, to treat his wounds. She also opened her doors to any Protestants who needed to find refuge, including the English ambassador at the time, Sir Francis Walsingham, when his apartments were no longer safe enough. The bloodshed is traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine. Did she suspect that the Guise family would seek revenge on Huguenot leaders for the death of their father at the hands of a Huguenot noble in 1562? Very likely. But she could not possibly have known it would lead to the thousands of deaths that followed. Did she encourage it? Hardly. Instability was never in the interest of the ones in power. Did she orchestrate it? No concrete evidence has ever been revealed. How did Catherine de Medici die? In September 1588 Catherine started to feel weak, and she eventually became ill with a lung infection. At this time, the situation in France was at its worst. The authority of Henry III, her favourite son, had been contested to the point when, in May 1588, he had to flee Paris as it was besieged by the Catholic League led by the Guises. Catherine spent her time trying to advise her son, but he no longer wished to listen to her. Her illness progressed and she continued to feel powerless as she watched her son’s own power being diminished. When, in December 1588, Henry III ordered the assassinations of his enemies – Henry, Duke of Guise and Louis, Cardinal of Guise – Catherine gasped at the horror she was witnessing. She knew that the French people would never forgive such treacherous behaviour from a king; she knew it would seal her son’s fate. Her lung infection spread further, and, on 5 January 1589, she gave her last breath in her own bed at the Castle of Blois. It is believed she died of pleurisy. Why was Catherine de Medici called the ‘Serpent Queen’? A dark legend has stained Catherine’s reign and those of her sons, largely due to the fact that none of them put an end to the religious civil wars that ravaged France between 1562 and 1598. Her Italian origins were also considered a problem by courtiers, as well as the fact that she showed interest in astrology and astronomy. She believed astronomers, such as Nostradamus, and asked them for predictions of the future. Some people saw this as being an interest in the occult, which she did not have, and – little by little – her detractors wrongly portrayed her as a ‘serpent queen’ who knew how to poison her enemies and who was heartless with the people of France. These attacks could not be further from the truth. Catherine, like any other ruler, did plot and lie when needed in order to protect her authority – or that of her sons – but she also showed how much she truly cared about the preservation of France, and always tried to find ways to promote peace and reach stability within the borders of her realm. Read more | Queens know best: survival lessons from powerful historical women Catherine was also fond of art and a keen collector of it; during her lifetime she acquired a great deal of tapestries, sculptures, rich fabrics, furniture and pottery, as well as portraits she commissioned from Jean Clouet and his son, Francis Clouet. She also had a passion for architecture, ordering the renovations of important buildings such as the castles of Montceaux-en-Brie and Chenonceau. She spent a huge amount on the arts, but was never truly recognised as a patron – partly because of the dark legend that still hangs over her reign today. By her end, Catherine had become a force to be reckoned with. From orphan to queen consort, to queen mother, she drastically influenced French history by producing three of the nation’s kings. Though the Valois dynasty did not prevail after Henry III, Catherine’s grandchildren from her other children went on to shape late 16th and 17th-century politics. In many ways, she was the grandmother of early modern Europe. Read next | Why Catherine de Medici despised Elizabeth I of England Dr Estelle Paranque is a historian in queenship, royal and diplomatic studies, and assistant professor in early modern history at New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University. She is the author of Blood, Fire and Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici (Ebury Press, 2022)