HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-11-21T16:03:17.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France
items: Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
items: Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
items: The dangerous road to the Bastille
items: The many faces of Napoleon
items: What should we make of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon?
items: How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution
items: How Marie Antoinette waged a battle for survival
items: The life and death of Marie Antoinette: everything you need to know about the last queen of France

Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T09:00:02.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical people
description: The wrongful conviction for treason of a Jewish army captain in France in the late 19th century exposed antisemitism and virulent nationalism – but also, as Mike Rapport reveals, sparked a flood of ‘fake news’ that presaged the worst of the modern media landscape
encoded: In the oppressive heat of his cell in the Mont-Valérien military prison west of Paris on 31 August 1898, Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry wrote a despairing letter to his wife, drank half a bottle of rum, and killed himself. This desperate act was a pivotal moment in one of the best-known causes celebres in modern history: the Dreyfus Affair. The story of Henry’s suicide, following his arrest for forging a document in the controversial case, was co-opted by the nationalist rightwing media as part of a tidal wave of coverage that threatened to destabilise French democracy and public trust in the Republic. The background is well known today. In September 1894, Henry, a counter-espionage officer, had uncovered evidence of a mole within French military intelligence. A cleaner working in the German embassy (and in Henry’s pay) had found a memorandum, since dubbed the ‘bordereau’, written by an officer in the French General Staff revealing military secrets. The handwriting was identified as that of Alfred Dreyfus, an army captain then working in the War Ministry, who was arrested, court-martialled, publicly degraded and hauled off to solitary confinement on the notoriously harsh penal colony of Devil’s Island, off French Guiana. But the army had the wrong man. Contradictions and irregularities in the case soon began to appear. In August 1896, the new head of military intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, was examining more papers stolen from the German embassy. The handwriting on one was identical to that in the bordereau used to convict Dreyfus – but the signature was that of Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a dissipated, debt-ridden, disreputable officer who had been selling secrets to the Germans for two years. Dreyfus, Picquart realised, was innocent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/BAL1756949-CMYKWeb-Ready-2c9d689.jpg" width="3683" height="2456" alt="An engraving shows a man lying dead on the floor, while a p…

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Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
type: item
date: 2024-01-19T18:13:55.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Regency Course
description: Jane Austen’s lifetime coincided with near-constant conflict and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic
encoded: The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age. During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America – and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour – a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston. Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired – marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America. Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists – led by figures including George Washington – fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola…

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Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
type: item
date: 2024-01-19T18:13:04.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Regency Course
description: Beneath the genteel surface of decorous society, unrest simmered in the world – and works – of Jane Austen
encoded: While the novels of Jane Austen might suggest an endless schedule of middle- and upper-class gaiety, disgruntlement was rumbling beneath the surface across the country – and, during this tail end of the Georgian era, it often erupted in violent, sometimes lethal protest. Not that Austen herself completely ignored what was happening in the country beyond Barton Cottage and Netherfield Park. For instance, her fifth novel, Northanger Abbey, refers to the unrest erupting in England’s larger cities. Although she writes about a riot as imagined by one of the characters, the rather visceral description depicts: “a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood”. Whether real or imagined, Austen’s inspiration for this tableau does seem to have come from real-life events. The episode appears to be a conflation of at least two separate disturbances that occurred prior to Northanger Abbey’s publication. In 1808, perhaps 6,000 weavers from the local – and rapidly growing – textile industry in Manchester gathered in St George’s Fields to protest about the lack of a minimum wage in their trade. Eight years later, not long before Austen’s novel was published, another riot broke out in London at the end of a hitherto peaceful protest. During the violence, the rioters even planned to attack the Tower of London – so it was surely not mere coincidence that Austen’s imagined account of the unrest included the Tower being “threatened”. Fighting for fair pay The weavers’ protest in Manchester may have been violent but it did achieve a modicum of success. Though dragoons were called in to restore peace (and one protester died during this response), the rioting was replicated in surrounding towns in Lancashire, and the weavers won a small concession in the form of a modest rise in their wages. Some scholars of Jane Austen believe that the Gordon Riots of 1780 also contributed to her description i…

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The dangerous road to the Bastille
type: item
date: 2023-12-01T10:52:56.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Robert Darnton guides us through the streets of Paris in the decades leading up to the French Revolution
encoded: The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the defining events of world history – but the decades preceding the revolution were also seismic, being marked by war, royal scandal, financial crisis and scientific wonder. In conversation with Rob Attar, Robert Darnton takes us on a journey through the streets of Paris in the 40 years that preceded the storming of the Bastille. Robert Darnton is the author of The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 (Penguin, 2023) View Green Video on the source website

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The dangerous road to the Bastille
type: item
date: 2023-12-01T07:31:31.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Robert Darnton guides us through the streets of Paris in the decades leading up to the French Revolution
encoded: The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the defining events of world history – but the decades preceding the revolution were also seismic, being marked by war, royal scandal, financial crisis and scientific wonder. In conversation with Rob Attar, Robert Darnton takes us on a journey through the streets of Paris in the 40 years that preceded the storming of the Bastille. Watch a video version of The dangerous road to the Bastille Robert Darnton is the author of The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 (Penguin, 2023) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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The many faces of Napoleon
type: item
date: 2023-11-27T09:48:54.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: As a major new film explores the life of the French emperor, Matt Elton asks historians Laura O’Brien and David Andress how we can make sense of the diverse and contradictory aspects of Napoleon’s character and career
encoded: Matt Elton: Before we start thinking about Napoleon’s legacy, we should explore a key aspect of his story: just how great a military commander was he, and what were his greatest successes? David Andress: He’s one of the greatest military commanders of all time. He was also a highly charismatic individual and, every time you talk about Napoleon, you have to bear that in mind alongside the fact that he was a terrible person, politically speaking. He was staggeringly successful at doing things with military force – the problem was, that wasn’t always a good idea. The story of Napoleon’s life from the mid-1790s onwards is essentially one of balancing his personal charisma, drive, ambition and outstanding leadership qualities with what he actually did in the political sphere, the systems he set up, and what they said about what he thought about everyone else who wasn’t him. Laura O’Brien: I completely agree. One of the reasons he continues to excite such interest is the tendency to view him through a binary prism: he is either the worst person who ever lived, or a perfect genius who was really hard done by. This is the classic historian’s answer, but we need to think about his reputation in a more complicated, nuanced way. We have to recognise what Napoleon achieved – which was exceptional – and the way he was able to capture the imagination to such an extent that he still informs how we understand leadership. How did Napoleon’s early life shape his worldview and how he saw himself? LOB: Probably the most important early formative event was being sent to a military academy in 1779, when he was nine. He spent the next five years in that very austere environment, and noted later how it taught him to survive in hard situations. He was likely very badly bullied: people joked about his accent, and the fact he didn’t speak French very clearly. He became interested in the idea of Corsican independence in this period, and in the fact that he was Corsican above all. Although he d…

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What should we make of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon?
type: item
date: 2023-07-31T14:11:31.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Video shorts
description: The Napoleon of Ridley Scott’s epic biopic appears to be a man of emotion and vision, but does that match up to what really know of the Corsican general? Dr Zack White considers how Napoleon’s film portrayals tally with real history
encoded: Ridley Scott's new trailer for his epic biopic of Napoleon's life has caused a lot of excitement and a lot of consternation online and in the social media forums. I t seems that we're getting quite a different portrayal of Napoleon to some of the representations we've seen in previous films. This is an intense Napoleon, with a very hefty dose of narcissism thrown in the mix and in a lot of respects, that’s highly accurate. There has been a lot of pushback about the way in which Joaquin Phoenix is portraying a much less openly emotional Napoleon. But Napoleon was noted as being oddly intense in the early stages of his life. It's one of the things that's picked up from his time at military Academy, and it's part of the reason he was quite unpopular. We also get this strong sense that Napoleon has a destiny that he believes he has been born to fulfil and that's, that's again, actually quite accurate. From an early point in his life, Napoleon was reading about Julius Caesar particularly, and trying to channel his own efforts in life to become a new Caesar. There was a lot of internal frustration for him when he wasn't getting the postings that he wanted, and this is part of the reason that he's actually in Paris during the Vendémiaire uprising, which leads to the famous ‘whiff of grape shot’ moment depicted in the trailer. The reason he's there is he's turned down a posting in the Vendée because he believes it is beneath him. So you have this intense guy, somewhat self-absorbed, very impressed with himself, and that’s actually quite accurate at this point in Napoleon's life. Napoleon and Josephine One of the things that's really exciting about what's come through in this trailer is the huge significance of Josephine de Beauhernais. Again, this is really reflective of reality. Josephine was Napoleon's emotional rock, just as Napoleon needed Marshall Berthier to be able to translate his military vision into reality, so Josephine was the one who – in the words of historian…

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How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution
type: item
date: 2023-07-11T09:50:43.000Z
creator: Marisa Linton
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: When the Corsican general seized power in a coup in 1799, he proclaimed himself a defender of the republican ideals that had come from the revolution. But, as Marisa Linton explains, the would-be emperor did all he could to dismantle them
encoded: On 10 November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte stormed into the chambers at the Château de Saint-Cloud in the suburbs of Paris and set in train a military coup. “The republic no longer has a government,” he declared to the assembled members of one of France’s two ruling councils. “Together let us save the cause of liberty and equality.” The coup represented an enormous gamble for Bonaparte but it paid off spectacularly: within a matter of days, he had been declared First Consul of his nation. He was now the most powerful figure in France – and hardly anybody had seen it coming. But one man had, and his name was Maximilien Robespierre. When revolutionary France had embarked on a war with its royalist neighbours in April 1792, Robespierre warned of the dangers that would follow. A military leader could, the leading Jacobin revolutionary counselled, take the opportunity to seize political power in Paris, becoming another Julius Caesar, another Oliver Cromwell. Robespierre’s warnings were disregarded, but they proved prescient. The ensuing war would last a generation. It brought to prominence several talented young generals with the potential to become a second Caesar. In the end the man who came out ahead was the young Corsican general who burst into the Château de Saint Cloud in November 1799: Bonaparte. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know For many historians, the coup of 1799 signalled the end of one of the great step-changes in European history: the French Revolution. Erupting in 1789, the revolution had shaken the old order based on the authority of king, nobles and clergy to its core. It also brought into being a raft of new political ideals, such as individual liberty, equality before the law, freedom of speech and religious toleration. The revolution was the first of its kind anywhere in the world, and would have an unfathomable impact on modern history. But what would be the fate of these revolutionary ideals under the Napoleonic regim…

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How Marie Antoinette waged a battle for survival
type: item
date: 2022-12-29T09:15:15.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Marie Antoinette spent much of her reign engaged in a battle: first to cement her position as queen of France, and then to avoid the guillotine. Catriona Seth uses the queen’s letters to trace her desperate bid for survival
encoded: Make a callous remark betraying your indifference to other people’s suffering, and you might be accused of having a “Marie Antoinette moment”. We’ve all heard of Marie Antoinette. She is the French queen who displayed her disdain for the plight of her hungry subjects by exclaiming the immortal phrase: “Let them eat cake!” She’s also the French queen who – as every history lover knows – got her comeuppance by being sent to the guillotine. And yet there’s a problem with this portrayal: Marie Antoinette never invited the French people to eat cake. Anti-monarchists propagated the falsehood using an anecdote that had circulated long before her birth. Anyone who wants to discover the queen behind the myth might instead consider the following: “Our situation is awful. When I am really sad, I take my little boy in my arms, I hug him with all my heart, and that consoles me.” Marie Antoinette wrote scores of letters during her lifetime, many of which have been preserved. And, as the words above suggest, these letters tell a tragic story. They paint a picture of a woman engaged in a desperate battle for survival as her world fell apart. They help us locate the real Marie Antoinette. Scurrilous rumours Maria Antonia, as she was christened, began life not in France, but in Vienna. She was born on 2 November 1755, the 15th of 16 children of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. Her mother, the queen of Hungary and Bohemia in her own right, used her offspring as pawns: their marriages consolidated her network. After lengthy diplomatic negotiations, Maria Antonia was sent to Versailles to wed the dauphin – the heir to the king of France – though they had never met. Preceded by a portrait destined to show her at her most beautiful, the 14-year-old left Vienna never to return. She was, as Maria Theresa wrote to her on 3 May 1770, “where Providence meant for [her] to live”. Less than five years later, she would be queen of France. Marie Antoinette, as she became …

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The life and death of Marie Antoinette: everything you need to know about the last queen of France
type: item
date: 2022-12-22T16:25:50.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: Queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette (1755–93) is famous for being overthrown by revolutionaries and being publicly guillotined following the abolition of the monarchy in France. But how much do you know about her life? And did she really say "Let them eat cake"?
encoded: From nation’s sweetheart to public enemy, what led Marie Antoinette to the guillotine? We bring you the facts about her life and death… Marie Antoinette: in profile Born: 2 November 1755, Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria Died: 16 October 1793, Place de la Concorde (previously known as Place de la Revolution), Paris, France | Read more about Marie Antoinette's final days Known for: Being overthrown by French revolutionaries and being publicly guillotined after the abolition of the monarchy. Family: Marie was the 15th child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Empress Maria Theresa. Together the couple had 16 children, 10 of whom lived into adulthood. At the age of 14, Marie married the heir to the French throne, Louis-Auguste, Duke of Berry and Dauphin of France, by proxy (a wedding that takes place without the presence of at least one of the two individuals) on 19 April 1770. Together they had four children: Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Louis Joseph, Louis Charles, and Sophie Hélène Béatrice. Timeline: Marie Antoinette’s tragic life 2 November 1755 Archduchess Maria Antonia (the future Marie Antoinette) is born in Vienna, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and of Empress Maria Theresa. 21 April 1770 Marie Antoinette leaves Vienna for Versailles and married life with the heir to the French throne whom she has never met. 10 May 1774 The death of Louis XV from smallpox means that Marie Antoinette’s husband, the dauphin, becomes Louis XVI, king of France. 19 December 1778 Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s first child, a daughter, is born in Versailles. Marie Thérèse Charlotte survives the revolution and lives until 1851. 22 October 1781 Marie Antoinette gives birth to a son, Louis Xavier, the dauphin (heir to the throne). A sickly child, he will die in 1789. The queen’s second son, Louis Joseph, dies in the Temple prison in 1795, possibly of tuberculosis. 1785 Marie Antoinette’s reputation is sullied by the “Diamond necklace affair”. This saw her falsely accused of…

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