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Author: Jean Plaidy Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1446411923 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
The first of Jean Plaidy's flamboyant French Revolution series. France eagerly awaits the day the young King, Louis XV, comes of age and breaks free from the rule of his ministers. The country hopes Louis will bring back glory and prosperity to France. However, he is too preoccupied with the thrills of hunting and gambling to notice the power struggle going on in his own court. Soon, the King is introduced to the pleasures of mistresses and a succession of lovers follows. From the gentle persuasions of Madame de Mailley to her overtly ambitious sister, Madame Vintimille, France stands by and watches a King ruled by his women...
Author: Jean Plaidy Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1446411923 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
The first of Jean Plaidy's flamboyant French Revolution series. France eagerly awaits the day the young King, Louis XV, comes of age and breaks free from the rule of his ministers. The country hopes Louis will bring back glory and prosperity to France. However, he is too preoccupied with the thrills of hunting and gambling to notice the power struggle going on in his own court. Soon, the King is introduced to the pleasures of mistresses and a succession of lovers follows. From the gentle persuasions of Madame de Mailley to her overtly ambitious sister, Madame Vintimille, France stands by and watches a King ruled by his women...
Author: Colin Jones Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141937203 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 906
Book Description
There can be few more mesmerising historical narratives than the story of how the dazzlingly confident and secure monarchy Louis XIV, 'the Sun King', left to his successors in 1715 became the discredited, debt-ridden failure toppled by Revolution in1789. The further story of the bloody unravelling of the Revolution until its seizure by Napoleon is equally astounding. Colin Jones' brilliant new book is the first in 40 years to describe the whole period. Jones' key point in this gripping narrative is that France was NOT doomed to Revolution and that the 'ancien regime' DID remain dynamic and innovatory, twisting and turning until finally stoven in by the intolerable costs and humiliation of its wars with Britain.
Author: Catherine Curzon Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 147384553X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 151
Book Description
This lively history of Europe’s royal families through the 18th and early 19th centuries reveals the decadence and danger of court life. As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history. Meanwhile, in France, Revolution stalks the land. Life in the Georgian Court pulls back the curtain on the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia, and the epoch-defining royal family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover. Beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Historian Catherine Curzon reveals the private lives of these very public figures, vividly recounting the arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and the scandals that rocked polite society. Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, King George IV makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage, and Marie Antoinette begins her final journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell. Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.
Author: Sally Christie Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1501102966 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 432
Book Description
Court intriguers are beginning to sense that young King Louis XV, after seven years of marriage, is tiring of his Polish wife. The race is on to find a mistress for the royal bed. The King's scheming ministers push Louise, the eldest of the aristocratic Nesle sisters, into the arms of the King. Over the following decade, of the five Nesle sisters-- Louise, Pauline, Diane, Hortense, and Marie-Anne-- four will become mistresses to King Louis XV. All will conspire, betray, suffer, and triumph in a desperate fight for both love and power.
Author: Desmond Seward Publisher: Independently Published ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
'Licentious or bigoted, noble or ignoble, ' wrote Nancy Mitford, 'there has seldom been a dull Bourbon.' The story of the Bourbon kings encompasses the two most glorious and turbulent centuries in French history, yet surprisingly, this is still the only narrative account of the dynasty for the general reader. They emerge from a shadowy line of medieval princes in 1589 to rule France for over 200 years, dominating Europe, launching an endless series of wars, creators of the dazzling splendour of Versailles, survivors from the French Revolution. The Bourbons begin with the dashing figure of Henri IV, with his courage, gaiety and 64 mistresses. They include figures such as the Sun King Louis XIV and Louis XVI who ended under the guillotine, and close with the little-known 'Henri V' - expected to return and rule France in 1873 but whose refusal to abandon the Lily banner of the Bourbons for the Tricolore finally lost him the throne. The Bourbon Kings of France is an accessible yet thorough history, written for the general reader and of particular interest to anyone who enjoys history or wishes to learn more about the Bourbons. Praise for The Bourbon Kings of France: 'A blending of wide historical knowledge and vigorous independent judgement to make a lively, exciting but dependable account for the general reader' - Sunday Times 'Enormously entertaining ... an excellent read ... a cross between a package tour of the Bourbon dynasty and a Guide Michelin to the favourites, mistresses and ministers of the French monarchy' - Spectator Paris-born Desmond Seward is a British popular historian who has written many books but is perhaps best known for The Hundred Years War, The Monks of War, The Wars of the Roses and Richard III. He lives in England's West Country.
Author: Olivier Bernier Publisher: New Word City ISBN: 1640191690 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 373
Book Description
"History as it ought to be written." - The New Yorker Louis XV lived an enchanted life. He had extraordinary good looks, absolute power, spectacular palaces, and the total grandeur that only eighteenth-century France could provide. The French people adored him and called him "the beloved." During his reign, France flourished, and had it not been for his successor, the chaos of the Revolution might never have happened. History, however, has not only been unkind in its assessment of Louis XV but also mistaken, as this absorbing biography demonstrates. In it, Olivier Bernier explains the development of the negative judgment, showing how the beloved Louis became maligned after his death. The author refutes the unfavorable assessment using such credible sources as the king's state papers, which remain intact in France's national archives. Louis XV emerges in these pages as one of the best French kings, thoughtful and caring, loving and loved by his people.
Author: Christine Pevitt Publisher: Grove Press ISBN: 9780802140357 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
This biography of the legendary mistress of King Louis XV offers dramatic insight into the life of one of the most enchanting, powerful, and feared women to grace the world's stage. Groomed from an early age to assume the role of a rich man's mistress, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson underwent several transformations before she caught the heart of the king himself. Although accustomed to the king's extramarital relationships, the court was shocked at the sudden ascension of the low-born Mademoiselle Poisson. The newcomer, however, wasted no time in establishing herself as the king's sole confidante and, ultimately, his indispensable partner in affairs of state. The critically acclaimed author of Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, Christine Pevitt Algrant traces Madame de Pompadour from her modest beginnings in early-eighteenth-century Paris to her reign as the undisputed mistress of Versailles. Filled with photographs, and evocative and insightful in its telling, Madame de Pompadour is a seductive portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential women of the age.
Author: Lisa Jane Graham Publisher: University of Virginia Press ISBN: 9780813919270 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
In May 1758, a bailiff named Jean Moriceau de La Motte was arrested for carrying seditious flyers and uttering mauvais discours against Louis XV. When he was questioned at the Bastille over the next several months, La Motte was unequivocal in his loyalty to the king, but his insistence failed to convince the police and probably hurt his case more than would have a simple admission of guilt. He was sentenced to be hanged on the Place de Grève after making his amends on the steps of Nôtre Dame. His punishment seemed severe, if not unwarranted, to an increasingly literate and informed Parisian populace that found censorship hard to support, either theoretically or practically, in the face of intellectual and cultural changes wrought by the Enlightenment. By looking at the police files for cases such as La Motte's, Lisa Jane Graham uncovers fascinating clues to the conflicting attitudes of eighteenth-century French subjects toward royal authority. Individuals like La Motte often failed to see the subversive implications of their words and protested their fidelity to the king in impassioned language. The crown's inability or refusal to accommodate a wider range of political speech turned the opinions of these indivduals into bitter grievances and sometimes crimes. Ironically, the decision to repress seditious speech not only alienated essentially loyal French men and women; by marking them as opponents of monarchical authority, it strengthened their sense of their own autonomy and legitimacy as social actors. The complex and surprising web of motivations lying at the heart of such loyalty, as revealed in the police files Graham examines, undermines some deeply rooted assumptions about the Enlightenment and its links to modernity. Graham's book presents the eighteenth century as the critical historical moment for studying how the premodern virtue of loyalty gave way to new ideas and vocabularies about the relationship between individuals and government. If the King Only Knew attests to the powerful emotional and ideological conflicts this difficult transition unleashed.
Author: Susanna Caviglia Publisher: ISBN: 9781789620399 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
French painting of Louis XV's reign (1715-74), generally categorized by the term rococo, has typically been understood as an artistic style aimed at furnishing courtly society with delightful images of its own frivolous pursuits. Instead, this book shows the significance and seriousness underpinning the notion of pleasure embedded in eighteenth-century history painting. During this time, pleasure became a moral ideal grounded not only in domestic life but also defining a range of social, political, and cultural transactions oriented toward transforming and improving society at large. History, painting, and the seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV reconsiders the role of history painting in creating a newvisual language that presented peace and happiness as an individual's natural rights in the aftermath of Louis XIV's bellicose reign (1643-1715). In this new study, Susanna Caviglia reinvestigates the artistic practices of an entire generation of painters born around 1700 (e.g. Francois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Vanloo) in order to highlight the cultural forces at work within their now iconic images.
Author: Jean Plaidy
Author: Jean Plaidy
Author: Colin Jones
Author: Catherine Curzon
Author: Sally Christie
Author: Desmond Seward
Author: Olivier Bernier
Author: Hélène Adeline Guerber
Author: Christine Pevitt
Author: Lisa Jane Graham
Author: Susanna Caviglia