Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "Royal" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
27More

The Spider King: Louis XI of France | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...spider-king-louis-xi-france Louis XI France Medieval
shared by manhefnawi on 22 May 18 - No Cached
  • The occasion of his liberty was the joyous passage through Meung of the new King, Louis XI, whose reign was to change the France in which Villon had pursued his rogue’s career out of all recognition
  • Of all the princes that I ever had the honour to know”, wrote Commines, “the wisest and most dexterous to extricate himself out of any danger or difficulty in time of adversity was our master King Louis XI.”
  • Louis was born in 1423, the year after the Dauphin, his father, had claimed his inheritance at the deaths of Henry V of England and Charles VI
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • The supposed humiliation of attending the sack of Liege by the Burgundian army cost him little; and he avoided the second condition imposed by Charles—the award of Champagne and Brie to Charles de France—by persuading his brother to accept the more remote province of Guyenne in their place
  • Yet Philip the Good felt himself increasingly isolated by French negotiations with Frederick III and the Swiss cantons. The opportune arrival of the Dauphin allowed him to reassert his influence at the French court and to arbitrate between father and son
  • Louis XI appeared to represent all the forces of feudal and Burgundian reaction
  • The independent duchy of Brittany possessed its own governmental institutions, and its ruler, Francis II, refused anything but simple homage to both Charles VII and his successor
  • If his royal connections and foreign ambitions had induced this capricious and luxury-loving prince to avoid open conflict with the crown, his impetuous son, John of Calabria, was foremost in every plot and affray
  • Louis XI might dismiss his father’s favourites; but he could not afford to reverse his policy. He refused support for John of Calabria’s ill-fated venture in Italy, quarrelled with Philip the Good, and disputed the right of Francis II to control the church in Brittany.
  • The King did indeed learn much from the League of the Common Weal
  • He took advantage of a misunderstanding between his ineffective brother and Francis II to recover Normandy, and at the same time distracted Burgundy by encouraging the revolt of the cities of Dinant and Liege. Having bought off Brittany and Charles de France, he sought to detach them from their Burgundian alliance by revealing the details of their defection
  • Louis XI also anticipated later methods of economic warfare. He deprived his Burgundian enemy of specie and procured the withdrawal of the support afforded him by the Medici bank. His concessions to English, Swiss and Hanseatic merchants were designed to detach them from Burgundian commerce
  • In these years Louis XI was conducting equally complex negotiations in Aragon and England
  • Charles VII exiled him to his government in Dauphiné. The nine years he spent there were occupied with strengthening the provincial administration and resisting the authority of the Crown
  • Pot-bellied and spindle-shanked, Louis XI was an unlikely figure, either as a monster of vice or, as he described himself, as the restorer of the splendours of Charlemagne and St. Louis
  • Louis employed the agents of the former financier, Jacques Coeur, whose condemnation under Charles VII he declared invalid. From Tours he drew the merchant financiers of the Beaune and Briçonnet families, and from Berry the Bochetels, who founded a notable line of royal secretaries
  • It is doubtful whether Louis XI had any general plan to transform the social order, but he found the middle classes his most convenient allies against the forces of disorder from above and below
  • In the towns Louis XI accelerated the trend to the formation of urban patriciates. He widened the special form of ennoblement available to municipal councillors.
  • From the number of national assemblies convoked by Louis XI it is sometimes conjectured that his government proceeded by consultative methods. But of the twelve such bodies convened by the King only one was a full Estates General, the others being merely assemblies of notables
  • The Estates General of Tours in 1468 was skilfully won over to the royal cause, and persuaded that to grant Normandy to the King’s brother would be to detach it from France and expose it to English and Burgundian influence
  • Trade prospered under Louis XI, but the recovery of agriculture was slow in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War. Choisnet had written in the Rosier des Guerres that “the King should see for himself the condition of his people, and should watch over them as a good gardener does his garden.”
  • While Louis won over Warwick, and reconciled the King-Maker with Margaret of Anjou to secure the brief Lancastrian restoration of 1470, the Burgundian Duke responded by publicly welcoming the return of Henry VI, and secredy promoting the triumph of his Yorkist brother-in-law, Edward IV.
  • As Charles VII had promoted the trade fairs of Lyon to ruin Geneva, so Louis established fairs at Caen and Rouen to challenge those of Bruges and Antwerp
  • Charles the Rash pursued chimerical schemes in Alsace, and clashed with the German Emperor. His preoccupation with affairs in the electorate of Cologne prevented him from supporting an English invasion of France in 1475, and Louis bought off Edward IV with the Treaty of Picquigny
  • Maximilian, the son of Frederick III, married the Burgundian heiress, Mary, and defended her lands against France until the Treaty of Arras brought peace in 1482. In all his calculations the Spider King could not have foreseen that Philip, the issue of this match, would marry the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile— an alliance which itself was in part a response to Louis’ policy in Catalonia
  • A new France had been nurtured by measures that seem at times not merely generations but centuries in advance of their age. Yet for all the surprising modernity of his policies, the manner in which Louis died revealed the extent to which he was still in thrall to the forces of the past.
  • The arcana of kingship which he bad penetrated were not of this kind. The first of modern national rulers went to his death surrounded by all the trappings of magic
18More

Louis-Philippe | Facts, Reign, & Legacy | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...Louis-Philippe France Exile and Return of Louis-Philippe duc d'Orléans
shared by manhefnawi on 03 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • Louis-Philippe was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe Joseph de Bourbon-Orléans, duc de Chartres, and Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. At first styled duc de Valois, he became duc de Chartres when his father inherited the title duc d’Orléans in 1785.
  • Despite the fact that he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the elder Louis-Philippe was arrested in Paris after his son’s desertion.
  • The execution of Philippe Égalité in November 1793 made Louis-Philippe the duc d’Orléans, and he became the centre of the Orleanist intrigues. He refused to countenance any plan to set himself up as king in France, however, possibly because he was negotiating with the revolutionaries for the release of his two brothers,
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen
  • On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.
  • Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.
  • Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition
  • when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.
  • In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a rebellion (July 27–30) that gave Louis-Philippe his long-awaited opportunity to gain power.
  • The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France. He consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing extreme monarchists (the Legitimists) on the one side and the socialists and other republicans (including the Bonapartists) on the other. The July Monarchy, with its “Citizen King,” could never command the support of all the factions, however. Its opponents resorted to political intrigue, insurrection, and even assassination plots. In July 1835 an attempt on the king’s life by Giuseppe Fieschi resulted in the deaths of 18 people and the wounding of many more, but the royal family escaped injury. Throughout Louis-Philippe’s reign, it was said that “for shooting kings there is no close[d] season.”
  • before abdicating in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, comte de Chambord. On August 7 the provisional government of deputies and peers present in Paris declared the throne vacant. Following the terminology of the Constitution of 1791, Louis-Philippe was on August 9 proclaimed “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people.” A modified version of the Charter of 1814 was issued, which the new king was obliged to accept.
  • The death of the popular duc d’Orléans in a carriage accident in July 1842 not only grieved Louis-Philippe very deeply but also seriously weakened the dynasty. The new heir to the throne, the duke’s son Philippe d’Orléans, comte de Paris, was an infant for whom a regency had to be prearranged.
  • The marriage (August 1832) of his daughter Marie-Louise to Queen Victoria’s uncle Leopold I, king of the Belgians, established an excellent relationship between Paris and London, almost foreshadowing the Entente Cordiale.
  • The British were finally alienated by Louis-Philippe’s policy on the “Spanish marriages.” In an attempt to revive the traditional family alliance between the French and Spanish Bourbons, he had at first wanted his sons Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and Antoine, duc de Montpensier, to marry Spanish Queen Isabella II and her sister and heiress presumptive, the infanta Luisa Fernanda, respectively. The British objected to this obvious threat of French predominance in Spain, and in 1843 Louis-Philippe agreed that Isabella should marry neither Henri nor the British nominee, Prince Albert’s cousin Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but rather some Spanish Bourbon instead.
  • French opposition to the regime had become much more embittered. The industrial and agricultural depression of 1846 aroused widespread popular discontent, and Louis-Philippe’s constant refusal of any electoral reform meant that many members of the lower middle class—from whom he might still have drawn support—remained without the vote. Finally, his narrow-minded conservatism and his unwillingness to seek any solution for pressing political and social problems drove many divergent interests into union against him.
  • The July Monarchy was but one casualty of the great revolutionary movement that swept through Europe in 1848. In any case, a change had come to seem unavoidable in France.
  • The July Monarchy was really an anachronism. To the French people—for whom, whether or not they favoured the institution, monarchy meant the splendours and absolutism of the ancien régime
  • In power Louis-Philippe strove to implement his desire to rule as well as to reign. The political difficulties with which he was faced revealed in him the weaknesses of an obstinate man; increasingly, his only response to crises was words and theories, and ultimately inaction lost him his crown.
9More

An Overview of the Declaration of Pillnitz - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/eclaration-of-pillnitz-1221700 history French Revolution Prussia and Austria Declaration hidden meaning
shared by g-dragon on 19 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • The Declaration of Pillnitz was a statement issued by the rulers of Austria and Prussia in 1792 to try and both support the French monarchy and forestall a European war as a result of the French Revolution. It actually had the opposite effect, and goes down in history as a terrible misjudgement.
  • most of Europe, who were monarchies less than pleased about citizens organising.
  • Concerned about both the welfare of his sister Marie Antoinette and the status of brother in law King Louis XVI of France, Emperor Leopold of Austria met with King Frederick William of Prussia at Pillnitz in Saxony. The plan was to discuss what to do about the way the French Revolution was undermining royalty and threatening family.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • French aristocracy who had fled the revolutionary government, for armed intervention aimed at restoring the full powers of the French king and the whole of the ‘old regime’.
  • He had followed events in France, but was afraid intervention would threaten his sister and brother in law, not help them (he was completely right). However, when he thought they had escaped he rashly offered all his resources to aid them. By the time of Pillnitz he knew the French royals were effectively prisoners in France.
  • Austria and Prussia were not natural allies given recent European history, but at Pillnitz they reached agreement and put out a declaration.
  • While it stated that the fate of the French Royals was of “common interest” to Europe’s other leaders, and while it urged France to restore them and made threats if harm came to them, the subtext was in the section saying Europe would only take military action with the agreement of all the major powers. As everybody knew Britain would have nothing to do with such a war at that point, Austria and Prussia were, in practice, not tied to any action. It sounded tough, but promised nothing of substance. It was a piece of clever word play. It was a total failure.
  • The Declaration of Pillnitz was thus designed to assist the pro-royal faction in the revolutionary government against the republicans rather than threaten a war.
  • France had developed a culture that did not recognise subtext: they spoke in moral absolutes, believed that oratory was a pure form of communication and that cleverly written text was disingenuous.
3More

Meghan and Harry interview: Prince William says royals are 'very much not a racist fami... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html Politics
shared by kaylynfreeman on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • London (CNN)Prince William has denied the royal family is racist in his first public remarks since his brother Prince Harry, and his wife Meghan, made explosive claims in a TV interview.
  • Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, made a series of damning accusations against the royal family in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired in the UK on Monday night.
  • In the interview, Meghan said that the skin tone of the couple's child, Archie, was discussed as a potential issue before he was born. The couple would not reveal who had made the remarks, but said it wasn't Queen Elizabeth II or her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. close dialogDo you want the news summarized each morning?We've got you.Please enter aboveSign me upBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Success!See you in your inbox.close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1271788 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1271788 *//* custom css from creative 53617 */.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-row-input.bx-row-validation .bx-vtext { font-size: 11px; color: #ee2924;}@keyframes bx-anim-1271788-spin { 100% { transform: rotate(360deg); }}/* rendered styles .bx-campaign-1271788 */.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 185px;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative {border-color: #c1c1c1;border-style: solid;background-size: contain;background-color: white;border-width: 1px 0;border-radius: 0;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 780px;padding: 10px;vertical-align: middle;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 340px;padding: 15px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {stroke: rgb(193, 193, 193);stroke-width: 2px;width: 24px;height: 24px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {width: 30px;height: 30px;padding: 0 0 10px 10px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-PGhroUO {width: 135px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-PGhroUO {text-align: center;display: none;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-LHjAYNs {width: 100%;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-LHjAYNs {width: 45px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-eWRqNk4 {width: 505px;padding: 2px 0 0 25px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-eWRqNk4 {width: 100%;padding: 5px 0 0;text-align: left;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Sk3p2Hs {width: 100%;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Sk3p2Hs {width: 100%;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Sk3p2Hs> *:first-child {font-family: CNN,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Utkal,sans-serif;font-weight: 400;font-size: 21px;color: #282828;line-height: 1em;letter-spacing: -.015em;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Sk3p2Hs> *:first-child {font-size: 22px;min-width: auto;padding: 0;line-height: 1.1m;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Gs3ScAY {width: 100%;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Gs3ScAY {width: 100%;}}@media all and (min-width: 1025px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Gs3ScAY {width: 500px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Gs3ScAY> *:first-child {font-family: CNN,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Utkal,sans-serif;font-weight: 400;font-size: 21px;padding: 6px 0 0;color: #ee2924;line-height: 1.1em;letter-spacing: -.015em;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-element-1271788-Gs3ScAY> *:first-child {font-size: 18px;padding: 8px 0 0;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-kw4VbV5 {width: 640px;padding: 10px 0 0;min-width: 550px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1271788 .bx-group-1271788-kw4VbV5 {min-width: auto;width: 100%;padding: 10px 0 0;}}@media all and (min-width: 737px) and (max-wi
9More

AI attack drone finds shortcut to achieving its goals: kill its operators - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...s-kill-its-operators-rhpn8kscc ai threat
shared by Javier E on 02 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • An American attack drone piloted by artificial intelligence turned on its human operators during a flight simulation and killed them because it did not like being given new orders, the chief testing officer of the US air force revealed.
  • This terrifying glimpse of a Terminator-style machine seemingly taking over and turning on its creators was offered as a cautionary tale by Colonel Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the force’s chief of AI test and operations.
  • Hamilton said it showed how AI had the potential to develop by “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal”, and should not be relied on too much. He suggested that there was an urgent need for ethics discussions about the use of AI in the military.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The Royal Aeronautical Society, which held the high-powered conference in London on “future combat air and space capabilities” where Hamilton spoke, described his presentation as “seemingly plucked from a science fiction thriller.”
  • Hamilton, a fighter test-pilot involved in developing autonomous systems such as robot F-16 jets, said that the AI-piloted drone went rogue during a simulated mission to destroy enemy surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).
  • “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say, ‘Yes, kill that threat’,” Hamilton told the gathering of senior officials from western air forces and aeronautics companies last month.
  • “The system started realising that, while they did identify the threat, at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”
  • According to a blog post on the Royal Aeronautical Society website, Hamilton added: “We trained the system — ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that.’ So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”
  • The Royal Society bloggers wrote: “This example, seemingly plucked from a science fiction thriller, means that ‘You can’t have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you’re not going to talk about ethics and AI,’ said Hamilton.”
7More

Charles's Coronation Brings Up Mixed Feelings About the British Monarchy - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-charles-monarchy-bristol.html monarchy UK
shared by Javier E on 06 May 23 - No Cached
  • A recent poll conducted by YouGov and the BBC indicated that 32 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds believed that Britain should continue to have a monarchy, compared with 78 percent of people over 65 who supported a monarchy.
  • Most of the youngest cohort of people surveyed — 59 percent — said that King Charles was out of touch with the experiences of the British public, and 34 percent of those over 65 felt that way.
  • There was a similar divide when it came to interest in the royal family, with 78 percent of the youngest group surveyed saying it had none.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The generational divide is particularly stark in Bristol, which has a median age of around 34, younger than the national average, 40. It is also increasingly diverse, with 28.4 percent of the population from an ethnic minority group,
  • “The history isn’t great,” Ms. Weston, 28, said.
  • Her group launched into an impassioned discussion of the legacy of the British Empire, its involvement in the slave trade — especially relevant in a city like Bristol — and the way the royal family had historically been involved.
  • The city docks, just steps away, played a major role in the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved African people, and Caribbean products such as sugar, rum, indigo and cocoa produced by the enslaved were brought to Bristol and fueled local industries, enriching British merchants from this port city
9More

BBC News - Royal Dutch Shell issues profit warning - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-25773409
shared by Maria Delzi on 17 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has issued a profit warning after it made less money than expected in the final quarter of 2013.
  • "Fourth-quarter 2013 figures... are expected to be significantly lower than recent levels of profitability," the company said in a statement.
  • It now expects profits for the quarter to be about $2.2bn (£1.3bn) and profits for 2013 as a whole to be $16.8bn. Shell's shares fell more than 4% at the beginning of trading in London.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • , when it made $27.2bn.
  • "Our 2013 performance was not what I expect from Shell," Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a statement.
  • Mr van Beurden became chief executive at the beginning of this year, taking over from Peter Voser.
  • Shell said its profits in the fourth quarter were hurt by a range of factors, including higher exploration costs, security problems in oil-rich Nigeria, and maintenance work that hit oil and gas production.
  • It has seen a string of disappointing quarterly results over the past 12 months.
  • In December, the Anglo-Dutch company also cancelled a $20bn project to build a gas processing plant in Louisiana.
4More

Really, really big black hole detected - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html black hole cnn Royal Astronomical Society
shared by rachelramirez on 29 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Black hole is 30 times bigger than expected
  • The galaxy, with the very clunky name of SAGE0536AGN, was discovered with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Scientists think it's about 9 billion years old.
  • The data indicated the black hole is 30 times larger than expected for this size of galaxy, according to a press release from the Royal Astronomical Society.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Scientists aren't sure whether SAGE0536AGN is just a fluke or whether they've found a new class of galaxies.
3More

BBC News - Prince George christening: Official pictures released - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/uk-24662966
shared by B Mannke on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The prince, who was born on 22 July, was baptised by the Archbishop of Canterbury during a private christening attended by just 22 members of the royal family. The Cambridges broke with tradition to have their son christened at the Chapel royal, where the coffin of the duke's mother, Princess Diana, lay before her funeral.
  • For all the eye-catching charm of the photograph of George with his arms in the air, beneath the beaming smiles of his mother and father, it is the "four monarchs" photograph that can genuinely be said to have an historic significance.
  • Following the ceremony, the Queen told guests at Buckingham Palace how much she had enjoyed the ceremony. While the duchess said he had been a "good boy", as she attended a reception and dinner at the Kensington Palace State Apartments.
2More

Poppy Bush Finally Gives Junior a Spanking - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-gives-junior-a-spanking.html bush dynasty family politics 41 43 history
shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • I am here, my puzzled readers, to help interpret the latest Oedipal somersaults of our royally messed up Republican royal family.
  • Like many uptight, upper-class families, the Bushes seem oddly unable to directly confront tensions and resentments and talk to each other candidly. With other families, the unsaid and circuitous end up rupturing relationships. In the case of the Bushes, it ended up rupturing the globe.
8More

Saudi Arabia elections: 900 women run for office - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html saudi arabia elections policy women
shared by lenaurick on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • More than 900 women are campaigning for public office in Saudi Arabia
  • More than 900 women are campaigning for public office in Saudi Arabia -- a first in the kingdom's history.
  • Women will only participate in elections at the municipal level.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Just three months ago, Saudi women were allowed to register to vote for the first time.
  • the country remains an absolute monarchy ruled by the Saud family, which governs according to a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam.
  • Saudi women are forbidden to drive, and are not allowed to travel or go to school without a male guardian.
  • According to the U.S. State Department, municipal elections in Saudi Arabia fill half the seats in municipal councils, with the king selecting the other half.
  • The late King Abdullah also issued a royal decree in 2013 mandating the Consultative Council, a royally appointed body that advises the King, be at least 20% women,
4More

Falklands War 'true hero' Captain Rick Jolly dies - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...uk-england-cornwall-42682005
shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Falklands War 'true hero' Captain Rick Jolly dies
  • A Royal Navy medical officer who saved the lives of hundreds of British and Argentine troops during the Falklands War has died, aged 71.Working amid terrible conditions in the field, Surgeon Capt Rick Jolly, from Torpoint, Cornwall, saved the life of every British serviceman he treated.
  • He said: "Without his organisational skills the surgeons and medics would never have functioned. I can only thank him for saving my life, and many others. "It's a tragedy for everyone who knew him and a tragedy especially for his family."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Surgeon Cmdr Anthony Lambert met him several times, the first time shortly after he returned from the Falklands in 1982.He said: "As medics we aren't heroes, we just do our job, but he did his job incredibly well and was an inspiration to my generation".Tributes on Social media include the Commanding Officer of the Royal Marines 40 Commando who called him a "true hero".
21More

The Spanish Inquisition | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...spanish-inquisition Cultural Religion Inquisition Spain
shared by manhefnawi on 15 May 18 - No Cached
  • The Spanish Inquisition is commonly associated with torture, cruelty and oppression
  • The concept of inquisitions to root out religious heretics was not novel when, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV authorised the creation of a Spanish inquisition
  • These newly united kingdoms, under joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to set up such a body
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • previously operated in the Kingdom of Aragon
  • Its head and chief officials were royal appointees, it operated largely without reference to the Papacy, and appeals to Rome from the Inquisition were not permitted by the Crown
  • Below this were the two secretariats of Castile and Aragon, which dealt with the administration of tribunals not only in mainland Spain, but also in parts of the New World, the Balearic islands, Sardinia and Sicily
  • Perhaps the best known feature of the Spanish Inquisition was the auto da fé, or act of faith, an often public humiliation of those convicted by the Inquisition
  • After being abolished during Napoleon's occupation of Spain between 1808 and 1814, the Inquisition was briefly restored before being finally wound up in 1820
  • A great political institution of the monarch, working on ecclesiastical lines
  • That the Spanish Inquisition was oppressive to some extent is beyond doubt
  • the Inquisition as typifying the 'Black Legend' of early modern Spain, especially during the reign of Philip II (1558-98). It represented all that was worst about royal absolutism and intolerant fanatical Catholicism
  • the Inquisition was also engaged in a campaign to reform the morals of Spain's Catholic population
  • Philip II's stated wish not to be a ruler of heretics was almost entirely granted
  • It clearly had an educational aspect to its work
  • Yet for the most part it worked in parallel with the aims of the Crown
  • It is important to be aware that the elimination of heresy had a clear political as well as religious appeal to Spain's monarchs
  • for Spanish monarchs, as indeed for most other rulers, political and religious unity went in tandem
  • In 1565 though Philip had Valdes replaced by the loyal Espinosa, and from then on it again became a department of state
  • Spain contributed hugely to areas of learning such as navigation, natural history and medicine, with 1,226 editions of Spanish works being published abroad by 1800
  • It reflected the social, political and religious agendas of Spain's rulers and many of her people
  • In a very real sense, the Spanish Inquisition could not have existed anywhere other than in Spain
15More

Madrid: City of The Enlightenment | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...madrid-city-enlightenment Enlightenment Spain Architecture Culture
shared by manhefnawi on 21 May 18 - No Cached
  • In 1785 Tomas Lopez, Royal Geographer to King Charles III and Spain's foremost cartographer, published his Piano Geometrico de Madrid
  • That Lopez should include on his map uncompleted structures is not surprising. Since the accession of Charles III (1759-88) to the throne of Spain and its extensive and increasingly prosperous overseas empire, much of Madrid had been turned into a dusty construction site.
  • The Enlightenment was as varied and multifaceted in Spain as in most other European societies, the ideas and programmes of enlightened reformers moulded by differing social and cultural conditions
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Despite its demographic growth, it remained throughout the old regime period a court city, dominated by the king's household and government and their interests, as well as by the courtiers and other nobles and commoners attracted by the prospect of jobs, pensions, good marriages and high status
  • The threat this implied to order inspired some of the most significant of the reforms undertaken under Charles III
  • Not surprisingly, when Charles III -who had lived in Italy since 1731 as Duke of Parma and, from 1734 to 1759, as the first Bourbon king of Naples - arrived in his capital for the first time since he left it as a young boy, he was depressed by almost all that he saw. His determination to impose change provided a major impetus for the coming reforms
  • To Charles III and his ministers they seemed unworthy of the greatness of the Spanish imperial monarchy. Equally significant, they seemed to reinforce too strongly the presence of the church in an era in which enlightened thought set out to undermine baroque religiosity and clerical influence in secular life
  • Madrid had only been Spain's capital since 1561, when Philip II made what had been a town of purely secondary importance the political centre of his empire
  • But the characteristics which most typified Enlightenment reform in Spain were - apart from the heavy the arts as means of improvement -the impetus it received from Charles III and most of his ministers and the significant role played by some noblemen
  • Only during the reaction of the 1790s against the excesses of the French Revolution did most progressive thinkers find themselves effectively hedged in by the ministers and inquisitors of the new king, Charles IV (1788-1808). Under Charles HI, however, the king and his family, his ministers, sundry aristocrats in Madrid and elsewhere, many clerics and royal officials and some men and women of the professional and commercial middle classes harboured reformist ideas and patronised broadly enlightened artists and writers
  • This culture of the wealthy, enlightened elite, so heavily gallicised and secular-minded, was increasingly alienated from the ordinary people of Madrid, as well as the more traditionalist middle and upper ranks who chose to play no role in enlightened society
  • High food prices and the shortage of necessities could easily spark riots, as they did in the spring of 1766. The so-called Esquilache uprising, named after the Sicilian-born minister who was a principal target of the crowd's anger, spread from Madrid to many cities across Spain
  • The Manzanares was canalised and the Municipal Charity Committee, devised by Armona, was so successful that Charles III ordered similar bodies to be set up elsewhere. Free primary schools, essentially vocational, were established in each neighbourhood
  • Charles III, who had added numerous important buildings to Naples and nearby towns during his years as king there, sought from his first months in Spain to enhance his new capital
  • Travellers describing the capital in the 1770s and 1780s were impressed by its well lit, clean and impeccably paved streets; by the Paseo del Prado, which became one of Europe's finest thoroughfares; and by most of the structures Charles III had had built
10More

Charles III | king of Spain | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...Charles-III-king-of-Spain Domestic Reforms Foreign Policies of King Carlos III Spain
shared by manhefnawi on 16 May 18 - No Cached
  • Charles was the first child of Philip V’s marriage with Isabella of Parma. Charles ruled as duke of Parma, by right of his mother, from 1732 to 1734 and then became king of Naples
  • he became king of Spain and resigned the crown of Naples to his third son, Ferdinand I
  • Charles III was convinced of his mission to reform Spain and make it once more a first-rate power
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • His religious devotion was accompanied by a blameless personal life and a chaste loyalty to the memory of his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony, who died in 1760. On the other hand, he was so highly conscious of royal authority that he sometimes appeared more like a tyrant than an absolute monarch
  • Charles III improved the agencies of government through which the will of the crown could be imposed. He completed the process whereby individual ministers replaced the royal councils in the direction of affairs
  • Fearing that a British victory over France in the Seven Years’ War would upset the balance of colonial power, he signed the Family Compact with France—both countries were ruled by branches of the Bourbon family—in August 1761
  • But Charles’s opposition to papal jurisdiction in Spain also led him to curb the arbitrary powers of the Inquisition, while his desire for reform within the church caused him to appoint inquisitors general who preferred persuasion to force in ensuring religious conformity
  • He particularly resented the Jesuits, whose international organization and attachment to the papacy he regarded as an affront to his absolutism
  • By the end of his reign, Spain had abandoned its old commercial restrictions and, while still excluding foreigners, had opened up the entire empire to a commerce in which all its subjects and all its main ports could partake
  • Within these limits he led his country in a cultural and economic revival, and, when he died, he left Spain more prosperous than he had found it
9More

House of Savoy | European dynasty | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...House-of-Savoy Italy Victor Emmanuel Sardinia Piedmont
shared by manhefnawi on 16 May 18 - No Cached
  • the ruling house of Italy from 1861 to 1946
  • acquired considerable territory in the western Alps where France, Italy, and Switzerland now converge
  • raised to ducal status within the Holy Roman Empire, and in the 18th century it attained the royal title (first of the kingdom of Sicily, then of Sardinia). Having contributed to the movement for Italian unification, the family became the ruling house of Italy in the mid-19th century and remained so until overthrown with the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Victor Amadeus II (reigned 1675–1730) was raised in 1713 from duke to the status of a king as ruler of Sicily
  • During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), only Sardinia remained free of French control, but in 1815, Victor Emmanuel I (reigned 1802–21) added Genoa to the family’s holdings
  • At the beginning of the Risorgimento, the territory of the house of Savoy, centred on Piedmont, was unique among Italian states for its freedom from foreign influence and for its relative military strength. A liberal revolution in 1821 forced Victor Emmanuel I to abdicate in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. On the death of the latter in 1831, Charles Albert, of the Carignano branch of the family, obtained the throne. He contributed to the cause of unification under Piedmont’s leadership by modernizing his government
  • and fighting against Austrian power in Italy in the First War of Independence of 1848–49. Under his son Victor Emmanuel II (reigned 1849–1878, king of Italy from 1861), who supported Piedmont’s prime minister, Count Cavour, in the diplomatic maneuvering immediately before unification, the Kingdom of Italy was formed with the house of Savoy at its head
  • Victor Emmanuel III (reigned 1900–46), who remained as figurehead king during the Fascist regime, abdicated in 1946, at the end of World War II, in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to save the monarchy, but the Italian people voted in a referendum of June 2, 1946, for a republic, ending the rule of the house of Savoy
  • No longer royal, the Savoy family moved abroad, and the monarchist movement, strong in the 1950s, went into decline
16More

Anne de Montmorency: Great Master, Great Survivor | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...cy-great-master-great-survivor Montmorency Crown Loyalty Francis I Henry II
shared by manhefnawi on 17 May 18 - No Cached
  • On Louis’ death in January 1515 Francis duly became king of France at the age of twenty
  • In September 1515 Francis I once more asserted the French claim to Milan
  • In the spring of 1537, once more under Montmorency, the French attacked Artois in the Netherlands and a number of towns were captured before a truce was agreed with Charles’s regent, Mary of Hungary
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Savoy was allied to the Emperor and Francis’s real intention was to pressure Charles V (d.1558) into returning Milan to him.
  • Montmorency worked closely with Cardinal Wolsey in establishing a ‘perpetual alliance’ between Francis and Henry VIII in 1527.
  • Henry II was dead and the authority of the monarchy was threatened by dissension and religious conflict between the great noble families of France.
  • He returned to England as a special envoy later that year as relations between Francis I and Charles V began to deteriorate
  • He acted as an intermediary between the King in captivity, Louise of Savoy who was regent in France
  • On February 10th, 1538, he was made Constable of France, the highest military officer in the realm under the King
  • Montmorency exercised a strong but never uncontested influence upon the King
  • Yet like his English contemporary Wolsey, with whom he stands comparison on a number of grounds, Montmorency’s power depended entirely on his sovereign’s continuing trust and approval. Charles V’s decision over Milan in 1540 fatally undermined Francis’s confidence in Montmorency and therefore his power in the King’s regime
  • Francis embarked on his final war against the Emperor, who quickly allied himself to Henry VIII. The English took Boulogne and the allies threatened Paris before Francis and Charles agreed to the Peace of Crépy in September 1544. Francis I died on March 31st, 1547. On his deathbed he was reconciled to Henry
  • They pressed continually for war against the Habsburgs and in 1552 the Duke of Guise defended Metz from Charles V with great valour
  • On April 24th, 1558, Mary Queen of Scots, the niece of the Duke of Guise, who had been at the French court for almost ten years, was finally married to Henry II’s eldest son Francis. Just over a year later Henry died of injuries received in a tournament to celebrate the Franco-Habsburg peace of Cateau-Cambrésis and the fifteen-year-old Francis became king (r.1559-60). Montmorency lost influence, symbolised in the fact that the office of Great Master was taken from him and conferred upon the Duke of Guise
  • Francis II died in December 1560 and was succeeded by his brother Charles IX (r.1560-74), a minor, who was strongly influenced by his mother Catherine de’ Medici. This fact led members of the Bourbon family, headed by Anthony, King of Navarre and his brother Louis of Condé (1530-69), to assert their right and duty as princes of royal blood to guide the young king
  • These qualities were useful in serving Francis I and Henry II, both of whom sought to extend and consolidate royal authority within the kingdom of France
28More

Good Friends and Brothers? Francis I and Henry VIII | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...thers-francis-i-and-henry-viii Tudor France England Henry VIII Francis I Political
shared by manhefnawi on 20 May 18 - No Cached
  • One was of Henry VIII of England and the other was of Francis I of France. Their symbolic presence at the beginning of an ambitious project designed to link England and France was especially appropriate. Henry VIII is often called a 'Renaissance prince' and is popularly remembered for his ebullience and the extraordinariness of his reign
  • influenced by his relationship with that other 'Renaissance prince', Francis I
  • France and England been so drawn together by some higher ideal or imperative
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The Angouleme family was a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Francis' father, Charles, died on January 1st, 1496, and in 1498, the boy became heir presumptive to the reigning monarch, Louis XII
  • Louis XII died leaving no surviving son and Francis succeeded him as king on January 1st, 1515. Francis's accession was greeted favourably by the French nobility
  • His mother, Louise of Savoy
  • He was determined to avenge the defeats which Louis XII had suffered there and to capture the duchy of Milan which he regarded as his inheritance
  • On September l4th, 1515, at the Battle of Marignano, Francis defeated a large Swiss army allied to the duke of Milan and so regained the duchy. He secured his prize by a concordat with Leo X and, later, by treaties with the Swiss, with Charles of Spain and with the Holy Roman Emperor, Maxmillian
  • In 1533, Francis concluded a marriage alliance with Clement VII which he hoped would detach the pope from his allegiance to Charles V and thus help both him and Henry VIII
  • The young Tudor's great role-model was Henry V and he regarded northern France as his inheritance, rather in the way Francis saw Milan
  • In 1513, Henry had invaded France in alliance with the pope, the emperor and the king of Spain
  • Nevertheless, these victories and the subsequent peace treaty with Louis XII, allowed Henry to feel that controlling France was a great way of demonstrating his own impressive royal power
  • In England, Francis found an ally in the person of Anne Boleyn who virtually replaced Wolsey as the lynch-pin in Anglo-French contacts
  • Like Wolsey before her, Anne encouraged continued exchanges between the two monarchs and she also patronised English scholars in France
  • Henry then allowed himself to believe, incorrectly, that Francis approved of these claims
  • Henry VIII's accession in 1509 had generated the same kind of excitement as witnessed in France in 1515. The two kings did indeed have many personal similarities and rivalry between them was almost inevitable
  • Against this background and despite the difficulties, Anglo-French contacts were maintained and Francis constantly sought Henry's financial and military support against Charles V
  • Francis spent increasing amounts of time in Paris and at Fontainebleau where his steadily expanding artistic collections and library were shown to all important visitors
  • During the 1540s, Henry VIII also insisted, more than ever, that his was an imperial kingship
  • Much of this augmentation work was undertaken by the same John Leland who had witnessed Bude's work for Francis in the 1520s
  • Francis discussed Henry's building ideas with his ambassador, Sir John Wallop, to whom he also gave a guided tour of his private gallery and baths at Fontainebleau.
  • Henry's personal Psalter, in which he is depicted as King David, his second great role-model after Henry V, was produced by Jean Mallard who had been Francis I's court poet in the 1550s
  • In July 1544 thirty-one years after his first invasion, Henry once again crossed the Channel to set about the conquest of France. He managed to capture Boulogne
  • Francis I died on March 51st, 1547, barely two months after Henry VIII's death in January
  • that of the king as the warrior-leader whose greatness lay in military success and the distribution of largesse to his elite companions
  • Henry VIII's concept of his kingship was centred on the same ideal and his efforts to make his monarchy conform to it, partly through competition with France, pre-dated the start of Francis I's reign
  • This sophistication was particularly evident in Francis's artistic and intellectual patronage and it is here that his 'Renaissance' influence on Henry VIII is most apparent
  • On May 6th, 1994, after opening the Channel Tunnel jointly with President Mitterand, the Queen observed that Britain and France, 'for all their ages-long rivalry, complement each other well, perhaps better than we realise'
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 199 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page