The Edict of Nantes
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The Edict of Nantes

ByVincento

In the sixteenth century, France witnessed decades of strife between the established Catholic Church and the new Huguenot believers, followers of John Calvin’s Protestant doctrine. These culminated in a series of massacres in many parts of the country. The most horrible became known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, at which thousands of…

Huguenot refugees by Albert Anker
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A Night in the Forest

ByVincento

This is a sample chapter from my work-in-progress: Gédéon. Madeleine d’Albert “Get out of sight, Madeleine!” Papa’s voice roused me from my slumber. A cry escaped my lips as my head jerked up and struck a brass knob on Maman’s escritoire. Papa was quick to push back into place the tiny drawer that had opened…

The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century by Pierre Goubert
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The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century by Pierre Goubert

ByVincento

This book contains a wealth of otherwise hard-to-find facts about the often poverty-stricken and mostly unnoticed country folk in the diverse provinces and regions we now know as France. Everything warrants a chapter: food, clothing and housing; birth, marriage and death; farming and poaching practices; relationships between peasants, seigneurs, unwelcome soldiers, haughty priests and the revenue-hungry…