piracy
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My latest target for research is the English garrison/bastion of Brest, on the coast of Brittany, specifically the final years of the 14th century before it was handed back to the Bretons. My interest had been aroused when reading Ducal Brittany 1364-1399, by Michael Jones. In it I learned of the practice of…
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Here at this link is the ultimate tease for this already whining, snivelling book-seeker who has been buying books all over recently and whose purse is becoming sadly threadbare. And whose house is running out of space for accommodating my endless lust for more books! This particular volume is expensive (natch, all the books I…
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It has been brought to our attention that a website, probably based in Eastern Europe, has uploaded several hundred recently published history books and made them available without charge or password, ostensibly as an educational project. Whilst we won’t mention the site in question, to avoid encouraging them, here is a reminder of the typical…
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THE THREE HUNDRED YEARS WAR – PART 2: the just cause
Angevin Empire, Aquitaine, Capetians, Charles IV, Chris Given-Wilson, Cinque Ports, Crecy, david II, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Edward the Black Prince, Henry III, Henry of Lancaster, Ian Mortimer, Isabelle de France, John II, John the Posthumous, Jonathan Sumption, Kathryn Warner, Legitimacy, Louis IX, Louis X, Ludwig IV, Phillip III, Phillip IV, Phillip V, piracy, Poitiers, Roger Mortimer, Saint-Sardos, Scotland, Treaty of Bretigny, Treaty of Paris, Valois, WalesPreface This is the second of three articles charting the course of continual Anglo-French conflict from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. In the first article, I wrote about the rise and fall of the Angevin Empire, culminating in the Treaty of Paris (1259). This article picks up my narrative after the death of…
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Last night I watched (on PBS America) a BBC2 Timewatch episode entitled The Mysteries of the Medieval Ship. It concerned the discovery, in June 2002, of a foundered/scuttled medieval vessel of some size, buried in the oozing mud of the Severn Sea – well, the oozing mud of the River Usk, at Newport, to be…
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It would seem that pirate queens existed long before the 17th/18th century, the Spanish Main and swash-buckling as we know it. There was a certain French noblewoman in the 14th century who took her revenge upon the French for executing her husband, and did all she could with her pirate fleet to help the England…