My last folksy yarn about the mad as hell Italians who wanted to scatter bits of Mr and Mrs Napoleon III across Paris that winter evening in 1858 left us in a bad place. We learnt that two of the three condemned men sentenced to die were executed by guillotine, shoeless and in long nightshirts… Continue reading “On dit que l’un fut sauvé”
Tag: Napoleon III
Bang bang, that awful sound
In the early 1850s, in what is now Italy, the soon-to-be-country’s revolutionary nationalists hated in equal measure the Austrians for occupying much of the north and the Pope who was sustained by the Austrians, for retaining his distinctly worldly hold on the bit in the middle he claimed as The Papal States. Garibaldi, Mazzini and… Continue reading Bang bang, that awful sound