History in this part of France Part 10

At the edge of my village, I have frequently driven past a small stone monument. On it is a plaque dedicated to some French Resistance workers who were shot dead by the Germans during World War II in August 1943.

It is situated by the side of marshy fields, in a windswept and lonesome place… A few of those who were alive at the time are still here in the village, and remember it well.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/history-in-this-part-of-france-part-10/

History in this part of France, Part 11

The little fortified town of nearby Brouage has a claim to fame from several angles.  One of its famous historical figures is Samuel de Champlain (1574 – 1635), the founder of Quebec and “Father of New France”. He was a navigator, a cartographer (he drew out the first accurate map of Canada), a politician, a mathematician and an explorer.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/history-in-this-part-of-france-part-11/

Extract from my novel, 'A Call from France

Extract from "A Call from France" by Catherine Broughton

The local Rotary club held their annual écclade there, which was how we met Sergio and Saskia. The campsite was still very much in its nursery stages, but it was nonetheless a good choice of venue for all the local people were interested – including us – in finding out what was happening and, in turn, it created publicity for the campsite, not to mention general bonhomie for the village.

An écclade is a traditional cooking of muscles in the Charente Maritime. The entire coastline is renowned for its seafood – as indeed is any coastline, I guess – muscles and oysters being the staple diet of the local people. An entire culture has evolved around muscles and oysters, accompanied by a whole world of “knowledge” about the type of oyster or muscle, and an entire vocabulary to go with it. For this particular speciality, the muscles are arranged, tier by tier, in a circle on a fireproof – usually a large cast iron platter - dish or even just on the sand. They are carefully balanced, facing inwards (this is important) so that they eventually make a kind of rounded pyramid. All guests must stand in a circle and admire. Pine needles are then placed over them, about two inches thick, and everybody must again admire. Words like “ooh la-la” are uttered. At a given signal (a mystery to this day) the pine needles are set alight. They are allowed to burn (along with furtherooh la-la) for about three minutes and then are brushed away, hopefully onto sand or similar where they will die out. All guests then help themselves to the pine-scented cooked muscles.

This is altogether more complicated than it seems. The muscles are not only too hot to touch but also black with pine ashes, and the ones that were not facing inwards – or which fell to one side during the various ooh la-la-ings – are also filled with black pine ash. After we’d attended two or three of these functions we discovered that vast quantities of kitchen roll are essential for wiping blackened fingers, and vast quantities of chilled white wine for washing down the ash. Even so, we didn’t bother with them again

Marie de Mancini- Hisotry in France Part 7

History in this part of France. Marie de Mancini.

The ancient fortified town of Brouage is a few minutes’ drive from here, and well worth a visit.  It is a famous and interesting town in its own right, loaded with fascinating epochs of history and fine old architecture.  One of its many famous (or infamous!) residents was Marie de Mancini, one-time lover of the French king Louis XIV, nicknamed The Sun King.

Marie de Mancini was Italian, born in Rome in 1639 and died in Pisa 1715.  She was brought to France as a young girl, and was introduced to the French Court by her influential uncle, a French-Italian cardinal close to the King Louis.

Marie and Louis fell in love and, to all intents and purposes, Marie was the first of many of Louis’ passionate love affairs. It seems Marie was also the only one Louis ever truly loved – though this may be the result of French romanticism.  Certainly, the King, barely a year older than Marie, was just at that tender age when love seems to be forever.

We do know that they hoped to marry because these plans were fiercely opposed by the King’s mother, who was the Queen of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, as well as the French Court in general.

Louis was instructed to ban Marie from Court, and for a while she lived in La Rochelle, and then moved to Brouage, which was the last place the unhappy lovers ever met.  Convinced that Louis would one day return for her, Marie waited several years in Brouage before finally marrying an Italian prince.  She had three children by him but abandoned both him and the children (ostensibly because he was violent) and return to Italy, where she died.

Marie de Mancini is the subject of Racine’s tragedy “Berenice”, whence came the famous words:

“Vous etes Empereur, Seigneur, mais vous pleurez”.  (You are emperor, sire, yet you cry).

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most major book shops and libraries.  More of her work, to include entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

The Cuckoo

Ah, the first signs of The End of the Winter – today we heard the cuckoo !

A few cuckoo facts:

- there are many types of cuckoo

- most are beige/brown or blue-grey in colour

- they spend most of the year in Africa and from there travel all over Europe, Asia and Australasia

- the female lays 12-22 eggs, all in different nests, usually nests belonging to the pipit or the reed bunting

- although the cuckoo’s eggs look the same as hers, the mother reed bunting or pipit will chuck out about 20% of the cuckoo’s eggs

- the female cuckoo chooses a nest belonging to the same species of bird that she hatched in

- they get their name from their distinctive call (ie their name is onomatopoeic), though in fact not all cuckoos make the well-known distinctive sound, and also it is anyway only the males

- in the UK the tradition used to be that you phone The Times to tell them when you hear the first cuckoo!

- cuckoo spit has nothing to do with cuckoos – it is from insects

- cuckoo’s favourite food is hairy caterpillars

- there is no record of a cuckoo ever being seen in Iceland or being heard in Africa

Click here for hummingbirds

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available on Amazon or Kindle, or can be ordered from most leading book stores or libraries.  Her titles, and more about her and her work, are on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Holiday Rentals - The Chateau and Cottages of Rochebonne

www.holidaychateaufrance.com 

Situated near La Rochelle, magnificent beaches, ideal for families.

Places still available for this summer!!

History in France Part 5 - Joan of Arc

Goodness – how do I fit Joan of Arc in to one small blog ?  Well, I fitted Eleanor of Aquitaine in, which was sacrilege, so I suppose I can do the same for Joan.

Joan of Arc, or Jeanne d’Arc (sometimes Arques) would probably not interest me much, except that one of the many schools I went to was called Joan of Arc.  There was a dreadful school song : Joan of Arc !  For the love we bear thee!  which us girls, neat in our maroon gym slips and brettles, would shout out in to the great hall.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 at the time of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1437) between England and France, when England owned vast areas of France and demanded a dual monarchy with the throne of France *.  Her parents were land-owning farmers, a couple of notches up from peasants, but almost certainly totally illiterate and simple folk. She was born in the village of Doremy (re-named Doremy-la-Pucelle**) in what is now the Lorraine.  Her childhood home is a museum these days.  She was extremely religious, and one can safely suppose that she heard her father and his friends vehemently discussing the English occupation and control of such large areas of France, and the poor state of mental health of the French king, Charles VI.  Impressionable and heavily influenced by strong family feeling, undoubtedly fired-up with hormones and quite possibly a tomboy, Joan decided she heard voices telling her to help the French army oust the English and replace the mad king with the Dauphin (heir to the throne).

There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Joan was in fact schizophrenic (as she heard voices) or suffered from some other mental illness.  But I don’t think so.  There were already other women in the French army – and, oddly, one of the first things Joan did once she was in a position of power, was to ban women from the army – and anyway there is no evidence, either then or now, that she was anything other than bright, asute, controlled, sharp and sincere.  If you read through the transcript of her trial (sure!) you will see her replies are not those of an insane girl.

In a nutshell, French France was largely divided in to two factions: the Burgundians, who supported the English, and the Armagnacs who supported the French.  There was a great deal of in-fighting, intrigue, devious plots and anger, not to mention battle.  French France was in a terrible state as all the fighting for many years had taken place on French soil, the land was massively burnt-out by English troops and France had furthermore been ravaged by the Black Death.

At the age of 16, Joan asked an influential uncle to help her meet one Count Baudricourt, who in turn helped her (after much sarcasm and several refusals) meet the Dauphin.  It may be that the French authorities saw Joan, unusual as she was, as some kind of “sign” that they latched on to in desperation as their regime was close to total collapse.  Joan dressed up in armour and demanded to be placed at the head of the army, a request that was granted, one can only assume, in complete hopelessness when everything else had failed.

Joan was successful in that she had the Dauphin crowned the new king*** and she won an outstanding battle. But within three years she had been captured by the Burgundians and sold for a vast sum to the English. She was put on trial by the French pro-English Bishop Cauchon, and eventually burnt at the stake in the town of Rouen in northern France.  She was only 19 years old.

* the French king, Charles VI, was insane and the heir to the throne, Charles VII, was a child

** Joan was affectionately nicknamed la Pucelle, meaning “the little flea”.  Odd to an English ear, but ma puce in French it is common to this day

*** pictures portray him as an adult, but he was in fact barely 14 years old

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most big book stores and libraries.  More about her, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories are on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

 There are no surviving pictures of the real Joan, so all illustrations are artist impressions, even this medieval one – which seems to me to be the more realistic and less romanticised.