• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: C.S. Forester

Allons, enfants!

14 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Military History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Across the Doubtful Sea, Alexandre Dumas, Bastille, Bastille Day, Bastille Day parade, Beau Geste, Bernard Cornwell, Brigadier Gerard, C.S. Forester, CD, Charles X, Conan Doyle, Cyrano de Bergerac, de Bougainville, Edmond Rostand, Eugene Leliepvre, French Foreign Legion, French Royal Navy, Hornblower, King's French Guard, Louis Philippe, Marquis de Montcalm, Napoleon, Place de la Bastille, Place Henri Galli, Sharpe, South Pacific, The Three Musketeers

Dear readers, chers lecteurs,

Welcome/bienvenue as always/comme toujours. This is a special extra posting for our faithful French readers, but really for all of our readers who love adventure and history—and that, as far as we can tell, is everyone who regularly reads us.

When we were thinking about this special Bastille Day extra, we wondered what we should write about.

We could, of course, write about the original Bastille day, 14 July, 1789, when a crowd of brave and angry Parisians, aided by some members of the King’s French Guard, attacked the 14th-century fortress-turned-state-prison, and forced its surrender.

Bastille_1715

l'attaquesurlabastille(We can’t resist a visual footnote– you’ll notice the people to the right in dark blue with the fuzzy hats. These are members of a grenadier company of the French Guard. Here’s a larger and more modern illustration of these Guards by one of our favorite French military artists, Eugene Leliepvre.)

leliepvregardefrancaise

Not satisfied with capturing the place, the revolutionaries soon tore it down, and it’s now the Place de la Bastille, with a column, erected in 1840, commemorating the revolution of 1830, in which the last member of the Bourbon monarchy, Charles X, was overthrown and was replaced by his cousin, Louis Philippe.

demolitiondelabastille

Place_de_la_Bastille,_1878

In 1899, a small section of one of the Bastille’s towers was discovered during metro excavations and is now on display in the Place Henri Galli, not far from its original site.

la-bastille1Paris4_SquareHenriGalli_VestigesBastille_Nov09

The Revolution which followed the fall of the Bastille brought on the era of Napoleon and, for those of us interested in adventure and who read English, at sea, C.S. Forester’s “Hornblower” series, among others, and, on land, Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” series and, long before that, the “Brigadier Gerard” stories of Conan Doyle. Hornblower and others have appeared in some of our earlier postings, when we discussed sources for our first novel, Across the Doubtful Sea, set in an imaginary South Pacific in the 18th century,

Across Cover

but we’ve never looked at Gerard or Sharpe. And we would be glad if our French readers would offer comparable books in French for this period (one of us grew up in a Francophile household and reads French). One reason why heroes in our first novel are members of the French Royal Navy is that the period from 1750 to 1800 is filled with adventure, both in exploration and in war, and that navy is constantly involved, something of which English readers have no knowledge.

img_9168

(Another color plate by Leliepvre.)

One has only to remember de Bougainville (1729-1811),

Louis_Antoine_de_Bougainville_-_Portrait_par_Jean-Pierre_Franquel

who began his career as an aide to the Marquis de Montcalm, the daring and resourceful commander of French regular forces in New France, 1756-1759.

The_Victory_of_Montcalms_Troops_at_Carillon_by_Henry_Alexander_Ogden

In the 1780s, however, he had become a naval commander, leading an exploratory expedition to the South Pacific.

51_Pacific_02-419x600

Throughout the later 17th and 18th centuries, the French Navy formed a large part of the French struggle for commercial supremacy across the world.

Quibcardinaux2

Or then again, as we’ve done once before, we could go back to the 17th century and write about Alexandre Dumas and his famous musketeers, who first appeared in The Three Musketeers (1844).

alexandre-dumas-3TheThreeMusketeers099

Or there is the wonderful play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) by Edmond Rostand, set about 1640. We could easily write a posting about the amazing scene in the first act alone, where, at the Hotel de Bourgogne, Cyrano fights a duel and composes a ballade at the same time.

Edmond_Rostand_en_habit_vert_01

cyrano_acte1

What else? Hmm. How about the French Foreign Legion of one of our favorite old adventure movies, Beau Geste (1939)?

beaugeste1939

And then a final then again, perhaps it’s best just to wish everyone a happy Bastille Day and end with some dramatic views from a previous parade…

defile114 Juillet 2013defile3

Merci, nos lecteurs/thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • Ollamh

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Games
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Star Wars
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • (Failed) Rewards and (No More) Fairies June 22, 2022
  • Stretching Back (II) June 15, 2022
  • Stretching Back (I) June 8, 2022
  • Loathing, If No Fear June 1, 2022
  • Black and Ominous? May 25, 2022
  • (Un)happily Ever After ? May 18, 2022
  • Riddles in the (Not So) Dark May 11, 2022
  • Feeling Blue (II) May 5, 2022
  • Feeling  Blue (I) April 27, 2022

Blog Statistics

  • 61,622 Views

Posting Archive

  • June 2022 (4)
  • May 2022 (4)
  • April 2022 (4)
  • March 2022 (5)
  • February 2022 (4)
  • January 2022 (4)
  • December 2021 (5)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (4)
  • July 2021 (4)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (5)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (6)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (4)
  • August 2019 (4)
  • July 2019 (5)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (4)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (4)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • doubtfulsea
    • Join 65 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • doubtfulsea
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...