Readings in
French History

First things first: before there was a France, there were Greeks and Romans, leaving a rich history to be tracked down by moneyed English travelers; among them, William Henry Hall, whose book The Romans on the Riviera and the Rhone documents his excursions in Provence with history, maps, photographs, and even some of a friend's watercolors.

[ 185 pages of print, 4 maps, 15 illustrations
presented in 21 webpages ]

John Wilson Croker's Royal Memoirs on the French Revolution is his translation of original French documents, the first-hand accounts of some of the parties involved: the Duchess of Angoulême's narrative of the journey to Varennes of Louis XVI and his Family (June 1791), her memoirs of her own imprisonment in the Temple thru the execution of the King in January 1793 to that of the Queen in October to the death of Louis XVII in June 1795; and the narrative of the future Louis XVIII's flight out of France in 1791.

[ 293 pages of print
presented in 10 webpages ]

Empress Josephine: the biography of Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie, first wife of Napoleon, by Ernest John Knapton (1963).

[ 372 pages of print
presented in 26 webpages ]

The Napoleonic saga told from a different angle: The Bonapartes in America details the American stories, schemes, marriages, properties and lives of Napoleon, his relatives, and their descendants: e.g., the Patterson Bonapartes, Joseph's life in New Jersey, plots to rescue the Emperor from St. Helena, Napoleonic adventures in Mexico, the life of Marshal Ney in North Carolina for thirty years after he was executed. . . . It's amazing how many members of the family found their way to the United States, some even becoming good Americans.

[ 277 pages of print
— 18 webpages; 9 photos, 11 engravings ]

"French Military Adventurers in Alabama 1818‑1828" tells the curious story of a group of Napoleonic generals and army officers who founded the Vine and Olive Colony at Aigleville in Marengo County, Alabama.

[ 36 pages of print
— 1 webpage, 3 engravings ]

France at War collects several books and other texts bearing on the First and Second World Wars as lived in France and French North Africa.

•  [ 1718 pages of print
— 62 webpages, 19 illustrations, 3 maps ]

One of the largest sections of my site deals with the history of the American territory and State of Louisiana. Not all of that history is French by any means; but Louisiana began as French exploration and a French colony, and about half of Charles Gayarré's massive History of Louisiana can be considered French history, as well as a similar portion of Grace King's New Orleans: The Place and the People; and although Kendall's History of New Orleans focuses on the American city, he cannot avoid treating the French town in his first chapter, The French Domination.

[ over 1000 pages of print and a number of illustrations
presented in 28 webpages ]

English-speakers all know the vigorous race of Normans, now long settled north and west of Paris and firmly French, as the conquerors of England; but the Normans also conquered Sicily and southern Italy, ruling those parts for nearly three hundred years. Their story, from the 11c to Charles d'Anjou and the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, is told onsite in Vol. II, Chapter 3 of F. Marion Crawford's book The Rulers of the South.

[ 210 pages of print
presented in 3 webpages ]

Henry Jones Ford's Washington and His Colleagues treats of the many difficulties the first president of the United States had to face in setting up his government. Chapter 6, titled "French Designs on America", details French government plans to reëstablish a French colonial empire in North America on the wreckage of the United States.

[ 32 pages of print — 1 webpage ]

Commodore Thomas Truxtun, one of the founding fathers of the United States Navy, is best known for two great victories over the French — one clear-cut, the other less so — in the Quasi‑War of 1798‑1800. In the standard biography of him, Truxtun of the Constellation, Chapter 33 gives an account of the seafight against L'Insurgente; Chapter 36 of the fight against La Vengeance.

[ 21 pages of print — 2 webpages ]

Among the journal articles collected in my American History Notes section, several are of interest here, listed as chronologically as possible:

The Apostle of the Abnakis: Father Sebastian Rale, S. J. (1657‑1724)

The Attack on Norridgewock, 1724

Captivity of a Party of Frenchmen among Indians in the Iowa Country, 1728‑1729

Excerpts from Bossu's Travels in North America

General Collot's Reconnoitering Trip Down the Mississippi

Lafitte, the Louisiana Pirate and Patriot

The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley in the Period of Washington and Adams

La guerre franco-américaine (1798‑1801)

The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas

Icaria and the Icarians

The French in Mexico and the Monroe Doctrine

My Year in Europe as a Prisoner of War (in which an American pilot of World War II tells how he was smuggled thru Belgium and France by men and women of the Resistance at the peril of their lives)

[ 245 pages of print presented in 12 webpages ]

And then there's the Souvenirs of the Marquise de Créquy: if you know what to make of them, you're doing better than most. They are, however, French history — of sorts; maybe the small excerpts onsite, in my translation, will encourage you to read the (linked) original.

[ 6 pages of print presented in 5 webpages ]