Hugh Noel Williams: 5 books

IN her unpublished Mémoires, which she began, but never completed, and only a few pages of which—possibly all that she wrote—have been preserved, Sophie Arnould tells us that she was born in 1745, “in the same alcove in which Admiral Coligny had been assassinated two hundred years before.”...

FEW women in French history have been the subject of more discussion than the young girl whom Molière married, at the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, on February 20, 1662. Armande Grésinde Claire Elisabeth Béjart, for that was the bride's name, is described in the marriage deed as the daughter...

François de Bassompierre was born at the Château of Harouel, in Lorraine, on Palm Sunday, April 12, 1579, “at four o’clock in the morning.” His family, which was one of the most ancient and illustrious of Lorraine, appears to have owed its name to the village of Betstein, or Bassompierre, near...

It will therefore, I think be admitted that the present volumes, in which I have endeavoured to give a full and unprejudiced history of the Women Bonapartes, call for no apology; and I may even venture to believe that, whatever their shortcomings, they will be welcomed by the English and American public as an attempt to fill a place in our Napoleonic literature which has been long vacant.

It will therefore, I think be admitted that the present volumes, in which I have endeavoured to give a full and unprejudiced history of the Women Bonapartes, call for no apology; and I may even venture to believe that, whatever their shortcomings, they will be welcomed by the English and American public as an attempt to fill a place in our Napoleonic literature which has been long vacant.