Everyone had a lockdown project. Some of us learned languages, or took up embroidery. Adam Zamoyski set himself the task of researching the life of his great-great-great-grandmother, the Polish princess Izabela Czartoryska.
Born in 1746, Czartoryska was certainly a remarkable woman, not least because her exceptional longevity – she lived to the age of 89 – meant that she witnessed a period of huge upheaval. For one thing, one can see through the prism of her life the unravelling and destruction of the Polish Kingdom, which was first undermined and partitioned by its avaricious neighbours in the last quarter of the 18th century then devoured after the Napoleonic Wars. Remarkably, Czartoryska was a subject, in turn, not only of the Kingdom of Poland but also of the Holy Roman Empire, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Russian empire and the Austrian empire.
More than that, she lived through a period of enormous social and political change, encompassing not only the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars but also the wider ideas of the Enlightenment, despotism and the rise of nationalism. And they were changes that she felt very personally – not least as an aristocrat, but also as one who had met many of the leading figures of the age from Benjamin Franklin to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as Marie Antoinette, Frederick the Great and Tsar Alexander I. One of her lovers, the Duc de Lauzun, even ended his days under a revolutionary guillotine in 1793.
Bu hikaye BBC History UK dergisinin September 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye BBC History UK dergisinin September 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.
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Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.
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