2

CONTENTS
Introduction
Deadly Dark Ages
Murky Middle Ages
The Hundred Years War that wasn’t
Cruel crimes
Revolting France
Kurious kings
Quirky queens and wicked women
Savage seventeenth century
Awful for animals
Evil eighteenth century
Nasty nineteenth century
Epilogue
Footnotes
Copyright

3
Introduction
Some people in history have been revolting. They revolt against
anything. They revolt against their rulers, they revolt against paying
taxes, they revolt against paying too much for food.
You must know how those rebels feel – you probably revolt against
eating Brussels sprouts, or too much homework, or washing your
dad’s car for 20p.

There’s nothing wrong with a good revolt. Sometimes it’s the only
way to change things. If it hadn’t been for rebels you might not be
reading this book … you might be a slave in some rich person’s
house, working 23 hours a day and paid in mouse droppings. (Or, if
you’re really lucky, something a bit more filling … like rat
droppings.)
But some countries seem to have been better at revolutions than
others. Take France. They probably had the best revolution of all
time. In 1789 they had a revolution that got rid of kings and lords in a
big way. It was real…

How did the French get to be so good at revolting? Simple. They

got lots and lots of practice. Through the years they had peasant
revolts, religious revolts and student revolts – princes revolted

4
against their fathers and lords against their kings.
And the French didn’t mess about when they revolted. There was
no going up to a lord and saying…

No. The French tortured, burned, executed, cut, gouged, hacked

and sliced their way through dozens of revolutions. They all failed, of
course, until in 1789 the people finally got it right and got rid of their
king soon after.
Then they changed their minds and decided they liked kings after
all – for a while.
And when they weren’t rebelling they were eating weird food,
being killed or cured by dreadful doctors, fighting against the
English (their favourite foe), or fighting each other in deadly duels.
The French could be foul, but you could never accuse them of being
boring.
The history of the revolting French is pretty horrible, of course.
Horrible history, in fact. But no one has ever put all these horrible
French facts into one book. Until now, that is. Read on…

5
Deadly Dark Ages
In the Dark Ages ‘France’ was the land of the ‘Franks’. A tough
bunch of people who came from the north of Europe and booted
everybody else out – even the Romans. Here’s roughly how they did
it…

AD 200s The Franks are a group of people living by the Baltic Sea –
which is a bit chilly – in a place called Pomerania – which is a bit of a
silly name. They move south and settle on the River Rhine, outside
the Roman Empire.

287 This is the first we hear of a Frankish leader – Genobaud – when

the Romans beat him in battle. Those fearsome Franks will be
back…
300s The Franks cross the Rhine and spread into part of the Roman
Empire in an area called Gaul – now northern France and western
Germany. The western Franks will become ‘French’ and the Eastern
Franks ‘German’.

355 A Frank, Silvanus, becomes emperor of Rome … for 28 days.

6
Then he sets off for church and is hacked to pieces by his enemies.

388 The Franks, led by Marcomeres and Sunno, cross the frontier to
attack the Romans in Gaul. The Franks then pretend to run away –
the rotten Romans follow them … into a trap. The Romans are
massacred – but Sunno is killed. By his own men, the Franks. Franks
a lot, mates.

476 Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus is overthrown and the

Romans become too weak to rule Gaul. The Franks simply rule
themselves with their own kings. Of course just because these kings
are all Franks doesn’t mean they’ll live happily ever together. Oh, no.
They will squabble for hundreds of years to be top poodle.

507 Crafty but cruel Clovis rules in Gaul. He wipes out the Franks

7
back in Germany, then begins to wipe out his own family. He
complains he is lonely … and invites his surviving relatives to join
him. They say no. Wonder why?

511 Clovis dies and France is split between his four sons. They are
called the Merovingian kings.
732 Arabs raid southern France. Frank hero, Charles Martel, leads a
lot of peasants to a great victory. Charles’s family, the Carolingian
kings, replace the Merovingian kings.

799 Carolingian king Charlemagne rescues the Pope from his

enemies. His reward is to be made ‘Emperor’ of France, Germany
and Northern Italy. Some power. (In 1254 the Germans will call this
ruler ‘Holy Roman Emperor’.)
810 The fearless Franks come up against a new enemy – the Vikings.
But the Viking King Godfred is assassinated so France is spared …
for a while. Charlemagne dies in 814 and the Franks aren’t so strong
now – watch out!

8
885 A huge Viking army attacks Paris – defenders pour boiling oil,
wax and tar on the Viking noddles. Ouch. After a year’s siege the
French pay the Vikings to go away. So, of course, they’ll be back.

923 Robert the rebel has nicked the throne from King Charles of
France. This year Charles kills him and nicks it back. What a
Charley.

Cruel Clovis
Clovis was a cruel and crafty Frankish king. If someone upset him he
didn’t lose his cool. He waited and plotted … then struck viciously.
The story of Clovis and the stroppy soldier is a good example.

9
10
Chopper Charlemagne
French King Charlemagne was a great warrior and he made the

11
people he clobbered, like the Saxons, follow the Christian religion –
even if he had to kill them to do it! In 788 he had 4,500 Saxon
prisoners beheaded – in one day. The French choppers must have
been exhausted. (Charlemagne fought the Saxons for 33 years – and
started a French fashion for l-o-n-g wars.)
Charlemagne had so much power there were bound to be people
who wanted to take it from him. Champion Charlie wasn’t easy to
chop, though several tried. Charlemagne’s son, Pepin, a handsome
hunchback, plotted with Frankish lords to kill Charlemagne. Pepin’s
plot was discovered. He had his head shaved and was sent off to be a
monk. Some of Pepin’s mates were less lucky – they were banished
after having their eyes put out.

Plucking eyes was a popular pastime. Charlemagne’s big buddy

was Pope Leo III. Jealous enemies of the Pope attacked Leo III in the
street in 799. A gang of armed men tried to rip out the Pope’s eyes
and his tongue. But they didn’t kill him, and Leo’s eyes and tongue
recovered! (It is said he healed because he was a saint!)
Charlemagne sent an army to help Leo and the grateful Pope
crowned Charlemagne ‘Holy Roman Emperor’.
When Charlemagne was crowned Emperor he acted shocked. He
said…

12
 Hmmm! A likely story.

Did you know...?

Charlemagne had a great bridge built over the River Rhine at
Mayence. The bridge caught fire in 813 and burned to ashes. It was a
‘bad sign’ the people said. Another ‘bad sign’ was a black spot seen
on the sun. Later a ball of fire fell from the sky and spooked
Charlemagne’s horse so it threw him off. There were earthquakes,
lightning strikes, and thunderbolts that smashed houses and
churches. What did these ‘bad signs’ mean? Charlemagne was going
to die – and he did in 814!

13
Murky Middle Ages
The Middle Ages (from around 1000 to around 1500) were hugely
horrible. Cruelty and crime, plague and pain, battles and blood, wars
and witchcraft, terror and torture, robber bands 1 and riots.
Especially riots. This was the age when the peasants started to fight
back against the lords.
France was made up of large regions ruled by powerful dukes. The
dukes ruled with their knights in armour and only obeyed the King of
France when it suited them. Sometimes peasants revolted against
their dukes – and sometimes the dukes revolted against the king.
Sometimes religious rebels revolted against the Catholic Church. It
was just a revolting time to be alive.

1033 French people panic. It is 1,000 years since the death of Christ
and they think the world is going to end. Storms destroy the crops.
Many starve. It is the end of the world for them.

1106 Emperor Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, defeats his rebel
son … then dies. The son becomes Henry V. If Henry V had waited
for dad to die he could have saved all the fighting.
1208 Pope Innocent III calls for a new Crusade against the people of
south-west France – Languedoc. What had they done? Argued with
the Catholic Church’s beliefs – they are ‘heretics’.

14
1212 Stephen of Cloyes, a 12-year-old shepherd boy, leads the
Children’s Crusade to the Holy Land – helped by William the Pig
(honest!). Most of the young crusaders end up sold as slaves or dying
of disease.

1231 The Catholic Church’s ‘Inquisition’ is formed to seek out and

destroy heretics – they will go on to terrorize Europe for hundreds
of years to come with terrible tortures and brutal burnings.

1244 Massacre at Montségur. Non-Catholics killed. Meanwhile King

Louis IX is put in his coffin ready for burial. Suddenly he sits up and
recovers. He will reign another 26 years.
1309 King Philip IV has to hide in a Paris temple when a mob sets out
to kill him. Just one of many revolutions against French kings.

15
1328 Revolting peasants in northern France – peasant army
destroyed and their leader executed horribly.

1337 The Hundred Years War starts between France and England
when Edward III of England says, ‘I am King of France.’ and the
French say, ‘Oh no you’re not.’

1348 The ‘Black Death’ arrives in France, a dreadful plague that

gives you purple spots and turns you smelly and then probably kills
you.
1431 French heroine Joan of Arc is rewarded for leading France to
victories against the evil English – she is burned as a witch.

1440 Now Joan’s friend, French Lord Gilles de Rais, is executed for
killing kids.

1453 Lord Talbot’s English army defeated by French cannon at

Castillon. The Hundred Years War started with victories for English

16
archers. It ends with a French archer, Michael Perunin, giving
Talbot the chop with a battle-axe.

1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Catholic King Charles IX

lures his enemies to Paris. He invites them to his sister’s wedding –
then has them killed. Some say 27,000 died in the massacre.

Cruelty to Cathars
In Languedoc in south-west France the people began to object to the
way the Catholic Church was run. The Languedoc rebels were called
‘Cathars’.
Why? Many history books will tell you ‘Cathars’ means ‘pure
ones’. Horrible Histories can tell you it comes from German words
meaning ‘cat worshippers’. That’s because their Catholic enemies
said that a Cathar had to kiss the bum of a black cat.

So what did the Cathars call themselves? Was it…

17
a) Ex-Christians
b) Awkward Christians
c) Good Christians?

Answer: c) They followed the teachings of Jesus Christ, so they

were Christians. They just didn’t agree with the way the Christian
Church was run.

Deadly differences
The head of the Catholic Church, Pope Innocent III, was upset. The
Cathars did not agree with the Church on some important matters…

18
The Pope couldn’t have people going around saying things like that.
He’d be out of a job in no time. Anyone who didn’t follow the
Catholic Church was a ‘heretic’ and often the punishment for
heretics was to be burned alive.

Did you know…?

When the Pope moved in the 1300s from Rome to France, the Pope’s
new palace at Avignon had two whole floors of terrific toilets! They
had stone seats (a bit cold in winter) and emptied into pits below the
ground. A stream was diverted to wash the sewage away.
But the people in the town of Avignon, outside the palace,
suffered. They were crowded out with the Pope’s followers and
there weren’t enough toilets to go round. The smell in summer made
the townfolk ill.

Cathar cwiz
Cathars and cruelty seemed to go together. Can you work out which
of these cruel Cathar facts are true?

19
1 The Pope’s Crusaders are about to attack the town of Beziers in
1209. The soldiers ask monk Arnold Amaury, ‘How do we tell the
difference between good Catholics and wicked Cathars?’ What does
Amaury answer?
a) ‘Kill them all. God will tell the difference when they get to
heaven.’
b) ‘Capture them all and torture them to get the truth.’
c) ‘The Catholics will be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the
Cathars can’t.’

2 The Cathars could be a bit rough too. The Catholics said the
Cathars captured a Catholic priest and did what?
a) Made the priest kiss a black cat’s bum.
b) Made a black cat kiss the priest’s bum.
c) Chopped him into pieces.

3 The most ruthless soldiers were the foot soldiers who fought in the
Crusade for money – ‘routiers’. What were routiers said to do for
fun?
a) Roast live cats over a fire.
b) Roast live children over a fire.
c) Roast chestnuts over a fire.

4 Simon de Montfort was leader of the Crusade and his job was to
persuade the Cathars to become Catholics. How did he do this in the
Bram region of France?
a) He sent priests in to preach to them 48 hours non-stop.
b) He said, ‘Do you want to be a Catholic with a head or a Cathar
without a head?’

20
c) He pulled out the eyes of the Cathars and sliced off their noses
and lips.

5 Simon de Montfort moved on to Minerve in June 1210 and captured

lots of Cathars. When 140 Cathars refused to become Catholics, what
did Simon de M do to them?
a) Burned them on one big bonfire.
b) Smacked them on the wrist and told them the Pope would be angry
with them.
c) Told them, ‘I forgive you.’

6 The Lady of Lavaur sheltered 400 Cathars and refused to give them
up to de Montfort. When she was captured in May 1211 how did de
Montfort treat her?
a) Like a lady. But he forced her to go into a nunnery.
b) Like a dog. He had her thrown down a well and stones piled on top
of her.
c) Like a man. He had her nose and ears cut off.

7 By 1216 the Cathars were fighting back. When they captured

Catholic soldiers they sometimes cut off their feet and used them to
what?
a) Throw at the Catholic enemies.
b) Keep their slippers warm at the end of a hard day’s killing.

21
c) Kick around like a football game – except it was a foot-foot game of
course.

8 Simon de Montfort tried to attack Toulouse in 1217 but was killed

by a rock on the head. What were his last words after he was hit by
the rock?
a) ‘Toulouse. Toulouse, I thought I had nothing to lose.’
b) ‘Oi. Who threw that rock?’
c) ‘Splat.’

9 Simon’s great enemy, the Count of Toulouse, died of old age in

1222. What happened to his body?
a) It was buried at sea.
b) It was buried at the spot where Simon de Montfort was splattered.
c) It wasn’t buried and was eaten by rats.

10 The King of France took over the war against the Cathars – and
failed. Finally the Pope sent in men to seek out, torture and burn
Cathars. Who were these torturers?
a) Soldiers.
b) Monks.
c) School teachers.

Answers:
1a) This idea is still tried by some school football teams – ‘If it
moves – kick it.’ (Of course all readers of Horrible Histories play
that way.) The soldiers did what they were told and massacred
everyone, from babies and women to priests. Maybe the monk
didn’t say those exact words – but the soldiers did it anyway.
Twenty thousand died.
2c) The story may not be true, just a lie made up by the Catholics
to make the Cathars look evil. But people believed it. Some people

22
will believe anything.
3b) The routiers were more terrifying than the knights. They
were badly armed and many didn’t even have shoes. But they
were vicious and showed little mercy. They made good Crusaders
because they were afraid of nothing – just like Horrible Histories
readers.

4c) One man was left with one eye. The one-eyed man was given
the job of leading his blind mates to the next fortress as a
warning: ‘Mess with Simon and you’ll never see (or smell) your
feet again.’ Simon de M’s excuse for the cruelty was that the
Cathars had done the same to two Catholic knights. Other knights
had their skin ripped off while they were alive and ordinary
soldiers often had hands or feet chopped off if they were lucky –
if they were unlucky they were simply chopped into pieces.

`
5a) The Cathars were burned. Some witnesses said the Cathars
were so happy to die the Catholics didn’t have to throw them on
the bonfire – they threw themselves on.

Burning was going to be a popular way of killing off Cathars.

6b) The lady died horribly but not as horribly as some of her

23
knights. Eighty of them were lined up to be hanged all at once.
But the weight was too great and the hanging beam collapsed.
They had their throats cut instead. The captured Cathars were
burned.
7a) The prisoners were hanged or chopped up but using feet as
missiles was nasty.

Toe – tow … geddit? Oh, never mind.

8c) Simon de Montfort said nothing because his head was caved
in. They said that women and girls fired the stone that killed him.
A historian of the time said:

Now that’s what you call ‘out for the count’.

9c) The Count of Toulouse had fought against the Catholic
Church – so the Catholic Church said, ‘Right. We refuse to bury
you in a Catholic churchyard. Serves you right.’ So the body was
left in a coffin in a garden next to the churchyard where it rotted
and was nibbled by rats. The bones were scattered.

24
 All right … no more Toulouse – to lose – too loose jokes. Not
even the one about the family with an upstairs toilet and a
downstairs toilet who were known as the two loos family…
10b) The monks went in with the help of soldiers and tortured
people to confess – or betray friends who were Cathars. They
were known as the Inquisition. If you didn’t confess you were
tortured till you did confess – if you did confess you were
burned. The Cathars last stand was in 1244 at their fortress of
Montségur. They were finally captured and given a choice –
become a Catholic or burn: 220 men and women chose to burn.
They died together in one huge fire. The Catholic Church had
‘won’ the war – but lost a lot of friends and a lot of respect. If the
Cathars never recovered from the massacre at Montségur, then
neither did the Catholic Church.

Deadly doctors and disgusting diseases

French doctors, like most other doctors in the Middle Ages, used a
mixture of magic, killer cures and real cures. They never quite knew
which was which, of course. Here are a few of the most peculiar.
Match the illness to the cure – but it doesn’t matter if you get it
wrong, because it probably wouldn’t work anyway.

25
Answers:
1c) Ringworm is a sort of fungus that makes itchy red rings –
usually on your scalp. It has to be treated with fungus killers.
Boy’s pee might not kill the fungus – but it would give it a bit of a
nasty shock.
2a) Gout is caused by crystals in your blood that stop your blood
flowing freely. It is very painful at the point where the crystals
gather – often in the foot. Goat’s droppings (mixed with honey)
may give you a warm and soothing plaster. It will also make your
feet smell nearly as bad as they do now.
3h) Smallpox is a virus like flu. But it makes you hot and sick and
spotty. The spots leave scars that make your face look like the
surface of the moon. The cure was wearing red clothes, and
sitting in a room with daylight coming through red curtains. A
waste of red cloth for all the good it will do you.

26
4b) It might take some of the pain away but not the cause – rotten
teeth. But doctors weren’t too bothered about ‘curing’ the
patient. The doctor’s job was to make the patient feel a bit better.
The ‘cure’ was left to God. (Let’s hope God’s waiting room isn’t
as crowded as our waiting rooms or sick people will be there a l-o-
n-g time.)
5f) You need to be pretty rich for this, but that’s what the
wealthy Duke of Berry ate. It didn’t kill him – but it made his
peasants poor and angry. To know they were paying taxes just so
he could swallow their gold made them revolt.
6d) The doctor prescribed this for the vicious Charles of
Navarre. The idea was that he would sweat till the fever left him.
But he went too near fire. Ever seen a Christmas pudding soaked
in brandy? Hold a match to it and what happens? Pow. It burns.
Charles caught fire when a servant leaned too close with a candle
and, because he was sewn into the bandages, couldn’t escape.
Char-grilled Charlie died after two weeks of agony.
7e) Chopping off a cat’s tail is cruel to the cat. But drinking blood
from that tail is better than another cure for stomach ache – you
have to drink wine mixed with pussy-cat poo! Phew!
8g) Cats figured in a lot of cures because they were said to be
magical with powers of witchcraft. To cure a field full of weeds
just bury a cat alive in the field. Nasty. And to make yourself
invisible eat the raw brain of a cat while it is still warm.

27
Did you know…?
In 1635 the French banned sales of tobacco. Good idea? The trouble
was they said you could still get it from your doctor if he said you
needed it to cure you. (Cure you of what? Life?) Tobacco had been
brought to France by Mr Nicot in the 1500s.

Foul fleece
Louis XVI’s daughter-in-law gave birth to a child on a scorching hot
day and felt ill. The doctor came up with a curious cure for her.
What was it? Here’s a clue … she survived…
a) He had 50 frogs killed in her bedroom, made into a soup and fed to
her.

b) He had a sheep killed and skinned in her bedroom then had her
wrapped in the bleeding skin.

28
c) He had a peacock killed in her bedroom and used its tail feathers
as a huge fan to keep her cool.

Answers: b) The sheep skin cure made her better – well, you’d
pretend to be better if someone wrapped a smelly sheep fleece
round you, wouldn’t you? She wanted to nod off but the doctor
forced her to stay awake for hours. Finally he had her sealed up in
the room, in the heat, for nine days without even a candle for
light.And you thought your doctor was cruel?

Disgusting disease
In 1494 Charles VIII invaded Italy. He arrived at Naples with his
army and sent messengers to demand the city surrendered… The
messengers came back with their ears and noses cut off!
But that trip to Italy got rid of more noses than just those
messengers’. The French soldiers returned home with a disease. It
ate away at the roof of the mouth, then the lips, the nose and the
eyes.
Priests and doctors argued over the cause…

29
God or worms (or even germs), the result was often death.

Handy doctor

30
It could have been worse
The Duchess of Orleans lived at Versailles Palace in the days of
Louis XIV. She had been born in Germany and happily took the
awful French treatments because there were worse cures in
Germany at that time. She wrote letters home and said…

Human fat? From a dead human, I guess.

Did you know…?

Doctors believed in cutting a patient and letting out blood. Louis
XIII had blood let out 47 times in one month. It’s a wonder he had
any left.

31
Funny bones
When the doctors failed to save your life, and you died, your bones
didn’t get a lot of peace in Paris in the 1400s. Most corpses were
buried in the Cemetery of the Innocents.
This cheerful place had paintings on the walls – paintings of
Death.
Mr Death became fashionable in a street theatre performance
called the ‘Danse Macabre’ (the Gruesome Dance). In the play there
were 15 pairs of people from Pope and Emperor down to peasant and
child. They stepped forward and said something like…

Charming, eh? But back to the Cemetery of the Innocents.

Your corpse would be taken to the graveyard but, if you were
seriously rich, you could be buried in your own little bone-house at
the cemetery.

32
 The poor were put under the ground … but just for a while. The
cemetery was so crowded the old bones were dug up to make room
for fresh ones. Skulls and bones were left lying around to remind
people – like the Danse Macabre – ‘One day you’ll be like this.’
And the people of Paris rather liked this in the 1400s. Shops
sprang up in the cemetery, selling books and clothes, cakes and
ribbons. And people came to see the Danse Macabre performed or
listen to preachers.
If T-shirts had been invented in those days they’d have been sold
in the cemetery and probably said something like:

The cemetery closed in 1786 and it was reckoned there were two
million skeletons there. They were dumped in a quarry.

Quick quiz
How horrible are you? Try this foul French quiz and find out if you
could have been as nasty as the horrible historical people were. The
more you score the nastier your twisted mind is.

33
Score 10 and you can wear a badge that says:

Score 7, 8 or 9 and you can have this one:

Score 4, 5 or 6 and you can wear this:

Score 1, 2 or 3 and wear this badge:

Score 0 and wear this:

34
1 In 1303 the Pope in Italy was angry because the French King was
taxing priests in France. How would you sort out the 85-year-old
Pope?
a) Kidnap him.
b) Stick pins in the priests.
c) Pinch all the prayer books from the churches.

2 King Jean II (1319–64) had a painter Girard D’Orleans working for

him. As King Jean’s painter what job would you like to do?
a) Paint King Jean’s face.
b) Paint King Jean’s toilet paper.
c) Paint King Jean’s toilet seats.

3 In 1360 Captain Ringois led a sea raid on England and was captured.
All he had to do was say he’d obey the King of England and he’d go
free. He refused. What would you do rather than obey?
a) Jump off a cliff to your death.
b) Jump over your prison wall to freedom.
c) Jump on a jailer’s head to escape.

35
4 The brothers (and sisters) of the Free Spirit preached against the
Catholic Church and were burned. In 1372 a sister, Jeanne
Dabenton, was sentenced to be burned with a Free Spirit brother.
But the brother died in prison. So what would you do if you were the
judge?
a) Set her free.
b) Burned her anyway.
c) Burned her along with her friend’s corpse.

5 A lady saw her husband beheaded by French King Philip VI. What
would you do with your dead husband’s head?
a) Take it home and show it to your son.
b) Bury it.
c) Pickle it and put it in the family museum.

6 Young King Charles VI had a feast after his coronation. The

greatest honour was to sit next to Charles. How would you make sure
you got that seat?
a) Leave the coronation early and get to the feast hall first.
b) Bribe the chief servant to put a reserved notice on the seat for
you.
c) Push anyone else out of the way if they get there first– a bit like
musical chairs.

36
7 In the 1370s one-eyed Olivier de Clisson was known as ‘The
Butcher’. What would you do to get a nickname like that?
a) Sell meat.
b) Become a soldier who hacks off enemy arms and legs during a
battle.
c) Become a circus performer who eats live crocodiles in his act.

8 In the Middle Ages French parents and kids often shared a big bed.
But it was against the law to take a baby under 12 months into your
bed. This law stopped parents making an excuse. Which excuse?
a) ‘I’m late for work because baby cried all night.’
b) ‘Baby died because Dad rolled on top of him.’
c) ‘I can’t go to church because baby pooed on me in the night.’

9 In 1638 the French general, Duke de la Valette, lost a battle and ran
away to England. If you were French King Louis XIII what would
you do?
a) Send him a nasty letter calling Valette a cowardy custard.
b) Have Valette brought back from England and punch him on the
nose.
c) Have a dummy made of Valette and have the dummy’s head
chopped off.

37
10 In 1815 a group of women were walking in Paris when two men
upset them. What would you do to the men?
a) Beat them with your knickers till they run off.
b) Beat them with your shoes till they are knocked out.
c) Beat them with your umbrellas till they are dead.

Answers:
1a) The Pope was 85 when a French gang kidnapped him from his
holiday home near Rome. The local people set the Pope free …
but the shock killed the old man. The next Pope was French – and
he was too scared to go to Rome to rule from the Pope’s palace.
‘The Italians will get their revenge on me,’ he argued. So the
Pope stayed in France (in Avignon) and that’s where the Popes
lived for the rest of the century.
2c) Would you enjoy painting toilet seats? A bit of a bum job
really. And what if someone sat on your painting before it had
dried? They’d be walking around with your painting on their
backside. France is famous for its art gallery the Louvre – maybe
it should have one called the Loo-seat.
3a) Ringois was thrown into a miserable dungeon and threatened
with death. He refused to give in. In the end he was taken to the
cliffs of Dover and told, ‘Obey or jump onto those rocks below.’ He
jumped.
4c) Well, it’s nice to have a bit of company when you’re being
burned, isn’t it? Someone to chat to, have one last joke with.

38
5a) Lady de Clisson took her husband’s head home to Brittany
and showed it to her seven-year-old son, Olivier. She made him
swear that he would grow up to become a knight and fight the
French. Which he did. But later de Clisson also became the
French King, Charles V’s, ‘Constable’ – in charge of law and
order for France! He made lots of money and lots of enemies.
6c) The Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Burgundy both thought
they should sit next to the new king. They scrambled and
scrapped for the seat like two kids. The King’s council said,
‘Burgundy should have it.’ Anjou said, ‘I’m having it any way,’
and sat down. He had to be dragged off. Still it turned out to be
quite a party. Three great lords rode on horses to serve the 12-
year-old King. In the streets fountains ran with water, milk and
wine.
7b) When in battle, Olivier used a huge double-edged battle-axe
that was said to kill everyone it struck. He lost an eye but it didn’t
stop him flattening Frenchmen. In 1369 he turned back to fight
for the French. One of his nastiest acts was to capture 15
Englishmen and have them locked up. He then ordered that they
should be released – one at a time. As each happy prisoner
stepped out Olivier whacked off his head with a single stroke of
his war axe. So 15 swishes, 15 happy heads rolled.

39
One night his enemies plotted to kill him. As Clisson rode
through the streets of Paris a gang of 40 armed men attacked the
Constable and his eight guards. Clisson was armed with just a
dagger. The attackers had swords and hacked Clisson to the
ground and kept chopping till he fell through the door of a baker
shop where the baker dragged him inside. The attackers rode off
leaving Clisson with 60 sword cuts. He survived.
8b) An extra baby in the family could mean the rest went hungry.
So some parents smothered their babies. They gave the excuse
that the baby shared their bed and it was smothered by accident.
The Church passed a law saying, ‘No babies in bed, then.’ It
probably didn’t stop the babies having other ‘accidents’. Be
warned. Don’t start sharing a bed with your parents. You may
choke on the smell of Dad’s socks.
9c) Sounds a bit daft – executing a dummy when you can’t get
your hands on the real criminal. But that’s what the British
people have done for hundreds of years, thousands of times, with
Guy Fawkes dummies on 5 November.
10c) Paris umbrellas used by Paris women as weapons. Deadly.
The women were supporters of the King. The men were
supporters of the King’s enemy, Napoleon. When the men
shouted ‘Long live Napoleon!’ the women didn’t argue. They just
murdered the men. Ouch.

Score
So how did you score? Even if you scored 11 out of 10 you still
couldn’t be as horrible as some French during the murky Middle
Ages.

40
Woe for women
Women have been badly treated in every age of history everywhere
in the world. Medieval France is no different from the rest. Here are
just a few foul facts…

1 In the 1300s women plucked their eyebrows and the hair on the
front of their heads (to give them a high forehead). Churchmen hated
this fashion – ‘If God wants you to have bushy eyebrows then you
should have bushy eyebrows.’ They ranted, ‘The punishment is
waiting for you in Hell. For every hair you’ve pulled out, a devil will
push a red-hot needle in its place.’

2 A writer, Menagier of Paris, wrote a list of ‘rules’ for women to

obey in the 1350s. They were the usual things men have used to bully
women for thousands of years…

Menagier probably got his own way because his wife was just 15
years old.
3 French men in the Middle Ages married girls as young as 12 so it’s
no wonder they could bully them so easily. A man called La Tour
Landry described how a wife shouted at her husband in public. Her
husband…

41
a) smashed her in the face with his fist
b) kicked her in the face and broke her nose.
Her face was so badly damaged, Landry said, she never showed
herself in public again. Was Tour shocked by this wife-beater? No.
He said:

4 In 1379 the English Earl of Arundel planned an invasion of France

and his soldiers took some women along for company. Awful Arundel
set off in December, which is barmy because it’s a stormy time of
year. The English ships were hit by the storms and needed to lose
some weight if they were going to stay afloat. What did the English
throw overboard? You guessed it – the women.
You will be pleased to know nasty Arundel beat up the pilot who
was guiding them. Without a guide the ships soon smashed into rocks
and sank. Arundel and his 25 ships went to the bottom of the sea.
Only seven men survived.

5 In 1419 the English invaders were destroying Northern France and

the peasants were starving. One peasant woman kept a supply of
meat. It was soaked in salt water to stop it going rotten. It would last
her a couple of months. But where had she got that meat?
a) She stole it from the English army by disguising herself as an army
cook.

42
b) She killed her two children.
c) She killed a passing elephant.

Answer: b) Don’t tell your parents (or your teachers) that kids
make a tasty snack or they might decide to munch you instead of a
bag of crisps. (Parents and teachers, of course, should NEVER be
allowed to read a Horrible Histories book.)

Did you know…?

It wasn’t only the women who starved in the Middle Ages. Even the
wolves had a rough time. The starving animals dug up corpses from
graveyards to feed themselves. Some even swam the River Seine to
prey on the people of Paris. Which probably led to the ancient
Horrible Histories joke…

43
The Hundred Years War that wasn’t
England and France fought ‘The Hundred Years War’ from 1337–
1453 … and if you’re any good at sums you’ll know that’s 116 years!
And they weren’t fighting very much during those 116 years either.
Just the odd invasion from England, a lot of time arguing and some of
the time being quite friendly. Not 100 years … and not much war.
Edward III of England was the nephew of Charles IV of France –
so, he said, ‘If my uncle was king of France then I should be too.’
The French had different ideas and different French kings said,
‘Push off, Ed.’ Not a very big argument but enough to give us some
nice horrible history moments. Here are a few…

1 Battling Blois
In the 1340s Charles of Blois was a leading French fighter. He was a
very religious man and, for his religion…
• He wore clothing that was never washed, even when it was crawling
with lice. Underneath he had a shirt of rough horse-hair.
• He put pebbles in his shoes.
• He slept on straw on the floor next to his wife’s comfy bed.
• He wore knotted cords round his body, so tight the knots dug into
his skin.

But his holy ways didn’t stop him being murderously cruel in war. At
the town of Quimper he had 2,000 men, women and children
massacred. At Nantes he lopped off the heads of 30 prisoners and had
them lobbed over the town walls. Nice man.

2 The savage sixty

44
In 1351 two knights from Brittany, northern France, decided to fight
a duel. Robert supported the French king and Bramborough
supported the English king.
When their men heard about the duel they all wanted to join in.
The two knights decided to make it a 30-a-side competition. (A bit
like two English rugby teams against two French rugby teams with a
licence to kill.)
The English and French nations were thrilled at the idea. If they’d
had newspapers in those days then ‘The Combat of the Thirty’ would
have been front page news – or at least back-page sport headlines.

The Combat of the Thirty is over and all 60 knights have been
wounded. But it’s mostly English-lovers’ blood that is scattered over
our fine French fields.
First the 60 men prayed together and then they played together.
The two teams of 30 kicked off on time. They were armed with
swords, bear spears, daggers and axes and it was England who scored
first. After a while it was 4–2 to England as four French lay dead on
the field of play to two English.

Sir Owen brought down in the penalty area.

Half time couldn’t come quickly enough for French captain
Robert. He called to the English striker, Bramborough, ‘Can we stop
for a drink?’

45
 Battling English defender Geoffrey Bouays called back, ‘Drink
your own blood!’
If the first half belonged to the English then the second half was
all France. They scored time and again till Bramborough and eight of
his team lay dead on the field. Down to 21 men, the surrounded
English surrendered. They will be held prisoner now till their family
pay the ransom.
It was a great victory for France in this knock-out competition.
Robert’s super survivors will be hailed as heroes. Bramborough will
be relegated to the grave while his knights suffer the agony of
penalties.

Le Blanc with a stunning header

The battle decided nothing. It was just an excuse for a fight. Yet,
more than 20 years later, the French fighters were remembered as
heroes and were still getting a free nosh at King Charles V’s table.
The French and English knights loved to believe this was the
noble way to do battle. Maybe it was. But they still spent most of
their time burning towns, destroying crops, stealing cattle and
murdering unarmed peasants.
All the Combat of the Thirty really gave us was that great war cry:
‘Drink your blood and your thirst will pass.’ Try that next time your
friend tries to scrounge your can of Coke.

3 Chopped Charlie
The Hundred Years War wasn’t all about brave battlers. There were
plenty of cut-throat cowards too. And it was often Frenchmen
cutting the throats of other Frenchmen.

46
 Charles d’Espagne became King Jean II’s favourite and the jealous
King of Navarre sent his brother, Philip, to give Charles d’Espagne
the chop.
In January 1354 Philip’s men arrived at Charlie’s castle at night.
Charlie was asleep and they dragged him from his bed. Most people
in those days slept without any clothes; in January he must have been
a chilly Charlie. Instead of facing his enemy bravely, Charlie’s chat
went something like this:

47
 They stabbed Charles d’Espagne EIGHTY times.
He died.

The King of Navarre had the nerve to appear before King Jean of
France with some of his murdering friends. It was Navarre’s turn to
grovel and plead for his life. King Jean spared Navarre but had his
men arrested and marched off to be hanged.
Suddenly King Jean became tired of the march to the hanging
place. He stopped them at a field and ordered their heads lopped off
then and there. There was no executioner around, so a soldier was
given the job. He wasn’t very good. He took six chops to get one head
off.
The bodies were hung in chains for two years while Navarre
rotted in prison. Navarre mind.

4 Painful Poitiers
One of the ‘big’ battles of the war was at Poitiers in 1356. The
English army was small, but the French made big mistakes – they

48
should have attacked on Sunday when the English were weak, but a
bishop told them it was sinful to fight on a Sunday. Then when the
French knights did fight it was on foot, not horseback!

The little English army fought desperately for seven hours and
finally surrounded the French King Jean II. The French knights
fought and died to save him. The French historian Froissart
described the battle as very, very bloody…

King Jean II went as a prisoner to England until a vast ransom was

paid.

49
France was left without a king and many parts were ‘ruled’ by gangs
of robbers for almost ten years. (One of the men who tried to take
over France was the King’s old enemy, the King of Navarre!)

5 Misery Monday
On Monday 13 April 1358 the powerful English army was shattered
by an enemy stronger than the French – a storm.
Edward’s army was camped near Chartres when a hail-storm hit
them. The storm…
• Killed men.
• Killed horses.
• Turned tents to shreds.
• Dragged and crushed the supply wagons into the mud.
Many who survived the storm later died of the cold without any
shelter. Shattered King Edward III made peace with the French.

6 Phil the Phighter

King Jean II’s son, Philip, was named ‘Philip the Bold’. How did he
get this wonderful title?
a) Phor phearlessly phighting off phiphty men with just his phists?
b) Phor hitting an unarmed old servant?

Answer: b) King Edward of England held a banquet for King Jean

of France. The head butler served Edward first. Philip hit the
butler and jumped on the table. He cried:

50
 In other words the King of France was more important than the
King of England. But King Edward was a good sport and said:

The name stuck to Philip like treacle pudding to a spoon. But was
Edward being sarcastic? (If you attacked a school dinner lady and
jumped on the table would your teacher call you ‘bold’?)

7 The G-R-E-A-T invasion flop

William the Conqueror argued with the English – so he invaded. He
didn’t sit on his bum and wait for the English to come and put the
boot into France. So why, in 116 years of war, didn’t the French
cross the English Channel and invade England?
The answer is: they tried.
In 1386 England sent off an army to fight in Spain. The Scots
promised to invade England from the north if France crossed the
channel to invade from the south. The French began to prepare
themselves for the invasion:
• Their fleet was to be ‘The greatest since God created the world’.
(Well, they bought and built 1,200 ships, but some were a bit
ropey.)
• They built a ‘camp’ that was to be towed across the channel and
built into a fortress when they landed. The fortress would be 5.5
kilometres around the walls. Those walls would be six metres high
with towers every 20 metres.

51
• They had 200,000 arrows (about ten for every English defender) but
they’d have been too drunk to fire straight – because they had four
million litres of wine – enough for 50 litres for each French fighter.

So what went wrong? They waited for the mighty Duke of Berry to
arrive but he was too busy collecting things! (He collected books and
paintings and musical instruments, the usual stuff. But he also
collected dogs and religious ‘relics’ – bits of holy people and holy
things: he had enough of the Virgin Mary’s hair to stuff a mattress.)
Berry finally arrived at the port on 14 October – the date when
William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings – but the days
were turning wild and wintry. Storms battered the ships – the sailors
lost their bottle.

The King gave up and went home – before he left he gave the
floating fortress to the Duke of Burgundy.
The English didn’t have four million litres of wine, but they had a
pretty good party and a good laugh at the French fighting flops.

8 Awesome Agincourt
After twenty-odd years of peace the English were back. New King

52
Henry V wanted a war so he stirred up the Hundred Years War
again.
The small English army met the large French army at Agincourt in
1415. What had the French learned in the 60 years since painful
Poitiers?

• The French knights fought on foot … again. Now their armour was
heavier to keep out English arrows – but that just meant they could
hardly move.
• The French knights pushed to the front to grab the glory. Their
crossbows (at the back) were useless. The knights were so packed
together they could hardly swing a cat – or a sword.
• The French knights slipped in the mud. The next line of knights
moved forward and fell over them. The English foot soldiers saw
this and dashed in to slide their knives into joints in the armour.

The English were on the rampage again. France had a mad king and a
feeble Prince Charles in charge. It was agreed that Henry V and the
English could have France when Prince Charles’s mad dad died.
It looked like the end for France. But they hadn’t reckoned on a
simple, village girl…

9 The Mad Maid

Joan of Arc was a French peasant shepherdess. In 1428 she was
looking after her sheep in Domremy when she heard heavenly voices.
They told her to lead an army against the English.

53
 In just three years she led an army that beat the socks off the
English and made sure Prince Charles was crowned King Charles
VII.
In the end she was captured by the army of Burgundy and ‘sold’ to
the English. The English didn’t like the idea that God was on the
French side. They had to prove Joan was actually working for the
Devil instead. They put her on trial with French priests to judge her
… and, surprise, they found her guilty. She was a witch, they said, so
she was burned.
What did King Charles VII of France do to save the girl who had
given him his crown and France its freedom?
Nothing. No ransom, no rescue, no bargaining with the English.
He let them burn her.

The 1400s were a great time for writing French poetry, but not for
Joan. Joan wasn’t as famous in her own day as she is in history books
now. Maybe someone should have written a song for Joan. If they had
it might have gone something like this…

54
10 The end
Joan’s fight wasn’t the end of the Hundred Years War, but the
English never recovered from the defeats they had suffered at her
army’s hands.

55
 The English had a winning chance against the men of Paris and
Aquitaine and Brittany and Normandy, while those regions
squabbled like kids. But they had far less chance when the regions
joined together under Charles VII and called themselves ‘France’.
Suddenly the French people were fighting for a new idea – the
idea that they weren’t just people of Paris or Aquitaine or Brittany or
Normandy … they were all ‘French’.
That’s why Joan, even scorched to ashes, was so important in
French history.

56
Cruel crimes
While the Hundred Years War dribbled on there were soldiers
everywhere. And, when they weren’t fighting, they stayed alive by
joining outlaw gangs. They robbed travellers and the French law
hadn’t the power to stop them. No one was safe on the roads of
France – poor pilgrims or travelling traders. There was a saying…

Crafty Coquillards
In the 1400s the robbers were known as Coquillards. And
Coquillards were the only people safe on the roads.
How did you know if a person was a Coquillard?

The Coquillards had their own way of talking – almost their own
language. Have a look at the following and see if you can match the
words to their meaning – if you get one wrong you get your throat
cut, of course.

57
 Answers:
1c) Because prison floors were covered in straw. To be ‘on the
straw’ was to be thrown into prison.
2a) Obvious really. Trouble is a Coquillard on the straw could
lose his handles as a punishment.
3e) So ending up on the hill of joy is worse than losing your
handles.
4b) Hope that answer didn’t baffle you.
5d) So obvious you MUST have got this one!

Painful punishments
The only way to put criminals off was to show no mercy to the ones
who were caught. Some punishments were nastier than others.

Fried forgers
Only the king was allowed to make money. Forging money was a
crime against the king. The punishment? To be boiled in oil.
Now, boiling in oil may not sound too bad – after all most of you do
it to potatoes every day then eat them as chips. But in France it was
slower and much more painful.
The execution took place in the pig market of Paris. A pot of cool
oil was hung over a stone slab. The forger was tied hand and foot and
dropped into the oil. A fire was lit under the pot and it took a while
for the oil to heat up. The executioner had a long hook to make sure
the victim didn’t wriggle out. Very slow, very nasty.
Would you want to forge an absence note from your parents if that
was the punishment? Taken to the school dinner kitchens where the

58
deep-fat frier awaits you…

Dungeon dread
In 1416 King Charles VI put a big fat tax on the people of Paris. What
did they do? Revolted, of course! Nicolas D’Orgemont led a plot to
kill the King. What happened? It failed, of course.
Nicolas was a strong man though he was nicknamed Nicolas the
Lamer because he lost a foot in an accident when he was young. What
punishment could destroy limping Nic?
The underground dungeon of the Bishop of Orleans’s palace. He
was sent below ground with no light and little air. They said he
suffered…

For all his strength Nicolas went mad and died in six months. He
was just 46 years old.

Paddled poets
Poetry is quite good for insulting people. You know the sort of thing
you write about teachers…

59
But it wouldn’t be a good idea to do it in Middle Ages France.
Insulting poets were punished.
The great French poet Francois Villon was found guilty of writing
an insulting poem to a lady. His punishment was…

The woman he’d insulted came to watch.

Lucky Villon. Two other poets had insulted a nun and been thrown
into jail. But the soldier who wrote a naughty poem about Hugette de
Hamel in the 1450s was beaten to death.

Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais was the sort of character you usually meet in fairy
tales. But if you really want to scare your lousy little brother then
don’t tell him this story … it’s so horrible your little brother would
laugh at you and say, ‘You’re making that up.’
Gilles was a nobleman and a soldier who fought with Joan of Arc.
In 1440 he was taken to court and charged with some incredibly
horrible crimes. The case was so shocking the judges had a statue of
Jesus taken out of the courtroom so the statue didn’t have to listen…

60
Gilles de Rais was not amused. He replied…

This did not make him popular with his judges. The trial went on.
They wanted to prove he had used black magic…
Gilles had wasted a lot of money in his life. To get it back he had
hired a magician from Italy, Francois Prelati, who said he could
change lead into gold. Prelati had wasted a lot more money – and of
course failed.
After a month Gilles finally said…

61
But the court was determined to prove that de Rais had tried to
summon the Devil, so they began to call witnesses. It was thought
that they’d been paid to lie about Gilles. Prelati, the magician, said…

Then the witnesses to de Rais’s kid-killing were called. Gilles de

Rais’s servant, Etienne Corrilaut, said…

The trial was hardly fair. One accusation was that Gilles killed the
son of Jean Lavary, and dumped the boy’s body down the castle
toilet. But though the evidence was presented in writing, the
witnesses who wrote it never actually appeared in court. Gilles’s
helper, Poitou, confessed, though…

Nice job.
The judges asked Gilles again if he was guilty. Gilles admitted the
murders but said ‘Not guilty’ to raising the Devil. This time the
judges sent Gilles down to the torture chamber below the court
room. They said he should be tortured till he told the truth. So
Gilles admitted that the murders had been sacrifices to the Devil.

62
He then made an unusual deal with the court…

So Gilles de Rais was hanged for the murders then his body was
burned. The scorched body was taken from the fire – another nice
job.
Was he guilty of mass murder? Who knows. He had some very
powerful enemies who wanted his lands and castles. When Gilles
was executed they got them.
Gilles de Rais may have been the most vicious murderer in French
history but he didn’t get a very fair trial, so we’ll never really know
the truth.

Mastering Marelle
The highway robbers of 1400s France didn’t spend all their time
cutting throats and pinching purses. Oh, no. They enjoyed spending
their stolen money as fast as they could in towns like Dijon. There
they ate, drank and gambled away their loot. When they lost their
money they went out and robbed someone else.
One of their favourite gambling games was called Marelle. What
was this sport for thugs and ruffians? Rugby? Fencing? Wrestling?
No, it was hopscotch. Yes, that cute little playground game was a
fiercely fought gambling pastime for the highwaymen of Dijon.
Here’s how to play it…

63
You need:
A stone.

A chalk drawn spiral on the ground – like a snail’s shell seen from
above. The snail is divided into ten squares – they have to be big
enough so a player can land in one with each hop.

To play:
1 The first player throws the stone at the first square. The stone has
to land completely in the square without touching any lines or
bouncing out. If not, the player misses that turn. If the player’s
throw lands in the square, the player hops into the square, picks up
the stone and wedges it between their knees. The player hops on to
the end of the shape, then turns round and hops back through the
shape, hopping through squares in reverse.
2 The players continue in turn by throwing the stone into the next
square then the next.
3 A player ends their turn if they step on a line, miss a square or lose
their balance. They must start that sequence again on their next
turn.
4 The first player who completes one course for every numbered
square is the winner.
The prize:
In Marelle you can bet by each player putting money on the last
square. If the first player to get to square ten can get back safely with
the money they get to keep it.

64
And you can try to put your opponent off any way you like – so long as
you don’t touch them.

Horrible Histories warning:

Marelle can be a rough game the way the highwaymen played it.
Don’t be surprised at these cut-throat robbers playing hopscotch.
It was first invented in the early Roman Empire and Roman
soldiers used it as a training game. The Roman kids copied it.

Teetotum
This is a gambling game with no skill – just luck. Very popular among
the good-for-nothing slubberdegulions of France. You can try it –
gambling for pebbles – just to see how easy it is to lose a fortune.

You need:
A six-sided pencil. Mark three side of the pencil with the letters P, J
and F. Mark the other three sides with R.

To play:
1 Every player puts one piece of pebble-money into the middle of the
table.
2 Each player takes turns at rolling the pencil.
3 Look at the letter that ends up on top:

R (from the French word ‘rien’) = you take nothing out, put
nothing in.

65
 P (‘piller’) = you get your one pebble back – but no more.
J (‘jocque’) = you put another pebble on to the table.
F (‘fors’) = you take all the pebbles and have won the game!

The French gamblers didn’t use a pencil – they used a dice on a

spindle that they would spin round. But the idea was the same. A
simple game for simple minds. A group of teachers would enjoy
playing it.

66
Revolting France
Think of French history and you think of the French Revolution – the
one that happened in 1789, when lots of posh people got their heads
chopped off.
But the French were revolting long before that. In fact, they were
expert revolters. Prepare to read about some disgustingly horribly
historical happenings…

1 The festering fief of Flanders 1302

Flanders (we call it Belgium now) was a ‘fief ’ of France. (That meant
they had to pay taxes to the French.) The fief fellers of Flanders
were fed-up though. They had more to do with the English, trading
wool and wine with them. So the wild workers of Bruges in Flanders
revolted.
The French sent in their foot soldiers and bowmen to soften the
fighting fief fellers of Flanders. They were to be followed by the
knasty knights to off the pathetic peasants. No contest.
But it all went wrong.

67
 Fifteen years later the French returned … it took them a long
time to train new knights.
Yes, you could say … fifteen years after the foul, floundering,
falling French foes, and flattened French foot soldiers, had been
fixed like fish by the fed-up, fabulous, freedom-fighting fief fellers
from Flanders (phew – try saying that with a mouthful of marbles) …
the French massacred the Flanders peasants.
They killed them in their thousands.

2 The pitiful Pastoreaux 1320

The shepherds of France heard that King Louis IX had been thrown
in prison. They banded together and said…

68
The shepherds, or the Pastoreaux as they were known, looked for
someone to blame … and started on the priests. They murdered
quite a few and then set up their own church with their own Pope
and bishops and priests.
Their leader said he had a letter from the Virgin Mary in his fist –
but he never opened his hand to show anyone. He said it told the
shepherds to fight a Crusade. They marched south towards the Holy
Land…

They passed through the towns of Paris and Orleans without much
trouble, even though they burned town halls (to stop the tax
collectors’ work) and broke into prisons.
By the time they reached the south of France they turned their
spite against the Jewish people in the region. Jews were accused of
getting lepers to poison Christian wells. Five thousand Jews were
killed. At Chinon 160 Jews were burned in a pit on an island outside
of town. Lepers were blamed for helping the Jews and they were
massacred too.
One hundred and twenty Jewish groups were destroyed. At
Verdun, 500 Jews defended themselves from inside a stone tower.
When they were about to be defeated, they killed themselves.
King Louis (later Saint Louis) thought killing Jews was quite a
good idea. But killing his priests wasn’t. They had to be stopped.
First French people were ordered not to feed the Pastoreaux.
Then the soldiers struck at the Pastoreaux and butchered them.

69
The Pastoreaux revolt ended with shepherd rebels hanging by their
necks from trees.

3 The putrid peasants 1358

The peasants were fed up. They’d lost their king in the Battle of
Poitiers against the English – they blamed the knights. And the
peasants were being robbed by the bandit-gangs of soldiers – they
blamed the knights.
They did what a lot of grumbling people do. They held a meeting.
It was on 28 May 1358 in the village of St Leu and they met in a
cemetery – the mood was grave.
The answer to the problem of the no-good knights? ‘Destroy them
all,’ the peasants decided and jumped up and down with excited
anger – probably trampling over their grandmas’ bones as they did so.
They rushed out and murdered the nearest knight and his family
then burned his castle.
The idea caught on. Peasants grabbed any old farm tool or weapon
and attacked. Many horrors have been described … but some may
not be true. It was said that:
• Some peasants fastened a knight on a meat ‘spit’ above a fire and
roasted him while his wife and children were forced to watch.
• The wife was forced to eat her husband’s flesh.
• People who tried to stop them were locked in their houses and the
houses set alight.
But when the peasant army came face to face with the crafty King of
Navarre, what did he do?

70
a) Offer to talk to the peasant leader and have him crowned.
b) Offer to talk to the peasant leader and
pay him to go home.

c) Offer to talk to the peasant leader and have him executed.

Answer: c) … and a)! Navarre said to the peasant leader, Cade,

‘Let’s talk at my camp.’ The potty peasant agreed. Once Navarre
got his hands on Cade he had him crowned – with a red-hot iron
crown. That hurt. But not for long because Cade’s crowned head
was lopped off. What a way to give someone a hair trim. 20,000
rebel peasants ended up dead.

4 Terrible taxes 1379

French lords raised taxes and often used the money to pay for their
own fun. In 1379 they charged peasants a tax for a tournament. The
people refused to pay. They rioted and the riots spread through
France. (Rioting about taxes was going to be good practice for the
French Revolution 400 years later.)
Tax collectors went into houses to check what food people had and
made them pay tax on it. The people were furious – as you would be
if someone marched in to your house, stuck their nose in your fridge
and demanded money for your food.
The peasants marched and cried…

71
Soon the cries turned nastier and became…

They did more than that in southern France, it was said. They did
what…?
a) Stole the rich men’s food and ate it.
b) Killed the rich men’s dogs and ate them.
c) Killed the rich men and ate them.

Answer: c) A witness said: ‘They cut open the bodies and ate the
flesh of Christian men as if they were animals.’ (Scrummy.
Imagine eating rich people for school dinners? Think of
‘millionaire munchies’, ‘businessman burgers’, ‘celebrity soup’ or
‘teacher tart’.2)

The revolution ended like most of them when the men in armour
marched in. The Duke of Anjou stormed into Montpelier and said…

72
The next day the Duke said he would let them off most of the savage
punishments and the peasants were grateful to him. The threat to
massacre 600 was just a little bit of play-acting by the dramatic Duke.

5 The mad Maillotins 1382

The peasants had short memories and were revolting just three years
later – and, of course, the nobles gathered an army and crushed
them. Nothing new there. But a group of peasant tax-rebels had a
few new revolting revolution happenings…
• The rebels started by attacking the Paris police station and stealing
3,000 ‘Maillotins’ – or mallets – for weapons. These lead hammers
were pretty deadly if you smashed someone with it. (And very
painful if you dropped one on your toe.) The rebels became known
as ‘Maillotins’ even when they weren’t carrying a heavy hammer.
• In the south of France 40 of the rebels had a get-rich-quick idea.
First you find all the men worth more than a 100 pounds. Next, you
kill them. Then, you marry their widows and get their money.
There was just one little problem – most of the 40 rebels already
had a wife. How did they plan to solve that? They planned to
murder their own wives first so they’d be free to marry the rich

73
 widows. Nice people.

• The northern rebels were smashed at a battle near Roosebeke. The

young King Charles VI asked to see the rebel leader, Artevelde,
dead or alive. He was dead. The young king bravely walked up to
Artevelde’s corpse and gave it a good kicking. The body was then
taken away and hanged from a tree. (Don’t worry, it didn’t hurt a
bit.)
• But the Duke of Burgundy had the strangest little bit of revenge.
He had a tapestry woven which showed the face of Artevelde. The
Duke then used the tapestry as a carpet so he was able to trample
over Artevelde’s face when he felt like it.

6 Revolting students 1453

Paris students were a nuisance. They came from all over Europe and
many of them stole food and clothes from the Paris people to stay
alive. When house owners tried to argue with the students the
students said they didn’t understand – they weren’t French.
The Paris police finally went potty. They…

74
• Smashed into student rooms to find stolen goods.
• Arrested students and locked them in jails
without food or water.
• Blocked a peaceful student protest march.
• Attacked them with swords, knives, bows and
axes as they tried to get past police barriers.

The police had gone too far. Many were punished. Sergeant Jean
Charpentier was a killer cop. How was he punished?

Answer: a) He was dragged through the streets till he reached the

house of the man he had murdered. He agreed to pay the widow
400 livres. Then the public executioner lopped off his hand.
Which is a bit daft. How could the cruel cop earn the money to
pay her when he didn’t have a hand?

7 The Protestant protests 1545

By the middle of the 1500s England had become a Protestant country.
France was still Catholic and worried that the Protestant ideas might
spread over there.
So what do you do to a Protestant?

75
Which do you think they did in France in 1545? Here’s an extra
clue…

Got it? That’s right, the Protestants were executed. In Provence

Baron Jean Meynier wanted some land from a Protestant neighbour.
He went to King Francis I with a rumour that the Protestants were
planning a rebellion.

Protestant women were shut in a church and it was set on fire.

Protestant men were sent to serve as slaves rowing galleys for the
French navy. Protestant homes were forced open and robbed.
Did mean, malevolent Meynier get the land he wanted? Of course
he did.
Some rebellions weren’t rebellions at all. They were set up as an

76
excuse to exterminate someone...

8 The Bartholomew batterings 1572

The peasants usually revolted because they had no food. But in the
1560s the Protestants had a much more dangerous idea…

Don’t obey the king? Elect a new one? That was revolution. The
Catholics were shocked.
Food prices were high in the 1560s (again) and hungry Catholic
peasants looked for someone to blame. Guess who?

The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 was a good excuse to do

just that.
On August 22, the Protestant leader, Admiral de Coligny, was
riding through Paris when an assassin fired at him, breaking his arm.
The Catholic assassins decided to finish him off and went to King
Charles IX to see if he agreed. Charles argued…

77
The butchering began…
• That night a troop of soldiers went to de Coligny’s door. They
killed the guard who opened the door, and rushed into the house.
De Coligny was dragged from his bed and stabbed in the belly till
his guts spilled out.
• De Coligny, still alive, was then thrown out of his bedroom window
to the pavement below. The Catholic Duke de Guise kicked the
corpse in the face and claimed, ‘This is what the King ordered.’
• Everyone thought, ‘Oh, that’s what the King wants?’ So the rest of
the Catholics in Paris joined in. Catholics wore white crosses on
their hats, and went around butchering their Protestant neighbours
with the help of soldiers.
• The killing went on for three days or so, with the King unable to
bring the whole thing under control.
• The massacres spread outside of Paris over the next few months.
Some thought they had orders from the Crown to kill all the
Protestants.
• Many people gave up their Protestant religion. Yet again a rebellion
had been crushed by cruelty.

78
Wedding woe
A wedding is usually a happy event. Loads of booze and dancing and
laughter … and murder if you were at the wedding of Henry of
Navarre.

79
 Henry was a hated Protestant. Thousands of his Protestant
supporters arrived in Paris for his wedding to Margaret, the King’s
sister. Unfortunately the Catholics turned up as well – invited by the
King – and the wedding became a bloodbath. In this massacre:
• In Paris 2,700 Protestants died that day and around France another
20,000 were killed around that time.
• Margaret saved some Protestants by hiding them under her bed.
• Young women insisted on seeing the corpses to see if they could
find their missing boyfriends.
Henry of Navarre knew he could only survive the massacre if he
pretended to turn Catholic. And Henry knew he could become king
and rule Paris if he went to a Catholic church for a service the
Catholics call ‘mass’. So Henry did it and 17 years after the massacre
he finally took the throne. He said, famously…

Henry became Henry IV – so he got all France for the price of a few
Catholic prayers. He brought peace and became known as Good King
Henry – which isn’t bad.

9 Cruelty to Croquants 1592

Stop me if you’ve heard this one but … the peasants were starving
because of poor harvests and the lords were still taxing them.
What did the peasants do? Revolt.
What did the lords do? Kill them cruelly.
Same old story. The difference this time was King Henry IV
said…

80
But these Croquant revolts went on for nearly 50 years. Always the
same. Peasants revolt – peasants massacred. They just didn’t learn.
In 1637 the Duke de la Valette attacked and killed 1,000–1,500
Croquants. The Duke’s men then burnt 25 houses with women and
children still inside.
Survivors suffered the usual: torture, breaking on the wheel (more
details later), hanging, chopping off body-bits and showing those bits
in public. Some were sentenced to life as a slave in the galley ships.

Did you know…?

The peasants expected the executioners to do a good, clean job. If an
executioner made a mess of an execution then the spectators could
turn on him and lynch him too.

81
Sometimes the victims were heroes to the peasants so they helped
them escape. They would…
• Have a riot at the scaffold and set the prisoner free in the
confusion.
• Cut through the wooden steps up to the scaffold so the executioner
had an accident.

• Simply rush onto the scaffold and kidnap the prisoner.

10 Cracking Camisards 1702

The Croquants were battered – but they had started fighting back
against the executioners. In 1702 the Camisards revolted, fighting for
their religion – nothing new there – but King Louis XIV’s
punishments were so harsh the rebels rebelled against them. The
rebellion went on much longer – three years – than it could have
done.
One of cruel Louis XIV’s punishments was ‘breaking on the
wheel.’ So, if your teachers have a problem with a rebel pupil, here’s
a handy Louis XIV guide to dealing with them. You may like to pass
it on to your teacher…

82
This was still happening about 30 times a year in the 1780s in France.
It’s no wonder the people were so violent when they revolted in 1789.

11 The Flour Wars 1775

King Louis XVI came to the throne and the people loved him … at
first. The price of bread had always been a problem. So Louis XVI’s
ministers came up with plans to cut the price of bread. But rich and
greedy men bought up all the corn and charged even higher prices.

83
 There were riots in nearly every market in France. Rioters
attacked bakers’ shops and stole flour and bread. The riots became
known as the ‘Flour Wars’.
Instead of making the peasants happy, Louis had made them
furious. Two months after the riots the price of bread was still high.
What did Louis do? Had his coronation with the usual show of his
wealth. His Queen, Marie Antoinette, wrote to her mother…

The peasants made sure she didn’t live to be a hundred. She didn’t
forget – neither did they.

Funny food
Henry IV was a caring king. He said he cared about the peasants. He
had a dream for every peasant in France…

The chickens, who didn’t speak French, might have been the only
ones to disagree.
Henry’s dream didn’t really come true, of course. Most peasants
stayed hungry:
• Peasants only ate meat a few times a year – on feast days or when
they slaughtered their animals in the winter.
• They didn’t even get the kilo of bread a day that they needed to stay
healthy.
• About a quarter of children died before their first birthday and half
of all the children born in France were dead before their tenth
birthday.

84
French peasants never seemed to have enough food while their kings
and queens had too much. So food became one of the biggest reasons
for revolt.
The French are famous for their cooking. Delicious snails and
frogs’ legs are still favourite foods of France. All of which has
nothing to do with this joke…

Scoffing stories
French peasants were so interested in food half their folk stories
were about it. Like the story of the greedy peasant girl…

85
That’s just a story. But here are a few fantastic French food facts to
flabbergast you…

1 Bad booze
In the Middle Ages the richest wine was the deep red wine from
Gascony. Wine sellers often took cheap red wine, added dye to it and
sold it as expensive Gascony wine. You wouldn’t know till you drank
it – and discovered it stained your teeth and tongue dark red.

2 Beastly buns
In 1590 Paris was under siege and the people were starving. They
went along to the Cemetery of the Innocents and pinched the bones.
They ground them up, mixed them with water, and baked them into
bread.

86
3 Lousy loaves
In 1586 there was a famine in the Vivarais region of France. The
people had a few handfuls of barley or oats for flour. They made their
bread more filling by grinding in tasty extra ‘flour’ made from…
• Acorns
• Grape seeds
• Pine tree bark
• Nut shells
• Broken tiles and bricks.

That’s tough but tasteless. But imagine eating the bread they made
from grass and sheep guts.

4 Munching monarchs
Louis XIV was famous for his mountainous meals. But Louis XVI
wasn’t much better. At one wedding party young Louis stuffed
himself so full he couldn’t move.

5 Greedy guts
While Louis XVI was feasting a dreadful plague and famine swept
through northern France. Tanners took cattle and turned their skins
into leather. The meat was sold to the butchers but the guts were
thrown into the back streets. The starving people fought over the
cow guts, kidneys, liver and brains because they had nothing else to
eat.

87
 Some mothers who couldn’t feed babies left them out in the wind
and rain to die.
Peasants were found dead in ditches, their mouths full of grass
that they’d tried to eat.
And King Louis grew fatter.

6 Sliced bread
Most people think sliced bread was invented in the twentieth
century. But when the French Revolution locked Louis XVI in
prison in 1792 he was fed on sliced bread.
Stretch your brain cell and work out why? Why didn’t the guards
give him the usual loaf of bread?

Answer: They were worried that the King’s friends might

smuggle messages into the prison and help him escape. It would
be easy to write a message, bake it into a loaf and send it to the
King. So the guards sliced the bread first.

88
Kurious kings
The kings of France had more money than they could spend while
their people starved. No wonder there were revolts. And apart from
the wasters, some kings were just plain potty.
France, like most other countries in history, has had some pretty
peculiar people in charge. And their names were even odder. Spot
the only invented name in this motley crew:

Answer: Pepin the Potato was NOT a king of France. The rest
were.

Here is some incredible info and foul facts about a few of France’s
rulers.

Louis I (788–840)
Known as Louis the Pious (or ‘Saintly’). This kind and holy king
discovered Bernard of Italy was plotting against him. So he kindly
had Bernard’s eyes gouged out.
Sadly this killed Bernard. Saintly Louis was said to be very upset.
What a kind man.

89
Philip IV the Fair (1268–1314)
Philip did a bad job of running the country and the peasants were
starving and after his blood. He came up with a vicious way to raise
money – and save his skin.
• Philip accused a group of fighting monks – called ‘Knights
Templar’ – of worshipping the Devil.
• Philip had them tortured and then burned at the stake.
• Philip was able to steal the Templars’ money and buy his way out of
trouble.
But it did Philip the very-unfair no good because the Templars had a
spooky revenge…
The chief Templar (the Grand Master), was sent to the stake to be
burned. Pope Clement had agreed to the execution. As the flames
leapt up the Grand Master cried to Philip, ‘I shall meet you and
Clement by God’s seat before a year is past. You and your family, for
13 generations, will be cursed!’ Pope Clement died the next month
… King Philip died within seven months, though he was a healthy
46-year-old.

Charles VI (1368–1422)
The trouble with having kings and queens is this: what do you do if
one of them goes a little potty? You can’t sack a monarch, can you?
Charles VI of France became mad and all France suffered. Here’s
his sad story…
1 In 1385 he married Isabeau – but only after he had her examined in
the nude. She was the daughter of Stephen III, Duke of Upper
Bavaria-Ingolstadt – known as Stephen the Toff.

90
2 Charles fell ill – his hair fell out and his nails fell off. Before he
recovered he got a terrible shock. In 1392 Charlie’s friend, Olivier de
Clisson, was attacked – but survived more than ‘60 blows by sword
and knife’. The King flipped.

3 Charles set out with an army to get de Clisson’s attacker. On the

journey he started babbling nonsense and making rude signs with his
hands.
4 One hot day Charles rode out after drinking too much wine. A leper
jumped out, grabbed the reins of Charles’s horse and cried, ‘Turn
back, your Highness. You are destroyed.’ This scare tipped the King
over the edge into complete madness.

91
5 A little further on that journey a page dropped the King’s lance
with a clatter. The frightened Charles drew his sword and chopped
at everyone in sight. He killed five of his own knights before his
attendants stopped him.

6 Charles recovered but, a year later, suffered another night of

terror. Charles went to a fancy dress party dressed as a wild man.
His friends were dressed the same. Their costumes were covered in
tar. A spark from a flaming torch set them alight. Four died and
Charles was only saved by a duchess who threw her skirt over him.

7 Charles began to imagine he was made of glass. He had steel rods

put into his clothes so he wouldn’t shatter if he fell over.

92
8 Charles started to insist his name was George. He refused to
change his clothes for months. He stank and his body was crawling
with lice. The doctor decided he needed a shock. Ten men with
blackened faces rushed into his bedroom. Terrified Charles changed
his clothes. (Wouldn’t you?)

9 Charles suspected everyone – especially his wife, Queen Isabeau.

Her trusted servant, Louis de Bosredon, was thrown in prison in
chains. Which was better than what happened next. He was put in a
leather sack and drowned in the River Seine. Louis was in Seine –
Charles was simply insane.

10 They treated Charles with around 250 oranges – and it cured him
for a little while. A year later he died of a fever. During the reign of
poor Charles the French knights had lost the Battle of Agincourt to a
little English army. It was time for a new king – and an even crazier
woman, Joan of Arc – to save France.

93
Charles VIII (1470–1498)
Charlie was so polite he didn’t turn his head away from his wife
while he talked to her and led her into his tennis court. As a result he
smacked his head against a beam, cracked his skull and died. Game,
set and match, Charlie.

Francis I (1494–1547)
Rich Francis got Leonardo da Vinci to paint him a picture. It became
the most famous picture in the world – the Mona Lisa. Where did
filthy-rich Francis hang this painting? In his bathroom.
Francis restarted the wars with Italy – and he came unstuck at the
battle of Pavia…
Francis believed that knights were gentlemen and should fight like
gentlemen – on horses, with swords and lances. His army had guns
but he wouldn’t let them fire.

Francis and his knights charged at the Italian guns, waving their
swords. Of course the Italians shot them down. Francis’s horse was
shot from under him and he was captured.
Six thousand French soldiers died – all because Francis wanted to
fight like a gentleman.
Henry VIII of England had been a rival of Francis all their lives.
So Francis laughed when he heard that Henry was dead. Then he
remembered that Henry had said, ‘One day we’ll both be dead.’
Francis was upset, and the same night had a fever. He never

94
recovered. You can just imagine Henry’s ghost…

Henry II (1519–1559)
Henry’s dad, Francis I, should have told the lad: ‘Knights in armour
are finished.’ Maybe they did tell Henry – maybe he just didn’t
listen. He played at being a knight by fighting in a tournament. So
you can’t feel sorry when he had a bit of an accident…

95
Charles IX (1550–1574)
Charles allowed his Catholic friends to massacre their Protestant
enemies on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 … then spent the next two
years feeling really, really sorry for what had happened.
Then, in 1574 he stopped feeling sorry. He died. It was said he
was tormented with guilt for the massacres and died sweating blood.
(This is a horrible way to die and it makes a right mess of the
bedclothes so try not to do it. Think of the poor person who has to
clean up after you.)

Henry III (1551–1589)

People who live by the sword often die by the sword, it is said.
Henry III was a great example. Horrible Henry fought against the
Guise family and viciously killed the Duke of Guise in December

96
1588.
First he invited the Duke of Guise to meet him. There were rows
of Henry’s archers lining the stairs but the daft Duke went on up
them. There were 40 armed men in the King’s room … but the daft
Duke went in. Would you have been a bit suspicious by now?
When he went in, the doors were bolted. The Duke struggled
bravely, but he didn’t stand a chance against horrible Henry…

Henry then did the same to the Duke’s brother, the Cardinal de
Guise.
BUT … horrible Henry didn’t last long. In August 1589 he was
dead. Murdered.
A monk called Jacques Clement asked to see the King and the
guards let him in. As soon as he was close enough he drew a knife and
stabbed Henry to death.
The Duke of Guise’s ghost must have laughed its ghostly socks
off. What happened to the mad monk? The King’s servants battered

97
and hacked him to death.
You wouldn’t believe how the next king, Henry IV, died…

Henry IV (1553–1610)
King Henry IV was killed by a mad monk. (I said you wouldn’t
believe it. But it’s true.) Henry was riding in his carriage when it got
stuck in a traffic jam. Mad Monk, Francois Ravaillac, jumped on to
the carriage wheel and thrust his dagger into the King’s chest. The
King then said a pretty silly thing.

Amazing man. He is dying, and he still finds the time to tell his
doctors exactly what his problem is. How thoughtful.
The blood gushed from his mouth. The doctors couldn’t help him.
He died.

Louis XIII (1601–1643)

Little Louis was just eight when he became king. So, of course, his
mum ran the country for him. The trouble was his mum had a
boyfriend, Concino Concini, who helped her to run the country.
When Louis XIII was 15 the young lad gave the order…

• Guards went to arrest Concino Concini. They said he had struggled

so they had to shoot him three times in the head and stab him before
kicking the body aside. In fact Concino Concini was murdered.
That’s what Louis really wanted.
• The body was buried secretly – but not secretly enough. A mob of

98
 Paris people dug up the hated Concino Concini, chopped the body
into bits, fed some to their dogs and burned the rest.
• Concini’s wife was then put on trial and beheaded. She was a rich
woman. Who got her money? Louis XIII, of course.
Two years later in 1619, Mum tried to lead a rebellion against her
own son. She failed. Happy families or what?

Louis XIV (1638–1715)

The French don’t have kings these days. But they still look back at
some of them and say (in French) ‘He was a good guy … for a king.’
And one of their favourites is Louis XIV – nicknamed ‘The Sun
King’.
His vast palace at Versailles cost millions in today’s money and it
had over a thousand fountains in its gardens.

Just one cloak in his wardrobe cost Louis a sixth of the cost of the
palace – while his peasants starved.

Here are a few facts about the French favourite…

1 Louis . When he died it was discovered that his bowels were twice
as long as most people’s and his stomach was huge. But was he a
greedy eater because he had a big gut to fill? Or did he have a big gut
because he ate so much?
2 Louis built the palace of Versailles and you can still visit it today.
The palace had golden ceilings and 5,000 servants – but only two
toilets. Rich visitors had to take their own potties with them. They
were emptied in a ditch at one corner of the palace – and Louis made

99
sure unpopular guests had their rooms just above that dreadful ditch.

3 Louis was a big-head – and a bald head. No one but his hairdresser
was allowed to see the King without his wig. Louis set a fashion in
Europe for wigs. These wigs were usually made from goats’ hair –
very itchy – and were probably full of lice and other insects. He was
also a bit of a shorty and wore high-heeled shoes. They were the
height of fashion.

4 Louis was very fussy about good manners in his palace. He even
invented some new manners:
• No one was allowed to turn their back on the royal family – or even
a picture of the royals.
• No one was allowed to go to the toilet while travelling with the king
– a duchess travelled with Louis in a coach and was desperate for a
pee but she had to wait nearly six hours.
• Knocking on the door was said to be rude so palace people had to
scratch on them with their fingernails. Screech.
5 Louis wanted total power – power with no limit. One of his lords,
the Count de Guiche, argued with the King…

100
The Count did something no one dared do – he turned his back on
the King and marched to the door…

6 Louis liked to sleep in his own bed – wherever he was. So he had

413 beds made and there was always one handy wherever he stopped
for the night. But he wasn’t so fussy about his baths. How many
baths did he have in his whole life?
a) 77 (one a year)
b) 924 (one a month)
c) 3

101
 Answer: c) Phew! So it’s not that surprising that he didn’t notice
how mouldy he was. One day he pulled off a sock and one of his
toes dropped off.

7 When Louis XIV’s queen died he married the Marquise de

Maintenon. He kept the marriage a secret. His new wife was fondly
known as ‘Old Prune Face’ and ‘The Rag-Bag’.
8 Louis died in 1715 saying, ‘Sorry I spent so much money and went
into so many wars with other countries.’ He was. His son and
grandson were dead and Louis XIV decided this was God’s
punishment because he’d been such a lousy Louis. Louis’s five-year-
old great-grandson took the throne. Guess what he was called?
That’s right…

Louis XV (1710–1774)
What a lazy Louis he turned out to be. He let ministers like Cardinal
Fleury run the country. When Fleury died Louis decided to take
over. Who told him how to rule? His girlfriends, Madame de
Pompadour and Madame du Barry.

102
No wonder Robert Damiens (known as ‘Robert the Devil.’) tried to
assassinate him. In 1757 Robert the Devil was caught and sentenced
to death.
The mob may have felt a bit sorry for King Louis … but the
punishment of Robert was so vicious they felt sorry for Robert the
Devil instead.

Big mistake, Louis.

Louis XVI (1754–1793)

Another Louis – the grandson of the last one. This was the king who
finally got the chop. What was so wrong with lousy little Louis XVI?
Louis never really wanted to be king. He was shy, clumsy … and
silly as a big daft kid!

103
Why not try these jolly games at school? See how much detention you
can get for each one!

But France wasn’t happy with its silly king. Between 1788 and 1793
there were nearly 5,000 acts of rebellion in France … and then Louis
lost his head on the guillotine.

Louis everywhere
England stopped having Henries when they got to Henry VIII and
Edwards when they got to Edward VIII. But France loved the name
Louis and they kept going past eight – the Louis who lost his head in
the Revolution was number 16 … and when they brought kings back

104
for a while in the early 1800s they went up to Louis XVIII. What was
the matter with these people? Couldn’t they think of a new name? Or
were they just too lazy? Anyway, the days of the new Louis kings
were just as horrible as the old ones.

105
Quirky queens and wicked women
France had some crazy kings and some cruel kings in its history. But
those miserable monarchs also had some weird and wacky women to
share their thrones and their lives … quirky queens and wicked
women.

Jeanne of Burgundy (1294–1322)

Philip V’s wife was a wicked lady. Before Philip became king she was
spied having a bit of a party with two sisters-in-law and three fellers.
The fellers were murdered and one of her sisters-in-law was
suffocated between two mattresses.
But Philip forgave Jeanne and the happy couple went on to become
king and queen.
Philip died and Jeanne moved to the Tower of Nesle – the tower
where she’d been spied on – and went on with her naughty ways. For
another seven years it was said that Jeanne…
• Spotted men walking past and invited them up to her tower.
• After a kiss and a cuddle she tied them up in a sack and had them
lowered to drown in the river below.
The tower was known as the Screaming Tower and was finally
knocked down in 1665.

106
Marie de Medici (1573–1643)
This French queen wore the dearest dress in the history of the
world. It had 3,000 diamonds and 39,000 pearls on it. The dress
would cost you ten million pounds today.
She wore it just once. And the peasants starved.

Marie Louise of Orléans (1695–1719)

Marie Louise has been seen as a fat figure of fun. In fact she
probably suffered an eating disorder, bulimia. Her tragic story is not
a pretty one…

107
108
The Duke of Saint-Simon said:

109
Marie Louise’s dad died four years later.

Marie Antoinette (1755–1793)

A fortune-teller read Marie Antoinette’s horoscope when she was
born. He said her life would be a disaster. A birth party for the baby
Marie was cancelled. That fortune-teller knew what he was talking
about.
Marie Antoinette grew up and married Louis XVI. Bad move. She
was Austrian, yet she became the most famous victim of the French
Revolution when her head hit the basket.
The peasants hated her. She stood for everything bad about the
nobles who ruled France. Was she as bad as all that? Test your
teacher with this quick quiz. Of course, if they score less than seven
out of six, they lose their heads…

True or false…?
1 Marie Antoinette was born Maria Antonia. (That’s true.) She had
six sisters: Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria … and Maria.

110
2 A young man asked Marie to marry him when they were both very
young. (That’s true.) He grew up to be the famous composer Mozart.
3 When Marie Antoinette arrived in France for her wedding she had
to take all her clothes off and be examined to see if she was good
enough for husband Louis.
4 Marie arrived in France in 1770 and it took the French 23 years to
hack her head off. (That’s true.) But the people of Paris hated her
from the start.
5 Marie had a friend, Madame de Guéméne, who always had her dogs
with her. (That’s true.) Madame de Guéméne’s dogs helped her to
speak to spirits of dead people.
6 When the Revolution came Marie Antoinette worried that someone
might break into her room and try to kill her. (That’s true.) As a
burglar alarm she kept a budgie by her bedside.

Answers:
1 True. All the girls in her family were christened with the first
name Maria. Their mother was Maria Theresa. Very confusing
except when it came to dinner time and their nurse called,

111
‘Dinner, Maria.’ When Maria Antonia moved to France to be
Queen the French changed her names to the French ‘Marie’ and
‘Antoinette’.
2 True. At least that’s the story Mozart’s dad told. Little
Wolfgang Mozart slipped on his musical backside at a court
concert. Little Marie Antoinette rushed over, helped him to his
little musical feet and kissed him. The boy said, ‘I am so grateful I
will marry you, if you want.’ It may have been better for her neck
if she’d accepted. Then she married her brother! Louis XVI
didn’t come from France for the wedding – Marie Antoinette’s
brother took the bridegroom’s place and instead of saying ‘I do,’
said ‘Louis does.’
3 False … but that’s what several historians have written. Don’t
believe everything you read.
4 False. When Marie Antoinette went into Paris she was mobbed
by adoring French people. They broke through police barriers
and Marie and hubby Louis couldn’t move for three-quarters of
an hour. It took a very special sort of woman to turn all that love
into murdering hate.
5 True. At least that’s what she said. What were they? Spectre
spaniels? Ghostie greyhounds? Poltergeist pugs?

6 False. She kept a little dog under her bed. Of course people in
those days also kept a potty under the bed in case they needed a
pee in the middle of the night. Let’s hope Marie didn’t get the
potty mixed up with the dog’s water-bowl in the dark!

112
Madame Roland
Madame Roland hated Marie Antoinette, and was one of the few
women with influence after the 1789 revolution, through her
husband a minister of the new Republic. She said…

Charming. She wrote…

In 1793 her perfect white teeth bit the basket when she went to the
guillotine. Wonder if she was wearing her sweetest smile?

Did you know…?

In 1774 Miss Bertin of Paris had a fashion shop and she came up with
a new idea for women’s heads … ‘poufs’. These were stiff net things
built on top of the head and then decorated. Some were decorated
with flowers.
But there were also some other very strange sights that posh Paris
women carried on their heads. Can you spot the odd one out?

113
Answer: 5 is the odd one out. There is no record of Miss Bertin
making a football scene in a pouf. But all the rest are true. Queen
Marie Antoinette had 1, 2 and 3 all together on her head at the
same time.

114
Savage seventeenth century
This was the age when the kings of France were really rich and
started to see themselves as perfect – if the king said jump you didn’t
argue, you just asked, ‘How high?’

Some things didn’t change. Wars? Rebellions? That’s right…

1618 Remember the Hundred Years War? Now the Thirty Years
War starts in Germany. France will join in later. They don’t believe
in short sharp scraps these French, do they?

1630s Now the French decide to fight Austria. This will cost lots of
money to pay their armies. So Ministers Cardinal Richelieu and
Mazarin tax the peasants. Taxes treble by 1648 – and the peasants
have riots and rebellions. (Surprised?)

1661 Louis XIV (the Sun King) takes the throne – he’s there to stay a
l-o-n-g time. He will build the glorious (but expensive) palace of
Versailles. He will also go to war against the Brits (again) and try to
grab new lands for France around the world. He wants a French
Empire.

115
1690 Terrible famines in Northern France. Starving peasants, as
usual.

Rotten Richelieu (1585–1642)

During the 1600s, the idea of France as a single country under a
single king became really strong. One man ruthlessly plotted to make
sure it became a reality. That man was Cardinal Armand Jean du
Plessis de Richelieu.
Richelieu was a top Catholic bishop – a ‘cardinal’ – but that didn’t
stop him becoming a top minister to Louis XIII (the lovely Louis who
had his mum’s boyfriend murdered).
Richelieu was as ruthless as Louis. They made a good pair. The
Cardinal had this idea that a king should have total power over his
people. Louis liked that – but no one asked the people what they
thought of the idea.
Richelieu also thought it was a good idea to go to war with most of
the rest of Europe. That was an expensive business so he raised taxes
that the peasants had to pay. They revolted. They hated the ‘Salt
Tax’ and in 1639 they had…

The Barefoot rebellion

The ‘Barefoot’ rebellion started in the salt marshes of Avranches
where people worked in bare feet making salt at the edge of the sea
(it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford shoes). Many of the people who
joined the rebels were priests, army officers and even a few nobles.
For once the farming peasants didn’t give the rebs much support.
So what do you do when a tax collector calls? Easy. In 1639 the
‘Barefoot’ rebels had the answer…

116
That must be one of the oddest rebellion cries of all time.
The King left Cardinal Richelieu to sort out the peasants. End of
rebellion.

Did you know…?

Richelieu probably had lessons in ruthlessness from his deadly dad…
It all started when Uncle Richelieu was murdered by a neighbour
in 1565. Daddy Richelieu set out for revenge. As the murderer
crossed a stream Daddy Richelieu rolled a huge cartwheel at him and
knocked him off his horse. Before he could get up Daddy Richelieu
had butchered him in the stream.
Twenty years later Cardinal Richelieu was born. You can imagine
what he learnt at Daddy’s knee…

117
Musketeer Mystery
Richelieu’s days were made famous in the book ‘The Three
Musketeers’. Musketeers were soldiers armed with musket guns but
also pretty handy with their swords. Richelieu used them to do his
dirty work.
Brief pause for an ancient historical joke…

When France was being invaded by Spain in 1641, the leader of

the invaders, Soissons, was hunted down and shot by one of
Richelieu’s musketeers … it is said.
But there is another story about the death of Soissons. Soissons
wore a helmet with a face guard. It was his habit to push up the face
guard with his pistol. In his last battle he pushed up the guard with a
loaded pistol – the pistol went off and blew his head open.

118
Pointless plot
On 12 September 1642 the Marquis of Cinq-Mars was beheaded. His
crime? He had plotted with his friend, de Thou, to assassinate
Cardinal Richelieu.
The execution was very entertaining. A witness may have
described it like this…

119
120
When Cinq-Mars had been executed Richelieu wrote to the King
and said he wanted even more power. The King said, ‘Yes.’
Richelieu was happy. Dead happy. A fortnight later Richelieu was
simply dead. (Just a chest infection, not murder.)

121
 What a shame for Cinq-Mars though. He plotted to kill Richelieu
and was executed – if he’d waited just three months the Cardinal
would have been dead anyway.
People lit bonfires to celebrate the death of the cruel and crafty
Cardinal. And, another six months later, King Louis XIII had died
too.

Pointy poet
One of Richelieu’s strongest beliefs was that duelling was wrong – as
it was murder – and had to be banned.
Between 1601 and 1609 there were 2,000 French noblemen killed
in duels.

One of the fittest and fastest fighters was the poet, Cyrano de
Bergerac.
Cyrano had a big nose – a huge nose – a nose that would have
looked right on Pinocchio. If anyone poked fun at the nose (or
Pinocched fun at it) then Cyrano challenged them to a sword fight.
He won over 1,000 duels. At his peak he was slicing, slashing and
stabbing four opponents every week.

122
Richelieu passed a law banning duels in 1626. The punishment was
death. The posh men were the ones who enjoyed a good duel most.
One lord, Bouteville, decided to ignore the law and was caught.
‘They won’t dare execute me,’ he thought.
He was beheaded. It was Bouteville’s last duel – between the
executioner’s axe and his neck. Bouteville’s neck lost.

123
Awful for animals
Humans have always been cruel to creatures, foul to fish, brutal to
birds, rotten to reptiles and savage to sheep, sows, starlings, sardines
and sausage dogs. You can bet they’d even have been deadly to
dinosaurs if they’d been around. So it’s no surprise to find the
French were foul to their four-legged and feathered friends.

1 Blackbird blood Have you heard the nursery rhyme:

A dainty dish lots of lords and ladies enjoyed. A crust was baked and
songbirds popped underneath just before it was served. Good
harmless fun. Unless the king was a French one in the Middle Ages.
The French had an idea that was even more fun – they sent hawks to
perch on the roof beams. When the birds flew out the hawks
swooped down and destroyed them.

2 Suffering swans In the Middle Ages the French had a sport for
July and August each year – swan catching. This was a chance for
everyone, from the nobles and the churchmen to the peasants, to join
together in tormenting young swans.

124
 It was important that you went after swans that were too young to
fly … after all, you wouldn’t want them to have a chance to get away.
This is what you do…

125
Fun? At other times, swans were killed and eaten. Their bodies were
roasted then dressed in their feathers again. The beak and legs were
stuck back on and covered in gold. The cooked bird was then placed
on a river-bank scene made of sugar and painted pastry. This was
placed on the dinner table for guests to admire … then eat.

3 Slaughtered squirrels Animals were killed for their fur – they

still are. But in the Middle Ages cute little squirrels were massacred
in their millions to make posh folk’s clothes.
Blanche de Bourbon went off to marry the Spanish king Pedro the
Cruel in clothes made from the skins of 11,794 dead squirrels. Of
course the squirrels would be pleased to know that her husband
Pedro the Cruel was very … cruel. Blanche and Pedro married in
1353, but Pedro fancied Maria de Padilla and he left Blanche soon
after the marriage. Blanche was upset, but at least she had 11,794
dead squirrels to cheer her up.

4 Dreadful for dogs In the 1370s the villainous Charles of Navarre

had an argument with the Count of Foix about some money. Charles
gave the Count’s son a bag of powder. ‘Feed this magic powder to
your father and we’ll be friends again.’ The Count of Foix found the
powder and fed it to his dogs instead. The dogs howled in agony and
died. Of course the powder was poison … and of course the dogs
were innocent. (The son was also innocent, of course, but he died
horribly too. His father found the boy cleaning his nails with a knife.
He grabbed him angrily, the knife slipped, the boy cut his own throat

126
and died.)
Some dogs were luckier – Henry III used to carry a basket of small
doggy pets with him. They were hung around his neck.

5 Poor pigs In Dijon, in the Middle Ages, pigs wandered the streets
looking for scraps of food. It was a hard life and they were tough pigs
who learned to fight and bite for everything.
One pig ate a young child. The pig was put on trial for murder and
was found guilty. Murderers in France were hanged – so they hanged
the pig.

In 1740 a cow was hanged. Her crime? She was found guilty of
being a witch.

127
6 Itchy insects Insects are often pests, of course, so people came up
with jolly ways of getting rid of them. Goodman of Paris advised his
wife…

He also suggested spreading a white woollen blanket on the floor.

Fleas would be caught in the rough hairs and, because fleas are black
and the wool is white, you can see the little pests and squash them.

Then there was his advice for trapping flies…

128
 He had one last piece of good advice. If the fly trap didn’t work …
swat them.

7 Big sad wolf When wolves started to roam through Paris in 1439
they weren’t so keen on the sheep or cows – they went for the
shepherds. In November the biggest and most vicious wolf was
finally killed. Its body was put in a wheelbarrow and the killers trund
led it around Paris. They opened its jaws to show the fierce teeth and
scare the kids. They also collected ten francs as a reward for their
killing.

French kings hunted foxes for fun. But wimpy Henry IV didn’t
like getting wet. He had trees, grass and rocks brought into the
palace, then a fox was set free and they hunted indoors.

8 Fat falcons It wasn’t all bad news for animals and birds. Half a

129
mile outside the walls of Paris was Montfaucon – or ‘Falcon Hill’.
How did it get its name? Because it was a popular place with falcons?
They found lots of food there?
Yes, and no. The kind peasants of Paris didn’t feed them tasty
treats. The falcons ate the dead criminals who were executed there,
or who were dumped there after being executed somewhere else, and
left to rot.
Montfaucon was a mound five metres high and 10 x 12 metres in
size. It had a platform in the middle and a 10-metre-high stone pillar
at each corner. Beams of wood joined the four pillars and there was
enough room to hang 60 people at a time.
There was a pit in the middle of the platform for the corpses. It
was covered with a metal grating to stop the bones being stolen – but
wide enough to let in the feasting falcons. Other bits of chopped or
boiled bodies were hung there in wicker baskets for the people of
Paris to peer at.
One criminal, Pierre des Essarts, was beheaded in 1413 but his
body wasn’t sent to his family for three years. There wasn’t a lot left
for them to bury by 1416.

9 Sad horses’ tales In the 1600s and 1700s there were thousands of
French people wandering the countryside, looking for work. As they
drifted they often stopped to pinch chickens from farmyards,
washing that was spread on hedges to dry, or milk from cows in the
fields.
Sometimes they also sneaked up on horses and lopped off their
tails. The horses had nothing to swish away flies.

130
 What a rotten thing to do to a horse. Why on earth would they do
that?
a) to knit the horse hair into a nice pair of socks
b) to sell to furniture makers for stuffing chairs
c) they were jealous of rich people who owned smart horses.

Answer: b) At least it didn’t hurt the horse. Some of these

travelling peasants also chopped themselves. They wanted to look
like old war heroes when food and money was given out to
soldiers.

10 Cruel for cats In the 1730s young Nicolas Contat was learning to
be a printer in a Paris printer’s shop. It was a miserable life living
above the shop, with poor food and his sleep disturbed by howling
alley cats.
Nicolas and his friends decided to get their own back on their
lazy, bullying boss. They crawled into the roof and gave him a sample
of what they suffered – they howled like cats and stopped him getting
to sleep. At last the boss’s wife said, ‘Do anything but get rid of the
cats around here – except for my lovely Big Grey, of course.’
The first thing Nicolas and his friends did was kill Big Grey, who
used to get better food than they did. Then they captured as many
cats as they could and brought them into the printer’s yard. The cats
were given a trial by the boys, found guilty … and hanged.

When the boss’s wife saw the cats hanging in her yard she

131
screamed for an hour. And the boys just laughed. Years later Nicolas
Contat remembered the cat massacre as the happiest of his days in
Paris!
It was a cruel world in those days but especially if you were a cat.
Many holiday events used cruelty to cats as entertainment. They
were…
• Set on fire and chased through the streets.
• Tied to a stake and burned like a witch.
• Tormented so their yowls made a hideous music.
• Put on top of a bonfire, a dozen in a basket.
• Bricked up (alive) into the walls of a new house for luck.

132
Evil eighteenth century
This was it. The big one. The century when all those practice
revolutions finally paid off. Probably the most revolting century of
all…

1729 The French are claiming a lot of land in America – Louisiana.

Like the Brits they haven’t asked the Native Americans. But when
the French try to make Natchez Indians give up holy graveyards the
Natchez massacre 300 French settlers. The French take revenge and
the Natchez are almost wiped out by 1731.

1756 The Seven Years War starts. It’s really all about who gets the
wealth from the rich new lands in America. Will it be Britain or
France? France loses almost all her lands in America and Canada.
The French aren’t happy so…

1775 France helps the American people to rebel – against their

British rulers. America wins. Happy French! But France has taught
her peasants an important lesson: revolution can succeed and you can
get rid of your kings. So…

133
1789 The French Revolution begins. There have been poor harvests
and starving peasants. This time the peasants will finally win a
revolution. You can’t say they don’t deserve it after all those
attempts.

1793 The French chop off their king’s head – an idea they pinched
from the English who did it 150 years before. But the French do a
better job, because they also guillotine the Queen, many of the posh
people (aristocrats) and anyone else who wants to pick a fight. This is
‘The Terror’ and it goes on for two years. Heads fall like raindrops.

1799 The French are fighting nearly everybody in the world. A great
general steps forward and leads them to victory. He is Napoleon
Bonaparte. The French are so grateful they will make him their
Emperor … which is a bit like a king, really. Oh, dear. After finally
getting rid of their monarchs what do they end up with a few years

134
later? A monarch.

Revolutionary rottenness
In 1789 the French peasants were starving – again. An Englishman,
Arthur Young, visited France and was shocked…

The English writer, Tobias Smollett, had described the peasants a

few years earlier…

The taxes were high. Poor peasants tried to farm their own land
then go out to work for the rich farmers to make extra money. They
had to do two jobs just to scrape a miserable living.

135
 One unfair tax was collected for the local lord’s pigeons – the
peasants had to give their corn to feed them. (This is a bit like every
pupil in a class having to give teacher a litre of petrol so he can drive
his Rolls Royce to school while they walk. Now that would cause a
revolution!)
King Louis wasn’t too popular and the rebels really hated Queen
Marie Antoinette because she seemed to spend a fortune while they
starved.
What do French kings do when the peasants rebel? Send in the
soldiers. But this time something odd happened.
King Louis XVI kept a diary. On the day the trouble started he
wrote just one word…

How wrong could one king be?

If the French Revolution had kept a diary it might have looked
something like this…

Diary of a revolution

136
137
138
139
140
141
142
The great escape
The imprisoned King and Queen needed a way out. King Louis
hatched a plan:

But the kings of Europe didn’t want to help – except for potty King
Gustav of Sweden.
Of course, running off and getting foreign armies to fight the
French people would upset the French people. Can you blame them?
It was ‘treason’. And the punishment for treason was death.
And, anyway, the plan to escape was a disaster. If the Paris people
had had a popular newspaper in those days the story would have made
front-page headlines…

143
144
145
The journey back to Paris was grim. The peasants had really turned
against the royal family now. They spat at the King and tore the
Queen’s clothes. Furious gangs jumped on the carriage, wild women
swore at the royal family.
But Paris was curiously calm. Messages were scrawled on the
walls of the city…

146
King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were driven through the
dusty Paris streets in an eerie silence.

Rescuing the royals

Louis and Marie Antoinette had failed in their escape plan, but all
wasn’t lost … they thought. If Marie’s nephew, the new Emperor of
Austria, invaded France then the Austrians would set her free.
The trouble was the Austrians sent a message to the French
people which was a bit violent. It more or less said…

Of course the people of Paris read this and said…

147
The posh people of Paris gathered at Louis and Marie’s Palace.
Three hundred arrived to defend him. Some were armed with swords
but others were only armed with shovels. Some just brought pokers
and tongs from the fireside, but all were ready to die defending their
king. Brave? Or just stupid?

The King surrendered to the Assembly and told his guard to

surrender or they would be massacred. His 500 guards put down
their weapons … and the revolutionaries massacred them anyway.
(That’s cheating.)

A horrible rampage of murdering followed…

• The mob rushed into the Palace and killed everyone they found –
even maidservants.
• Some servants and nobles ran into the gardens and climbed the
statues. The mob didn’t fire muskets in case they damaged the

148
 statues. They hacked down the victims with pikes then stabbed
them.
• Some very young boys were found playing football in the Palace
garden … with human heads.
King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were thrown in prison –
which is a little bit better than being massacred.

Did you know…?

The French Revolution wasn’t good for the leaders of the French
Army. During the war with Austria the Duke de Biron ordered,
‘Charge the enemy with your bayonets!’
His soldiers replied, ‘Hang on! We are free and equal. We’ll have
a vote.’ They voted, ‘Non! We don’t want to.’
No wonder the war went badly.

The bloody royal end

The King and Queen were in prison. They thought they still might
be rescued by the invading Austrians and that kept their hopes high.
But once the blood began to flow there was only going to be one end.
A bloody one.

1 By 3 September 1792 the war was going badly. The French were
losing. They couldn’t kill the Austrian invaders … so they started
killing off the French people they didn’t trust. As revolutionary
leader Marat said…

Blood of the posh people was top of the list, of course.

149
 One of the Queen’s friends met a nasty end. The royal family were
sitting down to dinner in their prison when they heard a racket.
Guards and common people burst into the room…

The royals looked out anyway. Some people were waving a pole at the
window. On the pole was a head. Its long fair hair was caked with
blood and waved in the wind. They recognized it. Marie Antoinette
cried as she fainted…

The unlucky princess had been beheaded. Her body was dragged
through the streets while the head was perched on a pole. Her heart
had been ripped out and waved on the end of a sword.
2 Louis XVI was executed on 20 January 1793. He died horribly. He
was laid face down on the guillotine and the executioner, Sanson,
pulled the rope.
The blade fell.
The King screamed. His neck was so fat the blade failed to slice it
off first time. It came off at a second attempt.
A young guard, about 18 years old, picked up the head for the
crowd to see. ‘Long live the Revolution!’ they cried. They rushed
forward to dip handkerchiefs in the blood.

150
3 In October 1793 Marie Antoinette was given a joke trial – everyone
knew they were going to sentence her to death. The Queen went to
her death quite bravely, but her guards didn’t treat her too kindly…
• They arrived in her cell and insisted on tying her hands behind her
back. ‘The King didn’t have his hands tied when you executed him!’
she argued. They tied her anyway. They then had to untie her again
so she could have a pee.
• They chopped her hair so it wouldn’t get in the way of the
guillotine.
• She was put into a cart and led through the streets of Paris.
• She was tied to the end of a rope and the executioner held the other
end.
• The guillotine was supposed to be quick – a couple of people a
minute could be chopped. Yet it took them four long, fear-filled
minutes to prepare Marie Antoinette.
• As she stepped on to the platform she trod on the foot of the
exeutioner and the wimpy man cried out in pain. So Marie
Antoinette’s famous last words were…

151
• The executioner removed her white cap. It showed that she was
almost bald. The crowd laughed and jeered at her.
• The blade came down, the head fell. A revolutionary picked up the
head and waved it at the cheering crowd.

The Terror – 1792

There was no real law and order by autumn 1792. Gangs of
revolutionaries set up their own courts, tried people and had them
butchered. These ‘legal’ bloodbaths became known as ‘terrors’. Here
are some of the most horrible happenings in the September 1792
massacres, when mobs broke into the prisons and killed the
prisoners…
1 Priests who failed to help the Revolution were cut down with
swords. A prisoner watched the killing and reported:

152
2 A prisoner tried to escape up a chimney. The judge told the
jailer…

When the shots failed they lit a straw fire in the hearth. The choking
prisoner fell down and was killed.
3 Women helped to load the bodies on to carts so they could be taken
away to be buried. They often took breaks to dance on the blood-
soaked ground. Many of them sliced off the ears of bodies and pinned
them to their aprons.
4 Not many of the victims were noblemen. Most were just common
thieves and beggars. Twelve hundred people died in the autumn of
1792 – and 37 of them were women. There were less than 200
executioners doing the dirty work.
5 One executioner cut out the heart of a nobleman and squeezed the
blood into a wine glass. He told a girl, ‘Drink this or your father in
prison will die.’ What would you do if someone offered you that
threat? What did she do?

Answer: She drank it.

6 The executioners were mainly ordinary people like shop-keepers.

They executed people then they took their bloody axes back to their

153
shops and hung them up so everyone could see what good
revolutionaries they were.
A few years later the massacres of September 1792 started to
disgust most French people. The executioners came up with another
story…

Meanwhile the Minister of Justice, Georges Jacques Danton,

shrugged and said…

You may be pleased to know that, two years later, deadly Danton
became a prisoner and went for a guillotine chop.

The Terror – 1793

In October 1793 a new Terror began when one lot of revolutionaries
(the Jacobins) began to execute another lot of revolutionaries (the
Girondins).
The choppers were chopped. Here are five foul headlines about
the Terror … only the key words are missing. Can you fill them in?

154
Missing words are: husband, name, dance, pair of corpses, rubbish
tip.

Answers:
1 Rubbish tip. The guillotine was taken to pieces and carried to a
Paris rubbish tip for Bailly’s execution. That’s how much the
people hated their old mayor.
2 Dance. A girl who danced with an enemy soldier was beheaded
for the ‘crime’.
3 Name. A woman was arrested and taken to court. ‘Yes, that is
my name, but I am not the woman you want. You want a woman
with the same name in the next street.’ The judge just said, ‘We
have you here so we’ll try you instead.’ She was executed.
4 Pair of corpses. At Nantes the guillotine was too slow. So
executioners chained prisoners together, put them in barges, and
sank them in the River Loire. Sometimes sailing ships that put
down anchors would pull up the anchor with bodies hooked on
them.

155
 5 Husband. A woman cried when she saw her husband executed.
Her punishment was to die by beheading. But for a couple of
hours she had to lie on the guillotine while her husband’s
headless body was allowed to drip blood over her. Then the blade
put her out of her misery. Nasty.

The gruesome guillotine

The secret of speedy slicing was a machine that could kill kings
cleanly and queens quickly, and lop lords and ladies like lightning.
The guillotine.

Foul guillotine facts

1 The first French guillotine was built by Dr Joseph Guillotin … but
he had advice on how to build it. Who advised him? King Louis XVI.
Imagine that. What must he have been thinking as he laid his head on
the machine?

2 Chopping French aristo heads started before the guillotines were

built. The first day of the Revolution was 14 July 1789. On that day
one nobleman, the Marquis of Launay, the governor of the Bastille,
was caught by a Paris mob who cut off his head with a knife. His
followers suffered the same charming chopping and their heads were
paraded around Paris. The guillotine didn’t replace the knife for
another three years.
3 The guillotine is a famous machine of the French Revolution … but
head-chopping machines had been invented 200 years before. One
was used in Halifax, northern England, to execute cattle thieves and
one was used in Scotland when the Earl of Morton was executed on it

156
in 1581. The Scots called it ‘The Maiden’. Dr Guillotin pinched the
English and Scottish idea.
4 The guillotine was quick, and good executioners could get through
two victims a minute. Not easy.
5 The head shooting off from the guillotine became known as
‘sneezing into the basket’. Atch-ouch. The guillotine itself was
known as what?
a) The Red Theatre?
b) The People’s Avenger?
c) The National Razor?

Answer: All three.

6 The guillotine was tested first on live sheep and calves, then on
dead bodies. Finally it was tried out on a live highwayman called
Pelletier. Crowds turned out on 25 April 1792 to watch his
execution. They went away grumbling, ‘It was all over so quickly. It
was no fun at all.’ They marched off singing…

7 The French Revolution Terror from 1792 to 1794 sliced lots of

heads off in two years – but the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in
1572 killed more in one DAY.
8 One woman made a living by making wax masks from the dead heads
in the guillotine basket. Her name was Madame Tussaud. Nice job.

157
9 Dr Guillotin invented the guillotine because he was such a kind
man! He didn’t want criminals to suffer. He said all they’d feel
would be a tickle at the back of the neck. Oh yeah? Care to try it and
prove it? One victim who felt nothing was called Valaze. He stabbed
himself to death in court in 1793 – but the judge said his corpse had
to be guillotined anyway.
10 Some French doctors took a front seat at the executions to test if
the head lived on after the chop. When the head fell they called out
the victim’s name. One reported…

That’s nonsense (you’ll be pleased to know if you are ever sent to

the guillotine).

Happy ending 1?
It’s said Dr Guillotin’s cousin, also called Guillotin, helped him to
design the killing machine. But then he had to watch as the woman he
loved lost her head on their invention. Cousin Guillotin turned
against the executioners and worked for their enemies – the people
who wanted a King of France again. This was treason – Cousin
Guillotin was arrested and executed. How? With the guillotine, of
course.

158
Happy ending 2?
France’s chief guillotine executioner was Charles-Henri Sanson. He
was good at his job and once executed 300 men and women in three
days. He wasn’t keen on executing women and he did not enjoy
executing King Louis XVI – but he didn’t dare refuse.
It was a tricky job, high up on the blood-soaked platform. One day
Charles-Henri’s son, Gabriel, was helping Dad to dead-head the
traitors. Gabriel slipped, fell off the platform and crashed to the
cobbled street below. Gabriel died. After that a fence was put up
round the guillotine platform.
The last public execution on a guillotine was in 1939.

Ratty Robespierre
The ‘Reign of Terror’ was led by a weedy little man called
Maximilien Robespierre. He led the department for ‘Public Safety’ –
that was supposed to get rid of enemies of France. Enemies who
were losing them the war. In time it started to get rid of enemies of
Robespierre.
No one was safe. In the end everyone in government was so scared
of Robespierre they ganged up on him and had him arrested with his
gang of bullies. Robespierre was signing a letter calling in the army
to kill his enemies. That’s when a man named Charles-André Merda
took a hand. He described his gallant attack on Robespierre’s lair…

159
160
Merda was a bit of a liar, but this part of the story was probably close
to the truth. Robespierre had been about to sign the order that would
set the army loose on the people of Paris. The paper has ‘Ro …’ at
the bottom and splashes of blood on it.
Robespierre’s gang had sent hundreds to the guillotine. Now it
was their bloodstained turn…
• Robespierre’s brother, Augustin, tried to escape by jumping from a
window. He broke his leg and was caught. Chop!

• Couthon fell down some stairs in his effort to get away and gashed
his forehead. He went to the guillotine bandaged. Chop!

• Hanriot was thrown out of a window – but survived because he fell

on a rubbish heap. Soldiers found him and tore out one eye which
was left hanging down his cheek. As he climbed onto the guillotine
the following evening a spectator snatched the eye off. Chop!

161
• Robespierre was patched up by a doctor so he was still alive when
he went to the guillotine. The executioner tore off the bandage and
his jaw almost fell away. A witness said, ‘He let out a groan like a
dying tiger. Everyone in the square heard it.’ It didn’t hurt for long.
Chop!
A woman screamed at Robespierre…

Over 80 of Robespierre’s supporters followed him for the chop. In

many parts of France the leaders of the Terror were executed and
the worst of the Terror was over.
Who suffered most? Surprise, surprise, the poor peasants.
• The price of bread rose and they starved. The people who had
bread made fortunes. They ate at restaurants where a meal cost as

162
 much as a peasant made in two months.
• In early 1795 freezing weather froze the rivers and wolves came
down from the hills to attack people and their animals.
• The spring thaw made the rivers flood their homes and fields.

After the Terror

Of course the peasants revolted. Not against a king now, but against
their own government. Even in tragic times like these, history has its
horribly hideous human moments.
On 20 May 1795 the poor people marched on the government.
They broke down the doors to tell their Members of Parliament what
they thought of them.
Time for a hero to step forward – and it was young Jean Féraud.
He threw himself down in front of the mob and cried…

The rebels marched to the President’s seat. Féraud dusted himself

down and rushed to the defence … again.

163
Féraud’s body was kicked out of the building and a local innkeeper
sliced off the head ‘like topping a turnip’ (a witness said). Then the
rebels stuck the head on a pike and carried it back in to show the
President.
After 1,000 years of revolution the kings had gone – but the poor
were still starving and the rebels were still as vicious as ever. That’s
what hunger and spite does to you. After 1,000 years the French
hadn’t learned a lot.

Song of a revolution
The French have the world’s best national anthem – written in 1792,
before they’d executed their King and when enemies were invading
France…

164
Great, blood-stirring stuff.
But before that was written the French peasants had their own
rebel song. This is not so well known – but just as gruesome. Next
time you lead a rebellion (against cruel school exams or crueller
school dinners) you’ll need a good song to march to. Try the French
Revolution one…

165
Little Boney

166
What did the rulers of France do when the peasants revolted? They
sent in the army, every time.
In 1795 the army was winning battles but this was a tough job. So
it was time for the government to turn to a bright young general – the
26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte.
Boney was a little bloke. He had good points and bad points…
• Good: he’d always supported the Revolution.
• Bad: he’d also supported the rotten Robespierre.
• Good: he’d fought well as a captain at Toulon against enemies of the
Revolution.
• Bad: he’d then ducked out of fighting a nasty little war in the west.
Napoleon hung round Paris, whingeing about how unfairly the
government was treating him. He was a shabby, long-haired little
figure, wandering the streets of Paris and threatening to kill himself,
when government minister Barras sent for him and said…

Boney agreed. The rebels outnumbered the government forces.

Boney had a tough job on his hands. He lined up his men and waited
for the rebel attack.
He then did something the rebels didn’t really expect – something
which would make him a great leader. He fought dirty.
On 5 October 1795 at 3pm the rebels marched towards Boney
firing their muskets – Boney’s men fired back with cannons. The
rebels were blown away. By 6pm the rebellion – and probably the
French Revolution – was over.

167
Boney boss
Napoleon was made chief of the French army in Italy. Once he
started winning, the French government couldn’t stop him going on
and on. He ended up in Egypt.
Napoleon’s army was trapped in Egypt when Britain’s Admiral
Nelson was sinking the French army ships. So Napoleon left his
army there and sneaked home alone. He was a deserter. How would
the people of Paris treat a deserter?
The French welcomed him home like a hero. The people were a
bit fed up with the government and the Revolution by then. What
they wanted was a strong leader … someone like Napoleon in fact.
On 9 November 1799 Napoleon marched into the French
Parliament with the army of Paris. The Members of Parliament ran
away. Napoleon was made leader with two other men. But five years
later he was top man. Emperor of France.
The Revolution had got rid of a king – and replaced him with an
emperor.
A little change – a lot of blood.

168
Nasty nineteenth century
The terrors of the Revolution were over but France was still a
dangerous and deadly place to live throughout the 1800s. After the
Revolution of 1789, and all the bloodshed of the Terrors and
Napoleon’s wars, France had a king again! But how long would it last?
It seemed that bits of French history were being acted out again –
and again – and again.
1814 Boney beaten. Louis XVIII (brother of chopped Louis XVI)
takes the throne.
1824 Louis XVIII died and another brother, Charles X, is king.
1830 Charlie X upsets Parliament and they force him to chuck in the
crown. But they just give the throne to another feller, Louis
Philippe. Lou-Phil upsets lots of people too but he manages to hang
on for 18 years in spite of attempts to assassinate him.

1848 Most of Europe seems to be revolting and the French aren’t

going to be left out. There are the usual food shortages so the
peasants rebel – and suffer mass execution at the hands of the
government. France decides it can get along without kings (again).
The new government is a ‘Republic’ – like the one they had in 1793
when Louis XVI got the chop. They also get themselves a President
– Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

169
1849 Louis gets rid of the Republic and makes himself
Emperor Napoleon III.

1870 Napoleon III gets into a war with Germany (the Franco-
Prussian War) and loses it. He is forced to pack his bags (and crown)
and go. The people of Paris rise up against their own Republican
government. They call themselves ‘Communards’ and surprise,
surprise, they are massacred by the army.

Boney’s war
Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of France in 1804. And

170
Napoleon picked fights with everyone else in Europe. Yep – another
l-o-n-g war.

Wars cost money. France had a huge amount of land in America that
stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rockies. In 1803
Napoleon sold it to the United States for 15 million dollars. (No one
bothered to ask the Native Americans who lived there, of course.)
Now Napoleon could have some really good battles…

171
Nobbling Napoleon
But did Napoleon die saying something more exciting? Something
like…

172
…because that’s what most historians now believe. A newspaper
report of 2001 summed it up…

There are many people today who admire French dictator Napoleon
and they believe he was murdered. But they don’t believe he was
killed by his English captors on the island of St Helena. Amazingly
the fans of Napoleon think the ex-Emperor was murdered by his
French countrymen.
They believe he was murdered slowly with arsenic poisoning.
There are 31 signs of arsenic poison and in the last four years his life
Napoleon suffered 28 of them, including:
• a hatred of bright light
• rib pain
• loss of hair and teeth
• vomiting and diarrhoea
• discoloured nails
• sleeping problems

The chief suspect is one of Bonaparte’s companions, the French

173
aristocrat, Charles Montholon. He had plenty of chances to slip the
Emperor the poison but why would he want to? Montholon was a
friend to Napoleon – but he was also short of money.

Montholon – murderer?
It is quite likely the French government paid Charles Montholon
to do the deed. After all, France was settling down under her new
king and they didn’t want Napoleon returning and bringing more war
and misery – that’s what he’d done when he escaped from the island
of Elba back in 1815.
Another historian believes Montholon only wanted to make
Napoleon a bit sick so they would both be sent back to France.
Whatever the reason, one thing seems certain. Napoleon had
arsenic in his body when he died. Recent USA tests on a lock of the
Emperor’s hair prove that.
So the mighty ruler of Europe was murdered. Whodunit? We can
never be certain, but the finger of suspicion points at the French
royal family who didn’t want the great man to return … ever.

Nineteenth-century nonsense
Here are a few fascinating facts for you to bring up at the school
dinner table – and some of them may make your mates bring up their
school dinners! Entertain everyone and become the most popular
person at lunch – just turn to the person next to you and say: ‘It’s
strange, but true…’

174
The three men were accused of plotting against Louis XVIII, the
‘father’ of the French people. And the punishment for attacking a
father was to have a hand cut off. So the men had a hand chopped and
then were taken to the guillotine to have their heads off too. Splat.

Giuseppe had been a soldier with Napoleon and he hated kings. In

July 1835 he decided to assassinate King Louis Philippe. He rigged
up 25 guns to fire together when he pulled the string. That way he
could kill the King and his sons as they walked down the street.
He missed King Lou-Phil and the sons but killed 18 other people
including a girl of 12. He was executed … with just a single
guillotine chop. Splat.

In 1840 Louis tried to copy Uncle Napoleon Bonaparte and landed

with a small force. He expected the rest of the French to join him.
They didn’t have time. His little army was nearly drowned in the
Boulogne surf as they tried to land. He was rescued by the Boulogne
soldiers – who arrested him. The invasion lasted three hours and 20
minutes. And the vulture? The sign of Napoleon was an eagle – but
Louis Nap couldn’t get his hands on one so he took a vulture in a cage

175
instead. In France Louis was caged – but not executed. No splat.

In 1858 Felice Orsini (an Italian) threw a bomb at Napoleon III as the
Emperor drove to the opera. Napoleon survived but eight people in
the street died and another 100 were injured. Felice’s friends in
London made the bomb for him. The French were a bit upset with
the British after this. Felice was executed, of course. Splat.

A 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, said…

It was a miracle and pilgrims began going to her town of Lourdes to

see for themselves. And today they’re still going to find a miracle
cure for sickness. They paddle in the water in the cave. Splash.

The Communard rebels of 1871 weren’t very clear about what they

176
wanted. But they did know they wanted so many public toilets in
Paris that no one would ever have to pee in the Paris streets again.
Splash.

In 1894 Santo Caserio walked up to President Sadi-Carnot with a

bunch of flowers. The President’s guards let Santo through and the
killer draw a knife and stab the President. Caserio chopped. Splat!

Paris shops in the nineteenth century sold small pistols that fired
perfume when you pulled the trigger. A bit like a water pistol today
only more smelly. Splash.

177
In 1870 Germany invaded France and surrounded Paris. The people
in the trapped city starved and had to eat cats and dogs and rats. In
the end they went to Paris zoo, killed the elephant and ate it.
Probably made it into jumbo-burgers. Splat.

And it’s still there today. The ‘giant black factory chimney’ is the
Eiffel Tower, of course. The 289-metre tower 3 was built in 1889 for
the 100th birthday of the Revolution so people would remember the
great event.

178
179
Epilogue
The days of blood spilling on French fields wasn’t over, of course. In
the twentieth century France was at the bleeding heart of two
dreadful world wars. But that’s another story for another book.
The French Revolution was one of the great events in history.
Ordinary people changed their world. Of course it took 1,000 years of
misery and practising in smaller revolts to stir them into real action.
But the peasants rebelled and wiped out so many lords and ladies that
they got rid of them for years and years.
As an American rebel, Thomas Jefferson, said,

(Of course Jefferson went on to become the third US president. Did

he change his mind about shedding blood of leaders when he became
one? Probably.)
He also said…

And he may be right. The French had lots of ‘little rebellions’

through their history – but nothing much changed for the better for
the poor people until 1789. So sometimes people commit vicious and
bloody acts to win their freedom. Heads were chopped, and chopping
a head is a brutal business. And sometimes it wasn’t left to soldiers
or executioners to give the final chop…
When the people of Paris captured the Bastille prison on 14 July
1789 they took the governor prisoner. It wasn’t a butcher who cut off
the governor’s hated head – it was a cook. And it wasn’t as quick and
clean as a guillotine. The whole happening was messy. A mob of
people – including a boy just eight years old – took the governor of
the Bastille alive. But…

180
History is made up of messy scuffles like that. A murder caused by a
cook’s kick. How angry do you have to be to do that? The French
people had 1,000 years of anger bubbling away inside their boiling
blood. The anger exploded in their Revolution and they changed
their world.

181
Eighty years after the 1789 Revolution the people rose up again –
against their own government. And after that 1871 Communard
Revolution the rebels were crushed with floods of blood and masses
of cruelty. The days of watering the tree of liberty with blood were
over.
The French have got rid of their kings and queens and emperors
for good and put the guillotines away in museums. Hopefully they’ll
never have to get them out again.

182
1 Robber bands roamed the roads to rob the rich. These are not to be confused with rubber
bands that are only useful at flicking at teachers.

183
2 Yes, I know, teachers say they aren’t filthy rich, but those shabby clothes are just a
disguise to fool you.

184
3 Other books tend to disag ree over the recorded height of the tower, but the figure 289
was meant to refer to the date of the Revolution in 1789.

185
 Scholastic Children’s Books,
Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street,
London, NW1 1DB, UK

A division of Scholastic Ltd

London ~ New York ~ Toronto ~ Sydney ~ Auckland
Mexico City ~ New Delhi ~ Hong Kong

First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2002

This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2013

Text © Terry Deary, 2002

Illustrations © Martin Brown, 2002

eISBN 978 1407 13716 2

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees,
you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-
screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether
electronic, mechanical or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented, without the express prior written permission
of Scholastic Limited.

Produced in the India by Quadrum

The right of Terry Deary and Martin Brown to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has
been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

www.scholastic.co.uk/zone

186