Showing posts with label Flanders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flanders. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Flanders 1793: A Tale of Two Diaries

By Dominic Fielder
‘Somewhere there was a fault.’
The British campaign in Flanders, between 1793 and 1795, feels like an often-overlooked footnote in British military history. A disaster, that if we somehow look away, will be neatly swept under a rug, and we can return to the familiar narrative of a series of coalitions against France until the victory of Waterloo. Fortescue’s British Campaigns in Flanders is still the seminal work for understanding this campaign and sets the two diaries in context. The anonymous writer known as ‘Officer of the Guard’, was a member of the Duke of York’s staff and is a mixture of beautiful verse and pithy prose. Robert Brown’s account as corporal in the Coldstream Guards, is observant of the everyday. A shared war from very different social strata. 

Terra Firma at length, thank my stars! We have gain’d,
And our raptures, believe me, can scarce be explain’d.
With more transport the breast of a debtor ne’er heav’d,
From straw and his fourpence per diem reliev’d,
Than ours when we shook all our friends by the hand,
As they joyfully leap’d from the decks on dry land.
                                                                Officer of the Guards Vol 1
In February 1793, the French Convention declared war on Great Britain. In response, Great Britain sent a small army, a brigade initially with more men to follow. It was necessary to be on the continent, to be seen to be ‘doing our bit’ to restore the French monarchy; there were after all, political prizes to be had! While the Guards’ officers were no doubt keen to be rid of an overcrowded ship, Corporal Brown makes no mention of the hardship, instead comparing the villages around the port of Helleveotsluis to the country he had just left, ‘The streets are regular and kept remarkably clean, as well as the outside of their houses, which they are continually washing’.

The gaining of Terra Firma was an obvious relief to all the Duke’s soldiers. It had been a less than auspicious start.
 
The port of Hellevoetsluis at Hollands Diep  

The parade of two thousand guardsmen which had set off along the Mall had turned into a drunken ramble by the time it had reached Greenwich. Soldiers were loaded into three overcrowded transports. A soldier slipped on a gang-plank, fell and shattered his leg. Amongst the doctors in the three battalions, no medical supplies could be found. None had been loaded but at least the campaign furniture of the Guards officers had. Some consolation at least. The young officer from York’s inner circle foreshadowed the days ahead, “Somewhere there was a fault.”

The epitaph of the Flanders campaign.

The ships that sailed into Hollands Diep narrowly avoided a storm that would have surely wrecked them. Such an auspicious start was compounded by the constraints of operational orders sent by the government, and Henry Dundas in particular, which attempted to shackle the Duke’s army to a protection of the landing places along Hollands Diep. In early March 1793, there were around 2000 men under the Duke’s command. Two weeks earlier, the French convention had passed a law to levy 300,000 men to be added to a standing army that John Lynn in The Bayonets of the Republic suggested had shrunk from 450,000 in November to 290,000 in February 1793.

While the French were fighting on every border, the Army of the North, under General Dumouriez was around 23,000 with the Army of the Ardennes also nominally under his control. Fortescue paints Dumouriez as the supreme chancer, his aims with the Army of the North uncertain. It seems more likely that Dumouriez had designs on capturing Amsterdam and its gold rather than The Hague and the seat of the Dutch Stadtholder.

The war for Corporal Brown is one that any soldier across the ages could identify with. Marching, waiting, marching again. In fact, there was to be no major engagement in Holland. The French had begun a siege of Willemstadt, a fortress on the south bank of Hollands Diep, but the arrival of a strong Austrian army under Prince Josias, drew Dumouriez and the bulk of his men in the direction of Brussels and a fateful battle.

As the moment of high drama approached, the tempo of the ever present politicking increased. The Duke of York was given license to move further inland but strict instructions from Dundas that the ‘British army’ was not to become just another corps in Josias’ ranks. Two thousand men would barely constitute an Austrian corps but that was being rectified. Hanover was to supply 15,000 infantry and around 5,000 cavalry. More Germans, Hessian troops, would follow as well as several squadrons of British cavalry. All this due by May, but by then the emergency and the chance to secure the peace dividend and political prize could well be lost.

The Duke of York. The King's choice as the commander
of the British army on the continent in 1793.

Dunkirk might seem a strange choice as compensation for Great Britain’s efforts but, along with other French colonies in the West Indies, Fortescue suggests that such a deal had been brokered by Austria. The Imperials from Vienna were playing a much greater endgame, to ensure both its close ties with the restored House of Bourbon but also to expand north into Saxony. By greasing the palms and soothing the consciences of other nations, Prussia was also to receive French territory in the Austrian plan, who could deny Austria a rightful prize when she alone asked nothing of France. Pitt’s embattled administration thought that possessing a little part of France would play well at home with the mob.

Such manoeuvring was scarce confined to the allies. Dumouriez, the master strategist, had a foot firmly planted in both worlds and a step light enough to stay one move ahead of the guillotine. He was perhaps the last man to hold a private counsel with Louis XVI before the King’s execution. A courtier of some thirty years but also the Revolutionary Minister for War and now Commander of the Army of the North. Dumouriez believed that his men were more loyal to him than to France, much as Lafayette had done, the year before. A miscalculation that had nearly cost his predecessor his life.

When the negotiations between Dumouriez and Prince Josias first occurred, I cannot be certain. On the 18th March 1793, the two armies fought at Neerwinden. The Austrian victory sent the French reeling back towards their northern border. Somewhere in that time frame, the Convention in Paris heard that Dumouriez planned to defect. By the 1st of April, a delegation had arrived from Paris to arrest the traitorous general, only for Dumouriez to have them arrested and sent to the Austrian camp.

The timeframe is too tight for these events to play out consecutively. Eleven days for secret negotiations to be discovered, reported to Paris, a decision made and a delegation dispatched to the frontier? Which draws the obvious conclusion of collusion between Dumouriez and the Austrian Prince Josias before Neerwinden, making the battle a bargaining chip and the treachery to have been relayed to Paris from within the General’s close circle. If Dumouriez won, he had more choice. Amsterdam could still be taken. And with money, why restore an unpopular monarchy when a new-style of revolutionary leader might be more acceptable to the masses? The defeat weakened his hand but would the ultimate gambit of changing sides bear fruit?

So he sent the commissioners, under arrest,
To the Austrian encampment, and stood forth confess’d,
A friend to their cause, undertaking to bring
His army to publish young Louis their King.
And instantly mounting the modest cockade,
The power of his rhet’rick the Champion essay’d.
To his florid narration the answer reciev’d
Was, “Vive Dumouriez” Sounds he fondly believed. 

Five thousand Frenchmen followed Dumouriez into exile, less than one in eight that had taken the field at Neerwinden. The rest of the Army of the North could return to France on the swearing of oaths by officers that its men would not bear arms again. Prince Josias was roundly condemned by his allies, even publicly by his own Emperor for the attempts to woo Dumouriez. For the rest of April, the Allies bickered about how best to impose peace, without it seems, the smallest concern that they still had to beat the French to accomplish such lofty goals. At the end of April, Prussia proposed its own negotiations with the Army of the North, to affect a mass defection, and found itself on the end of various verbal attacks from rest of the coalition.

Dumouriez, a man for all seasons? 

A plan was eventually agreed, the capture of the fortress at Valenciennes, which opened a route to Paris. The battle itself, called the battle of Camp Famars, foreshadowed the events of 1794. There were no maps of the terrain. If any reconnaissance had been undertaken, that information failed to reach the frontline. What it did expose was the propensity of the troops to plunder, a scene that appalled Corporal Brown “Every house was plundered in a most unseemly manner, by the Austrians and others of the foreign troops; whose hardened hearts, neither the entreaties of old age, the tears of beauty, the cries of children, nor the moving scenes of the most accumulated distress can touch with pity.” 

Valenciennes fell in a protracted siege at the end of July. The Army of the North, whose leaders had either defected, died at its helm or faced the guillotine for their ‘failures’, retreated. The allies pursued and Paris was just eleven days march away. But the coalition faltered again. The fortress of Lille would be at the backs of the allied forces and the Austrians feared having their supply lines severed. The Duke of York, with two brigades of British infantry and his Hanoverian and Hessian contingent was under pressure to secure Dunkirk before it was too late. After all, grabbing the city once the revolution had been beaten might look a little disingenuous. There was a last meeting between Prince Josias and the Duke of York before the British, with a corps of 10,000 Austrians acting as corps of communications, moved north.

With this moment of separation, the coalition lost the momentum and tempo of the war and would never regain it.

If ever you do attempt to follow the machinations of this campaign, do invest in a map of northern France. How the Austrian corps that accompanied the Duke was meant to protect communications between Josias and York has baffled my understanding. Lille and Dunkirk are around 50 miles apart. That is just one of the many farces that this rich campaign has still to reveal.

The story of Dunkirk and the fateful days of September 1793 are for another post.

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The King’s Germans is a project that has been many years in the making. Currently Dominic Fielder manages to juggle writing and research around a crowded work and family life. The Black Lions of Flanders (set in 1793) is the first in the King’s Germans’ series, which will follow an array of characters through to the final book in Waterloo. The King of Dunkirk will soon be released and Dominic hopes that the response to that is as encouraging as the reviews of Black Lions have been.
Dominc lives just outside of Tavistock, in Devon where he enjoys walking on the moors and the occasional horse-riding excursion as both inspiration and relaxation.

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Thursday, November 30, 2017

Frozen Moments in Time - The Art of Anthony van Dyck

by Anna Belfrage

Las Meninas, D Velázquez
Say Philip IV of Spain and chances are people will visualise a series of portraits by Diego Velázquez, principally that rather impressive work of art Las Meninas. What the great Velázquez did for the Spanish Hapsburgs in the 17th century, today’s protagonist did for the court of Charles I of England, painting a series of portraits that qualify as masterpieces. His skills made him the most sought after portraitist in England and as a result Anthony van Dyck became very, very rich and just as famous.

Anthony (Well, if we’re going to be correct his birth-name was Antoon) saw the light of the day on the 22 of March in 1599. His father was a well-respected and wealthy cloth merchant in Antwerp, and Anthony was his seventh child and second son. Where Papa travelled to sell his silks and gossamer-thin linens, Mrs van Dyck remained at home to raise their children and devote herself to her embroidery. Gifted with an artist’s eye, Mrs van Dyck embroidered landscapes and figures and little Anthony was quite enthralled by the end results. Soon enough, when Mama was sewing he was drawing on whatever he could find and so impressed was his mother that she managed to convince her husband to allow little Anthony to pursue the career of an artist by apprenticing him to the Flemish artist Hendrik van Balen from the age of ten.

Etching by van Dyck
It was apparent to everyone that Anthony had talent in spades. At the age of fourteen he painted his first commissioned portrait, proudly inscribing his age as well as his name on the finished work of art. At age sixteen, he and his friend Jan Brueghel Jr. opened their own studio. By now, Anthony was making a name for himself, not only as a painter but also as a draughtsman and an excellent etcher. (Some would argue that the art of etching peaked with Anthony’s work, never again to reach similar heights of artistry)

Anthony, self-portrait 1613-14
At nineteen, he was admitted into the guild of St Luke’s in Antwerp, thereby effectively recognised as a master of painting. With this under his belt, Anthony van Dyck was hired by Peter Paul Rubens as his chief assistant, which essentially meant he had made it to the top. Rubens was the most famous Northern European artist of the time, his studio churning out a stream of high quality paintings, many of them featuring religious themes. Rubens was a leading figure within the cultural aspect of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic movement spearheaded by Spain that had as its aim to limit the “spiritual damage” caused by the Reformation.

Tiger Hunt, Peter Paul Rubens. A lot of life (and death)

Anthony van Dyck shared Rubens' Catholic heritage and thrived under Rubens' tutelage, producing not only portraits but also a number of religious paintings and a few historical works. Rubens was very fond of historical paintings, huge canvases brimming with life and figures. He was also very impressed by his young adept, telling whoever wanted to hear that van Dyck was the best young painter he had ever met. He also encouraged van Dyck to foster his obvious talent for portraiture—a talent that required not only impressive skills as a painter but also a diplomatic flair to ensure the sitter was pleased with the end result. In effect, if a portrait painter wanted commissions, he had to be willing to do the 17th century equivalent of photo shopping to flatter whoever was being depicted.

Thomas Howard by Rubens
Rubens and van Dyck parted ways in the early 1620s. Rubens urged van Dyck to go to Italy and study the Italian masters. Our Anthony was all for going to Italy, but before doing so he detoured to England where for some months he was in King James’ employ. While in England, he met the Catholic peer Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was something of a fanatic art collector. Born in penury due to his father’s refusal to abandon his Catholic faith, Thomas was destined to end up heavily in debt due to his collection which contained everything from antique marbles to paintings by da Vinci, Rubens and a certain Titian. Our Anthony spent hours gawking at Arundel’s Titian portraits, realising just how much he had left to learn—and how right Rubens was when he repeatedly told van Dyck to go to Italy.

Anthony returned to Flanders to prepare for his trip to Italy. While at home, he fell in love and for a while there all thoughts of furthering his career by studying in Italy went AWOL as our handsome youth pursued tender caresses and kisses. However, youthful passions tend to be ephemeral, so after some months of cow’s eyes and ardent courting our young man did depart for Italy where he was to remain for close to six years.

Elena Grimaldi by van Dyck
A much wiser (if still rather young) Anthony van Dyck returned to Antwerp in 1627. By now, he had built quite the reputation and as he was not only a skilled artist but also charming and well-spoken he could soon add the Hapsburg regent of Spanish Flanders, Archduchess Isabella, to his clients. However, remaining in Flanders came with one major hurdle for someone as ambitious as van Dyck: there was one undisputed painting master in Flanders, and his name was Rubens, not van Dyck.

Meanwhile, in England King James had departed this world and been succeeded by his son, Charles I. While this king had about as much political skill as a bull in a china shop, he did have a genuine interest for art. Early on, he began amassing an impressive collection of paintings and during van Dyck’s years in Italy he had now and then facilitated a transaction on behalf of the English king.

Feeling somewhat frustrated by always walking in Rubens’ shadow, in 1632 Anthony van Dyck decided to try his luck in England. He was welcomed with open arms by King Charles and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. In fact, he was welcomed with open arms by more or less everyone in the English aristocracy. Once the king had decided he would only sit for one artist—van Dyck—his courtiers fell over their feet in their haste to have themselves and their families immortalised by the Dutchman.

King Charles, three aspects by A van Dyck
King Charles gave van Dyck a house and a studio at Blackfriars and was a frequent guest, together with his wife. The following years saw van Dyck churn out one portrait after the other, many of them of his royal patron and his family.

The Stuarts that gaze back at us from van Dyck’s canvases are a handsome lot, with soulful eyes and regular features. Such defects as buckteeth or excessive frailty are glossed over—van Dyck had no intention of risking his lucrative income by being too honest which of course has me wondering just how reliable van Dyck’s portraits are.

Charles I, by A van Dyck (and that horse HAS to be Spanish!) 
In his forty or so portraits of Charles I, the king is depicted riding, sitting, standing—always with a regal air that speaks of power and determination. Never is he presented as being as short and slight as he was. However, despite the potential airbrushing, the formal poses and the rich attires, the portraits pulsate with frozen life, as if at any moment the king will call for his horse, or the queen bend down to whisper something in the dwarf’s ear, or the young princes and princesses break apart from their tight group, the boys running one way, the girls another.

King Charles' children. IMO one of van Dyck's best portraits

Margaret Lemon (van Dyck)
All this painting made Anthony van Dyck rich. Very, very rich, which was fortunate as this was a man with little thought of tomorrow and a tendency to spend as lavishly as those he painted. He redecorated his house, he kept his various mistresses in style, dressed in the most expensive fabrics and in general lived life to the full. So profligate was his spending that his various friends at court became concerned and decided it was time their favourite painter settled down with a wife and got rid of his expensive ladies—especially his favourite mistress and sometime muse, Margaret Lemon, who according to malicious gossip had the temperament of an aggravated bear.

Mary, Lady van Dyck (van Dyck)
The king hoped that by ensuring van Dyck married an Englishwoman the artist would remain forever in England which is why he suggested van Dyck should marry a Mary Ruthvens, former lady-in-waiting to Henrietta Maria. Didn’t really work out as planned. Van Dyck spent months away from England both before and after his wedding, sometimes in Flanders, sometimes in France, where he tried (with little success) to win commissions from the French court.

To the left, Titian's portrait of Charles V
To the right, van Dyck's portrait of James Stuart.
Titian's influence is evident...

Anthony van Dyck returned to England for the last time in 1640. By then, the political unrest that was to explode into the English civil war was already evident, and the king had other things on his mind than being preserved in oils. Where before Anthony had had more commissions than he could cope with, now it was rather the reverse. It got to him, and the last months of his life were plagued not only by ill health but also by depression.

In December of 1641, Anthony van Dyck died at the age of forty-two. Other than his widow and two little girls he left behind an impressive collection of portraits, paintings that would set the standard for English portraiture for the coming century or so. Compared to Velázquez, van Dyck’s work can come across as bland, the little imperfections that give character toned down. But his undeniable skill with brush and pigments have given us vibrant snapshots of a world since lost, a time when gallants proudly wore lace and satin, long flowing hair and extravagant clothes. Young lions who would, to a large extent, lose both lace, ribbons, silk and life in the devastating English Civil War.

All pictures in public domain and/or licensed under Wikimedia Creative Commons

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Had Anna Belfrage been allowed to choose, she’d have become a professional time-traveller. As such a profession does not exist, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests, namely history and writing.

Presently, Anna is hard at work with The King’s Greatest Enemy, a series set in the 1320s featuring Adam de Guirande, his wife Kit, and their adventures and misfortunes in connection with Roger Mortimer’s rise to power. And yes, Edmund of Woodstock appears quite frequently. The first book, In The Shadow of the Storm was published in 2015, the second, Days of Sun and Glory, was published in July 2016, and the third, Under the Approaching Dark, was published in April 2017.

When Anna is not stuck in the 14th century, she's probably visiting in the 17th century, specifically with Alex(andra) and Matthew Graham, the protagonists of the acclaimed The Graham Saga. This is the story of two people who should never have met – not when she was born three centuries after him. The ninth book, There is Always a Tomorrow, was published in November 2017.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

England and Flanders: A Love Story

By Rosanne E. Lortz

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below....

Nowadays, the place name “Flanders” typically evokes the World War I poem by John McCrae and the sadness and loss that war brings. But in the Middle Ages, Flanders evoked a far different image—a bustling county renowned for its clothiers and its commercial ties with England.

Medieval Flanders, when juxtaposed with a modern map, overlaps the top right corner of France and a portion of Belgium and the Netherlands. The territory was part of the Carolingian domain under Charlemagne, but interestingly enough, its foundation as a County in its own right came about because of an English princess—or rather, a Carolingian princess who had been sent to England and then returned to her homeland.

When Alfred the Great was seven years old, his father Æthelwulf formed an alliance with the French king Charles the Bald by marrying his daughter Judith, a girl of no more than fourteen years old. In his History of Flanders, Charles Vanderhaegen describes Judith's unfortunate situation:
...Judith…was married off to the Anglo-Saxon king Ethelwolf, who was over 50 years old. 18 months later she became a widow and was married off again, this time to Ethelbald, a son to Ethelwolf from a previous marriage. He also died a few years later and Judith was promptly accused of incestuous relations to her stepson and expelled from England. Just like all kings from that time, Karel de Kale [Charles the Bald] sacrificed everything, including his daughter, for his political plans. So he locked her up in the castle only to free her for a future beneficial marriage.
At this point, while still imprisoned in a castle, Judith attracted the attention of a visiting nobleman named Baldwin. Although she had already had two husbands, Judith was not more than twenty years old and was reputed to be a beauty. Baldwin and Judith fell in love. Vanderhaegen writes:
Boudewijn [Baldwin] did not really count on getting Karel De Kale's [Charles the Bald’s] approval to marry his daughter as he was a mere subordinate. He therefore decided to free Judith from her prison by abducting her. He was aided by her younger brother prince Lodewijk, later to become Louis II of France, nicknamed the Stutterer. For some unknown reason he favoured a marriage between his sister with Boudewijn. Louis informed Judith of Boudewijn's marriage plans and in a specific night, sometime in 860, Judith disguised herself and escaped her guards. She left the castle and met Boudewijn outside the gates. Together they returned to Boudewijn's home.
But the star-cross’d lovers were not to have their happily ever after quite so easily. Charles the Bald was enraged by his daughter’s disobedience, and they were forced to flee to the neighboring kingdom of Lorraine.

Judith’s father demanded that the king of Lorraine (a cousin from the Carolingian line) return his daughter and her “husband”. To apply pressure on the couple, Charles confiscated all of Baldwin’s property and convinced the Carolingian clergy to excommunicate him.

But according to Vanderhaegen, Baldwin was not so easily intimidated: “He communicated to Karel [Charles] that if he was not reinstated and if Karel did not acknowledge his marriage, he would make a treaty with the Norsemen who had invaded the Frankish empire around 800 and who pillaged northwards and took power over that area.”

Although Charles chose to ignore this threat, the local clergy did not. The Archbishop of Reims alerted the pope about this very serious matter. The lovers went to Rome to present their case and won the pope over to their side.

However much it might have galled him, Charles was not powerful enough to go against the pope. A settlement was reached. Charles acknowledged the marriage and even presented Baldwin with a dowry of land.

Institution of Baldwin I, the first count of Flanders by Charles the Bald, the Frankish king.


Baldwin proved himself to be, if not the son-in-law that Charles wanted, then at least the son-in-law that Charles needed. Instead of going over to the “dark side” as he had threatened, he earned the nickname Ferreus (“Iron Arm”) by protecting the Carolingian kingdom against Viking incursions. Through Charles' begrudging generosity and his own prowess, he became the first Count of Flanders, ruling a County that would last for hundreds of years and become an important power on the continent.

Not much is known about the couple in the succeeding years, but Judith, who had been childless in her previous two marriages, gave birth to at least three sons and one daughter. And as if Judith’s connections with the royal line in England had not been tangled enough, her son Baldwin II ended up marrying Ælfthryth, the daughter of Alfred the Great (who had been Judith’s stepson/brother-in-law).

A century and a half later, there came another English connection. William soon-to-be-the-Conqueror married Matilda of Flanders (although one story of their courtship—of William dragging Matilda by the hair after she refused to marry him—is not quite as romantic as the story of Baldwin and Judith…).

As the centuries went by, the County of Flanders became an increasingly important player in French affairs. In the latter part of the twelfth century, the Flemish Count held as much territory as the French king held directly, and Flanders enjoyed a period of great prosperity.

The bulk of this prosperity was due to the thriving commerce between Flanders and England. And the bulk of the commerce was due to English sheep and Flemish looms. Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes that beginning in the eleventh century, “wool accounted for half the wealth in England.” Some of this wool was exported to Italian weavers, but most of it went to Flanders. Hallam says:
The stimulus for the wool trade came from Flanders, whose powerful counts had in the 11th century imposed a long period of peace on the region. With peace came prosperity and a rise in population: food shortages resulted and many Flemings emigrated. Others moved to the burgeoning Flemish cities, where they worked in the region’s rising industry, cloth manufacture…. English wool production expanded to meet [this demand]. As early as 1194 England grazed around six million sheep, and produced up to 50,000 sacks of wool a year. 
This mutually beneficial relationship between Flanders and England lasted for several hundred years—until the English Edwards killed the goose that laid the golden eggs by putting too high a tariff on wool export.

As the English began to make their own cloth (and as the Black Death spread across Europe), the County of Flanders went into a decline. In 1369, the Duke of Burgundy took possession of Flanders as part of his wife’s dowry, and from that point onward the County of Flanders was no longer independent.

In terms of size, the County of Flanders was not a large piece of medieval Europe, but the part it played in England’s economy was a pivotal one. And while the symbiotic relationship that English shepherds and Flemish weavers shared across four centuries is not quite as dramatic a love story as that of Judith and Baldwin, it is still a romance worth reading about—a romance that contributed to the success of a country that had half of its money wrapped up in wool.

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Salamander Books, Ltd., 2002.

Vanderhaegen, Charles. The History of Flanders. Trans. Herman Boel. http://www.hermanboel.eu/en-dossiers-hist03.htm (Accessed June 4, 2014).