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Jacques Beaufranchet
Jacques de Beaufranchet, ''Seigneur d'Ayat'', was born 5 March 1728. His sister Amable married Gilbert Antoine des Aix, ''seigneur de Veygoux'', and was mother to the famous General Desaix, who died at the Battle of Marengo in 1800. Beaufranchet was captain to the major's aide for the Beauvoisis regiment. On 25 November 1755 he was married to Marie-Louise O'Murphy, "la belle Morphyse", who had been one of King Louis XV's mistresses. O'Murphy was born in Rouen, Normandy, to a family of Irish origin with known criminal pasts. Upon her unwise attempt to take the place of longtime favorite Madame de Pompadour as maitresse-en-titre, Louis XV sent O'Murphy away, gave her a false identity as "Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly", daughter of an Irish gentleman A gentleman (Old French: ''gentilz hom'', gentle + man) is any man of good and courteous conduct. Originally, ''gentleman'' was the lowest rank of the landed gentry of England, ranking below an esquire and above a yeoman; b ...
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General Desaix
Louis Charles Antoine Desaix () (17 August 176814 June 1800) was a French general and military leader during the French Revolutionary Wars. According to the usage of the time, he took the name ''Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Veygoux''. He was considered one of the greatest generals of the Revolutionary Wars. Biography Desaix was born to a noble family in the Château d'Ayat in Ayat-sur-Sioule, in the province of Auvergne, to Gilbert des Aix, Lord of Veygoux, the family manor in Charbonnières-les-Varennes, and Amable de Beaufranchet, his wife and first cousin. Desaix received his military education at the school founded by Marshal d'Effiat, and entered the French royal army. During his first six years of service, he devoted himself to duty and to military studies. When the French Revolution broke out, he threw himself into the cause of liberty. Refusing to "emigrate", he joined the staff of Charles Louis Victor de Broglie, the Jacobin son of the duc de Broglie. This nearl ...
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Battle Of Marengo
The Battle of Marengo was fought on 14 June 1800 between French forces under the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Austrian forces near the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont, Italy. Near the end of the day, the French overcame General Michael von Melas's surprise attack, drove the Austrians out of Italy and consolidated Bonaparte's political position in Paris as First Consul of France in the wake of his coup d'état the previous November. Surprised by the Austrian advance toward Genoa in mid-April 1800, Bonaparte hastily led his army over the Alps in mid-May and reached Milan on 2 June. After cutting Melas's line of communications by crossing the River Po and defeating ''Feldmarschallleutnant'' (FML) Peter Karl Ott von Bátorkéz at Montebello on 9 June, the French closed in on the Austrian Army, which had massed in Alessandria. Deceived by a local double agent, Bonaparte dispatched large forces to the north and the south, but the Austrians launched a surprise attack o ...
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Marie-Louise O'Murphy
Marie-Louise O'Murphy (; 21 October 1737 – 11 December 1814), also variously called ''Mademoiselle de Morphy'', ''La Belle Morphise'', ''Louise Morfi'' or ''Marie-Louise Morphy de Boisfailly'', was one of the lesser mistresses (''petites maîtresses'') of King Louis XV of France and possibly the model for the famous painting by François Boucher. Birth Marie-Louise O'Murphy (or Morfi) was born in Rouen on 21 October 1737 as the youngest of twelve children of Daniel Morfi and Marguerite Iquy. She was baptized the same day in the church of Saint Eloi: Irish ancestry The family of Marie-Louise O'Murphy was of Irish origin, who settled in Normandy. The presence of her paternal grandfather Daniel Murphy is attested in Pont-Audemer at the end of the 17th century, when his first wife Marguerite Connard (Irish like him) died. Militant of the Jacobite army, he followed the deposed King James II of England to his exile in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye; in consequence all t ...
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King Louis XV
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defined as his 13th birthday) on 15 February 1723, the kingdom was ruled by his grand-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as Regent of France. Cardinal Fleury was chief minister from 1726 until his death in 1743, at which time the king took sole control of the kingdom. His reign of almost 59 years (from 1715 to 1774) was the second longest in the history of France, exceeded only by his predecessor, Louis XIV, who had ruled for 72 years (from 1643 to 1715). In 1748, Louis returned the Austrian Netherlands, won at the Battle of Fontenoy of 1745. He ceded New France in North America to Great Britain and Spain at the conclusion of the disastrous Seven Years' War in 1763. He incorporated the territories of the Duchy of Lorrai ...
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Rouen
Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of the largest and most prosperous cities of Middle Ages, medieval Europe, the population of the metropolitan area (french: functional area (France), aire d'attraction) is 702,945 (2018). People from Rouen are known as ''Rouennais''. Rouen was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy during the Middle Ages. It was one of the capitals of the Anglo-Normans, Anglo-Norman dynasties, which ruled both England and large parts of modern France from the 11th to the 15th centuries. From the 13th century onwards, the city experienced a remarkable economic boom, thanks in particular to the development of textile factories and river trade. Claimed by both the French and the English during the Hundred Years' War, it was on its soil that Joan of Arc was tried ...
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Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises mainland Normandy (a part of France) and the Channel Islands (mostly the British Crown Dependencies). It covers . Its population is 3,499,280. The inhabitants of Normandy are known as Normans, and the region is the historic homeland of the Norman language. Large settlements include Rouen, Caen, Le Havre and Cherbourg. The cultural region of Normandy is roughly similar to the historical Duchy of Normandy, which includes small areas now part of the departments of Mayenne and Sarthe. The Channel Islands (French: ''Îles Anglo-Normandes'') are also historically part of Normandy; they cover and comprise two bailiwicks: Guernsey and Jersey, which are B ...
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Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the List of islands of the British Isles, second-largest island of the British Isles, the List of European islands by area, third-largest in Europe, and the List of islands by area, twentieth-largest on Earth. Geopolitically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Ireland), which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. As of 2022, the Irish population analysis, population of the entire island is just over 7 million, with 5.1 million living in the Republic of Ireland and 1.9 million in Northern Ireland, ranking it the List of European islan ...
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Madame De Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and remained influential as court favourite until her death. Pompadour took charge of the king's schedule and was a valued aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies. She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. She was particularly careful not to alienate the Queen, Marie Leszczyńska. On 8 February 1756, the Marquise de Pompadour was named as the thirteenth lady-in-waiting to the queen, a position considered the most prestigious at the court, which accorded her with honors. Pompadour was a major patron of architecture and decorative arts, especially porcelain. She was a patron of the ''philosophes'' of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire. Hostile crit ...
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Gentry
Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle [simple and decent] families ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates (see manorialism), upper levels of the clergy, and "gentle" families of long descent who in some cases never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a Estate (land), country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term ''gentry'' refers to the landed gentry: the majority of the land-owning social class who typically had a coat of arms, but did not have a Peerages in the United Kingdom, peerage. The adjective "Patrician (post-Roman Europe), patrician" ("of or like a person of high social rank") describes in comparison other ...
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Livre Tournois
The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 grams of fine silver. The was a gold coin of one minted in large numbers from 1360. In 1549, the was decreed a unit of account, and in 1667 it officially replaced the . In 1720, the was redefined as 0.31 grams of pure gold, and in 1726, in a devaluation under Louis XV, as 4.50516 grams of fine silver. It was the basis of the revolutionary French franc of 1795, defined as 4.5 grams of fine silver exactly. Circulating currency In France, the was worth 240 deniers (the "Tours penny"). The latter were initially minted by the abbey of Saint Martin in the Touraine region of France. Soon after Philip II of France seized the counties of Anjou and Touraine in 1203 and standardized the use of the there, the began to supersede the (Paris pou ...
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Battle Of Rossbach
The Battle of Rossbach took place on 5November 1757 during the Third Silesian War (1756–1763, part of the Seven Years' War) near the village of Rossbach (Roßbach), in the Electorate of Saxony. It is sometimes called the Battle of, or at, Reichardtswerben, after a different nearby town. In this 90-minute battle, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, defeated an Allied army composed of French forces augmented by a contingent of the Reichsarmee (Imperial Army) of the Holy Roman Empire. The French and Imperial army included 41,110 men, opposing a considerably smaller Prussian force of 22,000. Despite overwhelming odds, Frederick employed rapid movement, a flanking maneuver and oblique order to achieve complete surprise. The Battle of Rossbach marked a turning point in the Seven Years' War, not only for its stunning Prussian victory, but because France refused to send troops against Prussia again and Britain, noting Prussia's military success, increased its financial support ...
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