If you’ve followed this blog, you know I have a longstanding fascination with people who come from difficult beginnings in remote parts of the country and somehow forge a national reputation and a lasting place in history. It’s not that I follow the “great man” school of historic thought – I don’t! – but many of these people just have personal stories that are so compelling they are worth knowing about. Joan of Arc is certainly a prominent example in French history; in this space, I’ve written about Lafayette (hero of both the American and French Revolutions), about Pope Clement VI (a monk from the remote abbey at La Chaise-Dieu), and about the Count of Montmorin (Louix XVI’s “right-hand man”), […]
Tag: Napoleon
What’s Different in France: The Legal System
One of the first things you notice when you move to France is the difference between the French legal system and the ones we’re more familiar with in the U.S. and the U.K. For us, it became obvious on our first visits to some of the ruined castles in the Auvergne. We were surprised by the absence of safety barriers and access controls around piles of rubble, narrow staircases, and open pits in many of the ruins open to the public. We have pictures of my wife grabbing our 8-year-old son by the belt to keep him from plunging over the top of a castle rampart.
