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Gisela of France was a legendary 10th-century CE Francian princess, who, according to tradition, was married off to Viking leader Rollo of Normandy. Her name, Gisela or Gisla, comes from an Old German word meaning "to pledge"...

Henry of Navarre became the nominal ruler of France after the assassination of Henry III of France (r. 1574-1589), whose marriage to Louise de Lorraine produced no heir. After years of attempts to deny the...

The policy of appeasement towards the demands of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) regarding Nazi Germany's territorial expansion ultimately failed when the Second World War (1939-45) began. The reasons appeasement...

Society in the Kingdom of France in the period of the Ancien Regime was broken up into three separate estates, or social classes: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. These classes and their accompanying...

The Dreyfus Affair, or L'Affaire as it has become known, demonstrated the competing forces at work to either reestablish the monarchy and the Church in power or to solidify and advance the...

The Law of Associations was adopted by the French Parliament on 3 July 1901 to limit the influence of Catholic teaching orders as the first step toward the formal separation of church and state that would...

The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) was an intermittent conflict between England and France lasting 116 years. It began principally because King Edward III (r. 1327-1377) and Philip VI (r. 1328-1350) escalated a dispute over...

Charles VI (1368-1422), King of France, oil on canvas painting by Gillot Saint-Evre, 1837. Commissioned by King Louis Philippe I in 1837, the painting is part of the Portraits of the Kings of France series in the...

Isabella of France, Detail from an illustration in the Grandes Chroniques de France (Français 6465, fol. 338v.) by Jean Fouquet, Tours, c. 1455-1460. National Library of France, Paris.

A c. 1700 portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud of Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715). (Louvre Museum, Paris)