Um! Petain? Should we be relieved he didn't write Mon cher Mitterand ...? How's Sarkozy taking all this? Oh!
Oh! Off the subject, sort of, yet not really.... DF, you made a comment some months back about Sarkozy's reviving the French-Muslim states grand strategery. I didn't really understand what you were referring to (thinking the French colonial empire in AFrica), but after reading the excellent book, EMPRIES OF THE SEA, one discovered that the French back door alliances with the Ottoman Empire absolutely undercut and infuriated the Pope in Rome and Philip of Spain in the European attempts to keep Sulieman from expanding the Ottoman Empire into Europe. Is this essentially the history you referred to? The gall of the gauls boasting the "Most CHirstian King" of France double-dealing with the Muslims as the rest of European Christendom was fighting?
Fascinaitng, if infuriating subject, and not at all presented in US studies of World History, so I assume more readers than me missed the references you mentioned.
Um! Petain? Should we be relieved he didn't write Mon cher Mitterand ...? How's Sarkozy taking all this? Oh!
Oh! Off the subject, sort of, yet not really.... DF, you made a comment some months back about Sarkozy's reviving the French-Muslim states grand strategery. I didn't really understand what you were referring to (thinking the French colonial empire in AFrica), but after reading the excellent book, EMPRIES OF THE SEA, one discovered that the French back door alliances with the Ottoman Empire absolutely undercut and infuriated the Pope in Rome and Philip of Spain in the European attempts to keep Sulieman from expanding the Ottoman Empire into Europe. Is this essentially the history you referred to? The gall of the gauls boasting the "Most CHirstian King" of France double-dealing with the Muslims as the rest of European Christendom was fighting?
Fascinaitng, if infuriating subject, and not at all presented in US studies of World History, so I assume more readers than me missed the references you mentioned.