FredsWalks

20/04/2025

The first day of the American War of Independence began with... a French exploit!

April 19, 1775 marked the first confrontation between the "Patriots" (later known as the Insurgents) and the British crown.

This first confrontation took place in Lexington, Massachusetts, against a detachment of British soldiers.

Their objective was to destroy an arms depot to be used by the Patriotes. Informed of the imminent arrival of the British, Paul Revere rode from Boston to Lexington on the night of April 18-19, 1775, to alert the revolutionary militia.

Lexington was then located eighteen kilometers northeast of Boston. Paul Revere was a French-American. Originally from Gironde, his father emigrated to the British colonies in 1715. On this occasion, the family name (probably Révère) lost all its accents.

Thanks to Paul Revere's vital information, the Patriotes had time to organize and, after a brief confrontation, sent the British back from whence they had come on April 19, 1775.

Revere's exploit was immortalized in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Several American cities have been named "Revere" in his honor.

Celebrated by Americans on the third Monday in April, Patriots' Day commemorates the victory at Lexington... which owes a debt of gratitude to the French! 😜

Illustration: Battle of Lexington

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17/04/2025

April 17, 1524: Tuscan-born Lyonnais navigator Jean de Verrazano discovers today's New York Bay and christens it "New Angouleme".

From March 1524 onwards, Jean de Verrazano sailed to the east coast of America on behalf of France.

In 1524, France had been ruled by François I for almost ten years. He was interested in exploring the new sea routes opened up by Spain and Portugal.

The exploration lasted five months, beginning in March with the coast of South Carolina and ending in August with Newfoundland.

Verrazano landed on the island of Manhattan in April 1524. He named the island Nouvelle-Angoulême in honor of François I, originally titled Duke of Angoulême.

The explorer also named the river that flows into the bay the "Vendôme River". New York was born from New Angouleme, and the Vendôme River was renamed the "Hudson River" by the English.

Verrazano also established the first European contact with the American coast, with the exception of Florida, which the Spanish had approached ten years earlier, in 1513.

On a map dated 1529, the Florentine navigator described the mouth of the St. Lawrence and christened it "Nova Gallia", for "New Gaul".

At the height of the Renaissance, the historical continuity between Gaul and France, between the Gauls and the French, seemed natural, and was not the subject of any of today's "polemics". Nova Gallia is the first known reference to the territory of New France, whose foundations were laid by Samuel de Champlain in 1608.

On his return to France, Verrazano told François I that there was no practicable route from Europe to Asia via North America.

To the north, the frozen ocean precluded any practicable passage. Disappointed, François I turned his back on exploration for ten years, reorienting his foreign policy towards Italy.

This was before the French king turned his hopes to a certain Jacques Cartier.

Illustration: Verrazano lands at Newport Harbor in 1500. By hand, woodcut found on https://www.alamyimages.fr/photos-images/giovanni-da-verrazano.html

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16/04/2025

IT HAS BEGUN!!!

250 years ago TODAY...

In late winter and early spring of 1775, Gage received a series of dispatches from London ordering him to arrest the leaders of Massachusetts’s opposition party and launch a major strike against the growing provincial stockpiles of weapons and munitions. As he contemplated these orders, Gage considered various military options, including a long-range strike against a large store of weapons in the shire town of Worcester, forty miles west of Boston. Realizing that this was much too risky a venture, the general decided instead to seize the military supplies reportedly stored at Concord, a march half the distance of that to Worcester.

It appears Gage’s primary desire while planning his mission was the recovery of four brass cannons.

On the eve of the American Revolution, brass cannons were considered “weapons of mass destruction.” They were light, easily maneuverable, and deadly. In September 1774, four brass cannons were stolen while under guard by Boston residents and smuggled out of the town.

In February 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress reported the guns were located in Concord. The next month, Gage’s informants confirmed the pieces were in Concord and “Conceal’d at Mr. B, (lately chose or appointed Minute Colo.) Suppos’d to be deposited in his cellar.”

In preparation for a mission to Concord General Gage, the “Grenadier and Light Infantry companies are ordered off duty to learn new exercises.”

Many colonists correctly anticipate that a major operation is about to be set in motion.

Image: c. 1778 sketch of a British grenadier firing his musket.

#1775

16/04/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/laurent-ridel-19740a98_ne-vous-fiez-pas-aux-apparences-le-personnage-activity-7314519733704249344-BZLo?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAAFWMkB-PjqgsuaDzuw9kiqrvXfnqy2RXE&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

Ne vous fiez pas aux apparences. Le personnage couronné n’est pas un roi mais une reine. Et elle ne trône pas dans un fauteuil mais elle est allongée sur un lit mortuaire. Cette enluminure montre en fait les funérailles d’Anne de Bretagne. Morte en 1514, cette reine de France reçoit des fun...

13/04/2025

🇫🇷 the French of the Américain Civil War 🇫🇷

Did you know that the French were very much a part of this American war? A total of 30,000 Frenchmen served in either the North or the South.

Among them, the most famous and fearsome:
The Louisiana Tigers, the Southern Zouaves.

Napoleon III's French imperial troops had distinguished themselves in Algeria, Crimea and Italy.
Their prestige was immense in 1861, and 345 Zouave units were created on both sides during the war, but the Zouaves de Louisiane were a truly French unit, wearing French uniforms, speaking French and claiming to be French.

They defended their adopted state, Louisiana, its traditions, its originality, its existence. None fought to defend slavery. None owned slaves.

But the North had invaded the South to impose Jacobin centralism, the law of unbridled liberalism, and the conquest of the South was taking place in terror. So these simple men, who had known the battlefields of Europe, naturally threw themselves into the service of the cause of freedom for the States.
They participated valiantly in most of the great battles of the war, fighting heroically with honor and the famous French panache!
And forging a reputation as an elite troop.

As at the battle of Second Manassas, when facing waves of Bluecoats, the Zouaves, out of ammunition, managed to stop the Yankees with... stones.

These men follow in the footsteps of Napoleon's Grognards, the Marsouins of Bazeille, the Legionnaires of Camerone, the Poilus of 14-18 and the Cadets of Saumur. They deserve to enter the Pantheon of French heroes.

Remember these unsung Frenchmen.

(In the photo, you can see the first French Confederate flag)

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10/04/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/OoiOQsCAAak?si=KbOOcEQTMELuC2hf

Charles Gave démonte le petit jeu des multinationales américaines : elles font fabriquer leurs produits à bas coût en Chine, les revendent à prix d’or aux Ét...

09/04/2025

April 7, 1795... The adoption of the metric system.
Until the XVIIIth century there is no unified system of measurement. In 1795, there were more than seven hundred different units of measurement in France!
The convention adopts the decimal metric system whose base is the meter, corresponding to the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the earth's meridian from the equator to the North Pole... The name meter comes from the Greek metron, which means measure.
The law says "that there will be only one standard of the weights and measures for all the Republic; it will be a platinum rule on which will be traced the meter which was adopted for the fundamental unit of all the system of the measures"
But it will take nearly half a century for a system created during the Revolution to be adopted throughout France.
At the beginning of the 20th century, 36 countries had adopted the metric system on a mandatory basis, and seven on an optional basis.
Canada and Australia adopted it in 1970.

Only the perfidious Albion, which was to adopt the metric system in exchange for the Greenwich meridian (treaty signed at the International Meridian Conference in 1884), did not keep its promise...

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04/04/2025

LE PLUS VIEUX MONUMENT D'EUROPE EST EN FRANCE OÙ IL RIDICULISE LES PYRAMIDES DE GIZEH EN TERMES D'ÂGE AVEC SES 6 000 ANS

Cairn de Barnenez : un mastodonte de pierres qui dépasse les 6 000 ans.

Oubliez Gizeh et ses pyramides ! Le cairn de Barnenez, perché sur la côte nord du Finistère, était déjà là 2 000 ans avant la première pierre posée pour Khéops. Ce monument breton long de 75 mètres, parfois surnommé le "Parthénon mégalithique", est en réalité une double construction : un cairn primaire plus ancien et un cairn secondaire, tous deux recouvrant onze dolmens à couloir. Ces structures ne sont pas des simples tas de cailloux. On parle ici d’architecture monumentale construite sans mortier, avec une précision et une complexité qui forcent le respect. Et tout ça, en plein au Néolithique, quand l’agriculture venait à peine d’entrer dans la danse en Europe.

27/03/2025

Les cons…

27/03/2025

19/03/2025

16/03/2025

Did you know that in March 1347.

At the siege of Caffa in the Crimea, Khan Djanibeğ, leader of the Tatars who was on the verge of victory, saw his troops decimated by the plague, transmitted by the rat flea.
Before retreating, rather than throwing cannonballs, they dispatch their dead as projectiles. Genoese merchants who had been present fled the city, bringing the disease back to Europe.
From the far reaches of Asia, the disease spread to China and India, beginning in 1331. It is estimated that a third of its population was decimated between 1331 and 1393. The population fell from around 125 million to 90 million.
In France, the first cases appeared in the south of the country, and terror gripped the towns. It is estimated that at least 25 million Europeans fell victim to the disease in 5 years.
Some French provinces lost two-thirds of their population, already struggling with the onset of the Hundred Years' War.
Medicine was powerless, and people fled the cities for the forests and countryside. Those who don't flee lock themselves up in their homes, as imposed by the authorities.
The epidemic provoked many excesses, with the Jews being attacked for polluting water sources.
The plague reappeared until the 18th century, in a more localized form. Although an understanding of the disease and how it spread helped limit the damage, major catastrophes still occurred, as in Marseille in 1720.
Some 30-50% of the European population died within five years.
By way of comparison, the worst epidemic of the last century, the Spanish flu, killed 0.5% of the European population (2,300,000 deaths). By comparison, the scale of the disaster is staggering.

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