FredsWalks

24/06/2025

June 24 in 1859.
A French victory at the battle of Solferino.

The conflict between the Austrian Empire and the Franco-Sardinian coalition was born from the promise made by Napoleon III to King Victor Emmanuel II to help him build around him the unity of Italy in exchange for Savoy and the County of Nice.

The French army, led by Napoleon III, came to the aid of the Piedmontese. The Allied army, commanded by Emperor Napoleon, faced nine Austrian corps totalling 250,000 men. The French expeditionary corps numbered 133,000 Frenchmen and Sardinians recruited by Victor-Emmanuel.
The Battle of Solferino was primarily an artillery battle. It claimed the victories of Magenta and Solferino (June 4 and 24, 1859), thereby liberating Lombardy.

It was while visiting the battlefield of Solferino that a 31-year-old Geneva banker, Henry Dunant, was indignant at the fate of the 40,000 wounded dead or M.I.A and organized first aid, subsequently creating the red cross.

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Illustration: Adolphe Yvon (1817-1893), Battle of Solferino, June 24, 1859: Napoleon III orders the future Marshal Regnaud to engage the Imperial Guard, 1861, Musée du Second Empire de Compiègne, Château de Versailles collection.

18/06/2025

On this day, June 18, 1429:

The French erase the humiliation of Azincourt by clobbering the English and their famous Welsh archers at the battle of Patay.

(A historical event often forgotten in school books)

"In God's name, if the English were hanging from the clouds, we'd have them! Our kind king will have the greatest victory today that he has had in a long time.”
Joan of Arc

Following a series of victories for Joan of Arc where the French regain the taste for victory and fly from success to success, until the decisive battle of Patay. This somewhat forgotten victory among others on June 18 (some will understand) will mark the end of the power of the treacherous albion on the continent commanded by John Fastolf, John Talbot and Thomas de Scales. The ultimate achievement in the reconquest of the Loire Valley, the battle of Patay decapitated the English army for a long time, which lost its best officers and the elite of its archers. The English were crushed losing 2,500 to 3,000 all massacred! Barely 100 on the French side. Azincourt is avenged. Charles VII then went to Reims to be crowned, thus putting an end to the disputes over the succession to the throne of France.

The French expression "prendre sa Patay" (to loose dearly) comes from this battle ...

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18/06/2025

On June 18, 1812, the United States invaded Canada

On this side of the Atlantic, a date like June 18, 1812 is bound to conjure up fateful memories. Just think: in 1812, the Grande Armée disappeared in Russia, while three years later, the Battle of Waterloo was lost on June 18.

We can only hope that the Gaullian revival of another June 18 will help to mitigate this sense of catastrophe. And yet, in June 40, France was in the midst of a catastrophe of its own. In a nutshell.

On the other side of the ocean, history textbooks indicate that on June 18, 1812, the United States of America invaded Canada with the idea, not a pretty one, of taking advantage of the military embarrassments of the Crown then engaged in a long war against the France of the Corsican Ogre, as the Godons called it.

Thirty years after the Revolutionary War, which ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1782, the United States under President James Madison (1809-1817) thought the time had come to drive the Angloÿs out of the New World. Obviously - although discreetly concealed - economic motivations and the question of expanding the territory of the United States were not entirely absent from the thoughts of American leaders.

Whatever the reasons for declaring war, the British - supported, it should be noted, by the French of Canada, as well as by a number of Amerindian peoples confronted with the brutalities of American speculators - did better than resist.

Four months after Napoleon's abdication, on August 24, 1814, they succeeded in seizing Washington, burning its public buildings.

As a result, at the end of 1814, the belligerents - realizing the impossibility of prevailing over the opposing party - signed a treaty in Grand which established the status quo ante bellum.

In Ghent. Less than 70 km from the small town of Waterloo. Here we are again.

Below: this watercolour by George Munger dates from 1814. It depicts the Capitol in ruins after the passage of the troops of His Gracious Majesty King George III.

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11/06/2025

Remember, it happened 83 years ago, in a land far far away from France...
The Battle of Bir Hakeim took place from May 26 to June 11, 1942, in what is now Libya.

During this confrontation around a disused watering hole in the middle of the Libyan desert, General Kœnig's First Free French Brigade, made up of a motley crew of troops rallied to General de Gaulle, held out for eleven days, outnumbered less than one to ten, against the attacks of the Italian and German motorized armies. In so doing, it slowed down General Rommel's victorious offensive towards the Suez Canal and gave British troops the respite they needed to regroup in Egypt.

On the night of June 10-11, after clearing a narrow corridor in the minefield and setting the azimuth, the evacuation began, but under intense German cannon and machine-gun fire, to join British trucks 8km from Bir-Hakeim. At 4:00 a.m., the first elements reached the rallying point. Lieutenant-Colonel Broche, Commandants Savey and Bricogne were killed. Throughout the day, the British searched the area, recovering some of the marines at 8:00 pm. 2620 of the 3500 men were able to escape.

On June 11, the Germans entered Bir-Hakeim and found only wounded men who had not been able to take part in the breakthrough. Having delayed Rommel's offensive, the FFL brigade enabled some of the divisions of the British VIIIth Army to pull out, and the new El Alamein defense line to be set up, which was the stopping point for the Africa Korps.

French losses were 140 killed, 229 wounded and 814 prisoners, almost all of them wounded. On the German and Italian side, 3,300 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner, 51 tanks disabled, 49 aircraft shot down and over 100 vehicles destroyed.

A few months later, the Allied counter-offensive from Egypt drove the Axis forces back into Tunisia, where they surrendered.

Beyond its strategic importance, this first confrontation between French and German soldiers since the 1940 armistice had a considerable impact on the reputation and official recognition of the Free French Forces and their leader De Gaulle. This courageous resistance also became a symbol, even in the heart of occupied France.

Let's not forget...

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07/06/2025

7 June 1940: The Jules Verne bombed Berlin.

During the Battle of France, following, among other things, a German bombardment of Parisian targets on June 3, 1940, France decided to strike Berlin. On June 7, 1940, the Farman F.223.4 Jules Verne of the French Naval Aviation, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Henri Dailliére, took off from Bordeaux-Mérignac, headed north, then flew over the Dutch and Danish coasts at nightfall and, around midnight, dropped eight 250 kg bombs and 80 other 10 kg bombs on the outskirts of Berlin. This was the first bombing that the German capital had ever underwent and was above all psychological. It was to be repeated by the French three days later.

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26/05/2025

May 26, 1942: The battle of Bir Hakeim.

Rare are the French victories during the Second World War, yet this one took place in Italian Libya.
The first brigade of the Free French Forces whose mission was to hold the southern end of the defense line under the orders of General Koenig.
The battle of Bir Hakeim lasted fifteen days. With only 3,600 men, facing Rommel's 35,000 German-Italian troops. This heroic defense of the Free French allowed the British, who were in a bad position at the time, to withdraw and then to win a strategic victory during the first battle of El Alamein in July 1942. (The decisive pass)
By the night of June 10-11, 1942, the French had finished their work and had sufficiently held back the enemy. Encircled, they tried to break through the enemy lines.
The enemy suffered 3,300 killed, wounded or missing. Destroying many tanks, airplanes and cannons in the process. The French death toll from these battles was 140 killed, 130 wounded and 763 missing (including about 600 prisoners), much lower than that inflicted on the enemy.

Bir Hakeim was the first major military contribution of the Free French Forces.

At the end of the battle, General de Gaulle sent this message to General Koenig: "Know and tell your troops that all of France is watching you and that you are its pride.”

A bridge and a métro station on line 6 in Paris are named after this battle.

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11/05/2025

11/05/2025

10/05/2025