Curated playlist
Princes of Andorra
- NapoleonNapoleon crowned himself emperor with a replica of Charlemagne's crown. The pope had just anointed him.
- Louis XIVLouis XIV once played dead asleep while a mob filed past his bed. The twelve-year-old king never forgave Paris.
- Louis XVIIILouis XVIII spent twenty-three years as a king without a kingdom. He took the French throne in 1814.
- François MitterrandFrançois Mitterrand, who ended France's death penalty, once urged rejecting mercy in 80% of cases.
- Napoleon IIINapoleon III escaped a life sentence by walking out of prison dressed as a laborer.
- Louis XVIOn the morning of his execution, Louis XVI asked, "Any news of La Pérouse?"
- Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle tried five times to escape German prison camps in the First World War. He even posed as a nurse.
- Louis XVOn the 1st of September 1715, Louis XV, a boy of five, trembled and cried as he inherited the throne of France. Almost nobody had expected this. His reign would last almost 59 years, the second longest in French history. He became known as…
- Napoleon IINapoleon II was Emperor of the French for only two days. He was three years old and never ruled.
- Philippe PétainPhilippe Pétain left behind a verdict that fits on one line. Charles de Gaulle, who came after him at the head of France, judged that Pétain's life had been "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre". Each of…
- Louis Philippe IBefore he became king of France, Louis Philippe I lived above a Boston oyster house.