Episode Seven: The Undesired

Josephine was the great love of Napoleon's life, but in late 1809, he had their marriage annulled -- how had it come to this? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

We examine Napoleon's private life, with a special focus on the most important person in it: the charming and controversial Empress of the French, Josephine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

In the summer of 1809, General Sir Arthur Wellesley led a small British army into Spain. While the war raged on, Napoleon was also picking a political fight with a powerful enemy: the Roman Catholic Church. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

By the summer of 1789 the different sections of the Revolution were at loggerheads, and the recently created National Assembly riven in two. Both factions, the radicals on the left and the more moderate revolutionaries on the right, upheld different interpretations of how the new ... Show More

The war between revolutionary France and the allied powers of Prussia and Austria has reached fever pitch, and in early August 1792, the latter party threaten a terrible vengeance on Paris should harm be done to the French royal family. But far from calming tensions, this threat ... Show More

This 2017 episode covers the moment in 1789 when a group of protesters -- mostly women -- marched from Paris to Versailles to pressure King Louis XVI to address France's food shortage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

In the summer and Autumn of 1792 - with the Prussians bearing down on Paris, the streets thronged with the stirring swell of the Marseillaise, but also the rotting bodies of those brutally killed during the September Massacres - the French Revolution bore a new symbol of optimism ... Show More

Fresh from storming the Bastille, the revolutionaries are coming for the royals at Versailles. Marie Antoinette avoids a massacre by clever use of a secret passage - but perhaps it’s time to flee the country altogether? A plan is hatched… but fate is against them.See Privacy Poli ... Show More

“It was violence that made the revolution revolutionary”. The storming of the Bastille is viewed by many across the world as a moment of celebration, when the French people were liberated from the shackles of tyranny and royal despotism. Yet, it was also a moment of horrific vio ... Show More

The French Revolution is one of the great seismic events of global history. A devouring conflagration of bloodshed, violence and utopianism, it changed France and then latterly the whole of Europe forever. Yet, amidst the panoply of colossal, colourful names that defined this cat ... Show More

Welcome to Season 2 of The French Revolution! Revolutionary fervour threatens to engulf the streets of Paris, as demonstrators have gathered on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the removal of the King. Two days prior, the National Assembly had decreed that Louis XV ... Show More

With seismic antecedents such as the Glorious Revolution in England and the American War of Independence, what was it about the French Revolution that saw it become arguably the most important episode in all early modern political history? And what unique combination of factors c ... Show More

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité!” Alongside violence, the French Revolution is a story of principles and values. It is the ultimate intersection of brutality and Enlightenment idealism, as epitomised by the Fall of the Bastille. So too the creation and implementation of the Declar ... Show More