Scaramouche (novel)
''Scaramouche'' is a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1921. A romantic adventure, ''Scaramouche'' tells the story of a young lawyer during the French Revolution. In the course of his adventures he becomes an actor portraying "Scaramouche" (a roguish buffoon character in the ''commedia dell'arte''). He also becomes a revolutionary, politician, and fencing-master, confounding his enemies with his powerful orations and swordsmanship. He is forced by circumstances to change sides several times. The book also depicts his transformation from cynic to idealist. The three-part novel opens with the memorable line: "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." This line is Sabatini's epitaph, inscribed on his gravestone in Adelboden, Switzerland. Plot The Robe Andre-Louis Moreau, educated as a lawyer, lives in the village of Gavrillac in Brittany with his godfather, Quentin de Kercadiou, the Lord of Gavrillac, who refuses to discl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scaramouche
Scaramouche () or Scaramouch (; from Italian Scaramuccia , literally "little skirmisher") is a stock clown character of the 16th-century commedia dell'arte (comic theatrical arts of Italian literature). The role combined characteristics of the '' Zanni'' (servant) and the ''Capitano'' (masked henchman), with some assortment of villainous traits. Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a Don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice. History Although Tiberio Fiorillo (1608–1694) was not the first to play the role, he greatly developed and popularized it. He removed the mask, used white powder on his face, and employed grimaces. He was small , long beard, and wore a predominantly black costume with a white ruff. In France he became known as Scaramouche. In the 19th century, the English actor Joseph Grimaldi and his son J. S. Grimaldi made numerous appearances as Scaramouche. Character Scaramouche influences the audience to do his biddi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nantes
Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabitants (2018). With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms one of the main north-western French metropolitan agglomerations. It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region, one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany, a former duchy and province, and its omission from the modern administrative region of Brittany is controversial. Nantes was identified during classical antiquity as a port on the Loire. It was the seat of a bishopric at the end of the Roman era before it was conquered by the Bretons in 851. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany, Rennes became the provincial capital aft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ''Driven into Paradise: The Musical M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Barbara Field
Barbara Field is a playwright whose work has been seen at theaters across North America and Europe. Education Field is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the University of Minnesota (MA). Career She has written adaptations of such great works of literature as ''Great Expectations'' and ''A Christmas Carol'', both by Charles Dickens, and of ''Scaramouche'', by Rafael Sabatini. Great Expectations won the L.A. Drama critics award in 1996. Other plays include ''Neutral Countries'', co-winner of the Humana Festival's Great American Play contest in 1983, and ''Boundary Waters'', for which she received a DramaLogue Award in 1992. She also authored three books, ''New Classics from the Guthrie Stage''(Smith and Kraus) and ''Barbara Field, Collected Plays, Vol I & II'' (Amazon). Field is a co-founder of The Playwrights' Center The Playwrights' Center is a non-profit theatre organization focused on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Louis XVIII Of France
Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in exile: during the French Revolution and the First French Empire (1804–1814), and during the Hundred Days. Until his accession to the throne of France, he held the title of Count of Provence as brother of King Louis XVI. On 21 September 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and deposed Louis XVI, who was later executed by guillotine. When his young nephew Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the Count of Provence proclaimed himself (titular) king under the name Louis XVIII. Following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era, Louis XVIII lived in exile in Prussia, England, and Russia. When the Sixth Coalition finally defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jean, Baron De Batz
Jean Pierre de Batz, Baron de Sainte-Croix, known as the Baron de Batz or de Bance,"Histoire de la Convention Nationale, d'après elle-meme: précédée d'un tableau de la France monarchique avant la révolution", Volume 6 1835 by Léonard Gallois on page 294 (26 January 1754 – 10 January 1822), was a French royalist and businessman. He was born in Goutz-les-Tartas (Gers), and died in Chadieu, near Vic-le-Comte (Puy-de-Dôme). His life and actions in the service of Louis XVI inspired several popular novelists, including Baroness Orczy ('' Eldorado'', 1913), Rafael Sabatini (''Scaramouche'', 1921) and more recently Juliette Benzoni (''Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort'' series, 1999–2000). Biography Royal agent Under the Constituent Assembly, de Batz's reputation as a financier led to his 28 May 1790 appointment to the liquidation committee, which was responsible for clearing public accounts. It appears that de Batz conducted liquidations of fraudulent debts, sold to hi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II (german: Franz II.; 12 February 1768 – 2 March 1835) was the last Holy Roman Emperor (from 1792 to 1806) and the founder and Emperor of the Austrian Empire, from 1804 to 1835. He assumed the title of Emperor of Austria in response to the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor of the French. Soon after Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, Francis abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor. He was King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. He also served as the first president of the German Confederation following its establishment in 1815. Francis II continued his leading role as an opponent of Napoleonic France in the Napoleonic Wars, and suffered several more defeats after the Battle of Austerlitz. The marriage of his daughter Marie Louise of Austria to Napoleon on 10 March 1810 was arguably his severest personal defeat. After the abdication of Napoleon following the War of the Sixth Coalition, Austria participated as a leading member of the Holy Alliance at the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
, house = Habsburg-Lorraine , father =Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor , mother = Maria Theresa of Hungary and Bohemia , religion =Roman Catholicism , succession1 =Grand Duke of Tuscany , reign1 =18 August 1765 – 22 July 1790 , predecessor1 = Francis Stephen , successor1 = Ferdinand III , date of burial = , place of burial = Imperial Crypt , signature =Signatur Leopold II. (HRR).PNG Leopold II (Peter Leopold Josef Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard; 5 May 1747 – 1 March 1792) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria from 1790 to 1792, and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma, and Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. Leopold was a moderate proponent of enlightened absolutism. He granted the Acad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and state. A landlocked country, Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of and has a population of 9 million. Austria emerged from the remnants of the Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the first millennium. Originally a margraviate of Bavaria, it developed into a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire in 1156 and was later made an archduchy in 1453. In the 16th century, Vienna began serving as the empire's administrative capital and Austria thus became the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy. After the dissolution of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tuileries
The Tuileries Palace (french: Palais des Tuileries, ) was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. It was the usual Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henry IV to Napoleon III, until it was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871. Built in 1564, it was gradually extended until it closed off the western end of the Louvre courtyard and displayed an immense façade of 266 metres. Since the destruction of the Tuileries, the Louvre courtyard has remained open and the site is now the location of the eastern end of the Tuileries Garden, forming an elevated terrace between the Place du Carrousel and the gardens proper. History Plan of Catherine de Medici (16th C.) The site of the Tuileries palace was originally just outside the walls of the city, in an area frequently flooded by the Seine as far as the present Rue Saint-Honore. The land was occupied by the workshops and kilns craftsmen who ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Counter-revolutionary
A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revolutionary" pertains to movements that would restore the state of affairs, or the principles, that prevailed during a prerevolutionary era. Definition A counter-revolution is opposition or resistance to a revolutionary movement. It can refer to attempts to defeat a revolutionary movement before it takes power, as well as attempts to restore the old regime after a successful revolution. Europe France The word "counter-revolutionary" originally referred to thinkers who opposed themselves to the 1789 French Revolution, such as Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald or, later, Charles Maurras, the founder of the ''Action française'' monarchist movement. More recently, it has been used in France to describe political movements that reject the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Estates-General Of 1789
The Estates General of 1789 was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners (Third Estate). It was the last of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France. Summoned by King Louis XVI, the Estates General of 1789 ended when the Third Estate formed the National Assembly and, against the wishes of the King, invited the other two estates to join. This signaled the outbreak of the French Revolution. The decision to summon the Estates First Assembly of Notables and peasants The suggestion to summon the Estates General came from the Assembly of Notables installed by the King on 22 February 1787. This institution had not been called since 1614. In 1787, the Parlement of Paris was refusing to ratify Charles Alexandre de Calonne's program of badly needed financial reform, due to the special interests of its noble members. Calonne was the Controller-General of Finances, appointed by t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |