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blackswaneuroparedux · 1 year ago

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Je suis né gentilhomme, de bonne maison. Le nom de d'Artagnan était déjà connu quand je vins au monde.

Courtilz de Sandras, 1701.

Charles Ogier de Batz was born around 1612 in Castelmore near Lupiac in Gascony. He joined the company of musketeers around 1633, taking his mother's name, d'Artagnan, and the title of count. The historical d'Artagnan, the one originally portrayed by Courtilz de Sandras and the one more famously inspired by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet (Maquet was Dumas closest collaborator and never got the proper credit) have a few things in common. Both the de Sandras and Dumas versions of the real d’Artagnan were cadets from Gascony, who went to Paris to 'take up service' and became courageous and loyal musketeers to the king.

In 1646, the musketeers were dismissed and d'Artagnan entered Mazarin's service as one of his "ordinary gentlemen". His loyalty to the minister and the king during the troubles of the Fronde earned him a number of delicate missions, which revealed his tact and humanity, as well as rewards, such as the position of captain of the King's little dogs hunting deer. When the musketeers were reconstituted, d’Artagnan became a lieutenant in the first company of musketeers (1665), he soon became its captain-lieutenant (1667). It was said that this was the finest position in the kingdom, and D'Artagnan fulfilled it marvellously. His company soon became a model company, as brilliant as it was well trained, and the king congratulated him on several occasions.

It was as captain of the musketeers that d'Artagnan took part in the 1667 campaign in Flanders, with the rank of cavalry brigadier. He was part of Turenne's army, which besieged and captured Lille, and was appointed governor of that city. He was still there in 1672 when the Dutch war broke out. His so-called Memoirs say very little about this episode in his career. Nevertheless, he played an important role in the capital of French Flanders. It was he who had Vauban's plans for the new fortifications of the city carried out.

Dumas and Maquet, somewhat taking artistic licence (see the end of the Vicomte de Bragelonne) portraying d'Artagnan as commanding an army corps in front of the siege of Maastricht. It was there on the battlefield, shortly before the action in which he took part, he received a letter from Colbert, in which the minister announced that the king had just made him Marshal of France. But this is nonsense. The king did not need Colbert's pen to inform the captain of his musketeers of his decision regarding such a great reward; Louis XIV was in command in person before Maastricht, and he could have said to d'Artagnan: "Monsieur, je vous fais maréchal”. But he never said it. D'Artagnan was not yet a lieutenant-general; he only held the rank of marshal of the King's camps and armies.

In any case on 25 June 1673 Captain-Lieutenant d’Artagnan was killed at the siege of Maastricht. Siege warfare could be as dangerous as battlefield combat. As it was, d'Artagnan was not on duty that day, but events shifted, requiring his presence. He was hit in the throat by a stray bullet, which killed him.

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pavardscherie · 2 years ago

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Helloooooo Darling! I loved the Benji one <333 and I love Benji hehe

Could you write something about him and reader visiting his parents and things get steamy in his old bedroom? <333

a bedroom for two, benjamin pavard

pairing benjamin pavard x female summary benjamin takes you to visit his parents for a vacation, and things get steamy in his old bedroom.

izzy talks; man oh man, i'm starting to develop a very concerning crush on benji, and those cute curls. i'm really happy you liked it! and thank you for the request. all up for writing our favourite centre back! <3

i'm not writing complete smut yet, because im still practising to make it as detailed as possible ... buuut i added a little steamy stuff xd

a trip to france always had a nice melody to it. the beautiful, old buildings and several streets to walk through in a long summer dress while the warm wind blew through the hair. for her, it was more than just a loving vacation in the country.

a trip to france meant visiting maubeuge. a town with almost thirty thousand residents, surrounded by the river sambre and known for the 'Les Fortifications de Vauban' with endless widths of green grass. she's been at this place more than once, and she would come back in a heartbeat.

this time, benjamin asked her to visit his hometown and his parents, for his mother nathalie's birthday. frederic called multiple times over the past weeks, and hoped for a return of his son. with a bouquet of at least fifty red roses and a beautiful pandora necklace with swarovski stones embedded.

beautiful idea, made by both of them. and the birthday was the reason why she found herself, with benjamin's hand engulfing hers in comfortable warmth, exploring the large house that he bought for his parents. multiple rooms were almost empty, used as guest rooms if friends of the family stayed over, or benjamin brought team mates with him.

one room seemed unused since benjamin left his hometown to play at bayern munich, and it was the one at the end of the corridor. almost isolated from the guest rooms, and the staircase to the lower floor. "i lived there. it's like my teenage room." benjamin confessed, pointing a finger at the closed door.

"teenage room, huh?" she wiggled the eyebrows at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her red-coloured mouth. "did you bring girls to this room?"

"only one, and only today." the football player chuckled, walking down the corridor towards the closed door and pulling her with him. "you can feel special now." a hand placed on the doorknob, he opened it widely and revealed the embarrassing obsessions in his teenage years. multiple posters stuck to the dark blue coloured walls, disparate football players he looked up to and a couple of females, who were known as american models.

"so.." she walked inside, letting go of benjamin's hand to turn in circles and take in every corner of the room. a part of his past before moving to bayern munich. "the model typ?" a slender finger pointed at one of the victoria secret's model, presenting a white set of lingerie in an almost vulgar position.

"ah, no." the embarrassement settled in the pit of his stomach, but easily, a tint of cherry red spread across the span of his cheeks. he didn't remember the details about his former room anymore, but seeing the different females on the walls, squished between people like messi and ibrahimovic, caused a spark of bashfulness. " teenager fantasies, you know?"

benjamin gaze lifted towards the female, who inspected each detail of the room. a sweaty hand on the neck, the rough fingertips rubbed over the thin curls. "fantasies, aha." raising a single eyebrow at the state of her boyfriend, she slowly stepped further towards the double bed in the far right corner. plopping down on the comfortable mattress, she placed her hands flatly on the blanket behind her and leaned the weight on them.

"tell me more about your teenage fantasies."

benjamin lifted the head further to glance at his girlfriend, the form of her lips resembled the mischief that played in the back of her head. he knew the glimpse of smugness in the colour of his eyes, the moment when she already prepared the steps ahead, and clung to the spark of hope to receive the answer she wanted.

stepping closer to her, benjamin's hands traveled towards the pockets of his jogging pants, and slipped into the front pockets. "you're not going to laugh?"

"don't tell me you imagined taking miranda kerr home with you, and literally hoping you could rip those expensive underwear from her?" wiggling the shoulders, she already started to make fun of the fantasies that occupied benjamin's mind as a teenager.

"not funny, everybody wanted one of them. or her." he shrugged the shoulders in an attempt to wipe off the reminder of the topic, coming to a stop in front of her. as she sat on the bed, almost laid down on the blanket, benjamin towered over her. "but maybe, i can replay some of those fantasies."

reaching out for the female, his thumb caressed over her chewed-up bottom lip, and pulled it down slowly.

grazing over the soft skin, benjamin grabbed her chin between the thumb and pointer finger, tilting the head higher to connect their eyes. a smirk played on her lips, she didn’t need to give him an answer, the expression of utter smugness was enough. the red lipstick that framed her lips perfectly, was a reminder to last night when she kneeled in front of him.

marks, smeared strokes of red, left along his shaft and tip as she tried to fit him entirely into her mouth. still, after more than two years, she‘s fighting to find a way to please him without gagging too much. „tell me about your fantasies.“ she muttered, letting herself fall backwards on the duvets. strands sprawled out like a flower bed around her, arms laid out perfectly between the smooth hair.

from benjamin‘s position, it looked like a portrait. a picture painted by a very famous italian artist, who loved to draw roses in each picture. „how about i show you?“ running the thick fingers through the smooth curls, benjamin carefully climbed on top of her.

with the motions of his figure, his large hand traveled a different path. rough tips danced across the goosebumps on her exposed legs until reaching the hem of the summer dress which only covered half her thighs. slipping underneath the fabric, the eyebrows furrowed when the fingers didn’t find a pair of lace panties. „what the..“ he muttered, the french accent giving the words an extra edge.

„you expected underwear? how foolish of you.“ she giggled, the bottom lip pulled back immediately, when pavard‘s rough pads grazed her pulsating clit. the wetness pooled between her thighs, it got more difficult to listen to him when her thoughts already created multiple scenarios in her head.

shaking his head in disbelief, the words traveled straight to the forming tent in his jogging pants. „you’re going to be the death of me, just so you know.“ the answer was unnecessary, as the fleshy fingers started to massage the bundle of nerves with more pressure than usual. she planned this, she wanted this badly, and benjamin would in to those thoughts.

„benji, please.“ her lids fluttered close at the simplest touch of the man, she felt like pudding in his hands. „i need you, all of you, right now.“

watching closely how she drifted between pleasure and reality for a couple of seconds, he couldn’t help but letting the satisfied smirk spread across his face. many times, she tried to take control over the situation but one touch, one simple stroke or kiss was enough to have her beg for him.

shuffling out of the wide jogging pants, benjamin quickly pulled his boxer shorts down as well. mentally, he praised himself for choosing the comfortable pair of bayern munich sets, instead of going for the full elegant way. „don’t make a sound, babe. i don’t want my parents to think we‘re completely messed up.“

hiking the fabric of the dress up further, he revealed the bare pussy. tongue darted out, and licked over the dry lips at the delicious view. juices spread with his fingers glistened around the clit in the dim light, coming from the windows. leaning above her, one hand placed beside her head to keep his weight off her body, with the other, he grabbed his shaft and guided himself to her entrance. „benji..“

the impatient whimpers left her mouth, as he slowly pushed the tip inside. stretching out the entrance, the now empty hand found it’s place on the other side of the head. painfully slow, to achieve the teasing whines from her, benjamin pushed himself second for second inside of her warmth.

eyes focused on her expression, still searching for the slightest sign of pain. corner of the mouth twitched, a pleased smile wanting to push through and the eyebrows furrowed in passion. „are you good?“ the question was genuine, he always cared the most about how she felt during it.

nodding the head repeatedly, she clutched his shoulders tightly and pulled him down to her level. mouths merely an inch away, the hasty, warm breaths mixed together. "can you be quiet for me?"

she nodded again, not trusting the voice to speak without stuttering the words together, or needy whimpers escaping between the broken syllabeles. "i need words, baby."

benjamin felt the pulsating walls, clenching around his dick when he used the common nickname for her. she loved the sweet words, especially the spoken praises. "yes, i can be quiet for you."

"good girl." soft lips pressed a tender, featherlight kiss againts her glistening forehead, slight sweat spreading across the smooth skin. "my good girl."

praising words, a praise to always complying, and benjamin started to pull his hips back, snapping them quickly back, hoping she would be as quiet as she promised.

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jow99 · 3 months ago

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St Malo

This morning we caught the bus into town, about a 30 minute trip. First stop was coffee at a tea house called Sanchez. They even have Jose’s favourite dog on the sign!

St Malo old town is a walled city. I was here 38 years, ago off the ferry from the UK on my way down to Perpignan to meet my school friend Alison. It was great to finally return and have time to properly explore.

We visited the cathedral, which was dedicated to a Spanish saint (go figure). It, like a lot of things in St Malo, was partly destroyed during the reclamation of independence in WW2. The cathedral is now a delightful blend of old and new. There’s not much to see from the outside, but I’m so glad we went in. Another surprise was that the body of the guy who discovered Canada is also in this cathedral, Jacoves Cartier.

We walked the ramparts but far more interesting were the forts built on surrounding islands which we’re all designed and overseen by Vauban. You may recall the UNESCO listed tower back in Camaret-sur-Mer that we didn’t get, same dude. I have to say the man was good as these forts and towers are still standing in the most part. The ones here even withstood the same bombing that destroyed part of the cathedral.

Part way through we stopped for a lunch of moules mariniere and frites 😋 Having completed our tour of the ramparts and some of the surrounding forts (this has to be timed with the tides so you can walk out and not get wet), we headed off to Alet and the Solidor tower. So much to see here too. Lots of fortifications dating back to the 1400s through 17-1800s that were then reused by the Germans in WW2. There were even some Gallo-Roman ruins.

Late afternoon we stopped for a cider before a quick shop for some nibbles for tonight (we were still full from lunch) and then caught the bus back to the campground.

It’s been a fantastic day and the weather has behaved. Whilst I wouldn’t say it was hot, for a lot of the day I was in a t-shirt and we sat out for our nibbles dinner, finally retreating inside a bit after 8:30pm.

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philoursmars · 8 months ago

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Deuxième étape de mon périple dans l'Ouest pour retrouver des ami(e)s lointain(e)s , Brigitte et Sylviane à La Rochelle. Bri étant fatiguée, c'est Sylviane qui me fait découvrir la belle île d'Oléron.

Avant le pont, sur le continent, la ville fortifiée de Brouage au quadrillage des rues forcément militaire.

#brouage #charente-maritime #fortifications #vauban

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intheshadowofwar · 1 year ago

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28 June 2023

The Salient

Ypres 28 June 2023

In military teminology, a salient is when part of one side’s territory sort of bulges into the other side’s. Imagine you have two lines of paint, one red and one blue, running parallel, and they’re slightly wet and runny. Imagine a bit of the red paint leaking into the blue line. Picture that, and you’ve got a fairly good idea of what a salient looks like on a map.

From a purely military perspective, you don’t want a salient. A salient means that the enemy has positions on your flanks that can provide enfilade fire - effectively, they can hit you from the front and from both your left and right. It is much better to defend a straight line - or better yet, have the enemy in a salient pushing into your line. From a purely military perspective, what the British and French should have done in November 1914, when the fronts began to harden into what would become trench warfare, was to fall back and abandon the town of Ypres to the Germans. Politically, this was impossible - Ypres was the last Belgian town of any note held by the Allies, and to abandon it would be to abandon the country altogether. Since Britain had entered the war to defend Belgium, this was unthinkable.

Hence, the Ypres Salient, established after the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914 and crystalised after the Second in February to March 1915 (the latter being the first used of poison gas in modern warfare, and the first major battle fought by the Canadians.) For the troops of the British Empire, Ypres was always a bad place to be posted - but it was in the summer and autumn of 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, that the name became synonymous with hell on Earth.

I have some sympathy with Field Marshal Haig, at least in the early stages of the battle - the Allied badly needed a win. The French Army, after the disastrous Nivelle Offensive of early 1917, was in a state of mutiny. The Italians were foundering in the Alps and were about to be utterly hammered by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians at Caperetto. The Russian Army was disintergrating as the country fell into revolution. Of the main Allied powers, only the British had a functioning army. The burden fell on them. What I cannot sympathise with Haig on, of course, was the fact that the battle continued long after it made any sense to keep going. By October and November, in a morass of mud, gas, artillery and blood, the British Army was nearly bled white in a series of pointless offensive to take the blasted ruin of Passchendaele. It would be given up without a fight in the German offensives the following spring.

If you want the answer as to why the Allied appeased Hitler, you can find it in the rows and rows of tombstones in this small strip of Belgian land.

We started today with a brief walk along the walls of Ypres - they date back to Louis XIV, who built a lot of forts because he had a lot of enemies. (For the fortification nerds among you, I can’t remember if it’s a Vauban fort, but I suspect it probably was.) At the Lille gate, so called because it faces that city, we reached the Ramparts Cemetary. Most of the men buried here were killed in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, but there are clusters of 1917 names - little groups of men, all from the same battalions, all from the same day. Of particular note were about six men of the Maori Battalion, all of whom died on New Years’ Eve 1917. The men in these graves would have died all at once, victims of a direct hit from an artillery shell. One could escape snipers, machine guns, even gas, but at Wipers, a ‘whizzbang’ could always find you.

We met our new bus (apparently yesterday’s bus has been fired) and left Ypres for the second cemetery of our day’s touring, and perhaps the most unique I’ve ever seen. The Langemarck German Cemetary is one of the bleakest places I have ever visited. Slabs on the ground mark the dead - tens at a time - in what I can only describe as a pitiless mass grave of humanity. A distubingly large portion of these men died in October 1914, many of them cadets - these were the Kindermord bei Ypern, and their pointless, suicidal attacks on British positions were turned by their leaders into a propaganda tool to encourage young men to emulate their ‘sacrifice.’

There are over forty-four thousand German soldiers interred at Langemarck. This was because the Germans were given precious little room for burials after the war - the Belgians and French, pitlessly but somewhat understandably, called the bodies of German soldier ‘pollutants’ in their soil. As a result, German graves on the Western Front are filled to the burst point with wasted humanity. Of course it became a site of Nazi pilgrimage after the German conquest in 1940, and in an attempt to prevent this from happening again, the cemetary has interpretive spaces that a visitor must pass through to access the cemetery. That is the saddest thing about German cemeteries, I think - if they had a beautiful cemetery like the British and French do, it would immediately become a Mecca for fascists. One only needs to look at the grave of SS tank commander Michael Wittman, who despite being a Nazi of the worst stripe, still had tributes laid at his grave almost daily.

My personal verdict, though? Langemarck is obscene. It is dehumanising, alienating and almost industrial. When Seigfried Sassoon spoke of the ‘intolerably nameless names’ at the Menin Gate, he might very well have spoken about this. That there is probably no other option does little to reconcile me to this pit of inhumanity. Perhaps in that way it’s one of the best anti-war arguments I’ve ever seen.

We left Langemarck, passing the Brooding Soldier, a Canadian memorial to their victims of has attacks, and heading on to Polygon Wood. This is where the Australian Fifth Division chose to place their war memorial. The Australian Imperial Force in France had five infantry divisions - there was a sixth, the Mounted Division, in Palestine - and these were predictably numbered from one to five. The Fifth, the youngest of them, had perhaps the worst introduction to the war of all, starting their campaign at Fromelles, an unmitiagated failure of an offensive that still holds the dubious distinction of being the bloodiest day in Australian history. For reasons that are probably obvious, they didn’t chose to build their memorial at Fromelles - they chose Polygon Wood, part of the push towards Passchendaele. This is because Polygon Wood, by the standards of the Western Front in 1917, was actually a success - the Fifth took all of its objectives with ‘acceptable’ losses.

In a weird way, after Langemarck the graves at Polygon Wood seemed almost reassuring; yet it was confronting in its own way. Technically, the cemetery around the Fifth Division Memorial isn’t part of the actual Polygon Wood Cemetary - it’s the Butte New British Cemetary, and that’s pronounced like ‘boot’ you absolute children. But they’re effectively the same complex, and both of them are filled with dead Australians, New Zealanders and Britons. There are whole lines of headstones labelled ‘Known Unto God’ - these are the unknown soldiers, the men so badly mutiliated that they could not be identified. Some could be traced to a unit, a rank or a nationality - ‘an unknown Australian soldier,’ ‘an unknown soldier of the Manchester Regiment,’ ‘an unknown Australian Second Lieutenant’ - but that does little to erase the sense of cruel anonymity. Even so, people still lay tributes at these graves - poppies, flags, little wooden crosses. I’ve always liked that - people who don’t know and can’t know who these men were, but are willing to stop by their grave regardless. There was an unknown soldier with an Australian flag laid on it, and I was a little curious as it stood right next to one that was explicitly identified as Australia. Perhaps whoever left that flag was saying that, whether or not you were a Digger or a Tommy or a Kiwi in life, you’re in our house now, and you’re one of us.

I think it was the historian Mark McKenna who questioned the sincerity of those who make pilgrimage to foreign battle sites and mourn. Everytime I go to one of these places, I think they prove him a little more wrong.

We rambled into Polygon Wood itself, behind the cemetery, and found ‘Scott House.’ This is actually not a house, but a pillbox, taken by Australian forces in the battle. This would have been at the edge of the Hindenburg Line (or the Siegfried Line in German, not to be confused with the line of the same name in the Second World War.) The Hindenburg Line was built behind the German front at the end of 1916, after the Germans had taken a severe battering at the Somme and Verdun. They withdrew to it in the Spring of 1917, and it basically remained the frontline until Germany took the offensive again in 1918. It was something of a master stroke, and was really more of a series of mutually supporting lines of trenches, blockhouses, barbed wire and mines, funnelling the enemy into killing zones where they could be destroyed. It could also be manned by fewer men, allowing Germany to divert troops to the East to crush Russia. The fact that the blockhouse is still intact, over a century later, is a testament to its strength. Of course, in the end, the Hindenburg Line was cracked - or perhaps shattered was the better term. But we’ll get to that in a few days.

After leaving Polygon Wood, we briefly scouted past Tyne Cot - we’ll head back there tomorrow - and returned to Ypres for lunch. After lunch we headed to the In Flanders Fields Museum, in the rebuilt Cloth Hall at the centre of town. This museum has two basic functions - it’s a museum, recounting the history of the war in Belgium in general and in Ypres particularly, and the personal experiences of combatants and civilians, and it’s a memorial, explicitly designed to do justice to those who died in the Ypres Salient and to promote peace. There are things in it I disagree with in it (mostly the generic references to ‘the State’ in the first part of the memorial - all pre-war nations had their flaws, but I don’t think they can all be lumped together 1984-style as one generically malevolent ‘State’) but ultimately I very much recommend this museum. I think there’s a lot in there that other museums could learn from.

As I am wont to do, I’ve put some thought into an exhibit that really spoke to me. I think it’s the layouts of uniforms and equipment of the main combatants (with the somewhat bizarre exception of Britain, but I think that’s because most of their kit overlaps with the Canadians and Australians rather than any particular statement about ‘perfidious Albion’) as they were in 1918. Firstly, they’re laid out in such a way that it’s easy to see exactly what kit a soldier would be carrying, as opposed to being on a mannequin in full battle order (although don’t get me wrong, I love a good mannequin.) Secondly is the presentation - everything looks like it’s attached to a sprue, like a model kit. I don’t know if that’s intentional, but it gives everything a bit of a toy soldier feel - perhaps a sneaky little tweak on the nose at people with unhealthy interests in uniforms and guns (which I understand describes me, but I’m not above a little healthy self-reflection.) There was also a pretty neat exhibition on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and its French, Belgian, US and German counterparts.

We had a chat with the staff at the museum, and then that was it. I went to Ypres Burger, because I find it conceptually entertaining, and called it a day there. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about a famous and evocative poem that sits a little funny with me…

…no, it’s not Rupert Brook’s The Soldier. That doesn’t ‘sit funny’ with me, I hate it with white hot intensity. ‘That is forever England’ my bottom.

#first world war #western front #ypres

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