Chiclana-Barrosa - 5 March 1811 (In English)

On 6th February 1814, the deputy mayor of Reims opened his city gates to a handful of Cossacks. Following this bold move, the city would alternate between French and Coalition rule four times within the month of March. Renegade General Saint-Priest seized the city by force on 12th March at the head of a Russian-Prussian Army Corps: This pushed Napoleon to commit himself in this battle in order to restore a critical tactical situation. He triumphantly entered Reims from the day after at nightfall upon rough fights which took place in Tinqueux and at the gate of Vesle. The inhabitants cheared enthusiastically at him when he left the city in the morning of 17th Marc. He had to proceed on his tragic destiny about to be achieved a few days later in Fontainebleau.

In England in the eighth century, in the midst of the so-called Dark Ages, Offa ruled Mercia, one of the strongest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. For over 30 years he was the dominant warlord in the territory south of the Humber and the driving force behind the expansion of Mercia’s power. During that turbulent period he commanded Mercian armies in their struggle against the neighbouring kingdoms of Northumbria and Wessex and against the Welsh tribes. Yet the true story of Offa’s long reign and of the rise and fall of Mercia are little known although this is one of the most intriguing episodes in this little-recorded phase of England’s past. It is Chris Peers’s task in this new study to uncover the facts about Offa and the other Mercian kings and to set them in the context of English history before the coming of the Danes.

VaeVictis Issue #167 - March - April 2023