It happened on the second day of the summer term. Was it caused by the smell of lilac, the droning of the bees, or the French incense which Lane-Perkins had set alight? Nobody knew, but that spring afternoon following a heated exchange with a pupil, Sebastian Sermon, a forty-nine-year-old schoolmast[...]

Napoleon's Marshals led the troops of France in battles across Europe from 1804 to 1815. A mixed group of twenty-six men, some of the Marshals came from aristocratic backgrounds, some had originally pursued tradesmen careers as drapers and bakers, and others rose from total poverty to hold the highe[...]