100 love letters opened after 265 years

Over 100 love letters despatched to French sailors by their girlfriends and wives, but in addition by dad and mom and brothers, have been opened and studied for the primary time in 265 years. Written between 1757 and 1758, that they had been seized by the British Navy throughout the Seven Years’ Battle. The research by Renaud Morieux, of the College of Cambridge, printed within the journal Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales permits us to enter into the intimacy of lives of virtually three centuries in the past and perceive many social elements.

“I might spend the entire evening writing to you”, thus started a letter written by Marie Dubosc to her husband Louis Chambrelan, officer of the French naval ship Galatée. Marie couldn’t have identified, nonetheless, that the ship had been captured by the English and the whole crew taken into captivity in England; the 2 have been by no means in a position to see one another once more as a result of Marie died the next 12 months, earlier than Louis was launched and will return to France. The one between Marie and Louis is among the many tales which have emerged because of the lengthy work of Morieux, who analyzed a package deal of letters that was saved within the archives of the British Navy and had by no means been opened.

BR> Inside there have been over 100 letters despatched by family and pals to the crew of the Galatée, letters which, after an extended wandering between numerous ports, have been lastly delivered to the British Navy, which had captured the crew.

Studying them now permits you to have a look into essentially the most intimate lives of 100 households of virtually 300 years in the past: they have been stuffed with affection but in addition, at occasions, of traditional household points similar to that of Nicolas Quesnel’s mom, who complains to her son to by no means hear from him besides by means of his girlfriend Marianne. Marianne additionally writes to Nicolas asking her boyfriend to put in writing to her mom generally, who typically blames her for her son’s silence. Social dynamics of loves, jealousies and disappointments which have remained trapped in time on account of a collection of coincidences, locked in archives and forgotten, which now come again to life.

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