* 1929 – Bob Denard, French soldier and mercenary ( d. 2007 )

" We had not got forty yards on our retreat ," remembered Captain Peter Drake, the Irish mercenary serving with the French – " when the words sauve qui peut went through the great part, if not the whole army, and put all to confusion "

France and Comoros signed a mutual security treaty in 1978 ; following the mercenary coup against Abdallah in 1989, French troops restored order and took responsibility for reorganizing and training the Comorian army.

In addition, his opposition to the French and to mercenary service was welcomed by Zurich politicians.

About 1, 400 Mexican troops, led by the French mercenary general Adrián Woll, launched a second attack and captured San Antonio on September 11, 1842.

* December 29 – Battle of Garigliano, near Gaeta, Italy: Spanish forces under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba defeat a French – Italian mercenary army under Ludovico II, the Marquis of Saluzzo.

* August 24 – First Barons ' War: In the Battle of Sandwich in the English Channel, English forces destroy the French and the French mercenary Eustace the Monk is captured and beheaded.

* August 24 – Eustace the Monk, French mercenary and pirate ( b. c. 1170 )

It is likely that he first became a mercenary and marched with the French army to Italy, where he fought in the battle of Garigliano on 28 December 1503.

That the city-states of northern Italy, or Genoa on its own, could have put several thousand mercenary crossbowmen at the disposal of the French king is described by Schnerb as " doubtful ".

In 2003, France criminalized mercenary activities, as defined by the protocol to the Geneva convention for French citizens, permanent residents and legal entities ( Penal Code, L436-1, L436-2, L436-3, L436-4, L436-5 ).

The cessation of war in France left vast numbers of French, English, Gascon and Navarrese soldiers and freebooters in search of mercenary employment, and many of these soon became involved in the wars of Castille and Aragon, both of which bordered Navarre.

His reign was dominated by the war with the English, and two major problems: recovering the territories ceded at Bretigny, and ridding the land of the Tard-Venus ( French for " latecomers "), mercenary companies that turned to robbery and pillage after the treaty was signed.

The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin baro " man ; servant, soldier, mercenary " ( so used in Salic Law ; Alemannic Law has barus in the same sense ).

Cesare was made commander of the papal armies by his father, Pope Alexander VI, but was also heavily dependent on mercenary armies loyal to the Orsini brothers and the support of the French king.

The French Revolution abolished mercenary troops in its citizen army, but Napoleon I and the Restoration Monarchy both made use of Swiss troops.

Captain Peter Drake, an Irishman who spent most of his life as a mercenary in the service of various European armies, served the French cause in the battle and was wounded several times.

Jürg Jenatsch and Ulysses von Salis used French money to hire an 8, 000-man mercenary army and drive out the Austrians.

When it became clear that the French intended to remain permanently in the Leagues, but would not force the Valtellina to convert to Protestantism, Jürg Jenatsch ( now a mercenary leader ) converted in 1635 to the Catholic faith.

Charles, who counted on the mercenary companies under John Hawkwood and Bartolomeo d ' Alviano, for a total of some 14, 000 men, was able to divert the French from Naples to other regions of the kingdom and to harass them with guerrilla tactics.

Europe knew now, from the French and German soldiers in Charles ' expedition, of an incredibly rich land, divided into easily conquerable principalities, and defended only by mercenary armies that refused to fight at the slightest disadvantage.

Colonel Bob Denard ( April 7, 1929 – October 13, 2007 ), born Gilbert Bourgeaud, was a French soldier and mercenary.

Francis's precipitate advance, however, had not only masked the fire of the French artillery, but also pulled him away from the mass of French infantry, commanded by Richard de la Pole, and by Francois de Lorraine, who led the Black Band of renegade Landsknecht pikemen ( not to be confused with the Italian mercenary company of arquebusiers by the same name ), which was 4, 000 to 5, 000 men strong.

I worked for my Uncle ( an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest ) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.

While convalescing in his Virginia home he wrote a book recording his prison experiences and escape, entitled: They Shall Not Have Me Published originally in ( Helion's ) English by Dutton & Co. of New York, in 1943, the book was received by the press as a work of astonishing literary power and one of the most realistic accounts of World War 2, from the French side.

Alarmed by this display of weapons, I looked toward the bridge and there saw, stretched across the near side, a cordon of policemen, their bicycles forming a roadblock before which stood several French officers in uniform and a small waspish man in a brown derby.

Sure enough, mail began trickling in, delivered by a talkative, highly amused French postman who informed me there had been quite a debate at the post office as to whether that address would be recognized.

For by now the original cause of the quarrel, Philip's seizure of Gascony, was only one strand in the spider web of French interests that overlay all western Europe and that had been so well and closely spun that the lightest movement could set it trembling from one end to the other.

The French were now occupying Gascony and Flanders on the technical grounds that their rulers had forfeited them by a breach of the feudal contract.

This lofty disregard for others was not shared by such men as Pierre Flotte and his associates, that `` brilliant group of mediocre men '', as Powicke calls them, who provided the brains for the French embassy that came to Rome under the nominal leadership of the archbishop of Narbonne, the duke of Burgundy, and the count of St.-Pol.

In spite of the armistice negotiated by Amadee two years earlier, the war between Bishop Guillaume of Lausanne and Louis of Savoy was still going on, and although little is known about it, that little proves that it was yet another phase of the struggle against French expansion and was closely interwoven with the larger conflict.

For a time it appeared that a common European army might be created, but the project for a European Defense Community was rejected by the French National Assembly in 1954.

It was not a part of any one of the three ( later four ) zones for occupation by Soviet, American, British, and French troops respectively.

A British writer, Richard Haestier, in a book, Dead Men Tell Tales, recalls that in the turmoil preceding the French Revolution the body of Henry 4,, who had died nearly 180 years earlier, was torn to pieces by a mob.

For a while his work was influenced deeply by the French impressionists, and by the patterned, mosaic-like paintings of Gustav Klimt, then the dean of Austrian art.

-- An unusual flavor can be achieved by marinating the franks in French dressing or a mixture of honey, lemon juice and brown sugar prior to the picnic.

In Berlin he published his views of the chemical laws of nature in German and this was issued in French translation ( Paris, 1813 ) under the title Recherches Sur l'identite Des Forces chimiques et electriques, a work held in very high esteem by the new generation of research chemists.

A biting, pithy parable of the all-pervading hollowness of modern life, the piece has been set by Mlle Lagoon to a sumptuous score ( a single motif played over and over by four thousand French horns ) by existentialist hot-shot Jean-Paul Sartre.

Since the complicated process of establishing new communes and reviewing the rudimentary plan left by the French did not even begin until the fall of 1957, this goal appears somewhat ambitious.

Today it is occupied by the French Embassy.

The discovery that movies are a form of fiction was made in the early years of this century and it was made chiefly by two men, a French magician, Georges Melies, and an American employee of Edison, Edwin S. Porter.

But by week's end the Laotian cry of invasion was read as an exaggeration ( see foreign news ), and the U.S. was agreeing with its cautious British and French allies that a neutralist -- rather than a pro-Western -- government might be best for Laos.

Claude Jannequin's vocal description of a battle ( the French equivalents of tarantara, rum-tum-tum, and boom-boom-boom are very picturesque ) is lots of fun, and the singers get a sense of grace and shape into other chansons by Jannequin and Lassus.

She closed her eyes, remembering the small French cemetery, enclosed by stone walls.