Word: corsican
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...judge's request for a description of the death of one "François the Corsican," he sneered: "So you want to know the details? I must say you have sadistic tastes...
...Some of his biographers have been unable to get past Boswell's faults and a few have tried to argue them away, but Mr. Quennell has done the pudgy Scot exact justice. He has seen-but also seen past-the clown who strutted about the Shakespeare Jubilee in Corsican fancy dress and who "sallied forth like a roaring lion after girls." Mr. Quennell has rightly praised him as not only the author of the greatest biography in existence, but also as "one of the first English writers to be more interested in himself . . . than in the impression he made...
...Corsican landowner presented a claim for damages: U.S. soldiers, said he, had cut down six of his trees for firewood. Officials of the U.S. Army Claims Office asked how he knew the soldiers were Americans. He had a requisition-some penciling on the back of a can label. It was addressed to "Private Mortimer Snerd." Satisfied that only an American could have written that, the U.S. Army paid the Corsican $90 for his trees...
...name was Hans David Ludwig Yorck and the date was Dec. 30, 1812. Prussia was an ally of Napoleon at the time. The treasonable document he signed became known as the Convention of Tauroggen after Prussia turned against the Corsican. With the Russian general sat a young Prussian aide, Karl von Clausewitz, author later on of the world's most famous book of military theory, On War. With Yorck sat a Major von Seydlitz. At first, there was talk of court-martial for Yorck, but when Prussia's War of Liberation against Napoleon began, he became a national...
...Literally: Corsican scrub, traditional refuge for lawbreakers; now the term for Frenchmen hiding from Occupation demands. Most Maquis haunt the Haute-Savoie, near Switzerland...