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Thanks to a long tradition of political representation and to a culture of negotiation inherent to their own business, the cities of the Low Countries, particularly in Flanders, have sought since the twelfth century to impose themselves on the international diplomatic sphere. Located in a strategic region, where French feudal authority was in conflict with economic interests vital to trade with England towns, the cities of this part of the Low Countries, with or against their prince, built a part of their identity on these power issues specific to foreign policy. This article, highlighting the counties of Hainault, Artois, and especially Flanders, shows technical progress and mastery of diplomatic negotiation in urban areas from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century. Following specific events, it assesses the weight of authority and counter-powers in a space where economic prosperity remains at that time an almost exclusively political ambition.

Among the key actors of the French Protestant movement during the eventful year leading up to the First Civil War were the up to twenty deputies sent to court at any one time by the provincial synods of the churches throughout the kingdom. Working closely with the leading aristocratic protectors of the cause and the chief ministers in Paris and Geneva, these deputies, nearly all of whom were either lawyers or provincial noblemen, met together to coordinate their actions, helped to organize the Protestant delegation at the Colloquy of Poissy, directed the remarkable nationwide petition campaigns undertaken by the Reformed, issued directives that were circulated to the churches throughout the kingdom about how to respond to royal laws, and spoke collectively at court on behalf of the Protestant cause. They also transmitted to the royal authorities the grievances of the congregations of their synod and passed along requests and questions to leading ministers at court, notably to Theodore Beza during his stay in France. Despite their presence at the center of events in 1561-1562, these men have seldom been noticed and even less often studied by historians. This article surveys their work on behalf of the Protestant cause in these years and sketches their collective portrait. An appendix provides capsule biographies of all of these obscure but important figures whom the authors have been able to identify.

The vineyard harvest dates serie (banns harvest) of Dijon was previously the longest known serie of this kind in the historic documentation (1385-1906). Since the 19th century, it is used as one of the major source for historic climatology. In a recent paper we have re-investigated this datas in the city archives of Dijon in order to clean up the serie of several errors and to criticize it regarding the social context of the harvest (Revue Historique, 657, janv. 2011). Following this paper, this second article propose the elaboration of a totally new Burgundian banns serie, corresponding to the city of Beaune for the period between 1371 and 2010. It constitutes nowlong the longest vineyard harvest dates serie in the world. Located c. 40 km South of Dijon, the vineyard of Beaune has been recognized as a very qualitative one for long, since the end of the Middle Ages. Thus, a comparative study with the harvest practices in Dijon shows that, in the long term, a constant search for the good maturity have influenced more deeply here the opening date decision. Social determinisms seem therefore to have been less important in Beaune than in Dijon, and the « Beaune » serie is certainly more faithfull for a climatologic analysis. Also, the correlation coefficient (R) between the harvest dates and the French April to August temperatures serie between 1676 and 1906 is better in Beaune (R=0,67) than in Dijon (R=0,63).The main advantage of this new serie is to give finally some datas for just one location from the 14th century to now. Thus, ancient and very recent datas can be compared without problem. It's interesting to see, regarding the early dates, that the 1540-1550's present all the records with three very early years harvested in August (1540, 1556 and 1559). In comparison the 1990's-2000's present just one year of this kind (2003). More than that, the harvest of 1556 have been open earlier (August 16) than in 2003 (August 19). Despite we cannot see such evident earliness in the serie of Dijon at the same time, the « Beaune » serie interrogates then the hypothesis of a « very good mid-16th century » in Burgundy.

Since 1938 until 1940, the French socialist organizations, in particular the Socialist Youth Groups, far from languishing, had a dynamic existence. These groups had steady activities, in politics and entertainment and the JS were a nursery of future activists. The county of Isère constituted one of the main regions where this life of the JS was the most intense. The 1939 autumn's calling up disrupted naturally these groups, by depriving the JS of their means. When the war came nearer, these JS, marked by a pacifism, the various nuances of which it is necessary to underline, sometimes had difficulty in grasping the danger represented by the national-socialist policy. Like their elders, which sometimes considered them suspiciously, the young socialists hesitated to choose and at the end, for many of them, chose “Union sacrée” in front of the aggressor, for freedom and law.