200 year-old French love letters opened for the first time

euronews (in English)

Once forgotten in the British military archives, the 200-year-old love letters finally saw the light of day, thanks to a Cambridge University professor.

Transcript

00:00 Notes from beyond the grave and never received.

00:03 250 years after they were written, a batch of letters to French sailors have finally been opened and studied.

00:09 The sailors were captured by the British at the height of the Seven Years' War in the 18th century and held in UK prisons.

00:16 Dozens of letters were sent mainly by wives and mothers who didn't know of their men's fate.

00:21 They languished in the British National Archives until a French professor working at Cambridge University discovered them.

00:28 I immediately understood that these were not official letters from diplomats, aristocrats or great bourgeois,

00:35 but letters from people in common.

00:39 My heart rate accelerated and I understood that it was a unique object.

00:47 It was my greatest emotion as a historian to this day.

00:50 The letters give a fascinating insight into the lives of families during the late 1700s.

00:55 Some expressed love and fidelity to absent husbands and fiancées.

00:59 It's thought some of the senders died without seeing their loved ones again.

01:02 [WHOOSH]

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