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On 10 June 1944, 78 years ago today, 643 lives were cut short in the small French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near the city of Limoges. Thread 1/8 #oradour #France #Frenchhistory #oradoursurglane 
The focus today should not be on the SS division responsible, but it should be on the men, women and children who lost their lives. 2/8
3/8 The women and children were killed in this church. The one survivor, Marguerite Rouffanche, watched one of her daughters shot dead, and the other fall into flames when the floor of the sacristy gave way. She was holding Marguerite’s only grandchild, baby Guy.
1/11 Nuns & Sex in an Old Regime City? -a #nunstastic out of time at the book launch question from @hkellerlapp for @CorinneGressang, @school_tales, @onslies & other nun-scholars. Quick answer - yes nuns were intimately involved in community safeguarding & communal complicity.
2/11 Nuns has multiple roles: a) intrinsic to pre and post natal as nurses at the Hôtel-Dieu where unmarried women could give birth for no charge or (very rarely) be detained for promiscuity.
3/11 They also provided care to newborns charged to the care of the HD after birth - an option young couples sometimes exercised to manage the challenges of not being ready/willing to marry. (Newborns were dispatched from the HD to wet-nurses within a few days.)
1/ An archival puzzle (always look at the back page): Accounting for foundlings, "debauched girls" & Colbert's projects for Louis XIV's gloire. Or how little details speak to metanarratives. I see a note in my book mss cites a 1660-1671 register for 1650s material. Hhm
2/ The source is a Hôtel-Dieu register & the catalogue description is "Registre de remises des enfants exposés et abandonès à la Charité 1660-1671." This document is on line w/ a lot of other great material about e-mod foundlings digitized by @ArchivesdeLyon.
3/ I looked at the document and noticed "register" seems a bit formal for a sheaf of paper tied with string and the first page includes only a brief note. Frustrated! Then I looked at the last page ...
