Images

Jean Cavalier, Camisard leader, painting by Pierre-Antoine Labouchère, 1864. Musée du Désert, France.

The château of Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. Built in the 14th century for the Dukes of Anjou, it is the only Gothic castle in the Loire Valley.

A modern bust of the Spanish conquistador and chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 - c. 1580). Díaz wrote a famous account, The Conquest of New Spain. The bust is in the town of Medina del Campo in Spain, the birthplace of Díaz.

An 1894 illustration showing the uniform of a Grenadier, 40th Foot regiment, 1767. The soldier is wearing his famous "red coat" made with cochineal dye. From R. H. Raymond Smythies (1894). Historical Records of the 40th (2nd Somersetshire...

A c. 1621 portrait of Cardinal Agostino Pallavicini by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). The cardinal is wearing robes dyed with cochineal. (Getty Center, Los Angeles)

A 1785 portrait of Baronne de Crussol Florensac by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. The striking red dress and hat are rendered using cochineal pigment. (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)

Reconstruction of the well that Joan of Arc is believed to have used to get off her horse in Chinon on March 6th 1429 as she was heading to meet King Charles VII of France.

A prickly pear cactus (nopal) with the parasite insect Dactylopius coccus which is used to make cochineal dye.

An 18th-century illustration showing a Mesoamerican using the traditional method of collecting insects to make the prized cochineal dye. (The Newberry Library)

What is the Third Estate? was a seminal pamphlet written by Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sièyes (1748-1836) in the months preceding the Estates-General of 1789. The pamphlet argues that the Third Estate (commoners) constitutes an entire nation itself...