Dirk,

wait a minute, while you are here, I wanted to start  a reply to LiR about King Kong, the Dutch double agent, who was exposed by the Dutch Oreste Pinto, as the betrayer to the Germans about Operation Market Garden and Arnhem, which costed the lives of many British soldiers and perhaps of the Commonwealth as well. And also ask you about the Englandspiel, Funkspiel, Kriegsspiel? wich was meantioned in the messages about £Die Rote Kapelle and Trepper.

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul,

   King Kong ( proper name  Christiaan Lindemans ) was indeed a person you could describe as a double agent but there is no concrete evidence that he passed on information about Operation Market Garden to German authorities.
Yes , Oreste Pinto mentioned in his memoirs (books) that he unmasked King Kong as having betrayed the operation but that  has been queried .

The England Spiel is a different story and came about when a Dutch agent was dropped in the North of occupied Holland and the German Abwehr was waiting for him. It was said that the German Abwehr had prior notice of the agent being dropped .

There is a lot of information when you can log in to the proper websites.

As a matter of fact the same can be said about Oreste Pinto and not all the info makes him out to be what people think he is.

He was already in the dirty tricks department during the early 1900 when he attended Sorbonne University in Paris and worked with the then Deuxiéme Bureau.

He moved to London in 1914 got involved with Sûrete Territoire and was before the start of WW2 also approached by MI5 and that is the start of it all. 


Dirk

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Not so much about female spies, but spies generally, between 1959 and 1961 the BBC ran a couple of drama series about Oreste Pinto (who I think was Dutch) who worked during the war in the UK interrogating refugees to find out the genuine ones and the ones who had come with the intention of spying.  Bernard Archard played Mr Pinto in the series - slightly off-topic but firstling around the internet to check my facts (as much as one can on the internet) it seems Mr Archard had bought a ticket to Canada because he was fed up of regular periods of unemployment as an actor but the show runners decided they wanted someone who wasn't a "star" and Mr A auditioned and got the part.  In a 1962 Dutch programme covering the same subject matter (Wikipedia being my guide) an actor called Frits Butzelaar played the part of Oreste Pinto.  It's many years ago of course but I remember in one episode someone was outed by Mr Pinto as a spy because he threw darts at a picture of Hitler and the person being interrogated ran to place himself in front of the picture of Hitler to protect it from the darts.  There was another one where somebody claimed to have swum across either the English Channel or the North Sea and he was made to swim in a swimming pool a distance equivalent to the one he claimed to have swum in the sea (he was successful in swimming the distance if I remember correctly).

Lady in retirement,

you bring me always by mentioning your names into a search which end in another search, in this case about King Kong alias Christiaan Lindemans, as I read it before a protégé in London from Prince Bernhard, the husband of Queen Wilhelmina. And even I read in my time allegations about Prince Bernhard and Market Garden in the Belgian papers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Lindemans
From the wiki:
"An Armée secrète ‘s operative named Urbain Renniers^{[n 12]} recommended Lindemans for the job, before sending him out, Baker made a few enquiries, he then went to the 21st Army Group's^{[n 13]} headquarters which in turn contacted Prince Bernhard’s staff, on SHAEF Special Forces Captain de Graaf’s recommendation, Prince Bernhard notifiy Baker that Lindemans could be trusted, accordingly special priority clearance was granted and an IS 9 pass under the name of Christiaan Brand was issued"
"On 26 October 1944, Lindemans was denounced as a German spy by a fellow Abwehr agent named Cornelis Johannes Antonius Verloop^{[n 23]} nicknamed Satan Face (Abwehr codenamed Nelis), a recipient of the German Cross in Gold. Verloop who at that time was in Allied hands, claimed^{[n 24]} that Lindemans had betrayed Operation Market Garden to intelligence officer Kiesewetter on Friday, 15 September at the Abwehr station in Driebergen. "King Kong" showed no resistance to his arrest by British security officer Alfred Vernon Sainsbury of Special Forces Detachment on the afternoon of 28 October 1944 at Prince Bernhard's headquarters located at Château de La Fougeraie also known as Château Wittouck in Uccle outside Brussels. After five days in S^t-Gilles-Prison, Brussels, Lindemans was transferred to Camp 020 (A maximum-security prison), placed under the command of Lieutenant colonel R.W.G .Stephens nicknamed Tin Eye. Lindemans's personal effects were seized but gave no evidence of his betrayal."




http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/wwii-spies-oreste-pinto/
From this site:
"After sifting through all the various bits of evidence, Pinto decided that he had enough cause to warrant cross-examining the resistance leader. Sending a message to Dutch intelligence at Castle Wittouck, Pinto asked that King Kong report to him for an unspecified discussion. The next day, the spycatcher waited in vain for Lindemans to appear. Finally, two Dutch staff captains appeared to tell Pinto that Lindemans had been loaned out to the Canadians for a special, top-secret mission. Pinto managed to find out that Lindemans’ mission was to go to Eindhoven, Holland, to alert a resistance leader there about a large Allied parachute drop the following Sunday morning, September 17, 1944.
To Pinto, this was like the BBC broadcasting the forthcoming drop on the radio. Unaware that Operation Market Garden was in the works, all Pinto could do was send a report of his suspicions to SHAEF. Unfortunately, it was too late to call off the massive offensive, and the British and American paratroopers who made the drop found German Panzers waiting for them behind every hedgerow. No one but Pinto suspected that the real reason for the operation’s failure was the treachery of one man—Christian Lindemans.
It wasn’t until six weeks after the battle that Pinto, busy interrogating various suspects, obtained the proof he needed to arrest Lindemans. A Dutch spy for the Germans, Corelis Verloops, admitted—with a little help from Pinto’s pistol, which was aimed at his head—that Lindemans had warned the Germans about the planned parachute drop. Angrily, Pinto hatched a plan to capture Lindemans by trading on the man’s colossal vanity. Notifying King Kong that he was wanted at headquarters to receive a medal for his services, Pinto was able to lure him to his office, where he was overpowered by military police and taken to a safe house outside London. There, Lindemans made a full confession, one that covered 24 pages of closely typed foolscap."


It's for Dirk in Dutch about Oreste Pinto in his life in Netherland after WWII seemingly worked against Pinto in his official jobs in The Netherlands...The hand of Prince Bernhard, who was not pleased with all the allegations of Pinto on Lindemans besmearing in some way also Prince Bernhard, Dirk?



Kind regards, Paul.

Dirk Marinus wrote:

Paul,

   King Kong ( proper name  Christiaan Lindemans ) was indeed a person you could describe as a double agent but there is no concrete evidence that he passed on information about Operation Market Garden to German authorities.
Yes , Oreste Pinto mentioned in his memoirs (books) that he unmasked King Kong as having betrayed the operation but that  has been queried .

The England Spiel is a different story and came about when a Dutch agent was dropped in the North of occupied Holland and the German Abwehr was waiting for him. It was said that the German Abwehr had prior notice of the agent being dropped .

There is a lot of information when you can log in to the proper websites.

As a matter of fact the same can be said about Oreste Pinto and not all the info makes him out to be what people think he is.

He was already in the dirty tricks department during the early 1900 when he attended Sorbonne University in Paris and worked with the then Deuxiéme Bureau.

He moved to London in 1914 got involved with Sûrete Territoire and was before the start of WW2 also approached by MI5 and that is the start of it all. 


Dirk

Dirk,

thanks for your information. And now at the end I have finished my message. What do you think of my sources as for instance the 14 pages of his play of guilty?

Kind regards from Paul.

OOPS I see now that I yesterday asked Dirk for the link in Dutch about Pinto, but that I didn't send the URL
http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn4/pinto

Kind regards from Paul.

Dirk,

Yesterday I couldn't get the full page to display on (English) Wikipedia but today on looking at Mr Pinto's entry I note that it says that while Dwight Eisenhower called OP "the greatest living authority on security" it also says that Guy Liddell stated in 1942 that he had been told that OP had "a thoroughly bad record".  As a youngster I may have been beguiled by the acting of Bernard Archard who while he was not a typical glamour pants or matinee idol was a gifted (in my opinion at least) character actor who had presence.

Perhaps before ending with the Dutch Mata Hari the mentioning from Dirk Marinus with which it all started, I will mention the in my eyes "real" spy: Richard Sorge.

He warned of the approaching invasion on 22 June 1941, Barbarossa (Redbeard) but Stalin didn't want to believe him.
He also mentioned from Japan based on information that the japanese would not invade the Soviet Union, so that soldiers from Siberia could be moved to the West as Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Sorge

And also from Wiki, where I read that Sorge till his dead remained loyal to his cause (not a double spy as Trepper) and you can't blame him for trying to stay in Japan, as Stalin murdered his fellow spies out of distrust. After the Japanese captured Sorge, they wanted him to exchange for Japanese spies, but Stalin didn't want perhaps because of his fault of not listening to Sorge for Barbarossa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge
Read also in the wiki: under "posthumous recognition" about the Nazis still working in post war Germany as the filmaker of: The Jew Suss, who attacked Sorge in the Fifties, the same with Joseph Mc Carthy and the Un-American Activities.
Read also from the Spartacus net:
http://spartacus-educational.com/GERsorge.htm


Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous;

And a book: Stalin's spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo  Espionage Ring by Robert Whymant.
https://goo.gl/4TttMb

And the author:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Whymant


Kind regards, Paul.

For Anglo-Norman.

Too late for Mata Hari, but while I see that Anglo-Norman is still lurking here from time to time,
how was it with spies and resistance on Jersey during the German occupation?

PS: Anglo-Norman, you don't believe it, but after all those years (7-8 years?) after my one day visit to your island, I still receive on a regural base some advertisements to visit your island. They seem to be persistent overthere ...
PPS: I have even an anecdote about the B&B we were in the time in Granville

Kind regards from Paul.

There was no real active resistance as there was nowhere to hide, few weapons (the Islands had been demilitarized prior to the German invasion so really a few shotguns and perhaps a handful of souveniers of former wars, all of which - IIRC - the Germans were quick to gather up).  Although the Occupying Power generally ruled with a lighter touch than elsewhere, it was made quite clear the consequences of resistance would be severe.  As such resistance tended to be passive: listening to the BBC on concealed crystal sets (radios were confiscated early on), hiding of escaped slave workers and the like.  One possible act of sabotage was the cutting of some wires at a communications antenna, but the Germans were pursuaded the 'saboteur' was a stray cow!  (The truth remains unknown).  A handful of commando raids were launched to gather intelligence and boost morale, but they were on the whole not welcomed by the Islanders, as they achieved little except to prompt German crackdowns.  A few locals managed to escape and provided the British with what information they could.  However, off the top of my head the Allies didn't place any spies in the Islands.  I don't think they were considered sufficiently important, and perhaps also it was felt the populations were small enough that an outsider would be too readily spotted.

During the American War of Independence Major Moses Corbet, Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, ran a fairly effective spy network against the French (although they failed to spot the planned French invasion of the Island in 1780/81!).  During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Philippe D'Auvergne used Jersey as the HQ of La Correspondance, a French Royalist spy network who did much useful service to their British allies.  What, if any, role women played in either of these operations I'm afraid I don't know.

A little off topic as it doesn't relate to female spies or even spies in general particularly, but didn't the Stuarts (after the execution of Charles I) escape to France via the Channel Islands?

Charles II paid two visits to Jersey during the Civil Wars.  The first was in 1646, towards the end of the First Civil War, when he escaped the mainland and spent three months in Jersey.  A few months after he left, a local woman gave birth to James de la Cloche du Bourg de Jersey, who Charles would later recognise as his natural son - the first of many!  Following Charles I's execution, the Prince of Wales was proclaimed King in Jersey a fortnight later (the first place in the British Isles to do so, later prompting Charles II to date his reign from that point).  The Prince himself (along with the Duke of York) spent five months in the Island 1649-50 following his escape.  As thanks for the loyalty of the Islanders he granted Jersey a silver gilt Royal Mace, which is still displayed in the States Chamber and the Royal Court when sitting, and carried before the Bailiff in procession.  Sir George Carteret, the Lieutenant Governor of the Island throughout the Wars, was granted lands in America which he dubbed New Jersey.

It must be said, most of the Islanders were staunchly Huguenot and initially backed Parliament.  Much of their 'loyalty' was down to the iron grip Sir George and his family and associates held the Island in.  When Parliamentarian troops turned up in 1651 they were largely welcomed with open arms!

That's interesting, Anglo Norman (i.e. the fact that the islands were Huguenot).  In the late 1990s I went to Lourdes a couple of times and picked up some leaflets en route.  It seemed that although Lourdes is a well known Catholic shrine some of the towns in south-west France had been Huguenot.  When I was in London (and I think still now) there were a few houses in Spitalfields that had belonged to Huguenots in exile (and their descendants) though several other similar houses had fallen prey to the developers.  I think I mentioned before that one of my cousins did some sleuthing on her family history and her father's family were descended from Huguenots (though something must have happened in her branch of the family - her father was my uncle by marriage so it doesn't apply to me - because her father and mother had got chatting after attending mass).

Huguenots arrived in the Channel Islands fleeing persecution in France; for some reason the Islanders embraced Protestantism with particular enthusiasm.  High Church Anglican services were laid on for Charles at St Helier Parish Church, but the building itself was defiantly Protestant: all the stained-glass gone, the font gathering moss in the churchyard, the altar ripped out and replaced by a simply wooden table (if you look carefully at the ground of the Tudor upper works at Mont Orgueil you will see that some of the paving stones are recycled medieval altars!), and a huge triple-decker pulpit erected in crossing.  It must have been quite a shock!

Anglo-Norman wrote:

There was no real active resistance as there was nowhere to hide, few weapons (the Islands had been demilitarized prior to the German invasion so really a few shotguns and perhaps a handful of souveniers of former wars, all of which - IIRC - the Germans were quick to gather up).  Although the Occupying Power generally ruled with a lighter touch than elsewhere, it was made quite clear the consequences of resistance would be severe.  As such resistance tended to be passive: listening to the BBC on concealed crystal sets (radios were confiscated early on), hiding of escaped slave workers and the like.  One possible act of sabotage was the cutting of some wires at a communications antenna, but the Germans were pursuaded the 'saboteur' was a stray cow!  (The truth remains unknown).  A handful of commando raids were launched to gather intelligence and boost morale, but they were on the whole not welcomed by the Islanders, as they achieved little except to prompt German crackdowns.  A few locals managed to escape and provided the British with what information they could.  However, off the top of my head the Allies didn't place any spies in the Islands.  I don't think they were considered sufficiently important, and perhaps also it was felt the populations were small enough that an outsider would be too readily spotted.

During the American War of Independence Major Moses Corbet, Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, ran a fairly effective spy network against the French (although they failed to spot the planned French invasion of the Island in 1780/81!).  During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Philippe D'Auvergne used Jersey as the HQ of La Correspondance, a French Royalist spy network who did much useful service to their British allies.  What, if any, role women played in either of these operations I'm afraid I don't know.

Anglo-Norman,

thank you very much for your complete survey of spying and resistance on the Channel Islands during WWII and also for your links of Charles II. I want to start once a thread on him (Minette where are you?) because I find it such a fascinating person, bringing again pleasure in the austerity of the Brits, but at the same time a "real politiker" as his pragmatic grandfather Henry IV of France (perhaps he had something of his grandmother Mary de Medici too)...and I come just to the constatation that both Charles II and Louis XIV (quatorze) had the same grandfather as Henry IV...but at the same time he received money from Louis Quatorze to fight against the Dutch Republic and he tried to bribe the future William III the stadtholder of the Republic with the promise to make him king in the Republic in exchange for his cooperation. Lucky the stadtholder didn't commit, it was only later that he initiated the Glorious Revolution in England for his own gains and letting the Republic as stadtholder on the second plan, the start of the decline of the Republic, but there were other reasons too for the decline...

Kind regards from Paul.

Thinking about Putin today as a spy in the DDR during the "cold war" I did some quick research, as it seems that Putin had not a role in the time as spy, but in that time he learned a lot what he later could use including a circle of friends from that time...and it seems that the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent rule of the mob in Dresden has influenced his further life.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32066222
https://goo.gl/U6BwGa
https://www.businessinsider.nl/?international=true&r=US

Kind regards from Paul.

Belated thanks to Anglo-Norman for the information about Huguenots in the Channel Islands.

Could under cover police be considered "spies" in one sense?  In the early 1980s I had some colleagues who took what was said in the right wing British press very seriously and were stating that the women protesting about the American base at Greenham Common had been infiltrated by Communist agents. I said (not thinking I had to be particularly brainy but just applying common sense) well, if that is the case wouldn't the British have agents in place also?  Now, I'm not sure about Greenham Common but something did come out about under cover policemen having infiltrated left-wing groups in the latter decades of the 20th century.  I can't find anything about it online just at the moment but I remember there being something of a stink - I think since the Millennium - because some of the under cover police officers (including married ones) had fathered children with women that they feigned attachment to. I think they used the trick (quite well known - it's been used as a plot device in quite a few books) of assuming the identity of a child who had died young in order to be able to get a birth certificate).   I suppose it's possible there could have been under cover female police officers as well.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I think they used the trick (quite well known - it's been used as a plot device in quite a few books) of assuming the identity of a child who had died young in order to be able to get a birth certificate).

This device was first brought to the public's attention by Frederick Forsyth in his 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal and further publicised in the film made a couple of year later. Incredibly it took until 2007 before the Passport Office and the Office of National Statistics began working together and comparing data (i.e. passport applications v deaths of children and young people) in order to bring this to an end.

The trouble with spies and other secret agents, is that the lives and actions of all the really good ones almost inevitably remain obscure or indeed completely unknown. Nevertheless I’m surprised no-one has yet mentioned Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, and his network of agents. Driven by his Protestant zeal Walsingham was charged with rooting out local Catholic agitators as well as monitoring and uncovering wider Catholic plots by Spain and France to overthrow Elizabeth. To this end he developed a network of informers and embedded agents, both in England and on the Continent, amongst whom are likely to have been ...

Thomas Phelipes, who was a master cryptographer as well as being skilled at breaking and repairing seals without detection, deciphering codes and ciphers, and if necessary forging the writings of others. He was a key figure in uncovering the Babington plot and hence the entrapment of Mary Queen of Scots, by the interception of her secret coded correspondence.

George Eliot, who was a notorious confidence trickster and was suspected of rape and murder, but to avoid the charges was persuaded to enter the service of Robert Dudley and then work as a spy, reporting through Dudley to Walsingham. Eliot infiltrated the Catholic recusant network and so managed to track down the notorious Jesuit priest, Edmund Campion, and get him arrested. Campion was duly sent to London for trial and execution.

Giordano Bruno, the ex-Dominican friar who is today more usually remembered for his philosophical, mathematical and cosmological writings which eventually to his execution for heresy in Rome, has been suggested as one of Walsingham’s spies. In 1583 Walsingham seems to have deployed Bruno in the French embassy where he gained the trust of the French Ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. The information thus passed to Walsingham led to the discovery of the so-called Throckmorton plot which called for an invasion of England by Spain, combined with a domestic uprising to liberate Mary Queen of Scots and depose Elizabeth. Throckmorton confessed under torture and was executed, while the Spanish Ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, was expelled.

Sir Amias Paulet was Mary Queen of Scots' gaoler at Chartley. Walsingham instructed Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed any letters that she received, and to block any potential route for clandestine correspondence. Then in a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranged a single exception: a covert means for Mary's letters to be smuggled in and out of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Thomas Phelipes before being passed on. In July 1586 Anthony Babington wrote to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth. Mary's reply was clearly encouraging and sanctioned Babington's plans.  Walsingham had Babington and his associates rounded up; fourteen were executed in September 1586, and in October Mary was put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person, to be eventually condemned and executed.

Christopher Marlowe (the dramatist) was also likely in Walsingham’s employ. When the University of Cambridge, in 1587, hesitated to award him his Master of Arts degree because of a rumour that he intended to go to the English college at Rheims, presumably to prepare for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his "faithful dealing" and "good service" to the Queen. The nature of Marlowe's "good service" was not specified by the Council, but it appears Marlowe had served the government in some secret capacity. Surviving college records from the period also indicate that Marlowe had had a series of unusually lengthy absences from the university – much longer than permitted by university regulations. Furthermore surviving college accounts indicate he then began spending lavishly on food and drink during the periods he was in attendance – far more than he could have afforded on his known income (he was a lowly scholarship student as his parents were too poor to afford the fees, his father being a humble shoemaker).

In 1592 Marlowe was arrested in the town of Vlissingen in the Netherlands (then an English garrison town) for his alleged involvement in the counterfeiting of coins (a crime of high treason punishable by death), presumably related to the activities of seditious Catholics. He was sent to be dealt with by the Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley, but no investigation, charge or imprisonment ever resulted, so again it seems likely he had been acting with the knowledge of the government.

And of course Marlowe’s death - supposedly stabbed during an argument over the bar bill in a Deptford tavern - may not be all that it seems. A few days earlier Marlowe had been accused of writing a seditious pamphlet and had been summoned to appear before the Privy Council, but again no action at all seems to have been taken against him. On the day of his death he had spent nearly the whole day in the premises owned by the widow Eleanor Bull, together with three men: Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley. All these three had been employed by Walsingham at some time. Skeres and Poley had been 'agents provocateurs' who had helped snare the conspirators in the Babington plot, and Frizer, a notorious financial confidence trickster, later described Thomas Walsingham (Francis Walsingham’s nephew) as his "master" although the exact relationship is uncertain. (These three men were the only witnesses to Marlowe's death and all were 'professional liars' so their sworn statements at the Coroner’s inquest are perhaps not the most reliable). Even the landlady, Eleanor Bull, may have been in Walsingham’s employ. Far from being the owner of a disreputable dockside tavern she was a reasonably wealthy and respectable widow with genteel connections (she was a favourite niece of Blanche Parry, a companion of the Queen) and it has been suggested that her business, which was more like a hotel than a pub, may have acted as a sort of safe house or stopping off point for agents coming from and going to the continent. So far from being stabbed in a drunken brawl, Marlowe may have been deliberately bumped off by someone who feared he knew too much ... or he may even have faked his own death, perhaps again with the connivance of Walsingham and the Privy Council.

Then of course there's Robert Cecil, the son of the Lord Treasurer (Burghley),  who eventually succeeded Francis Walsingham as Secretary of State and head of the secret service. Cecil took over the role in 1596 under Elizabeth and continued to hold the position under James I, and it was under the latter that he was responsible for infiltrating the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.

Again I don't think the identities of his agents are known but nevertheless it seems fairly certain that he had a very good network of informers well-embedded into the Catholic recusants generally and probably even very close to the plot itself. Despite his protestations of apparent shock and surprise when the plot was discovered, I've always felt that on the contrary he seemed remarkably well informed about its development, even to the point of largely knowing the place, date and modus operandi. I think Cecil must have had at least one agent placed in, or recruited from, one of the plotters’ own households ... but who that might have been can only be speculation.

Meles meles,

thank you very much for your mentioning and predecessors of the British Secret Service, as for instance Walsingham.
I mentioned Walsingham in a link and wanted to expand for LiR as she spoke about the female spy of Charles II. But as everybody was gradually losing interest I later forgot it.
From my first messages:
https://penandpension.com/2015/02/24/the-c18th-british-secret-service-under-pitt-1/
From the link:
"James Bond’s eighteenth-century predecessors
The English secret service in the 18th century was a mix of previous English experience with the practices of other countries, in particular Italy and France.
Sir Francis Walsingham (1534-1590) developed a formidable intelligence network under Elizabeth I. Focusing on potential Catholic plots, he mined diplomatic and unofficial sources in Holland, France, and Germany. Yet, despite the undoubted importance of his work in keeping his queen safe and her country free from ‘terrorist’ activities, he never even received full payment. He often had to use his own money to keep his operations functioning, eventually bankrupting himself and his family.
Oliver Cromwell was, if anything, even better at espionage, prompting Samuel Pepys to remark that “Cromwell carried the secrets of all the princes of Europe at his girdle.” Yet, although Britain was almost constantly at war with one group or another during the century and more between the restoration of Charles II and the American Revolution, intelligence services were generally allowed to decay. It took a new French war and a new prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, to bring Britain a functioning secret service again."

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

I seem to recall that both sides made extensive use of spies during the English Civil War (1640s) which is hardly surprising as the war split whole communities, with even friends and families having divided loyalties. I believe quite a few were women who, being already embedded in their local communities and so readily acceped, could easily act as informers, some even betraying their families for the sake of their own beliefs.

A quick search of wiki gives the following three ladies:

Elizabeth Aitkin, who was married to Francis Aitkin who was a Parliamentarian spy until he was caught and executed by the Royalists. Elizabeth then seems to have taken on her dead husband's role by acting as an agent for the Parliamentarian commanders the Earl of Essex and Sir Thomas Fairfax. It seems she acted as a broadsheet seller in London, and so her principal role was in discovering the the location of printers producing Royalist propaganda.

Jane Whorwood, who was a Royalist agent during the Civil War managing the circulation of intelligence, as well as the smuggling of funds to sustain the Royalist faction. She was an intimate confidante of King Charles I and also helped co-ordinate his attempts to escape captivity in the late 1640s.

And after the war and Charles II's restoration there was Aphra Behn who was employed by the King as a spy in Antwerp. Her role seems to have been to try and get William Scot, son of Thomas Scot, one of Charles I's regicides who had been executed in 1660, to turn double agent and report on the doings of the English exiles who were in league with the Dutch and plotting against the Charles II.  

One thing they all seem to have had in common is that their respective spymasters never paid them correctly for their services!

Meles meles

Your :
"One thing they all seem to have had in common is that their respective spymasters never paid them correctly for their services!"


It was then and it is still the same now.


Dirk

Michael Collins, the IRA commander during Ireland's War of Independence, made no bones about how superior women were to men when it came to spying and intelligence gathering. Society placed them below the radar and he saw no reason at all why this shouldn't be exploited. Nor did he forget them when appointed Minister for Finance in the "underground Dáil" during that war - he stipulated that once independence had been secured then these women should receive a pension the equal of those he also earmarked for male veterans of the struggle. 40 years later his successor as Finance Minister, Sean Lemass, privately conceded to Collins' nephew that the belated award of this pension during the late 1950s under his instruction was simply one of several financial policies that Collins had planned to implement and that Lemass admired for their pragmatic sense so had no problem enacting them almost verbatim as Collins had defined them (Collins had also anticipated the need for semi-state bodies developing the country's prime mineral and agricultural assets, as well as the foundation of an Industrial Development Authority). Lemass went down in Irish history as a visionary minister who single-handedly reformed the Irish economy, as well as the first government minister and later prime minister to properly acknowledge and reward women's particular part in establishing independence. His predecessor, the spymaster who had employed these women, had been under no illusion.

I'm glad the women eventually received their pensions, nordmann.

About spies in general, I've never made a secret that I enjoy the fantasy show Game of Thrones.  It's known to be very loosely based (mainly) on the Wars of the Roses and Maurice Druon's Les Rois Maudits but there are other inspirations also though Mr Martin who wrote the books the show is based on (somewhat loosely at this stage in the series because the complete series of novels has not been completed).  There is a character in the series called Varys "The Master of Whisperers" who has his "little birds" (spies) reporting to him and I wondered if there might be a historic basis (or combination of historical bases) for that character.  Varys is supposed to have been emasculated as a child and I know that there were eunuchs that reached high positions in society in the Byzantine Empire and at various times in China's history but I don't know if one ever led a spy-ring.  There was a reddit thread (which I will study in more detail when I have a bit more time and maybe comment on the links provided in that thread [it's the links I'm really interested in]) giving details of various spy systems over the centuries. https://www.reddit.com/r/.../19pstl/did_ancient_empires_have_intelligence_agencies/

LiR ... for some reason your mention of the "little birds", although fictional, reminded me of Catherine de Medici’s notorious "Escadron Volant" (Flying Squadron), the group of beautiful female spies and informants she recruited to seduce important men at court, and thereby obtain information and control of them. The name seems to have been first used by an anonymous chronicler describing Catherine de Medici's court:
"This princess [Catherine], who thought of nothing other than her ambition, and who held modesty and religion to be of no value, had always a Escadrone Volante [he was writing in Italian], if I am permitted to speak in such a manner, composed of the most beautiful women of the court, whom she used by any means to amuse princes and lords, and to discover their most secret thoughts."

Given the size of Catherine's household and based upon personal memoirs, the number of women in the 'Flying Squadron' could have been anything up to a couple of hundred: the French courtier Pierre de Bourdeille, listed 86 names that he thought were in her employ but suspected there were many more. On the other hand the whole thing may be a myth arising out of contemporary satirical verses and libels that used classical rhetorical traditions of misogyny to discredit powerful women, and which did not literally depict life at court. The truth is probably somewhere between the two.

Certainly it seems that Catherine encouraged her maid, Isabelle de Limeuil, to seduce Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, who was the leader of the Huguenot movement, in order to gather information. Furthermore when in 1564 Isabelle gave birth to a son which she claimed had been fathered by Condé, his reputation was damaged and he was widely considered a traitor both to his religion and to his wife, Eléanor de Roucy de Roye, especially when she died just two months after the birth of the illegitimate child. Catherine de Medici later always claimed that she took great pains to care for the ladies of her court and find them suitable marriages, but in this case it seems that Isabelle had been simply exploited by Catherine as she had her promptly hustled away into a convent (or maybe the illegitimate child had not been part of Catherine's original plan). And in all fairness to Catherine, Isabelle was eventually allowed to leave the convent and in 1567, at the age of approximately 32, she married one of Catherine's male protégés, the wealthy Italian banker Scipion Sardini. The Prince of Condé went on to marry Françoise d'Orléans-Longueville and she too seems to have been groomed by Catherine to manipulate and inform on her husband.

Another of Catherine's spies was Charlotte de Sauve. Shortly after Henry of Navarre's marriage to Marguerite de Valois in 1572, it appears that Catherine de Medici recruited Charlotte specifically for her to seduce Navarre to become his confidante as well as mistress, and thus extract information which Catherine would use as political leverage (again because Henry was sympathetic to the Huguenot cause). Charlotte quickly became Navarre's mistress and exerted a strong influence over him, to such an extent that he stopped confiding or even conversing with his wife. Charlotte de Sauve has also been credited as a source of the information that led to the execution of Marguerite de Valois's own lover Joseph Boniface de La Môle, and Annibal de Coconnas, for conspiring together with Huguenot troops to overthrow Catherine and her son Charles IX (part of the events leading up to the anti-Huguenot St Bartholemew’s Day massacre of 1572).

Then in 1575 Catherine de' Medici, abetted by her son Henry III, instructed Charlotte to seduce the king's brother, Catherine's youngest son, François, Duke of Alençon, with the aim of provoking hostility between Alençon and Navarre so that the two young men would not conspire together against Henry. Charlotte subsequently became the duke's mistress, successfully creating a rift between the former close friends, as Navarre and Alençon became rivals over her. Charlotte de Sauve went on to have numerous other lovers including Henry I, the Duke of Guise, with whom apparently and perhaps suspiciously, she spent the night immediately before he was assassinated by Henry III's bodyguards, the following morning (in 1588). And Henry III had his own group of favourites, 'Les Mignons', a group of good-looking young men who in some respects acted as a sort of male counterpart to his mother's 'Flying Squadron'.

That's very informative, MM; although I learned a little French history at school and have gleaned some knowledge though reading over the years I'm reminded I don't really know it in depth.  Still, that's one of the reasons I come to Res Hist, to learn (a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing - I'm talking about myself having a little knowledge not other people).  And there was me only thinking of the "Flying Squad" in a police context as in the 1970s series The Sweeney.  Catherine de Medici does appear to have been an enterprising lady though I must admit I tend to get my Medicis mixed up - there were just so many of them.  I had a look at the lady's family tree and she was I see Mary Queen of Scots' mother-in-law at one time (when Mary was on her first marriage).  There was a TV series about The Medici a couple of years ago and it might still be possible to watch it online or maybe borrow a DVD but there have been so many TV series that play fast and loose with history that I'm dubious about even trying it.  Then again not being an expert on the Medici I might not pick up the errors.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Catherine de Medici does appear to have been an enterprising lady ...

That's one way of putting it, many of her contemporaries thought she was a domineering, manipulative witch (literally so as it was rumoured she dabbled in the occult), although more modern commentators have largely excused her from most of the worst decisions of the French crown. Mind you, she didn't have an easy life.

Both her parents died within a month of her birth and when the Medicis fell from power in their native Florence, Catherine was taken hostage and there were calls for her to be killed. She was eventually married off to Henry Duke of Bourbon, but he took little interest in her preferring his mistresses and for the first 10 years of marriage the couple failed to produce any children. In 1536 Henry's older brother Francis died leaving Catherine's husband heir to the throne and since they still had no children, nor any sign that Catherine could conceive (while her husband had already fathered an illegitimate daughter) there were calls for a divorce and a new marriage to secure the line. Desperate, Catherine resorted to quack remedies and strange practices to try and conceive - hence the start of the witchcraft rumours. On 19 January 1544 she at last gave birth to a son, Francis. Having become pregnant once she had no trouble doing so again, eventually having ten children, although the last two, twins, didn't survive long, and Catherine herself nearly died giving birth to them. When King Francis I died in 1547 Henry ascended the throne and Catherine became Queen Consort but she was still allowed almost no political power or influence, and was repeatedly snubbed and belittled by Henry's public infatuation with his principal mistress, Diane de Poitiers.

But then in 1559 Henry died after an accident at a jousting tournament and their son became king, Francis II, at just 15 years of age. Catherine de' Medici, now Queen Mother, and backed by the powerful Guise brothers (the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine) immediately took control of France, and from then on, through the successive reigns of three of her sons, and decades of tumultuous religious upheaval, she rarely loosened her firm grip on authority ....

LadyinRetirement wrote:

There was a TV series about The Medici a couple of years ago and it might still be possible to watch it online or maybe borrow a DVD but there have been so many TV series that play fast and loose with history that I'm dubious about even trying it.  Then again not being an expert on the Medici I might not pick up the errors.

There's also the 1994 film 'La Reine Margot' based on Dumas' novel of the same name about Catherine de' Medici's daughter, Margaret of Valois, who Catherine offered in marriage to the Protestant Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) as an attempt to reconcile the Catholic and Huguenot factions in France. (It didnt work, the Pope annulled the marriage and the wedding ceremony itself resulted, just days later, in the St Bartholemew's Day massacre). I don't know how true to history this dramatisation was (I haven't seen it) but I have a feeling there were some major errors/'reinterpretations', although sometimes part of the enjoyment is picking holes in the thing. It was filmed in French so if you find an undubbed or subtitled version it would be good for your French. It would be good for mine too ... I wonder if it's available on youtube.

Well, I'll have to try and do some background reading on Catherine de Medici - I suppose I can do that online to some extent but online resources can be unreliable sometimes.

Thinking about spies has made me think of industrial spying.  I can't think of a case of "nicking" someone's invention offhand.  I've heard that the original Apple Microsoft interface was very similar to something Xerox had invented but that could just be a case of invention.  I know I mentioned Game of Thrones somewhat frivolously recently and it remains a guilty pleasure but somehow the scripts for the entire season 7 (last year's scripts) were leaked online though I managed to avoid the leaks for the most part.  I don't know if they ever found out who the mole was (and whether it was a male or female mole).  There was an article saying that for the season (of GoT) currently shooting the security people were deploying some type of bird of prey to bring down drones (the smaller type of drone that average people can own obviously not the military ones) that were being flown over sites where the series was being shot.  I don't know the ins and outs (and even if it was spying really) but would Marco Polo (if it was indeed he and that's not just another legend) sneaking silk worms out of China count as spying or just plain theft.

One female spy who shouldn't be overlooked of course was the fabulous Josephine Baker. It's hard to know where to start praising this lady - she was exceptional in so many ways - but one often forgotten aspect to her amazingness was her considerable effort for the French Resistance during WWII.



Before the war this naturalised French citizen (her adoptive country since she discovered that as a person of African heritage she was nevertheless treated there as a human being, as opposed to how her native USA had treated her and would continue to treat her for quite a while after WWII too) had publicly defended Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia. Not a smart move at the time, and in fact something she often expressed regret for afterwards, but it did mean that when war broke out she suddenly found that the Axis governments all considered her "one of us" and allowed her pursue her career on the European Continent without impediment. As a result she travelled extensively throughout occupied Europe, giving concerts, entertaining the troops, lifting local morale, taking part in Gala events for military and political big-shots, and generally behaving - at least to American observers - in exactly the manner a disgruntled self-exiled traitor might.

What no one knew at the time however was that this travelling was a perfect cover for quite a bit of espionage on her part, often using sheet music notation to code intelligence related to German military installations, troop locations, airfields etc, which were then passed via the Resistance to the Allies. Pinning notes to her knickers was also a frequently used smuggling tactic. As a trusted citizen of Vichy France she travelled frequently to neutral countries, such as Spain, Portugal and several in South America, another great opportunity for relaying intelligence, and specialised in retrieving strategic policy from high-ranking officials at the many embassy functions and such like at which she was frequently an honoured guest.

While based in Morocco during a long period of ill health she learnt that her activities had at last begun to arouse some suspicion and she was encouraged to stay in North Africa, where she simply carried on as before with her concerts, though now for British, Free French and American troops serving in North Africa.

After the war, having attained the rank of Lieutenant in the Free French Air Force, she received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance from De Gaulle, who also made her a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

Very interesting that about Josephine Baker’s role during the Second World War. I for one was unaware of it. I had a vague notion that she had received some criticism (Maurice Chevalier-like) for performing during that time but, as is so often the case, the reality is completely different once the surface is scratched.

In a similar vein her role during the events of May 1968 in Paris is also sometimes misrepresented. In the English-speaking world, for example, I’ve seen potted biographies of her which include an image of her at the front of a marching crowd and a caption saying something like ‘Baker at a demonstration in Paris in May 1968’. Any casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that Josephine was a rabid revolutionary getting down with the students etc. The reality, however, is that Baker was fronting the second of the 2 big demonstrations which took place in the city on 30th May. 

The first demo in the morning, organised by the trade unions, attracted a massive 400,000 and called for President Charles de Gaulle to resign. It seemed for a while that the Paris mob would indeed instigate yet another French revolution. De Gaulle, however, called the bluff of the revolutionaries and broadcast a speech in the afternoon refusing their demand that he resign and also their demand that he sack the prime minister. He announced elections to be held in June and this immediately denied his opponents any legitimate excuse for street politics.

The broadcast prompted another demonstration that evening, this time a demonstration of support from ‘Gaullists’ (or at least from people who were heartily fed-up with the students and the communist element etc) and who were not prepared to see their ‘Trentes Glorieuses’ handed over to a rabble. The second demonstration attracted an absolutely enormous 800,000 (i.e. double that of the morning event) and it was this second demonstration which Josephine Baker fronted.

Vizzer and nordmann,

yes Josephine Baker, I knew about her role and wanted her to include in the list as I found it all in my research. Glad that you put it here now
nordmann.
Vizzer, that about May 1968, is a topic now, as it is 50 years ago. Here in Belgium it was a bit "ontladen" (discharged?) by the language struggle, the "Leuven Vlaams" (Louvain Flemish) and that also discharged by the compromis of the move and start of Louvain-la-Neuve university on French speaking soil...
But that aspect of Josephine's life I absolutely didn't know about...you see again how history can be manipulated as use for a certain goal...

I was just searching for Meles meles about Catherine de Medici when you came in.
Among others searching to find the full film of "Reine Margot" 1994...some year of two ago you could still find it but now it are all so-called free downloads, but you have to subscribe, and I guess somehow the instigators want to earn money with it...and perhaps it is also because it is a relative new film...?

In any case I thank you both for your information.

Kind regards to both from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Well, I'll have to try and do some background reading on Catherine de Medici - I suppose I can do that online to some extent but online resources can be unreliable sometimes.

Thinking about spies has made me think of industrial spying.  I can't think of a case of "nicking" someone's invention offhand.  I've heard that the original Apple Microsoft interface was very similar to something Xerox had invented but that could just be a case of invention.  I know I mentioned Game of Thrones somewhat frivolously recently and it remains a guilty pleasure but somehow the scripts for the entire season 7 (last year's scripts) were leaked online though I managed to avoid the leaks for the most part.  I don't know if they ever found out who the mole was (and whether it was a male or female mole).  There was an article saying that for the season (of GoT) currently shooting the security people were deploying some type of bird of prey to bring down drones (the smaller type of drone that average people can own obviously not the military ones) that were being flown over sites where the series was being shot.  I don't know the ins and outs (and even if it was spying really) but would Marco Polo (if it was indeed he and that's not just another legend) sneaking silk worms out of China count as spying or just plain theft.

Lady,

"silk worms out of China" that I have to investigate

Kind regards, Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Catherine de Medici does appear to have been an enterprising lady ...

That's one way of putting it, many of her contemporaries thought she was a domineering, manipulative witch (literally so as it was rumoured she dabbled in the occult), although more modern commentators have largely excused her from most of the worst decisions of the French crown. Mind you, she didn't have an easy life.

Both her parents died within a month of her birth and when the Medicis fell from power in their native Florence, Catherine was taken hostage and there were calls for her to be killed. She was eventually married off to Henry Duke of Bourbon, but he took little interest in her preferring his mistresses and for the first 10 years of marriage the couple failed to produce any children. In 1536 Henry's older brother Francis died leaving Catherine's husband heir to the throne and since they still had no children, nor any sign that Catherine could conceive (while her husband had already fathered an illegitimate daughter) there were calls for a divorce and a new marriage to secure the line. Desperate, Catherine resorted to quack remedies and strange practices to try and conceive - hence the start of the witchcraft rumours. On 19 January 1544 she at last gave birth to a son, Francis. Having become pregnant once she had no trouble doing so again, eventually having ten children, although the last two, twins, didn't survive long, and Catherine herself nearly died giving birth to them. When King Francis I died in 1547 Henry ascended the throne and Catherine became Queen Consort but she was still allowed almost no political power or influence, and was repeatedly snubbed and belittled by Henry's public infatuation with his principal mistress, Diane de Poitiers.

But then in 1559 Henry died after an accident at a jousting tournament and their son became king, Francis II, at just 15 years of age. Catherine de' Medici, now Queen Mother, and backed by the powerful Guise brothers (the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine) immediately took control of France, and from then on, through the successive reigns of three of her sons, and decades of tumultuous religious upheaval, she rarely loosened her firm grip on authority ....

Meles meles,

already from when your message appeared I had some doubt as I had read from the local library in Bruges (now not available anymore I found out)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de_M%C3%A9dicis
My book now read some thirty years ago:
https://www.amazon.com/Catherine-Medici-Jean-Heritier/dp/B0006AY3NO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIII_of_France

And from all that I, as I knew very well the history of Catherine, got nearly berserk from your hsitory as I didn't recognized nearly anything. I prepared to talk to you and LiR about Concinni and all...the grandmother of Charles II of England.. 
But at the end early in the morning I found that there were two Médicis in French history and I apologize for you as I for other Henrys and Henris have also made mistakes...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de%27_Medici
And there is indeed a book in your sense about the "atouts" (trumps? Is it from that that the name of some American...?) of Marie de Médicis
https://www.amazon.fr/Marie-M%C3%A9dicis-Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois-Dubost/dp/2228903930

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, I had to have a think originally about Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici to make sure I was thinking of the correct one.  I see you have mentioned the man in the iron mask.  I've mentioned before that I watched a "historical" drama entitled Versailles last year.  There is going to be a third and final season of that show broadcast on BBC2 later this year but it sounds as if the theme for this year's series is the man in the iron mask.  I may not watch the final series of Versailles - it has some attractive young people in it - and not just eye candy* but who can in fact act but why, oh why, oh why, oh why do the writers have to fabricate content or go with rumours when the actual reign of King Louis XIV of France was interesting in its own right without going into the realms of fancy?  (Sorry, end of rant).

I didn't know about Josephine Baker having been a spy - of course I had heard of the lady herself.

Upthread I mentioned industrial espionage briefly.  Now the industrialisation of spinning I have always thought (well it's what we were taught at school) that the British with Mr Arkwright invented the mechanical spinner (i.e. the "Spinning Jenny" named after Mr Arkwright's wife) but this article indicates that the British had "borrowed" inspiration from Italy:- https://www.allaboutlean.com/industrial-espionage-and-revolution/

* Meaning of "eye candy" from Urban Dictionary [url=https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye candy]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye%20candy[/url]

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, I had to have a think originally about Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici to make sure I was thinking of the correct one.  I see you have mentioned the man in the iron mask.  I've mentioned before that I watched a "historical" drama entitled Versailles last year.  There is going to be a third and final season of that show broadcast on BBC2 later this year but it sounds as if the theme for this year's series is the man in the iron mask.  I may not watch the final series of Versailles - it has some attractive young people in it - and not just eye candy* but who can in fact act but why, oh why, oh why, oh why do the writers have to fabricate content or go with rumours when the actual reign of King Louis XIV of France was interesting in its own right without going into the realms of fancy?  (Sorry, end of rant).

I didn't know about Josephine Baker having been a spy - of course I had heard of the lady herself.

Upthread I mentioned industrial espionage briefly.  Now the industrialisation of spinning I have always thought (well it's what we were taught at school) that the British with Mr Arkwright invented the mechanical spinner (i.e. the "Spinning Jenny" named after Mr Arkwright's wife) but this article indicates that the British had "borrowed" inspiration from Italy:- https://www.allaboutlean.com/industrial-espionage-and-revolution/

* Meaning of "eye candy" from Urban Dictionary [url=https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye candy]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye%20candy[/url]

Lady in retirement,

"the actual reign of King Louis XIV of France was interesting in its own right without going into the realms of fancy? "

Of course you are right. I did a lot of research for threads as: was it worthwhile for him to start all those wars to expand to the natural borders of his kingdom and ruin it at the end...a debt that still burden the reign of Louis XV, the John Law Louisiana bubble...and then Louis XVI, who had to ask the States General for money and then the Liberals...and the common people (gepeupel? mob, rabble, riff raff) and the Bastille?

"Upthread I mentioned industrial espionage briefly.  Now the industrialisation of spinning I have always thought (well it's what we were taught at school) that the British with Mr Arkwright invented the mechanical spinner (i.e. the "Spinning Jenny" named after Mr Arkwright's wife) but this article indicates that the British had "borrowed" inspiration from Italy:- https://www.allaboutlean.com/industrial-espionage-and-revolution/"

That's an interesting link...I didn't know...
But as for Industrial espionnage...the British were not alone...also our Lieven Bauwens from Ghent stole a Spinning Jenny from Britain to start is own linnen empire...flourishing under Napoleon...together with the steel industry of Liège...and there appeared Cockerill, who was as easy under Napoleon, the Dutch king Willem I as the first Belgian king Leopold I, really a man from all seasons...I mean someone who could adapt to every season...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieven_Bauwens
https://spybusters.blogspot.be/2010/08/industrial-espionage-in-1700-1800s.html
https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.be/2015/03/the-industrial-revolution-of-belgium.html

As I couldn't open your "eye candy"...
[url=https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye candy]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye%20candy[/url]


Kind regards from Paul.

Well, that's very strange.  Hoping the link to 'eye candy' in the Collins online dictionary works a little better.  https://i.servimg.com/u/f39/17/13/46/40/quill211.jpg

Of course, in these days of computers we have our various systems of protection to try and prevent online theft of passwords and that type of thing.

As the links did not work - "eye candy" according to the Urban dictionary "Something purely aesthetically pleasing, that is, pleasing to the senses. Can be a person, a film, a sunset, a flower, or anything else you can see."


The Collins dictionary gives a slightly different meaning:-  "Eye candy is used to refer to people or things that are attractive to look at but are not interesting in other ways".

Another lady, who besides her exploits as a spy had quite an extraordinary life, was Harriet Tubman.


 
Born to slave parents on a large plantation in Maryland in about 1820 she was named Amarinta Ross. Besides frequent routine beatings from her masters, as a child she also suffered a severe head wound when she became involved in an altercation when an overseer demanded she help restrain another slave who had absconded from the fields without permission. She refused, and as the other slave ran away, the overseer threw a 2lb weight at him, only for it to hit her on the head. Bleeding and unconscious she was returned to her owner’s house without medical care and then prompty sent back out to work in the fields just two days later, while her owners tried unsuccessfully to sell her as she was now deemed "not worth a sixpence". The injury, in all probability a fractured skull, caused her a lifetime of headaches, strange visions and occasional epileptic seizures.
 
Around 1844 she married a freed black slave, John Tubman, and thereafter adopted the name of Harriet (her mother’s Christian name). In 1849 her owner died and his widow began work to sell the family’s slaves, which would mean that Harriet Tubman’s family would likely be broken up and dispersed. Refusing to wait for her fate to be decided, and despite her husband’s efforts to dissuade her, she escaped using the network known as the Underground Railroad - an informal but well-organised system of free slaves, abolitionists and other activists, most prominently the Quakers – eventually arriving in Pennsylvania some weeks later. She then herself became active in the Underground Railway, making frequent clandestine journeys back to Maryland to help other slaves escape and to guide them along hidden trails at night, to Freedom. After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 this meant journeys not just to Pennsylvania or New York, but onwards to Ontario, which as part of the British Empire had already abolished slavery. In all throughout the 1850s she was personally responsible for rescuing about 70 slaves in thirteen expeditions. Over the same period she was an active speaker and fund-raiser for the abolitionist cause.
 
With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 she volunteered to work as a nurse in the Union military base at Port Royal in South Carolina, but before long was leading a band of armed scouts infiltrating confederate towns and reconnoitering the marshes of South Carolina. In 1863 she became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War when she guided three Union steamboats around mines in the Combahee River to attack several plantations. Once ashore the Union troops set fire to the plantations destroying buildings, seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies, and liberating some 700 slaves. She then when on to do similar spy/scout work in Florida where she provided key intelligence that aided the capture of the Confederate base of Jacksonville.

After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in New York state where she cared for her aging parents, but as she had never received a regular salary for her military service and for many years (until 1899) was denied a pension or any other compensation, she was reduced to poverty being often reliant on the financial help of supporters. Nevertheless she remained very active in the women’s suffrage movement, travelling widely to address meetings and rallies in New York, Boston and Washington DC. Eventually, however, illness (in part the effects of her childhood head injury) overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish some years earlier. She died in 1913.

That's quite an interesting story Meles meles. I have never heard about it, but I am not so familiar with North-American history.
I did only research about the Plain of Abraham, Québec and why the English "population" won the Seven Years War there and not the French...
Read and did research also for the French intervention in the American revolution. And many say, including me, that it in fact was not a revolution...

Kind regards from Paul.

Just home from dinner...and just started to look to the RH... 
And as it was nearly a war between Britain and Russia including spies in the world cup bid in 2010 for 2018 I put it here...I saw this afternoon a documentary about the event: "La coupe du monde des espions" (the world cup of the spies) It is also available in German, but there are no subtitles. And I found no youtube with subtitles, at least not in the French version. Meles meles can look to the French version but I have also a kind of summary from the Independent.
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/081594-000-A/la-coupe-du-monde-des-espions/
And the bit of summary from the Independent...
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/2018-world-cup-bid-ex-mi6-officers-found-corruption-while-spying-on-russia-9894308.html
And about Blatter...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepp_Blatter


I will give in an addendum some links that I also found about the case.
And tomorrow more comments from me...

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum:
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/533499-russia-2018-and-qatar-2022-world-cup-bid-reaction-right-choices
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/dec/03/world-cup-2018-england-bid-fifa
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/oct/28/sepp-blatter-fifa-russia-2018-world-cup-vote
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/6356052/englands-world-cup-2018-hacked-ex-fa-chief-lord-triesman/


Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Catherine de Medici does appear to have been an enterprising lady ...

That's one way of putting it, many of her contemporaries thought she was a domineering, manipulative witch (literally so as it was rumoured she dabbled in the occult), although more modern commentators have largely excused her from most of the worst decisions of the French crown. Mind you, she didn't have an easy life.

Both her parents died within a month of her birth and when the Medicis fell from power in their native Florence, Catherine was taken hostage and there were calls for her to be killed. She was eventually married off to Henry Duke of Bourbon, but he took little interest in her preferring his mistresses and for the first 10 years of marriage the couple failed to produce any children. In 1536 Henry's older brother Francis died leaving Catherine's husband heir to the throne and since they still had no children, nor any sign that Catherine could conceive (while her husband had already fathered an illegitimate daughter) there were calls for a divorce and a new marriage to secure the line. Desperate, Catherine resorted to quack remedies and strange practices to try and conceive - hence the start of the witchcraft rumours. On 19 January 1544 she at last gave birth to a son, Francis. Having become pregnant once she had no trouble doing so again, eventually having ten children, although the last two, twins, didn't survive long, and Catherine herself nearly died giving birth to them. When King Francis I died in 1547 Henry ascended the throne and Catherine became Queen Consort but she was still allowed almost no political power or influence, and was repeatedly snubbed and belittled by Henry's public infatuation with his principal mistress, Diane de Poitiers.

But then in 1559 Henry died after an accident at a jousting tournament and their son became king, Francis II, at just 15 years of age. Catherine de' Medici, now Queen Mother, and backed by the powerful Guise brothers (the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine) immediately took control of France, and from then on, through the successive reigns of three of her sons, and decades of tumultuous religious upheaval, she rarely loosened her firm grip on authority ....

Meles meles,

already from when your message appeared I had some doubt as I had read from the local library in Bruges (now not available anymore I found out)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de_M%C3%A9dicis
My book now read some thirty years ago:
https://www.amazon.com/Catherine-Medici-Jean-Heritier/dp/B0006AY3NO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIII_of_France

And from all that I, as I knew very well the history of Catherine, got nearly berserk from your hsitory as I didn't recognized nearly anything. I prepared to talk to you and LiR about Concinni and all...the grandmother of Charles II of England.. 
But at the end early in the morning I found that there were two Médicis in French history and I apologize for you as I for other Henrys and Henris have also made mistakes...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de%27_Medici
And there is indeed a book in your sense about the "atouts" (trumps? Is it from that that the name of some American...?) of Marie de Médicis
https://www.amazon.fr/Marie-M%C3%A9dicis-Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois-Dubost/dp/2228903930

Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles, searching about the Oranges as a Philip William of Orange and his connections with Henry IV of France I started again to doubt if it wasn't me, who was wrong with my Catherine and your Catherine...of course you were right...as I always seems to have mixed Mary with the earlier Catherine till now...and I was telling the story of Mary (thinking it was Catherine) and you told rightly the story of Catherine... ...my only excuse: it was that late in the night...and I persisted in my fault...till now...
Many excuses again and this indeed is as in the paper   the correction for my fault...correction meant to LiR too...

PS:And it was indeed that book that I read also some thirty years ago:
https://www.amazon.fr/Marie-M%C3%A9dicis-Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois-Dubost/dp/2228903930
And thanks to you am I finally freed from my delusion...


Kind regards to both from Paul.

I saw something on Sky News's (News'  ?) YouTube channel today a lady was being interviewed about a new (newish anyway) film Liberte: A Call to Spy about women in the SOS in World War II focusing on American Virginia Hall (played by Sarah Megan Thomas) and British Noor Khan (Radhika Apte).  Noor Khan I know has been mentioned on this website before.  The film has recently been shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival - though I'm not sure the review I'm linking is accurate when it says it's the first feature length film to be made on the subject.  https://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/2019/liberte-call-spy  The film about Violette Szabo Carve Her Name With Pride has been discussed on this thread.  I suppose Violette was just one woman.  Still, a new film may introduce the names of these brave ladies to a new generation.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I saw something on Sky News's (News'  ?) YouTube channel today a lady was being interviewed about a new (newish anyway) film Liberte: A Call to Spy about women in the SOS in World War II focusing on American Virginia Hall (played by Sarah Megan Thomas) and British Noor Khan (Radhika Apte).  Noor Khan I know has been mentioned on this website before.  The film has recently been shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival - though I'm not sure the review I'm linking is accurate when it says it's the first feature length film to be made on the subject.  https://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/2019/liberte-call-spy  The film about Violette Szabo Carve Her Name With Pride has been discussed on this thread.  I suppose Violette was just one woman.  Still, a new film may introduce the names of these brave ladies to a new generation.

 
Lady,

just coming in after obliged to let the computer for some hours this evening.
Yes it seems to be a remarkable film.
http://www.liveforfilm.com/2019/06/23/eiff-2019-review-liberte-a-call-to-spy-a-remarkable-film/
And I think, have to check that we already spoke about the three women, especially if I recall it well about Vera Atkins.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/books/30grim.html
And Noor was shot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/inayat_khan_noor.shtml
And Virginia Hall was the most famous one:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/virginia-hall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall

I hope the film will be a bit conform the reality, but if not fully accurate it is seemingly in my humble opinion worth to see it, especially as you say for the new generation.

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, I probably didn't explain myself very clearly.  I was not so much worried about how accurate the film's (i.e. Liberty: A Call to Spy) depiction of the female spies would be but that the article I linked reviewing the film (when shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival) said that it was the first time a feature length film had been made about the subject of female spies in World War II.  I could think of Carve Her Name With Pride about Violette Szabo off the top of my head, but that is a film that is nowadays relegated to being shown on TV and maybe not many younger people have seen it.  Again, I don't know without doing a bit of internet sleuthing whether there have been other full length films about female spies in World War II but I'd be surprised if 70 and more years having elapsed since World War II without there being some.

Lady, just come in on the board. I have had a busy day.

No, I didn't misundestood you. I was just my standard   comment about historical films, as I usually do   ...
And yes you are completely right that it is a good thing when youngsters can be made interested in such "realities". And the film seems on the first sight just the right approach and not the usual "hyperpictualization" (all pictures and no content) as some American films do.

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I was not so much worried about how accurate the film's (i.e. Liberty: A Call to Spy) depiction of the female spies would be but that the article I linked reviewing the film (when shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival) said that it was the first time a feature length film had been made about the subject of female spies in World War II.  I could think of Carve Her Name With Pride about Violette Szabo off the top of my head

And that wouldn't be the first time such untenable claims have been made regarding films featuring the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The trailing of the 2016 film Anthropoid about the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich claimed that it was telling an 'untold story'. Quite apart from the fact that 2016 saw the release of not 1 but 2 films about Operation Anthropoid (the other was called The Man With The Iron Heart) but the story has been the subject of countless documentaries over the years including at least one excellent British television docudrama. Films were being made of the story as early as 1943 within a year of the assassination. And probably the most famous depiction of the event came in the 1975 film Operation Daybreak starring Anthony Andrews, Martin Shaw, Timothy Bottoms, Nicola Pagett, Joss Ackland and Anton Diffring.