Synopsis
In the 17th-century Venice in an alternative world where humans and some animals live together and even can be coupled, Don Lope de Villalobos y Sangrin, [2] a Spanish wolf, and Armand Raynal de Maupertuis, [3] a French fox, are hired by old and rich Cénile Spilorcio to retrieve a treasure map from a Turkish ship. As they deliver the map, Spilorcio plots to have them arrested and sent to galleys; during the arrest, Maupertuis spots Spilorcio's adoptive daughter, Séléné, and the two fall in love. Spilorcio then sends his son Andreo and his servant Plaisant to find the treasure.
On the galley, Maupertuis and Don Lope meet with white rabbit Eusèbe. On her way, the galley sails into the Turkish ship, the same one from where they stole the map, and boards her; in the battle, Maupertuis and Don Lope are set free and help the Turks gain the upper hand, setting the slaves free and taking Captain Mendoza, the villainous captain of the galley, prisoner. Don Lope and Raïs Kader, captain of the Turkish ship, have an argument and promise each other to arrange for a duel when time is convenient. [4] The party sails to Malta, where Don Lope meets Hermine, a gipsy girl and Andreo's love interest, with whom he falls in love. Mendoza gets free and makes a deal with Spilorcio.
Finding a ship, the party set sails to Atlantis to retrieve the treasure with Andreo and his servant. In the process, they run afoul a pirate ship and are taken prisoners. Maupertuis and Don Lope are fed to a giant sea monster, inside of which they find the Flying Dutchman. Gaining control of the monster, they manage to reach an island of the archipelago where the treasure is supposedly hidden, where they meet with eccentric scientist Bombastus Johannes Theophrastus Almagestus Wernher von Ulm.
Exploring the island, Maupertuis and Don Lope discover that it is inhabited by castaway Selenites, people from the Moon. They are led by Prince Jean sans Lune, exiled brother of the King of the Moon, who plots to seize power; the treasure map was a trick of his to lure Earthmen into bringing him a moonstone, necessary to return to the Moon. Séléné's necklace, which Maupertuis wears as a token, turns out to be such a moonstone, and it is used to propel the Prince's galley into space as the full moon, casting its rays, attracts all Moon matter. The pirate ship, arrived meanwhile and laden with lunar fruits gathered on the island, is also sucked into space.
Maupertuis and Don Lope's party set in pursuit in Bombastus's custom-made spaceship. Bombastus, however, falls overboard, and they are left drifting towards the Moon; meanwhile, Bombastus is captured by a party led by Mendoza and Spilorcio, and persuaded to build a rocket.
Arriving on the Moon, Maupertuis and Don Lope's party make contact with the King of the Moon, informing him of the return of Prince Jean. The King decides, as a precaution, to send Maupertuis and Don Lope seek the "Maître d'Armes", an Earthman of great military expertise, who had previously helped defeat the Prince. Meanwhile, Mendoza's party arrives and makes contact with Prince Jean; Mendoza is hired to raise an army from local tribes of mimes.
In their quest for the "Maître d'Armes", Maupertuis and Don Lope meet with the pirates again. They hire them for the journey to the "Maître d'Armes", only to be betrayed when the pirates turn out to have turned privateers in the service of Prince Jean. As the ship closes to her destination, Maupertuis and Don Lope escape when chimaeras attack. They find the "Maître d'Armes", who eventually agrees to help because he was friend with Lope's father.
As the Maître d'Armes gathers his three companions of the previous campaigns against Prince Jean, Mendoza's army marches upon the capital of the Moon. The heroes' party, grossly outnumbered, is quickly destroyed, and the capital falls in the hands of Prince Jean.
The heroes have survived, however, only Don Lope sustaining a musket wound, and the Maître d'Armes being taken prisoner. He escapes with Eusèbe's help, and flees into the wilderness, where he befriends the mime tribesmen. Meanwhile, Maupertuis and Don Lope's party plot to set the King free from his brother; to regain their honor lost serving the Prince, the pirates join them. As Prince Jean gives a party to celebrate his rise and put his brother to death, both parties execute their plans, while Mendoza's henchmen trigger their own attempt at a coup d'État. In the confusion, Prince Jean is taken prisoner, the king is restored to power, the mimes gain an equal social status with other Selenites, and Mendoza and Spilorcio are sent into hiding, while the lovers are reunited.
As Prince Jean is exiled from the Moon, the heroes discover that Séléné is actually the lost daughter of the King of the Moon. A love triangle appears when Armand's friends discover that Séléné seems to prefer the "Maître d'Armes" to Armand, and to be oblivious to Armand's love for her. The resulting tension breaks the friendship between Lope and Armand, and Armand stays on the Moon while Lope, Eusèbe, Kader, Andreo and Plaisant prepare to sail to Earth.
But Armand finally realizes that Séléné is in love with the "Maître d'Armes", and decides to leave them together and commit suicide. He is kept from jumping off a cliff by the news that his friends have been captured by Mendoza, who has commandeered their ship and is sailing back to Earth. He joins with the pirates and Bombastus to retrofit the pirates' moving house into a spaceship. They catch back with Mendoza, free their friends, and Armand kills Mendoza in a duel. As they talk of following Raïs Kader's plan to attack Maracaibo and free his daughter Yasmina, a story told by the pirate captain reveals that Yasmina is none other that the Bohemian Hermine, who had been with them from the start.
Once Kader and Lope find a way to finally fight their duel bloodlessly, the heroes make plans for their retirement: Don Lope and Hermine are to marry, Armand wishes to write about their adventures, Bombastus plans to return to the Moon through another zany invention, and Andreo and Plaisant become actors. But as Lope and Eusèbe escort Armand back to Venice, they find a damsel in danger and throw themselves in that new adventure.
William Kidd, also known as Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd, was a Scottish privateer. Conflicting accounts exist regarding his early life, but he was likely born in Dundee and later settled in New York City. By 1690, Kidd had become a highly successful privateer, commissioned to protect English interests in North America and the West Indies.
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding.
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist.
Captain James Hook is the main antagonist of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and its various adaptations, in which he is Peter Pan's archenemy. The character is a pirate captain of the brig Jolly Roger. His two principal fears are the sight of his own blood and the crocodile who pursues him after eating the hand cut off by Pan. An iron hook replaced his severed hand, which gave the pirate his name.
Jolly Roger is the traditional English name for the naval ensign flown to identify a pirate ship preceding or during an attack, during the early 18th century. The vast majority of such flags flew the motif of a human skull, or “Death's Head”, often accompanied by other elements, on a black, dark brown or dark blue field, sometimes called the “Death's Head flag” or just the “black flag”.
Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano, better known as Pirata Cofresí, was a pirate from Puerto Rico. He was born into a noble family, but the political and economic difficulties faced by the island as a possession of the Spanish Empire during the Latin American wars of independence meant that his household was poor. Cofresí worked at sea from an early age which familiarized him with the region's geography, but it provided only a modest salary, and he eventually decided to abandon the sailor's life and became a pirate. He had previous links to land-based criminal activities, but the reason for Cofresí's change of vocation is unknown; historians speculate that he may have worked as a privateer aboard El Scipión, a ship owned by one of his cousins.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a 1993 adventure comedy film and a parody of the Robin Hood story. The film was produced and directed by Mel Brooks, co-written by Brooks, Evan Chandler, and J. David Shapiro based on a story by Chandler and Shapiro, and stars Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, and Dave Chappelle in his film debut. It includes frequent comedic references to previous Robin Hood films, particularly Prince of Thieves, and the 1938 Errol Flynn adaptation The Adventures of Robin Hood. Brooks himself had previously created the short-lived sitcom When Things Were Rotten in the mid-1970s, which also spoofed the Robin Hood legend.
Les Maîtres du temps is a 1982 independent animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux and designed by Mœbius. It is based on the 1958 science fiction novel L'Orphelin de Perdide by Stefan Wul.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1680s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1680 and 1689.
Jean Del Val was a French-born actor, also credited as Jean Gauthier and Jean Gautier.
Victoires de la Musique are an annual French award ceremony where the Victoire accolade is delivered by the French Ministry of Culture to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry. The classical and jazz versions are the Victoires de la musique classique and Victoires du Jazz.
Pirates is a 1986 adventure comedy film written by Gérard Brach, John Brownjohn, and Roman Polanski and directed by Polanski. It was inspired by Polanski's love of classic pirate films, as well as Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Polanski began planning the film in 1976 as a follow-up to the iconic Chinatown, but production was delayed several times due to lack of funding and Polanski's fleeing the United States to avoid sentencing for his confessed rape of a minor.
Redbeard is a series of Belgian comic books, originally published in French, created by writer Jean-Michel Charlier and artist Victor Hubinon in 1959. After their deaths the series was continued by other writers and artists, including Jijé, Christian Gaty, Patrice Pellerin, Jean Ollivier, Christian Perrissin and Marc Bourgne, Jean-Charles Kraehn and Stefano Carloni.
The War of the Castilian Succession was the military conflict contested from 1475 to 1479 for the succession of the Crown of Castile fought between the supporters of Joanna 'la Beltraneja', reputed daughter of the late monarch Henry IV of Castile, and those of Henry's half-sister, Isabella, who was ultimately successful.
In English-speaking popular culture, the modern pirate stereotype owes its attributes mostly to the imagined tradition of the 18th-century Caribbean pirate sailing off the Spanish Main and to such celebrated 20th-century depictions as Captain Hook and his crew in the theatrical and film versions of J. M. Barrie's children's book Peter Pan, Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, and various adaptations of the Middle Eastern pirate, Sinbad the Sailor. In these and countless other books, films, and legends, pirates are portrayed as "swashbucklers" and "plunderers". They are shown on ships, often wearing eyepatches or peg legs, having a parrot perched on their shoulder, speaking in a West Country accent, and saying phrases like "Arr, matey" and "Avast, me hearty". Pirates have retained their image through pirate-themed tourist attractions, film, toys, books and plays.
French assistance to Nguyễn Phúc Ánh, the future founding emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, covered a period from 1777 to 1820. From 1777, Mgr Pigneau de Behaine, of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, had taken to protecting the young Vietnamese prince who was fleeing from the offensive of the Tây Sơn. Pigneau de Behaine went to France to obtain military aid, and secured a France-Vietnam alliance that was signed through the 1787 Treaty of Versailles between the king of France, Louis XVI, and Prince Nguyễn Phúc Ánh. As the French regime was under considerable strain at the eve of the French Revolution, France was unable to follow through with the application of the treaty. However, Mgr Pigneau de Behaine persisted in his efforts and, with the support of French individuals and traders, mounted a force of French soldiers and officers that would contribute to the modernization of the armies of Nguyễn Ánh, making possible his victory and his reconquest of all of Vietnam by 1802. A few French officers would remain in Vietnam after the victory, becoming prominent mandarins. The last of them left in 1824 following the enthronement of Minh Mạng, Gia Long's successor. The terms of the 1787 Treaty of Alliance would still remain one of the justifications of French forces when they demanded the remittance of Đà Nẵng in 1847.
The Battle of Orbetello, also known as the Battle of Isola del Giglio, was a major naval engagement of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635. It was fought on 14 June 1646 off the Spanish-ruled town of Orbetello, on the coast of Tuscany, Italy, between a French fleet led by Admiral Armand de Maillé, Marquis of Brézé, and a Spanish fleet commanded by Miguel de Noronha, 4th Count of Linhares sent to break the blockade of Orbetello and relieve the town, besieged since 12 May by a French army under the command of Prince Thomas of Savoy. The Battle of Orbetello was tactically very unusual, since it was fought by sailing ships towed by galleys in a light breeze.
Alain Ayroles is a French author, playwright, screenwriter and translator known best for his graphic novels Garulfo, De cape et de crocs and Les Indes Fourbes.
Pedro Velaz de Medrano y Manso de Zúñiga, II Lord of Tabuérniga was the captain general of the Armada de Barlovento and custodian of the Fleet of New Spain, governor of the Tercio of Álava, governor of five galleons from Naples, sailor and prominent Spanish noble during the reign of Felipe IV. He is famous for having captained a French corsair flotilla in the Caribbean with the intention of capturing the Spanish treasure fleet for King Louis XIV of France. He married María de Altamirano y Ponce de León. His son Don Antonio Velaz de Medrano y Altamirano, Governor of the strategic city of Nieuwpoort became the I Marquis of Tabuerniga, granted by King Carlos II of Spain in 1682.
