Christine de Vedrines 
We Were Not Armed 

This is the story of how a family can be destroyed by a chain of events that begin when one member puts her trust in a conman. At the beginning of the 21st century, the de Vedrines were an ancient aristocratic Bordeaux family, educated and socially established. From the outside they had everything they could have wished for – wealth, love, friends, education and family. But the very closeness and trust they had with each other ended up splitting them apart. Exploiting a mix of family pride, historic roots, and personal identity, an outsider – a criminal called Thierry Tilly – stripped the family over ten years of their houses, their money and their personal dignity. It took the courage of Christine de Vedrines to break away from Tilly’s iron grip. Her story of how she did that is simply told but moving and sometimes almost unbearable.