battle
The last Roman emperor elected by the Senate.
Marcus Claudius Tacitus Augustus, known as Tacitus, was the last Roman emperor elected by the Roman Senate, and served only for a short period of time, between 275 and 276 AD. Little is known about Tacitus´ career before his reign. Some sources suggest he served in the Danube Legions before becoming a senator. We do know he held the office of Senate consul, rising to the highest Senate rank, princeps senatus, an office he held at the time he reluctantly accepted to be the next emperor by acclaim of the Senate. After the assassination of Aurelian, an eight-month long interregnum took place. During this time, the army, who normally would proclaim the next emperor, decided to cede their right to the Senate, due to their remorse over the death of the popular emperor, Aurelian, who had died wi...
The Battle of Frigidus. September 6, 394.
The Battle of Frigidus, or the Battle of the River Frigid, took place between September 5 and 6, 394, pitting the Roman Emperor Theodosius I´s army against the army of the western usurper, Eugenius. As a result of Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum, Arbogast´s, defeat, the Roman Empire was in the hands of a sole emperor for the last time in its history. As a Christian, Theodosius was enraged by the pagan awakening that was taking place in the West under the reign of Eugenius. Furthermore, the death of Valentinian remained unsolved, and Eugenius had deposed all the civilian offices appointed by Theodosius when he ceded the western part of the empire to Valentinian II, leaving him with no control over the western Roman Empire. When a Western embassy arrived at Constantinople to reque...
The Battle of Cannae. August 2, 216 BC.
The Battle of Cannae, an historic and decisive battle of the Second Punic War, took place on August 2, 216 BC between the Punic army, led by Hannibal Barca, and Roman troops, commanded by consuls Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. The battle took place in the city of Cannae in the Apulian region to the southeast of the Italian Peninsula, and ended with the victory of the Carthaginian army, despite being clearly outnumbered by the Romans. After the Roman defeat, several city-states abandoned the Roman Republic side. Although the battle didn´t bring the Carthaginians final victory in the Punic War, it is nevertheless remembered as one of the most incredible battles in military history, and the biggest defeat of Roman history up until that moment, though the future would deliv...
The Battle of La Rochelle. June 22, 1372.
The Battle of La Rochelle took place on June 22, 1372 between the Castilian fleet and the English fleet along the coast of the city of La Rochelle, France. This battle was the first phase of what would lead to the siege of La Rochelle by the French, when terrestrial and naval forces of France and Castille took the city that had been in English hands. In 1369, Charles V of France broke the Treaty of Brétigny, therefore renewing hostilities of the Hundred Years War after a nine-year respite. In great measure, the King of France took this decision counting on the support of Henry II of Castille, who had a powerful army that made the offense more likely to be successful. The French king, following his strategy to take English strongholds, e intensified his blockade over La Rochelle, the key po...
The Battle of Silva Arsia. March 1, 509 BC.
The Battle of Silva Arsia was a battle that confronted the forces of the Roman Republic and the Etruscans from Tarquinii and Veii, led by the deposed Roman king Tarquinius Superbus. The battle took place in Roman territory, in the Arsian forest. The battle was one of the several attempts of Tarquinius to recover the throne, and may also be analyzed as part of the permanent conflict between the Etruscan cities and a Roman Republic that was growing both in strength and in territorial expansion. The battle is part of the ancient history of Rome, most probably, a legend in great part. In 509 BC, Roman monarchy was overthrown, and the Roman Republic started as the first elections of the first consuls took place. The deposed king, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquinius “The Proud”), whose family came f...
El Álamo. February 23, 1836.
The Battle of El Álamo (that took place from February 23 to March 6, 1836) was a major military conflict in the Texan Revolution. It started with a 13-days siege that ended with the final confrontation between the parts on March 6. It confronted the Mexican army, led by General Antonio López de Santana, against a Texan secessionist militia, formed in its majority by American colonists. It took place in San Antonio de Béxar, that was at that time part of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Texas (today, US state of Texas). All the combatants for the Republic of Texas died, except for two of them, which inspired a lot of Texan colonists as well as American mavericks to join the Texan army. Heated by the desire of vengeance because of the cruelty shown by General Santana during the siege, Texa...
The Battle of Berezina. November 27, 1812.
As the surviving masses of the Grande Armée struggled on for the perceived safety of the west, the Russian armies closed in on them. The French had suffered a defeat just two weeks earlier during the Battle of Krasnoi. However, reinforcements who had been stationed near the Berezina during Napoleon’s initial advance through Russia brought the numerical strength of the Grande Armée back up to some 30,000 to 40,000 French soldiers capable of fighting, as well as 40,000 non-combatants. The Russians had approximately 61,000 troops at the Berezina, with another 54,000 under Kutuzov just 40 miles (64 km) to the east who were approaching the river. Napoleon’s plan was to cross the Berezina River and head for Poland, while his enemies wanted to trap him there and destroy him. The origi...
The Elizabethan Era Begins. November 17, 1558.
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personification of Great Britain) was first used in 1572, and often thereafter, to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals and international expansion. This “golden age” represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for its theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England’s past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the P...
The Battle of San Juan de Ulúa. September 24, 1568.
The Battle of San Juan de Ulúa was a battle between English privateers and Spanish forces at San Juan de Ulúa (in modern Veracruz, Mexico). It marked the end of the campaign carried out by an English flotilla of six ships that had systematically conducted what the Spanish considered to be illegal trade in the Caribbean Sea, including the slave trade, at times imposing it by force. Subsequent to the beginning of the Age of Discovery and the European exploration of the New World it was determined that in order to minimize potential conflict between the two major naval powers of the world at the time, Spain and Portugal, that a demarcation line between the two spheres of influence would be necessary. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the New World into Spanish and Portuguese zones w...
The Conviction of de Rais. September 15, 1440.
Even if there had been nothing else unusual about the Breton nobleman Gilles de Rais (1404–40), his outstanding career as a soldier in the Hundred Years’ War and as a comrade in arms of Joan of Arc would have been enough to guarantee his place in history. Today, though, those achievements can only be seen in the shadow of the secret life he led as the perpetrator of more than a hundred gruesome child murders, a rampage which made him arguably the first serial killer in recorded history. The early life of Gilles de Rais was marked by tragedy. Both his parents died about 1415: his father, Guy de Laval, was killed in a hunting accident that de Rais may have witnessed, and his mother, Marie de Craon, died of an unknown cause. He was raised by his maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon. As a young...
Hayk and Bel. August 11, 2492 BC.
August 11, 2492 BC is the traditional date set for the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor founder of the Armenian nation. Bel, signifying “lord” or “master“, is a title rather than a genuine name, applied to various gods in the Mesopotamian religion of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. Bel is represented in Greek as Belos and in Latin as Belus. Bel became especially used for the Babylonian god Marduk and when found in Assyrian and neo-Babylonian personal names or mentioned in inscriptions in a Mesopotamian context it can usually be taken as referring to Marduk and no other god. Though often identified with Greek Zeus and Latin Jupiter as Zeus Belos or Jupiter Belus, in other cases Belus is euhemerized as an ancient king who founded Babylon and built the ziggurat. He is r...
The Battle of Raphia. June 22, 217 BC.
The Battle of Raphia, also known as the Battle of Gaza, was a battle fought on 22 June 217 BC near modern Rafah between the forces of Ptolemy IV Philopator, king and pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt and Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid Empire during the Syrian Wars. It was one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic kingdoms and was one of the largest battles of the ancient world. The battle was waged to determine the sovereignty of Coele Syria. This is the only known battle in which African and Asian elephants were used against each other. Due to Polybius‘ descriptions of Antiochus’ Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), brought from India, as being larger and stronger than Ptolemy’s African elephants, it had once been theorized that Ptolemy’s elephants were in fact...