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Documents for "Wars and Battles":
  • Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks War, June 15-Aug. 23, 1866, between Prussia, allied with Italy, and Austria, seconded by Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Baden, and several smaller German states. It was deliberately provoked by Bismarck , over the objections of his king, in order to expel Austria from the German Confederation as a step toward the unification of Germany under Prussian dominance. The pretext for precipitating the conflict was found in the dispute between Prussia and Austria over the administration of Schleswig-Holstein. When Austria brought the dispute before the German diet and also decided to convene the Holstein diet, Prussia, declaring that the Gastein Convention (see under Gastein ) had thereby been nullified, invaded Holstein. When the German diet responded by voting for a partial mobilization against Prussia, Bismarck declared that the German Confederation was ended. With...
  • Axis coalition of countries headed by Germany, Italy, and Japan, 1936-45 (see World War II ). The expression "Rome-Berlin axis" originated in Oct., 1936, with an accord reached by Hitler and Mussolini. The Axis was solidified by an Italo-German alliance in May, 1939. This was extended (Sept., 1940) by a military alliance among Germany, Italy, and Japan—the so-called Berlin Pact, to which...
  • Balkan Wars 1912-13, two short wars, fought for the possession of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire. The outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War for the possession of Tripoli (1911) encouraged the...
  • Battle of Britain in World War II, series of air battles between Great Britain and Germany, fought over Britain from Aug. to Oct., 1940. As a prelude to a planned invasion of England, Germany attacked British...
  • Battle of the Bulge popular name in World War II for the German counterattack in the Ardennes, Dec., 1944-Jan., 1945. It is also known as the Battle of the Ardennes. On Dec. 16, 1944, a strong German force, commanded...
  • Battle of the Spurs 1 Fought in 1302 near Courtrai, Belgium, between the rebellious Flemish towns, led by Bruges, and an army sent by Philip IV of France, who had annexed Flanders in 1301. The French were totally...
  • Blenheim, battle of major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession (see Spanish Succession, War of the ), fought on Aug. 13, 1704, at the village of Blenheim, near Höchstädt, Bavaria. Responding to appeals from Vienna, which was threatened by French and Bavarian forces, the English commander, John...
  • Breton Succession, War of the 1341-65, an important episode of the Hundred Years War. Duke John III of Brittany died in 1341 without heirs. The succession was contested by his half brother, John de Montfort, who was backed by Edward III of England, and by Charles of Blois , who had married Jeanne de Penthièvre, a niece of the late duke. Charles and Jeanne were supported by Philip VI, John II, and Charles V of France. The resulting war continued through several...
  • Cairo Conference Nov. 22-26, 1943, World War II meeting of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China at Cairo, Egypt. A joint...
  • Casablanca Conference Jan. 14-24, 1943, World War II meeting of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Casablanca, French Morocco. A joint declaration pledged that the war would end only with the unconditional surrender of the Axis states. No agreement was reached on the claims for leadership of...
  • Central Powers in World War I , the coalition of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.
  • Copenhagen, battle of 1801, an important incident of the French Revolutionary Wars. In Dec., 1800, Denmark joined Russia, Sweden, and Prussia in declaring the armed neutrality of the northern powers in the French Revolutionary Wars and in announcing that they would not comply...
  • Crimean War 1853-56, war between Russia on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France, and Sardinia on the other. The causes of the conflict were inherent in the unsolved Eastern Question. The more immediate occasion was a dispute between Russia and France over the Palestinian holy places. Challenging the claim of Russia to guardianship of the holy places, France in 1852 secured...
  • Crusades series of wars undertaken by European Christians between the 11th and 14th cent. to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.
  • Devolution, War of 1667-68, undertaken by Louis XIV for the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. On her marriage to Louis, Marie Thérèse, daughter of Philip IV of Spain, had renounced her rights of inheritance in...
  • Dunes, Battle of the 1658, decisive engagement fought near Dunkirk in the struggle between France and Spain that had resulted from Spanish intervention in the Fronde. The Spanish under the command of Don John of Austria...
  • Dutch Wars series of conflicts between the English and Dutch during the mid to late 17th cent. The wars had their roots in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry, although the last of the three wars was a wider...
  • Fehrbellin, battle of 1675. Allied with France in the third Dutch War, King Charles XI of Sweden invaded Brandenburg but was defeated near the town of Fehrbellin, 35 mi (56 km) NW of Berlin, by the forces of Frederick...
  • Finnish-Russian War 1939-40, war between Finland and the Soviet Union. After World War II broke out in Sept., 1939, the USSR, never on cordial terms with Finland, took advantage of its nonaggression pact (Aug., 1939)...
  • Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, 1870-71, conflict between France and Prussia that signaled the rise of German military power and imperialism. It was provoked by Otto von Bismarck (the Prussian chancellor) as part of his plan to...
  • French Revolutionary Wars wars occurring in the era of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, the decade of 1792-1802. The wars began as an effort to defend the Revolution and developed into wars of conquest under the empire. The peace obtained in...
  • Grand Alliance, War of the 1688-97, war between France and a coalition of European powers, known as the League of Augsburg (and, after 1689, as the Grand Alliance). Louis XIV of France took advantage of the absence of Emperor Leopold I on a campaign against the Turks and of the promised support of James II of England...
  • Herrings, Battle of the 1429, episode in the siege of Orléans by the English in the Hundred Years War. The French, under Jean, comte de Dunois, attacked a supply train commanded by Sir John Fastolf. The English, barricaded...
  • Hussite Wars series of conflicts in the 15th cent., caused by the rise of the Hussites in Bohemia and Moravia. It was a religious struggle between Hussites and the Roman Catholic Church, a national struggle between Czechs and Germans, and a social struggle between the landed and...
  • Italian Wars 1494-1559, series of regional wars brought on by the efforts of the great European powers to control the small independent states of Italy. Renaissance Italy was split into numerous rival states, most of which sought foreign alliances to increase their individual power. It thus became prey to the national states that had begun to emerge in Europe...
  • Jenkins's Ear, War of 1739-41, struggle between England and Spain. It grew out of the commercial rivalry of the two powers and led to involvement in the larger War of the Austrian Succession. The incident that gave the name to the war occurred in 1731 when, according to Robert Jenkins, master of the ship Rebecca, he had his ear cut off by Spanish coast guards. English smuggling and resentment at exclusion from the Spanish colonial trade caused the war, but Jenkins's story in the House of Commons (1738),...
  • Jutland, battle of only major engagement between the British and German fleets in World War I. They met c.60 mi (100 km) west of the coast of Jutland. On May 31, 1916, a British squadron under Admiral Beatty was scouting in advance of the British main fleet, in search of the German main...
  • Lepanto, battle of Oct. 7, 1571, naval battle between the Christians and Ottomans fought in the strait between the gulfs of Pátrai and Corinth, off Lepanto (Návpaktos), Greece. The fleet of the Holy League commanded...
  • Lusitania liner under British registration, sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. In the sinking, 1,198 persons lost their lives, 128 of whom were U.S. citizens. A warning to...
  • Malplaquet, battle of a major engagement in the War of the Spanish Succession (see Spanish Succession, War of the ). On Sept. 11, 1709, the combined forces of England and the Holy Roman emperor, led by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy met the French army under Marshal Villars. Although the French were forced to retreat, the Anglo-imperial army, attacking strongly fortified positions, suffered more than 20,000 casualties, twice the number of French casualties. The battle...
  • Marengo, battle of a major engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars , fought on June 14, 1800, at the village of Marengo in Piedmont, N Italy. Determined to throw the Austrians back from positions they had recently regained in Lombardy and Piedmont, Napoleon...
  • Marignano, battle of 1515, in the Italian Wars, fought by Francis I of France and his Venetian allies against the Swiss Confederates, who then controlled the duchy of Milan. It was fought (Sept. 13-14) near the town...
  • Marne, battle of the two important battles of World War I that are named for the Marne River. In the first battle (Sept. 6-9, 1914) the German advance on Paris was halted at the Marne by the Allies under Joffre , Gallieni...
  • Moscow Conferences meetings held between 1941 and 1947 at Moscow, USSR. At a conference in Sept.-Oct., 1941, American and British representatives laid the basis for lend-lease aid to the USSR in World War II. In Aug., 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and W. Averell Harriman, representing U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, met with Soviet Premier...
  • Napoleonic Wars 1803-15, the wars waged by or against France under Napoleon I. For a discussion of them see under Napoleon I.
  • Navarino, battle of 1827, naval battle resulting from the intervention of the European powers in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). England, France, and Russia had demanded an armistice...
  • Normandy campaign June to Aug., 1944, in World War II. The Allied invasion of the European continent through Normandy began about 12:15 descr='[AM]' on June 6, 1944 (D-day). The plan, known as Operation Overlord,...
  • Northern War 1700-1721, general European conflict, fought in N and E Europe at the same time that the War of the Spanish Succession was fought in the west and the south. It arose chiefly from the desire of the neighbors of Sweden to break Swedish supremacy in the Baltic area, and from the conflicting ambitions of Peter I of Russia and Charles XII of Sweden. Many other interests were involved, however. Although there was no direct link between the Northern War and the War of the Spanish Succession, Sweden generally received the diplomatic...
  • Peninsular War 1808-14, fought by France against Great Britain, Portugal, Spanish regulars, and Spanish guerrillas in the Iberian Peninsula.
  • Polish Succession, War of the 1733-35. On the death (1733) of Augustus II of Poland, Stanislaus I sought to reascend the Polish throne. He was supported by his son-in-law, Louis XV of France. The rival candidate for the throne was the son of Augustus II, the elector of Saxony, who was supported...
  • Quebec Conference name of two meetings held in Quebec, Canada, in World War II. The first meeting (Aug., 1943) was attended by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston...
  • Ramillies, battle of fought May 23, 1706, near the village of Ramillies-Offus, Walloon Brabant prov., Belgium, 12 mi (19 km) S of Tienen, in the War of the Spanish Succession. Here, in one of his most brilliant...
  • revolutions of 1848 in European history. The February Revolution in France gave impetus to a series of revolutionary explosions in Western and Central Europe. However the new French Republic did not support these movements. The stage was set when the unrest...
  • Salonica campaigns In the summer of 1915, Bulgaria entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers; in September, Bulgaria attacked Serbia. An Allied expeditionary force that landed at Salonica in an effort to...
  • Seven Years War 1756-63, worldwide war fought in Europe, North America, and India between France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and (after 1762) Spain on the one side and Prussia, Great Britain, and Hanover on...
  • Spanish Succession, War of the 1701-14, last of the general European wars caused by the efforts of King Louis XIV to extend French power. The conflict in America corresponding to the period of the War of the Spanish Succession was...
  • Trafalgar, battle of naval engagement fought off Cape Trafalgar on the SW coast of Spain on Oct. 21, 1805, in which the British fleet under Horatio Nelson won a famous victory over the allied French and Spanish fleets under Pierre de Villeneuve. Nelson's strategy was to divide his own fleet into two sections, one led by himself in the HMS Victory, the other by his deputy Cuthbert Collingwood in the HMS Royal Sovereign, and to penetrate the enemy line in two places. This maneuver resulted in the capture of 20 enemy ships (one was blown up). The British lost no ships. Among the dead was Nelson himself, struck by a...
  • Verdun, battle of the longest and one of the bloodiest engagements of World War I. Two million men were engaged. It began on Feb. 21, 1916, when the Germans, commanded by Crown Prince Frederick William, launched a massive offensive against Verdun, an awkward salient in the...
  • Waterloo campaign last action of the Napoleonic Wars, ending with the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon I, who escaped from Elba in Feb., 1815, and entered Paris on Mar. 20, soon faced a European coalition. His only hope...
  • World War I 1914-18, also known as the Great War, conflict, chiefly in Europe, among most of the great Western powers. It was the largest war the world had yet seen.
  • World War II 1939-45, worldwide conflict involving every major power in the world. The two sides were generally known as the Allies and the Axis.
  • Ypres, battles of three major engagements of World War I fought in and around the town of Ypres in SW Belgium. The first battle of Ypres (Oct.-Nov., 1914) was the last of the series of engagements referred to as "the race for the sea." The German thrust toward the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais was stopped by the British at Ypres, but in the process the British Expeditionary Force of 100,000 was reduced to half its original...
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