Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was a line infantry regiment of the British Army that existed from 1881 until amalgamation into the Royal Regiment of Scotland on 28 March 2006. The regiment was created under the Childers Reforms in 1881, as the Princess Louise's, by the amalgamation of the 91st Regiment of Foot and 93rd Regiment of Foot, amended the following year to reverse the order of the "Argyll" and "Sutherland" sub-titles; the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was expanded to fifteen battalions during the First World War and nine during the Second World War. The 1st Battalion served in the 1st Commonwealth Division in the Korean War and gained a high public profile for its role in Aden during 1967; as part of the restructuring of the British Army's infantry in 2006, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Black Watch and the Highlanders into the seven battalion strong Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Following a further round of defence cuts announced in July 2012 the 5th Battalion was reduced to a single public duties company called Balaklava Company, 5th Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland. It was formed in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 91st Regiment and the 93rd Regiment as outlined in the Childers Reforms; the regiment was one of the six Scottish line infantry regiments, wears a version of the Government Sett as its regimental tartan. It had the largest cap badge in the British Army; the uniform included the Glengarry as its ceremonial headress. At the Childers reform amalgamation the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had a well-earned reputation for valour in the face of the enemy, most notably the 93rd during the Crimean War. Here, the 93rd earned the sobriquet of "The Fighting Highlanders" and carried with it the status of having been the original "Thin Red Line"; this title was bestowed following the action of the 93rd at Balaklava on 25 October 1854 in which this single battalion alone stood between the undefended British Army base at Balaklava and four squadrons of charging Russian cavalry.
The 93rd, under the command of Sir Colin Campbell, not only held steady, but for the first time in the history of the British Army, broke a large cavalry charge using musket fire alone, without having been formed into a square. This action was witnessed by the Times correspondent William Howard Russell, who reported that nothing stood between the Russian cavalry and the defenceless British base but the "thin red streak tipped with a line of steel of the 93rd" a description paraphrased and passed into folklore as "The Thin Red Line". Referred to by Kipling in his evocative poem "Tommy", the saying came to epitomise everything the British Army stood for; this feat of arms is still recognised by the plain red and white dicing worn on the cap band of the A and SH Glengarry bonnets. The 1st Battalion arrived in the Cape in November 1899 and formed part of the 3rd or Highland Brigade; the Argylls played leading roles in the Battle of Modder River, the Battle of Magersfontein, the Battle of Paardeberg and in an action at Roodepoort preceding the Battle of Doornkop.
In June 1900, the battalion was transferred to a new brigade under Brigadier General George Cunningham. They operated in the Eastern Transvaal. Sections of Argylls formed parts of the 2nd and 12th Battalions Mounted Infantry and a detachment, along with the Black Watch, formed an escort for Captain J E Bearcroft's naval guns during the advance to Pretoria. In 1908, the Volunteers and Militia were reorganised nationally, with the former becoming the Territorial Force and the latter the Special Reserve; the 1st Battalion landed at Le Havre as part of the 81st Brigade in the 27th Division in December 1914 for service on the Western Front. The 2nd Battalion landed at Boulogne-sur-Mer as part of the 19th Brigade, operating independently, in August 1914 for service on the Western Front; the 1/5th Battalion landed at Cape Helles as part of the 157th Brigade in the 52nd Division in June 1915. The 1/6th Battalion landed in France as part of the 152nd Brigade in the 51st Division in May 1915; the 1/7th Battalion landed in France as part of the 10th Brigade in the 4th Division in December 1914 for service on the Western Front.
The 1/8th Battalion landed in France as part of the 152nd Brigade in the 51st Division in May 1915 for service on the Western Front. The 1/9th Battalion landed in France as part of the 81st Brigade in the 27th Division in February 1915 for service on the Western Front; the 10th Battalion landed at Boulogne-sur Mer as part of the 27th Brigade in the 9th Division in May 1915 for service on the Western Front. The 11th Battalion landed at Boulogne-sur-Mer as part of the 45th Brigade in the 15th Division in July 1915 for service on the Western Front; the 12th Battalion landed at Boulogne-sur-Mer as part of the 77th Brigade in the 26th Division in September 1915 but moved to Salonika in Novembe
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a military conflict between Napoleon's empire and Bourbon Spain, for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807, escalated in 1808 when France turned on Spain its ally; the war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation, significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare. The Peninsular War overlaps with what the Spanish-speaking world calls the Guerra de la Independencia Española, which began with the Dos de Mayo Uprising on 2 May 1808 and ended on 17 April 1814; the French occupation destroyed the Spanish administration, which fragmented into quarrelling provincial juntas. The episode remains as the bloodiest event in Spain's modern history, doubling in relative terms the Spanish Civil War. A reconstituted national government, the Cortes of Cádiz—in effect a government-in-exile—fortified itself in Cádiz in 1810, but could not raise effective armies because it was besieged by 70,000 French troops.
British and Portuguese forces secured Portugal, using it as a safe position from which to launch campaigns against the French army and provide whatever supplies they could get to the Spanish, while the Spanish armies and guerrillas tied down vast numbers of Napoleon's troops. These combined regular and irregular allied forces, by restricting French control of territory, prevented Napoleon's marshals from subduing the rebellious Spanish provinces, the war continued through years of stalemate; the British Army, under Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Wellesley the 1st Duke of Wellington, guarded Portugal and campaigned against the French in Spain alongside the reformed Portuguese army; the demoralised Portuguese army was reorganised and refitted under the command of Gen. William Beresford, appointed commander-in-chief of the Portuguese forces by the exiled Portuguese royal family, fought as part of the combined Anglo-Portuguese Army under Wellesley. In 1812, when Napoleon set out with a massive army on what proved to be a disastrous French invasion of Russia, a combined allied army under Wellesley pushed into Spain, defeating the French at Salamanca and taking Madrid.
In the following year Wellington scored a decisive victory over King Joseph Bonaparte's army in the Battle of Vitoria. Pursued by the armies of Britain and Portugal, Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, no longer able to get sufficient support from a depleted France, led the exhausted and demoralized French forces in a fighting withdrawal across the Pyrenees during the winter of 1813–1814; the years of fighting in Spain were a heavy burden on France's Grande Armée. While the French were victorious in battle, their communications and supplies were tested and their units were isolated, harassed or overwhelmed by partisans fighting an intense guerrilla war of raids and ambushes; the Spanish armies were beaten and driven to the peripheries, but they would regroup and relentlessly hound the French. This drain on French resources led Napoleon, who had unwittingly provoked a total war, to call the conflict the "Spanish Ulcer". War and revolution against Napoleon's occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812 a cornerstone of European liberalism.
The burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of Portugal and Spain, ushered in an era of social turbulence, political instability and economic stagnation. Devastating civil wars between liberal and absolutist factions, led by officers trained in the Peninsular War, persisted in Iberia until 1850; the cumulative crises and disruptions of invasion and restoration led to the independence of most of Spain's American colonies and the independence of Brazil from Portugal. The Treaties of Tilsit, negotiated during a meeting in July 1807 between Emperors Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon, concluded the War of the Fourth Coalition. With Prussia shattered, the Russian Empire allied with the First French Empire, Napoleon expressed irritation that Portugal was open to trade with the United Kingdom. Pretexts were plentiful. Furthermore, Prince John of Braganza, regent for his insane mother Queen Maria I, had declined to join the emperor's Continental System against British trade. Events moved rapidly.
The Emperor sent orders on 19 July 1807 to his Foreign Minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, to order Portugal to declare war on Britain, close its ports to British ships, detain British subjects on a provisional basis and sequester their goods. After a few days, a large force started concentrating at Bayonne. Meanwhile, the Portuguese government's resolve was stiffening, shortly afterward Napoleon was once again told that Portugal would not go beyond its original agreements. Napoleon now had all the pretext that he needed, while his force, the First Corps of Observation of the Gironde with divisional general Jean-Andoche Junot in command, was prepared to march on Lisbon. After he received the Portuguese answer, he ordered Junot's corps to cross the frontier into the Spanish Empire. While all this was going on, the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau had been signed between France and Spain; the document was drawn up by Napoleon's marshal of the palace Géraud Duroc and Eugenio Izquierdo, an agent for Manuel Godoy.
The treaty proposed to carve up Portugal into three
Battle of Toulouse (1814)
The Battle of Toulouse was one of the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition. Having pushed the demoralised and disintegrating French Imperial armies out of Spain in a difficult campaign the previous autumn, the Allied British-Portuguese and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington pursued the war into southern France in the spring of 1814. Toulouse, the regional capital, proved stoutly defended by Marshal Soult. One British and two Spanish divisions were badly mauled in bloody fighting on 10 April, with Allied losses exceeding French casualties by 1,400. Soult held the city for an additional day before orchestrating an escape from the town with his army, leaving behind some 1,600 of his wounded, including 3 generals. Wellington's entry on the morning of 12 April was acclaimed by a great number of French Royalists, validating Soult's earlier fears of potential fifth column elements within the city.
That afternoon, the official word of Napoleon's abdication and the end of the war reached Wellington. Soult agreed to an armistice on 17 April. Following their successful invasion of France earlier in the year, an allied army of the Sixth Coalition, composed of British and Spanish troops under the supreme command of the Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington, laid siege to the city of Toulouse, one of the few remaining urban centres in France still loyal to Napoleon; the city of Toulouse was garrisoned by around 42,000 French troops, under the command of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. Imperial forces across southern France were demoralised by fighting the Anglo-Allied forces in their own country, were further shaken by news of repeated Coalition victories in northern and eastern France. Allied campaigning had pushed French forces out of Spain during 1813, after endless guerrilla wars which had resulted in more than 300,000 French casualties between 1808 and late 1813; the French suffered greater losses in manpower in southern France, as Napoleon diverted many southern forces to bolster his troops facing the Coalition armies invading northern and eastern France after an allied victory at Leipzig in October, 1813.
After Soult's defeat by Wellington at the Battle of Orthez in late February 1814, the French Marshal retreated north behind the Adour River to Saint-Sever. Soult was on the horns of a dilemma, he could defend Bordeaux to the north-west or Toulouse to the east. The French army would have difficulty obtaining food near Bordeaux and it would place the Garonne River in their rear. Therefore, Soult elected to base himself on Toulouse. With Soult moving east, Wellington sent Beresford and two divisions to seize Bordeaux, the third-largest city of France. To make up for this subtraction of strength, the British general called up 8000 Spanish infantry and the British heavy cavalry as reinforcements. Fearful that the Spanish would plunder the French countryside and incite a guerrilla war, Wellington put his allies on the British payroll and supply system. Meanwhile, the British-Portuguese-Spanish army pushed the French out of Aire-sur-l'Adour on 2 March in a skirmish. Soult pulled back to Maubourget, facing west.
A ten-day lull followed. On 12 March, Beresford captured Bordeaux without resistance. Leaving the 7th Division as a garrison, he rushed back to join Wellington with the 4th Division. Meanwhile, on 17–18 March, in a raid with 100 French cavalrymen, Captain Dauma circled the Allied army's south flank and attacked Saint-Sever where he captured 100 men. At the same time, Wellington launched his offensive. By marching east to Saint-Gaudens and north-east to Toulouse, the French avoided the British flanking columns. Reaching Toulouse, Soult placed his soldiers behind the city's fortifications. On 4 April, Wellington's engineers threw a pontoon bridge across the flooding Garonne north of the French city. After 19,000 Anglo-Allies crossed, the bridge gave way, but Soult failed to take advantage of his opportunity to defeat Wellington's army in detail. On 8 April, in a fine charge, the British 18th Hussars under Lieutenant-colonel Sir Henry Murray seized the bridge at Croix d'Orade on the Hers. Meanwhile, on 7 April at midnight, the official couriers left Paris with news that Napoleon had abdicated and that the war was over.
Toulouse lies on the Garonne, which runs into the city from the south-west turns and exits to the north-west. Just east of the Garonne, the smaller Hers-Mort runs past the city from the south-east to the north-east, forming a narrow corridor. To attack the city from the north, Wellington's main force would have to cross to the east bank of the Garonne drive south-east down the corridor between the two rivers. West of the Garonne lies the fortified suburb of St-Cyprien. To the north, Soult's outer defence line rested on the Languedoc Canal. Three bridges crossed the canal, at Pont Jumeaux to the north-west, Pont des Minimes to the north and Pont de Matablau to the north-east; each crossing was commanded by a powerful redoubt. The Heights of Calvinet rose east of the west of the Hers River; the Heights were crowned with several redoubts. Soult held St-Cyprien with the canal line with another division. Jean-Pierre Travot's conscripts lined the city walls. Jean Darmagnac's division stood between the canal.
The divisions of Jean Isidore Harispe and Eugene-Casimir Villatte defended the Heights with Eloi Taupin's division in reserve. Pierre Soult's cavalry screened to the south. Wellington
Saint Helena
Saint Helena is a volcanic tropical island in the South Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 kilometres east of Rio de Janeiro and 1,950 kilometres west of the mouth of the Cunene River, which marks the border between Namibia and Angola in southwestern Africa. It is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha. Saint Helena measures about 16 by 8 kilometres and has a population of 4,534, it was named after Saint Helena of Constantinople. It is one of the most remote islands in the world, was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, it was an important stopover for ships sailing to Europe from South Africa for centuries. Napoleon was imprisoned there in exile by the British, as was Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo and more than 5,000 Boers taken prisoner during the Second Boer War, including Piet Cronjé. Saint Helena is Britain's second-oldest overseas territory after Bermuda. Most historical accounts state that the island was sighted on 21 May 1502 by Galician navigator João da Nova sailing in the service of Portugal, that he named it Santa Helena after Helena of Constantinople.
A paper published in 2015 observes that 21 May is a Protestant rather than a Catholic or Orthodox feast day, the date was first quoted in 1596 by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, mistaken because the island was discovered several decades before the Reformation and the start of Protestantism. An alternative discovery date of 3 May is suggested as being more credible. Another theory holds that the island found by da Nova was Tristan da Cunha, 2,430 kilometres to the south, that Saint Helena was discovered by some of the ships attached to the squadron of the Estêvão da Gama expedition on 30 July 1503; the Portuguese found the island uninhabited, with an abundance of fresh water. They imported livestock, fruit trees and vegetables, built a chapel and one or two houses, they formed no permanent settlement, but the island was an important rendezvous point and source of food for ships travelling by Cape Route from Asia to Europe, sick mariners were left on the island to recover before taking passage on the next ship to call at the island.
Englishman Sir Francis Drake located the island on the final leg of his circumnavigation of the world. Further visits by other English explorers followed and, once Saint Helena’s location was more known, English ships of war began to lie in wait in the area to attack Portuguese India carracks on their way home. In developing their Far East trade, the Dutch began to frequent the island; the Portuguese and Spanish soon gave up calling at the island because they used ports along the West African coast, but because of attacks on their shipping, the desecration of their chapel and religious icons, destruction of their livestock, destruction of plantations by Dutch and English sailors. The Dutch Republic formally claimed Saint Helena in 1633, although there is no evidence that they occupied, colonised, or fortified it. By 1651, the Dutch had abandoned the island in favour of their colony at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the English East India Company a charter to govern Saint Helena and, the following year, the company decided to fortify the island and colonise it with planters.
The first governor, Captain John Dutton, arrived in 1659, making Saint Helena one of Britain's earliest colonies outside North America and the Caribbean. A fort and houses were built. After the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the East India Company received a royal charter giving it the sole right to fortify and colonise the island; the fort was renamed James Fort and the town Jamestown, in honour of the Duke of York King James II of England. Between January and May 1673, the Dutch East India Company forcibly took the island, before English reinforcements restored English East India Company control; the company experienced difficulty attracting new immigrants, sentiments of unrest and rebellion arose among the inhabitants. Ecological problems of deforestation, soil erosion and drought led Governor Isaac Pyke in 1715 to suggest that the population be moved to Mauritius, but this was not acted upon and the company continued to subsidise the community because of the island's strategic location.
A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves. Eighteenth-century governors tried to tackle the island's problems by planting trees, improving fortifications, eliminating corruption, building a hospital, tackling the neglect of crops and livestock, controlling the consumption of alcohol and introducing legal reforms; the island enjoyed a lengthy period of prosperity from about 1770. Captain James Cook visited the island in 1775 on the final leg of his second circumnavigation of the world. St. James' Church was built in Jamestown in 1774, Plantation House in 1791–1792. Edmond Halley visited Saint Helena on leaving the University of Oxford in 1676 and set up an astronomical observatory with a 7.3-metre-long aerial telescope, with the intention of studying stars from the Southern Hemisphere. The site of this telescope is near Saint Mathew's Church in Hutt's Gate in the Longwood district; the 680-metre high hill there is called Halley's Mount. Throughout this period, Saint Helena was an important port of call of the East India Company.
East Indiamen
Cambrai
Cambrai is a commune in the Nord department and in the Hauts-de-France region of France on the Scheldt river, known locally as the Escaut river. A sub-prefecture of the department, Cambrai is a town which had 32,518 inhabitants in the Census of 2009, it is in the heart of the urban unit of Cambrai which, with 47,138 inhabitants, ranks as 7th largest of the department. Its urban area, a more extensive range, included 65,986 inhabitants in 2009. With Lille and the towns of the former Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, it is part of the Metropolitan area of Lille which has more than 3.8 million inhabitants. Towards the end of the Roman Empire, Cambrai replaced Bavay as the "capital" of the land of the Nervii. At the beginning of the Merovingian era, Cambrai became the seat of an immense archdiocese covering all the right bank of the Scheldt and the centre of a small ecclesiastical principality coinciding with the shire of Brabant, including the central part of the Low Countries; the bishopric had some limited secular power and depended on the Holy Roman Empire until annexation to France in 1678.
Fénelon, nicknamed the "Swan of Cambrai", was the most renowned of the archbishops. The fertile lands which surround it and the textile industry gave it prosperity in the Middle Ages, but in modern times it is less industrialised than its neighbours of Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Cambrai was the Duke of Wellington's headquarters, for the British Army of Occupation, from 1815 to 1818. Occupied and destroyed by the German army during World War I, Cambrai saw unfold in its vicinity the Battle of Cambrai where tanks were massively and used for the first time. A second Battle of Cambrai took place between 8 and 10 October 1918 as part of the Hundred Days Offensive. World War II was followed by reconstructions and a developing economy and population, abruptly reversed by the 1973 oil crisis. Cambrai today is a lively city and, despite the past destruction, maintains a rich monumental heritage. Cambrai is affirmed as the urban centre of Cambrésis, its economic life is strengthened by its position on river. The town of Cambrai is located in the south of the Nord Department, of which it is chef-lieu of the arrondissement.
It belongs to the dense network of the cities of the area which are separated by a few tens of kilometres: Douai is only 24 kilometres, Valenciennes is 29 kilometres, Arras is 36 kilometres and Saint-Quentin 37 kilometres as the crow flies. The regional capital of Lille is 52 kilometres away. Cambrai is not far from several European capitals: Brussels is 108 kilometres, Paris is 160 kilometres and London is 280 kilometres; the city was developed on the right bank of the Scheldt river. Locally known as the Escaut, the river has its source in the department of Aisne, any more than 20 kilometres away. Cambrai is located on chalk bedrock of the Cretaceous period, which forms the northern boundary of the Paris Basin, between, to the east, the hills for Thiérache and Avesnois, the foothills of the Ardennes, northwest, the hills of Artois, it is at a point, lower than these two regions, called the "Cambrai threshold" or the "Bapaume threshold", which facilitates the passage between the south and the north: Bapaume is 100 metres above sea level, Avesnes-sur-Helpe is at 143 metres and Cambrai only 41 metres.
The Saint-Quentin canal, the Canal du Nord, the A1, A2 and A26 autoroutes all borrow all this passage between the basin of the Seine and the plains of the Nord department. The chalky subsoil allowed, as in many medieval cities, the digging of a network of cellars and quarries under the city; the poor quality of the Cambrai chalk was reserved for use in the manufacture of lime or filling, as well as common constructions. For prestigious buildings, stone from the nearby villages of Noyelles-sur-Escaut, Rumilly or Marcoing was used; the city is bordered in its western part, as well as to the north and the south, by the alluvial zones of the Scheldt Valley. Cambrai is built on the right bank of the Scheldt; the river, still of a modest flow in Cambrai, played a crucial role in the history of the city by providing multiple functions, including allowing the transportation of men and goods since antiquity. However, it was crossed by numerous marshes, it was with the discovery of coal at Anzin in 1734 that the Scheldt was expanded and declared navigable in 1780, from Cambrai to the North Sea.
The Scheldt is today the Canal de l'Escaut downstream of Cambrai. In addition, the river served as the boundary between the bishoprics of Tournai on its left bank and Cambrai on its right bank, from the 6th century; when the division of Charlemagne's Empire in 843, this border was retained to delimit the kingdoms of Lothair I and Charles the Bald, making Cambrai a city of the Holy Roman Empire until 1677. The Scheldt was indispensable to many economic activities, such as the tanning, the manufacture of salt and soap, as well as for retting of linen, the weaving of, one of the main activities of the city; the river was used in the Middle Ages and by Vauban, for the defence of the city by the establishment of flood defensive areas. Despite its important role in the history of the city, the Scheldt is little integrated into the present urban landscape. Main article: Climate of Nord-Pas-de-CalaisClimate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, there is adequate rainfall year round.
The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for
Ionian Islands
The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e. "the Seven Islands", but the group includes many smaller islands as well as the seven principal ones. As a distinct historic region they date to the centuries-long Venetian rule, which preserved them from becoming part of the Ottoman Empire, created a distinct cultural identity with many Italian influences; the Ionian Islands became part of the modern Greek state in 1864. Administratively today they belong to the Ionian Islands Region except for Kythera, which belongs to the Attica Region; the seven islands are. The seventh island, Kythira, is off the southern tip of the Peloponnese, the southern part of the Greek mainland. Kythira is not part of the region of the Ionian Islands. In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios was used as an epithet for the sea between Epirus and Italy in which the Ionian Islands are found because Io swam across it. Latin transliteration, as well as Modern Greek pronunciation, may suggest that the Ionian Sea and Islands are somehow related to Ionia, an Anatolian region.
In Modern Greek omicron and omega represent the same sound, but the two words are still distinguished by stress: the western "Ionia" is accented on the antepenult, the eastern on the penult. In English, the adjective relating to Ionia is Ionic, not Ionian; the islands themselves are known by a rather confusing variety of names. During the centuries of rule by Venice, they acquired Venetian names, by which some of them are still known in English. Kerkyra was known as Corfù, Ithaki as Val di Compare, Kythera as Cerigo, Lefkada as Santa Maura and Zakynthos as Zante. A variety of spellings are used for the Greek names of the islands in historical writing. Kefallonia is spelled as Cephallenia or Cephalonia, Ithaki as Ithaca, Kerkyra as Corcyra, Kythera as Cythera, Lefkada as Leucas or Leucada and Zakynthos as Zacynthus or Zante. Older or variant Greek forms are sometimes used: Kefallinia for Kefallonia and Paxos or Paxoi for Paxi; the islands were settled by Greeks at an early date as early as 1200 BC, by the 9th century BC.
The early Eretrian settlement at Kerkyra was displaced by colonists from Corinth in 734 BC. The islands were a backwater during Ancient Greek times and played little part in Greek politics; the one exception was the conflict between Kerkyra and its mother-City Corinth in 434 BC, which brought intervention from Athens and triggered the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca was the name of the island home of Odysseus in the epic Ancient Greek poem the Odyssey by Homer. Attempts have been made to identify Ithaki with ancient Ithaca, but the geography of the real island cannot be made to fit Homer's description. Archeological investigations have revealed interesting findings in both Ithaca. By the 4th century BC, most of the islands were absorbed into the empire of Macedon; some remained under the control of the Macedonian Kingdom until 146 BC, when the Greek peninsula was annexed by Rome. After 400 years of peaceful Roman rule, the islands passed to the Eastern Byzantine Empire. Under Byzantine rule, from the mid-8th century, they formed the theme of Cephallenia.
The islands were a frequent target of Saracen raids and from the late 11th century, saw a number of Norman and Italian attacks. Most of the islands fell to William II of Sicily in 1185. Corfu and Lefkas remained under Byzantine control. Kefallonia and Zakynthos became the County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos until 1357, when this entity was merged with Lefkada and Ithaki to become the Duchy of Leucadia under French and Italian dukes. Corfu and Kythera were taken by the Venetians in 1204, after the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade; these became important overseas colonies of the Republic and were used as way-stations for their maritime trade with the Levant. From 1204, the Republic of Venice controlled Corfu and all the Ionian islands fell under Venetian rule. In the 15th century, the Ottomans conquered most of Greece, but their attempts to conquer the islands were unsuccessful. Zakynthos passed permanently to Venice in 1482, Kefallonia and Ithaki in 1483, Lefkada in 1502.
Kythera had been in Venetian hands since 1238. The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only Greek island never conquered by the Turks. Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the majority remained Greek ethnically and religiously. In the 18th century, a Greek national independence movement began to emerge, the free status of the Ion
Battle of Orthez
The Battle of Orthez saw the Anglo-Portuguese Army under Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington attack an Imperial French army led by Marshal Nicolas Soult in southern France. The outnumbered French repelled several Allied assaults on their right flank, but their center and left flank were overcome and Soult was compelled to retreat. At first the withdrawal was conducted in good order, but it ended in a scramble for safety and many French soldiers became prisoners; the engagement occurred near the end of the Peninsular War. In mid-February, Wellington's army broke out of its small area of conquered territory near Bayonne. Moving east, the Allies drove the French back from several river lines. After a pause in the campaign, the western-most Allied corps surrounded and isolated Bayonne. Resuming their eastward drive, the remaining two Allied corps pushed Soult's army back to Orthez where the French marshal offered battle. In subsequent operations, Soult decided to abandon the large western port of Bordeaux and fall back east toward Toulouse.
The next action was the Battle of Toulouse. The Battle of the Nive ended on 13 December 1813 when Wellington's army repulsed the last of Soult's assaults; this ended the fighting for the year. Soult had found the Allied army failed to inflict a damaging defeat; the French pulled back within Bayonne's defenses and entered winter quarters. Heavy rains brought operations to a standstill for the next two months. After the Battle of Nivelle on 10 November 1813, Wellington's Spanish troops had gone out of control in seized French villages. Horrified at the idea of provoking a guerilla war by French civilians, the British commander imposed a vigorous discipline on his British and Portuguese soldiers and sent most of his Spanish troops home. Since his men were paid and fed by the British government, Pablo Morillo's Spanish division remained with the army. Wellington's policy paid dividends. In January 1814, Soult sent reinforcements to Napoleon. Transferred to the Campaign in Northeast France were the 7th and 9th Infantry Divisions and Anne-François-Charles Trelliard's dragoons.
Altogether, this totaled 11,015 foot soldiers under Jean François Leval and Pierre François Xavier Boyer and 3,420 horsemen in the brigades of Pierre Ismert, François Léon Ormancey and Louis Ernest Joseph Sparre. This left Soult with the 1st Division under Maximilien Sébastien Foy, 2nd Division led by Jean Barthélemy Darmagnac, 3rd Division commanded by Louis Jean Nicolas Abbé, 4th Division directed by Eloi Charlemagne Taupin, 5th Division commanded by Jean-Pierre Maransin, 6th Division under Eugène-Casimir Villatte, 8th Division led by Jean Isidore Harispe and Cavalry Division under Pierre Benoît Soult. Marshal Soult commanded 7,300 gunners and wagon drivers plus the garrisons of Bayonne and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Wellington's army consisted of the 1st Division under Kenneth Howard, 2nd Division commanded by William Stewart, 3rd Division led by Thomas Picton, 4th Division directed by Lowry Cole, 5th Division under Andrew Hay, 6th Division commanded by Henry Clinton, 7th Division led by George Townshend Walker, Light Division under Charles Alten, Portuguese Division directed by Carlos Lecor and Spanish Division led by Morillo.
Stapleton Cotton commanded three British light cavalry brigades under Henry Fane, Hussey Vivian and Edward Somerset. There were three independent infantry brigades, 1,816 British led by Matthew Whitworth-Aylmer, 2,185 Portuguese under John Wilson and 1,614 Portuguese directed by Thomas Bradford. Wellington planned to use the greater part of his army to drive the bulk of Soult's army well to the east, away from Bayonne. Once the French army was pressed sufficiently far to the east, a strong Allied corps would seize a bridgehead over the Adour River to the west of Bayonne and encircle that fortress; because Soult's army was weakened by three divisions, Wellington's forces were superior enough to risk dividing them into two bodies. Soult wished to contain his opponent in a wedge of occupied French territory. Garrisoned Bayonne blocked the north side of the Allied-occupied area. East of the city, three French divisions held the line of the Adour to Port-de-Lanne; the east side of the Allied-occupied area was defended by four French divisions along the Joyeuse River as far south as Hélette.
Cavalry patrols formed a cordon from there to the fortress of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrenees. On 14 February, Wellington launched his offensive toward the east. On the right flank was Rowland Hill's 20,000-man corps which included the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, Lecor's Portuguese and Morillo's Spanish divisions and Fane's cavalry. Hill's main column struck toward Harispe's division at Hélette. Picton moved on the left flank against Villatte's division at Bonloc and Morillo took his men through the foothills on the right flank. On 15 February, Hill's column defeated Harispe's division in the Battle of Garris and forced the French to abandon Saint-Palais and the line of the Bidouze River; the 25,400-strong Allied left flank corps under William Beresford began its advance on 16 February, aiming for the village of Bidache. Beresford's corps was made up of the 4th, 6th, 7th and Light Division as well as Somerset's and Vivian's cavalry. Altogether, Wellington had 3,000 horsemen marching to the east.
Reacting to the Allied pressure, Soult joined two of the three divisions north of the Adour t
Kingdom of Great Britain (1794–1800)
United Kingdom (1801–1881)
British Army
