1.
Battle of Preveza (1911)
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This engagement should not be confused with the Battle of Preveza in 1538. The Battle of Preveza, in September 1911, was the first naval engagement fought during the Italo-Turkish War, five Italian warships encountered five Ottoman ships off the Greek port of Preveza. Over the course of two days, four of the Turkish vessels present were sunk or captured and the city was bombarded, on September 29, just after the beginning of the war, the Italian fleet in the Ionian Sea began searching for Ottoman warships. At about 4,00 pm, an hour or so after war was declared, five Italian destroyers under Prince Luigi Amedeo, outnumbered, the Ottomans opened fire but soon after chose to flee without making any hits. The torpedo boat Tokat steered north chased by three destroyers while the Anatolia headed south followed by the remaining two Italian ships, after several moments of firing the Tokat ran aground near Nicopolis. She had been hit fifteen times, caught on fire, and was destroyed by additional Italian rounds. Nine men were killed, including the ships captain, Anatolia was capable of escaping her pursuers without being damaged. That night an officer of the Corazziere went ashore secretly to observe the Turkish defenses before attacking the following morning. Two more Ottoman torpedo boats were in the harbor, the Alpagot and the Hamid-Abad, when the attack began the next day on September 30, the Italians engaged the Turkish torpedo boats first and sank them quickly without sustaining damage or casualties. All of the Ottoman crewmen escaped their ships except one man, a scuttled armed yacht named Tarablus was also at Preveza and the Italians captured her while under fire from civilians on the shore. The Corazziere then fired on the Turks and drove them off, after a forty-five-minute engagement, the two destroyers sailed for friendly waters with their prize in tow
2.
Preveza
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Preveza is a town in the region of Epirus, northwestern Greece, located at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf. It is the capital of the unit of Preveza, which is part of the region of Epirus. The Aktio-Preveza Immersed Tunnel, the first and so far only undersea tunnel in Greece, was completed in 2002, the ruins of the ancient city of Nicopolis lie 7 kilometres north of the city. Different theories have suggested by scholars as to the origin of the name Preveza. In 1857, Panagiotis Aravantinos, one of the earliest historians of modern Epirus, suggested an Italian origin of the name, relating it to the word prevesione, supply. Most of the scholars who have dealt with the origin of the name after Aravantinos and this view has also been shared by the byzantinists Fyodor Uspensky and Konstantinos Amantos.541 km2, the municipal unit 66.835 km2. In antiquity, the part of Epirus was inhabited by the Greek tribe of Cassopeans, part of a larger tribe. At the southernmost part of Epirus, king Pyrrhus founded, in 290 BC, today, it is believed that Berenikea lies on the hills near the village of Michalitsi, following the excavations by Sotirios Dakaris in 1965. The Ionian Sea, near Berenikea, was the site of the naval Battle of Actium, on 2 September 31 BC, in which Octavians forces defeated those of Mark Antony, the ancient city of Nicopolis was built, nearby, by Augustus to commemorate his victory. The city is believed to have, at its peak, a population of 150,000, in AD90, Epictetus arrived at Nicopolis, after been banished by the Roman emperor Domitian, and established a school of philosophy. One of his students, Arrian, became a famous historian, Nicopolis continued under Roman and later Byzantine rule, experiencing brief periods of Bulgarian rule in the 10th century. According to one theory, modern Preveza grew around a military outpost built in the 9th century by the Bulgarians, the city was first attested in the Chronicle of the Morea. However, Hammond places the foundation of Preveza much later, at the end of the 14th century, after 1204, it came under the Despotate of Epirus, the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire, and the Despotate of Arta. It then came under Venetian rule until captured by the Ottomans, the Ottomans refounded Preveza probably in 1477, with a subsequent strengthening of the fortifications in 1495. This day is a Turkish Navy National Holiday, and some of today Turkish submarines called Preveze, Preveza was hotly contested in several Ottoman-Venetian Wars. However, at the end of the war in 1699 Preveza was handed back to Ottoman rule, Venetian rule would persist until the very end of the Venetian Republic itself in 1797. During this period, in 1779, the Orthodox missionary Kosmas visited Preveza where it is said he founded a Greek school, which would be the only school of the city during the 18th century. At the end of the 18th century, Preveza became a center of trade with western Europe
3.
Ionian Sea
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The Ionian Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania to the north, all major islands in the sea belong to Greece. They are collectively referred to as the Ionian Islands, the ones being Corfu, Zakynthos, Kephalonia, Ithaca. There are ferry routes between Patras and Igoumenitsa, Greece, and Brindisi and Ancona, Italy, that cross the east and north of the Ionian Sea, and from Piraeus westward. Calypso Deep, the deepest point in the Mediterranean at −5,267 m, is located in the Ionian Sea, the sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world. The name Ionian comes from the Greek language Ἰόνιον, Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io. In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios was used as an epithet for the sea because Io swam across it, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the name may derive from Ionians who sailed to the West. There were also narratives about other eponymic legendary figures, according to one version, Ionius was a son of Adrias, according to another, Ionius was a son of Dyrrhachus. When Dyrrhachus was attacked by his own brothers, Heracles, who was passing through the area, came to his aid, the corpse was cast into the sea, which thereafter was called the Ionian Sea. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Ionian Sea as follows, On the North. A line running from the mouth of the Butrinto River in Albania, to Cape Karagol in Corfu, along the North Coast of Corfu to Cape Kephali, from the mouth of the Butrinto River in Albania down the coast of the mainland to Cape Matapan. A line from Cape Matapan to Cape Passero, the Southern point of Sicily, the East coast of Sicily and the Southeast coast of Italy to Cape Santa Maria di Leuca
4.
Republic of Venice
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It was based in the lagoon communities of the historically prosperous city of Venice. It was a leading European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages, the Venetian city state was founded as a safe haven for people escaping persecution in mainland Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In its early years, it prospered on the salt trade, in subsequent centuries, the city state established a thalassocracy. It dominated trade on the Mediterranean Sea, including commerce between Asia, Europe and North Africa, the Venetian navy was used in the Crusades. Venice achieved territorial conquests along the Adriatic Sea, the city became home to an extremely wealthy merchant class, who patronized renowned art and architecture along the citys lagoons. Venetian merchants were influential financiers in Europe, the city was also the birthplace of great European explorers, including Marco Polo, as well as the classical music composer Vivaldi. The republic was ruled by the Doge, who was elected by members of the Great Council of Venice, the ruling class was an oligarchy of merchants and aristocrats. Venice and other Italian maritime republics played a key role in fostering capitalism, Venetian citizens generally supported the system of governance. The city-state enforced strict laws and employed ruthless tactics in its prisons, the opening of new trade routes to the Americas and the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean marked the beginning of Venices decline as a maritime republic. The city state suffered defeats from the navy of the Ottoman Empire, in 1797, the country was colonized by Austria and France, following an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte. Venice became a part of a unified Italy in the 19th century and it was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in reference to its title as one of the Most Serene Republics. He was the first historical Doge of Venice, whichever the case, the first doges had their power base in Heraclea. Ursuss successor, Deusdedit, moved his seat from Heraclea to Malamocco in the 740s and he was the son of Ursus and represented the attempt of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were more commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history. They desired to remain well-connected to the Empire, another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other main faction was pro-Frankish, supported mostly by clergy, they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers, the successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the Pax Nicephori, the two emperors had recognised that Venice belonged to the Byzantine sphere of influence, many centuries later, the Venetians claimed that the treaty had recognised Venetian de facto independence, but the truth of this claim is doubted by modern scholars
5.
Duchy of Mantua
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The Duchy of Mantua was a duchy in Lombardy, Northern Italy, subject to the Holy Roman Empire. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Mantua was invaded by Byzantines, Lombards, in the 11th century it became a possession of Boniface of Canossa, marquis of Toscana. The last ruler of the family was the countess Matilde of Canossa, after the death of Matilde of Canossa, Mantua became a free commune and strenuously defended itself from the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries. During the Investiture Controversy, Pinamonte Bonacolsi took advantage of the situation to seize power—as Captain General of the People—in 1273. His family ruled Mantua for the century, making it more prosperous. On 16 August 1328, the last Bonacolsi, Rinaldo, was overthrown in a revolt backed by the House of Gonzaga, ludovico, who had been podestà of the city in 1318, was elected capitano del popolo. Through a payment of 120,000 golden florins in 1433, Gianfrancesco was appointed marquis of Mantua by Emperor Sigismund, in 1459 Pope Pius II held a diet in Mantua to proclaim a crusade against the Turks. The first duke of Mantua was Federico II, who acquired the title from Charles V, the following year, the family acquired the Marquisate of Montferrat through marriage. Federico commissioned Giulio Romano to build the famous Palazzo Te, in the periphery of the city, in 1624, Ferdinando Gonzaga moved the ducal seat to a new residence, the Villa della Favorita, designed by the architect Nicolò Sebregondi. The War of the Mantuan Succession broke out, and in 1630 an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries besieged Mantua, Mantua never recovered from this disaster. Duke Ferdinand Charles, a ruler whose only aim was to hold parties and theatrical representations. After the latters defeat, he was declared deposed by Emperor Joseph I and took refuge in Venice, at his death, in 1708 his family lost Mantua forever in favour of the Habsburgs of Austria. Mantua was briefly united with the Duchy of Milan by an edict of Emperor Joseph II on 26 September 1786, Mantua was besieged by Napoleons French army in 1796, before falling in 1797. With the Treaty of Campo Formio, Mantua was annexed to the Cisalpine Republic becoming the Department of Mincio, duke of Mantua The House of Gonzaga, heirs to the sovereign marquessate of Mantua I Gonzaga di Mantova
6.
Spanish Empire
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The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, the Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976. The unity did not mean uniformity, nevertheless, some historians assert that Portugal was part of the Spanish monarchy at the time, while others draw a clear distinction between the Portuguese and Spanish empires. During the 15th century, Castile and Portugal became territorial and commercial rivals in the western Atlantic. The conquest was completed with the campaigns of the armies of the Crown of Castile between 1478 and 1496, when the islands of Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife were subjugated. The Portuguese tried in vain to keep secret their discovery of the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, chronicler Pulgar wrote that the fame of the treasures of Guinea spread around the ports of Andalusia in such way that everybody tried to go there. Worthless trinkets, Moorish textiles, and above all, shells from the Canary and Cape Verde islands were exchanged for gold, slaves, ivory and Guinea pepper. The Crown officially organized this trade with Guinea, every caravel had to get a government license, the treaty delimited the spheres of influence of the two countries, establishing the principle of the Mare clausum. It was confirmed in 1481 by the Pope Sixtus IV, in the papal bull Æterni regis, thus, the limitations imposed by the Alcáçovas treaty were overcome and a new and more balanced worlds division would be reached at Tordesillas between both emerging maritime powers. Seven months before the treaty of Alcaçovas, King John II of Aragon died, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the last Moorish king out of Granada in 1492 after a ten-year war. The Catholic Monarchs then negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west, Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus discoveries inaugurated the Spanish colonization of the Americas and these actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from north to south, as well as the easternmost parts of Asia. The treaty of Tordesillas was confirmed by Pope Julius II in the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis on 24 January 1506, Spains expansion and colonization was driven by economic influences, a yearning to improve national prestige, and a desire to spread Catholicism into the New World. The Catholic Monarchs had developed a strategy of marriages for their children in order to isolate their long-time enemy, the Spanish princes married the heirs of Portugal, England and the House of Habsburg. Following the same strategy, the Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Catalan-Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars beginning in 1494. As King of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Venice for control of Italy, these conflicts became the center of Ferdinands foreign policy as king. Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Holy League against France and this war was less of a success than the war against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in its control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre
7.
Portuguese Empire
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The Portuguese Empire, also known as the Portuguese Overseas, was one of the largest and longest-lived empires in world history and the first colonial empire. It existed for almost six centuries from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the grant of sovereignty to East Timor in 2002, the first era of the Portuguese empire originated at the beginning of the Age of Discovery. Initiated by the Kingdom of Portugal, it would eventually expand across the globe, in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1500, either by an accidental landfall or by the secret design. Over the following decades, Portuguese sailors continued to explore the coasts and islands of East Asia, establishing forts, by 1571, a string of naval outposts connected Lisbon to Nagasaki along the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India and South Asia. This commercial network and the trade had a substantial positive impact on Portuguese economic growth. Though the realms continued to be administered separately, the Council of Portugal ruled the country and its empire from Madrid. As the King of Spain was also King of Portugal, Portuguese colonies became the subject of attacks by three rival European powers hostile to Spain, the Dutch Republic, England, and France. With its smaller population, Portugal was unable to defend its overstretched network of trading posts. Eventually, Brazil became the most valuable colony of the era until, as part of the wave of independence movements that swept the Americas during the early 19th century. The third era represents the stage of Portuguese colonialism after the decolonization of the Americas of the 1820s. The colonial possessions had been reduced to the African coastline, Portuguese Timor, the disastrous 1890 British Ultimatum led to the contraction of Portuguese ambitions in Africa. Macau was returned to China in 1999, the origin of the Kingdom of Portugal lay in the reconquista, the gradual reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. There were several motives for their first attack, on the Marinid Sultanate. In 1415 an attack was made on Ceuta, a strategically located North African Muslim enclave along the Mediterranean Sea, although Ceuta proved to be a disappointment for the Portuguese, the decision was taken to hold it while exploring along the Atlantic African coast. At the time, Europeans did not know what lay beyond Cape Bojador on the African coast, under his sponsorship, soon the Atlantic islands of Madeira and Azores were reached and started to be settled producing wheat to export to Portugal. Fears of what lay beyond Cape Bojador, and whether it was possible to return once it was passed, were assuaged in 1434 when it was rounded by one of Infante Henrys captains, Gil Eanes. Once this psychological barrier had been crossed, it became easier to further along the coast
8.
Papal States
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The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Italian Peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At their zenith, they covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna and these holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy. By 1861, much of the Papal States territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy, only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Popes temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ended the crisis between unified Italy and the Vatican by signing the Lateran Treaty, granting the Vatican City State sovereignty. The Papal States were also known as the Papal State, the territories were also referred to variously as the State of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States. For its first 300 years the Catholic Church was persecuted and unrecognized and this system began to change during the reign of the emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity legal within the Roman Empire, and restoring to it any properties that had been confiscated. The Lateran Palace was the first significant new donation to the Church, other donations followed, primarily in mainland Italy but also in the provinces of the Roman Empire. But the Church held all of these lands as a private landowner, the seeds of the Papal States as a sovereign political entity were planted in the 6th century. Beginning In 535, the Byzantine Empire, under emperor Justinian I, launched a reconquest of Italy that took decades and devastated Italys political, just as these wars wound down, the Lombards entered the peninsula from the north and conquered much of the countryside. While the popes remained Byzantine subjects, in practice the Duchy of Rome, nevertheless, the pope and the exarch still worked together to control the rising power of the Lombards in Italy. As Byzantine power weakened, though, the took a ever larger role in defending Rome from the Lombards. In practice, the papal efforts served to focus Lombard aggrandizement on the exarch, a climactic moment in the founding of the Papal States was the agreement over boundaries embodied in the Lombard king Liutprands Donation of Sutri to Pope Gregory II. When the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell to the Lombards in 751, the popes renewed earlier attempts to secure the support of the Franks. In 751, Pope Zachary had Pepin the Younger crowned king in place of the powerless Merovingian figurehead king Childeric III, zacharys successor, Pope Stephen II, later granted Pepin the title Patrician of the Romans. Pepin led a Frankish army into Italy in 754 and 756, Pepin defeated the Lombards – taking control of northern Italy – and made a gift of the properties formerly constituting the Exarchate of Ravenna to the pope. The cooperation between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty climaxed in 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor, the precise nature of the relationship between the popes and emperors – and between the Papal States and the Empire – is disputed. Events in the 9th century postponed the conflict, the Holy Roman Empire in its Frankish form collapsed as it was subdivided among Charlemagnes grandchildren
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Ferrante I Gonzaga
Andrea Doria
