French Algeria
French Algeria known as Colonial Algeria, began in 1830 with the invasion of Algiers and lasted until 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants known as colons and as pieds-noirs. However, the indigenous Muslim population remained a majority of the territory's population throughout its history. Dissatisfaction among the Muslim population with its lack of political and economic status fueled calls for greater political autonomy, independence from France. Tensions between the two population groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events began of what was called the Algerian War; the war concluded in 1962, when Algeria gained independence following the March 1962 Evian agreements and the July 1962 self-determination referendum. During its last years of existence, French Algeria was the founding member state of the United Nations, NATO and the European Economic Community.
Since the 1516 capture of Algiers by the Ottoman admirals, the brothers Ours and Hayreddin Barbarossa, Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean. In 1681, Louis XIV asked Admiral Abraham Duquesne to fight the Berber pirates and ordered a large-scale attack on Algiers between 1682 and 1683 on the pretext of assisting Christian captives. Again, Jean II d'Estrées bombarded Tripoli and Algiers from 1685 to 1688. An ambassador from Algiers visited the Court in Versailles, a Treaty was signed in 1690 that provided peace throughout the 18th century. During the Directory regime of the First French Republic, the Bacri and the Busnach, Jewish negotiators of Algiers, provided important quantities of grain for Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the Italian campaign of 1796. However, Bonaparte refused claiming it was excessive. In 1820, Louis XVIII paid back half of the Directory's debts; the dey, who had loaned to the Bacri 250,000 francs, requested from France the rest of the money.
The Dey of Algiers himself was weak politically and militarily. Algeria was part of the Barbary States, along with today's Tunisia – which depended on the Ottoman Empire led by Mahmud II — but enjoyed relative independence; the Barbary Coast was the stronghold of the Berber pirates, which carried out raids against European and American ships. Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America culminated in the First and Second Barbary Wars. An Anglo-Dutch force, led by Admiral Lord Exmouth, carried out a punitive expedition, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers; the Dey was forced to sign the Barbary treaties, while the technological advance of U. S. British, French forces overwhelmed the Algerians' expertise at naval warfare; the name of "Algeria" itself came from the French. Following the conquest under the July monarchy, the Algerian territories, disputed with the Ottoman Empire, were first named "French possessions in North Africa" before being called "Algeria" by Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, in 1839.
The conquest of Algeria was initiated in the last days of the Bourbon Restoration by Charles X, as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people in Paris, where many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars lived. His intention was to bolster patriotic sentiment, distract attention from ineptly handled domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey". In the 1790s, France had contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two merchants in Algiers, Messrs. Bacri and Boushnak, was in arrears paying them; these merchants and Boushnak who had debts to the dey, claimed inability to pay those debts until France paid its debts to them. The dey had unsuccessfully negotiated with Pierre Deval, the French consul, to rectify this situation, he suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against him when the French government made no provisions for repaying the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in Bône, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and La Calle against the terms of prior agreements.
After a contentious meeting in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers on 29 April 1827, the dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. France demanded; when the dey responded with cannon fire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required. Pierre Deval and other French residents of Algiers left for France, while the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed a military expedition. However, the Count of Villèle, an ultra-royalist, President of the Council and the monarch's heir, opposed any military action; the Restoration decided to blockade Algiers for three years, but the overpowering presence of the French naval force prevented an incursion beyond the coastal perimeter. Meanwhile, the Berber pirates were able to exploit the geography of the coast with ease. Before the failure of the blockade, the Restoration decided on 31 January 1830 to engage a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré commandeered an armada of 600 ships that originated from Toulon, leading it to Algiers. Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan f
Charles X of France
Charles X was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. For most of his life he was known as the Count of Artois. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Charles became the leader of the ultra-royalists, a radical monarchist faction within the French court that affirmed rule by divine right and opposed the concessions towards liberals and guarantees of civil liberties granted by the Charter of 1814. Charles gained influence within the French court after the assassination of his son Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, in 1820 and succeeded his brother in 1824, his reign of six years proved to be unpopular from the moment of his coronation in 1825, in which he tried to revive the practice of the royal touch. The governments appointed under his reign reimbursed former landowners for the abolition of feudalism at the expense of bondholders, increased the power of the Catholic Church, reimposed capital punishment for sacrilege, leading to conflict with the liberal-majority Chamber of Deputies.
Charles initiated the French conquest of Algeria as a way to distract his citizens from domestic problems. He appointed a conservative government under the premiership of Prince Jules de Polignac, defeated in the 1830 French legislative election, he responded with the July Ordinances disbanding the Chamber of Deputies, limiting franchise, reimposing press censorship. Within a week France faced urban riots which lead to the July Revolution of 1830, which resulted in his abdication and the election of Louis Philippe I as King of the French. Exiled once again, Charles died in 1836 in Gorizia part of the Austrian Empire, he was the last of the French rulers from the senior branch of the House of Bourbon. Charles Philippe of France was born in 1757, the youngest son of the Dauphin Louis and his wife, the Dauphine Marie Josèphe, at the Palace of Versailles. Charles was created Count of Artois at birth by his grandfather, the reigning King Louis XV; as the youngest male in the family, Charles seemed unlikely to become king.
His eldest brother, Duke of Burgundy, died unexpectedly in 1761, which moved Charles up one place in the line of succession. He was raised in early childhood by the Governess of the Children of France. At the death of his father in 1765, Charles's oldest surviving brother, Louis Auguste, became the new Dauphin, their mother Marie Josèphe, who never recovered from the loss of her husband, died in March 1767 from tuberculosis. This left Charles an orphan at the age of nine, along with his siblings Louis Auguste, Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence, Élisabeth. Louis XV fell ill on 27 April 1774 and died on 10 May of smallpox at the age of 64, his grandson Louis-Auguste succeeded him as King Louis XVI of France. In November 1773, Charles married Marie Thérèse of Savoy. In 1775, Marie Thérèse gave birth to a boy, Louis Antoine, created Duke of Angoulême by Louis XVI. Louis-Antoine was the first of the next generation of Bourbons, as the king and the Count of Provence had not fathered any children yet, causing the Parisian libellistes to lampoon Louis XVI's alleged impotence.
Three years in 1778, Charles' second son, Charles Ferdinand, was born and given the title of Duke of Berry. In the same year Queen Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child, Marie Thérèse, quelling all rumours that she could not bear children. Charles was thought of as the most attractive member of his family, bearing a strong resemblance to his grandfather Louis XV, his wife was considered quite ugly by most contemporaries, he looked for company in numerous extramarital affairs. According to the Count of Hézecques, "few beauties were cruel to him." Among his lovers where notably Anne Victoire Dervieux. He embarked upon a lifelong love affair with the beautiful Louise de Polastron, the sister-in-law of Marie Antoinette's closest companion, the Duchess of Polignac. Charles struck up a firm friendship with Marie Antoinette herself, whom he had first met upon her arrival in France in April 1770 when he was twelve; the closeness of the relationship was such that he was falsely accused by Parisian rumour mongers of having seduced her.
As part of Marie Antoinette's social set, Charles appeared opposite her in the private theatre of her favourite royal retreat, the Petit Trianon. They were both said to be talented amateur actors. Marie Antoinette played milkmaids and country ladies, whereas Charles played lovers and farmers. A famous story concerning the two involves the construction of the Château de Bagatelle. In 1775, Charles purchased a small hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, he soon had the existing house torn down with plans to rebuild. Marie Antoinette wagered her brother-in-law that the new château could not be completed within three months. Charles engaged the neoclassical architect François-Joseph Bélanger to design the building, he won his bet, with Bélanger completing the house in sixty-three days. It is estimated that the project, which came to include manicured gardens, cost over two million livres. Throughout the 1770s, Charles spent lavishly, he accumulated enormous debts. In the 1780s, King Louis XVI paid off the debts of both his brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois.
In 1781, Charles acted as a proxy for Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II at the christening of his godson, the Dauphin Louis Joseph. Charles's p
Siege of Laghouat
The Siege of Laghouat was an episode of the French Pacification of Algeria. General Aimable Pélissier commanding an army of 6000, besieged the city of Laghouat in November 21, 1852; the decisive storming of the city occurred in December 4 and the French captured the city. The brutal treatment of the inhabitants of the city was part of the scorched earth tactic of the French army one of the first instances of recorded use of chemical weapon on civilians; the storming of Laghouat turned into several days of massacres to punish the population, treated as combating enemies. The battle witness the several deaths on the french side including that of general Bouscaren, that added to the fervor of the French soldiers to want to take revenge on the population setting an example for other towns and cities throughout the south of Algeria. About two thirds including women and children were massacred; the massacre has left a deep trauma in the Laghouati population. The year of the "Khalya" Arabic for emptiness is known to the inhabitants of Laghouat as the year, when the city was emptied of its population.
It is commonly known as the year of Hessian sacks, referring to the way the captured surviving men and boys were put alive in the hessian sacks and thrown into digged up trenches. Many reports of the battle were written by army chiefs and soldiers as well as visitors of the city after the massacre that reported the morbid atmosphere of the city following the siege. Surviving women were so afraid for their young sons of being collected by the French forces, they came up with a ruse to hide them, they put an earring on one ear. The tradition of protecting young boys from evil with an earring survived until today; the level of brutality of the massacre of Laghouat was both a show of force as well as part of the long scorched earth tactic of the three French generals that took the fortified city. By ordering the massacre of the population, the French were eyeing all the remaining Saharian territories beyond Laghouat. During the battle of Laghouat several tribes and other city republics and fortresses delivered help to try and stop the advance of the French, namely Ghardaïa, Ouargla.
The nobles of the latter cities after witnessing or hearing of the atrocities committed in Laghouat sought a peaceful agreement to surrender their cities or sign treaties keeping their autonomy within the protection of France. A few months after Laghouat, on April, 29th 1853, general Randon, the French governor of Algeria, signs a treaty of protectorate with the nobles of the cities of M'zab, known in France as the capitulation of the Mzab
Kingdom of France
The Kingdom of France was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Western Europe. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe and a great power since the Late Middle Ages and the Hundred Years' War, it was an early colonial power, with possessions around the world. France originated as West Francia, the western half of the Carolingian Empire, with the Treaty of Verdun. A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty; the territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum well into the High Middle Ages. The first king calling himself Roi de France was Philip II, in 1190. France continued to be ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines—the Valois and Bourbon—until the monarchy was overthrown in 1792 during the French Revolution. France in the Middle Ages was a feudal monarchy. In Brittany and Catalonia the authority of the French king was felt. Lorraine and Provence were states of the Holy Roman Empire and not yet a part of France.
West Frankish kings were elected by the secular and ecclesiastic magnates, but the regular coronation of the eldest son of the reigning king during his father's lifetime established the principle of male primogeniture, which became codified in the Salic law. During the Late Middle Ages, the Kings of England laid claim to the French throne, resulting in a series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War. Subsequently, France sought to extend its influence into Italy, but was defeated by Spain in the ensuing Italian Wars. France in the early modern era was centralised. Religiously France became divided between the Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the Huguenots, which led to a series of civil wars, the Wars of Religion. France laid claim to large stretches of North America, known collectively as New France. Wars with Great Britain led to the loss of much of this territory by 1763. French intervention in the American Revolutionary War helped secure the independence of the new United States of America but was costly and achieved little for France.
The Kingdom of France adopted a written constitution in 1791, but the Kingdom was abolished a year and replaced with the First French Republic. The monarchy was restored by the other great powers in 1814 and lasted until the French Revolution of 1848. During the years of the elderly Charlemagne's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of the Kingdom of the Franks. After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining political unity and the empire began to crumble; the Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts, with Charles the Bald ruling over West Francia, the nucleus of what would develop into the kingdom of France. Charles the Bald was crowned King of Lotharingia after the death of Lothair II in 869, but in the Treaty of Meerssen was forced to cede much of Lotharingia to his brothers, retaining the Rhone and Meuse basins but leaving the Rhineland with Aachen and Trier in East Francia. Viking advances were allowed to increase, their dreaded longships were sailing up the Loire and Seine rivers and other inland waterways, wreaking havoc and spreading terror.
During the reign of Charles the Simple, Normans under Rollo from Norway, were settled in an area on either side of the River Seine, downstream from Paris, to become Normandy. The Carolingians were to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two dynasties, the accession in 987 of Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, established the Capetian dynasty on the throne. With its offshoots, the houses of Valois and Bourbon, it was to rule France for more than 800 years; the old order left the new dynasty in immediate control of little beyond the middle Seine and adjacent territories, while powerful territorial lords such as the 10th- and 11th-century counts of Blois accumulated large domains of their own through marriage and through private arrangements with lesser nobles for protection and support. The area around the lower Seine became a source of particular concern when Duke William took possession of the kingdom of England by the Norman Conquest of 1066, making himself and his heirs the King's equal outside France.
Henry II inherited the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou, married France's newly divorced ex-queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ruled much of southwest France, in 1152. After defeating a revolt led by Eleanor and three of their four sons, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned, made the Duke of Brittany his vassal, in effect ruled the western half of France as a greater power than the French throne. However, disputes among Henry's descendants over the division of his French territories, coupled with John of England's lengthy quarrel with Philip II, allowed Philip II to recover influence over most of this territory. After the French victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the English monarchs maintained power only in southwestern Duchy of Guyenne; the death of Charles IV of France in 1328 without male heirs ended the main Capetian line. Under Salic law the crown could not pass through a woman (Philip IV's daughter
Battle of Sidi Brahim
The Battle of Sidi Brahim was a battle at Sidi Brahim in French Algeria between the troops of Abdelkader El Djezairi and French troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Lucien de Montagnac from 22 to 25 September 1845. The French force was made up of the light infantry troops of the 8th Infantry Battalion and the second squadron of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars; the encounter was unplanned and poorly commanded by Montagnac, went badly for the French troops. After a first encounter, the French's numbers were reduced from 450 to 82 chasseurs and hussars against hundreds of Algerians Cornered, the chasseurs of the carabinier company took refuge in a marabout, from which they repulsed all assaults. After a siege lasting many days, without food or water and short of munitions, they were reduced to cutting up their musket balls in order to keep firing. Emir Abdelkader captured captain adjutant major Dutertre and taken under guard to the front of the marabout to demand the chasseurs' surrender, but instead used his time there to exhort the survivors to fight to the death, for which Abdelkader beheaded him.
Abdelkader demanded that the French bugler sound the retreat, but he instead sounded the charge, whilst one chasseur replied to another of Abdelkader's other demands for their surrender with the word, Merde!.. When the remaining 80 survivors ran out of munitions, they managed to break through the enemy lines with a bayonet charge, but only 16 of them managed to rejoin the French lines. Among the dead was Montagnac himself; the remains of the soldiers killed at Sidi Brahim were gathered at Djemmaa Ghazaouet in the "Tombeau des Braves" reburied at the Musée des Chasseurs at the old fort in Vincennes in 1965. The extreme bravery shown by the battalion led to its being nicknamed the battalion of Sidi-Brahim and the battle being written up among its battle honours. However, according to Gilles Manceron, the soldiers "were led in quite an inconsiderate manner" by Colonel de Montagnac "whose writings boast, with no remorse, of several war crimes"; the expression "faire Sidi Brahim" became a motto of the chasseurs.
During the First World War, the 7th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins took a German pass for several days and, lacking munitions, managed to repulse the German attack with stones. There the chasseurs won the nickname "schwarzen Teufel", which became "blue devils", which they still use; the insignia of the 7th is a devil in a hunting horn. Les Zouaves et les Chasseurs a Pied, Duc d'Aumale, Henri d'Orléans - pseudonym - M. Lévy frères - 1859 - 184 pages Sidi-Brahim - 23, 24, 25 et 26 septembre 1845, Esquisse Historique - Charleville - Imprimerie Nouvelle - 1889 - 58 pages
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
French Navy
The French Navy, informally "La Royale", is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces. Dating back to 1624, the French Navy is one of the world's oldest naval forces, it has participated in conflicts around the globe and played a key part in establishing the French colonial empire. The French Navy consists of six main branches and various services: the Force d'Action Navale, the Forces Sous-marines, the Maritime Force of Naval Aeronautics, the Fusiliers Marins, the Marins Pompiers, the Maritime Gendarmerie; as of June 2014, the French Navy employed a total of 36,776 personnel along with 2,800 civilians. Its reserve element consisted of 4,827 personnel of the Operational Reserve; as a blue-water navy, it operates a wide range of fighting vessels, which include the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, various aeronaval forces, attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines, patrol boats and support ships. The history of French naval power dates back to the Middle Ages, had three loci of evolution: The Mediterranean Sea, where the Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem had its own navy, the Levant Fleet, whose principal ports were Fréjus and Toulon.
The Ordre, both a religious and military order, recruited knights from the families of French nobility. Members who had fulfilled their service at sea were granted the rank of Knights Hospitaller, elites who served as the officer corps; the Ordre was one of the ancestors of modern French naval schools including the French Naval Academy. The Manche along Normandy which, since William the Conqueror, always tendered capable marines and sailors from its numerous active seaports; the first true French Royal Navy was established in 1624 by Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to King Louis XIII. During the French Revolution, la Marine Royale was formally renamed la Marine Nationale. Under the First French Empire and the Second French Empire, the navy was designated as the Imperial French Navy. Institutionally, the navy has never lost its short familiar nickname, la Royale; the symbol of the French Navy was since its origin a golden anchor, beginning in 1830, was interlaced by a sailing rope. This symbol was featured on all naval vessels and uniforms.
Although anchor symbols are still used on uniforms, a new naval logo was introduced in 1990. Authorized by Naval Chief of Staff Bernard Louzeau, the modern design incorporates the tricolour by flanking the bow section of a white warship with two ascending red and blue spray foams, the inscription "Marine nationale". Cardinal Richelieu supervised the Navy until his death in 1643, he was succeeded by his protégé, Jean Baptiste Colbert, who introduced the first code of regulations of the French Navy, established the original naval dockyards in Brest and Toulon. Colbert and his son, the Marquis de Seignelay, between them administered the Navy for twenty-nine years. During this century, the Navy cut its teeth in the Anglo-French War, the Franco-Spanish War, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War. Major battles in these years include the Battle of Beachy Head, the Battles of Barfleur and La Hougue, the Battle of Lagos, the Battle of Texel; the 1700s opened with the War of the Spanish Succession, over a decade long, followed by the War of the Austrian Succession in the 1740s.
Principal engagements of these wars include the Battle of Vigo Bay and two separate Battles of Cape Finisterre in 1747. The most grueling conflict for the Navy, was the Seven Years' War, in which it was destroyed. Significant actions include the Battle of Cap-Français, the Battle of Quiberon Bay, another Battle of Cape Finisterre; the Navy regrouped and rebuilt, within 15 years it was eager to join the fray when France intervened in the American Revolutionary War. Though outnumbered everywhere, the French fleets held the British at bay for years until victory. After this conflict and the concomitant Anglo-French War, the Navy emerged at a new height in its history. Major battles in these years include the Battle of the Chesapeake, the Battle of Cape Henry, the Battle of Grenada, the invasion of Dominica, three separate Battles of Ushant. Within less than a decade, the Navy was decimated by the French Revolution when large numbers of veteran officers were dismissed or executed for their noble lineage.
Nonetheless, the Navy fought vigorously through the French Revolutionary Wars as well as the Quasi-War. Significant actions include a fourth Battle of Ushant, the Battle of Groix, the Atlantic campaign of May 1794, the French expedition to Ireland, the Battle of Tory Island, the Battle of the Nile. Other engagements of the Revolutionary Wars ensued in the early 1800s, including the Battle of the Malta Convoy and the Algeciras Campaign; the Quasi-War wound down with single-ship actions including USS Constellation vs La Vengeance and USS Enterprise vs Flambeau. When Napoleon was crowned Emperor in 1804, he attempted to restore the Navy to a position that would enable his plan for an invasion of England, his dreams were dashed by the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British all but annihilated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet, a disaster that guaranteed British naval superiority throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Still, the Navy did not shrink from action: among the engagements of this time were the Battle of the Basque Roads, the Battle of Grand Port, the Mauritius campaign of 1809–11, the Battle of Lissa, After Nap
