1.
Mathieu Elias
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Matheiu Elias, Elyas, or Elie, was born at Peena, near Cassel, in 1658. The artist, struck with the singularity of the circumstance and the evident disposition of the boy, after instructing him for some time he sent him to Paris for improvement, where he met with employment, and resided several years. On the death of De Corbehem, he settled at Dunkirk and he died at Dunkirk in 1741
2.
Dunkirk
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Dunkirk is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It lies 10 kilometres from the Belgian border, the population of the city at the 2012 census was 90,995 inhabitants. The name of Dunkirk derives from West Flemish dun and kerke, nowadays, Dunkirk is the worlds northernmost Francophone city. About 960AD Count Baldwin III had a wall erected, in order to protect the settlement against Viking raids. The surrounding wetlands were drained and cultivated by the monks of nearby Bergues Abbey, the name Dunkirk was first mentioned in a tithe privilege of 27 May 1067, issued by Count Baldwin V of Flanders. Count Philip I brought further large tracts of marshland under cultivation, laid out first plans to build a Canal from Dunkirk to Bergues and vested the Dunkirkers with market rights. However, in the course of the Western Schism from 1378, English supporters of Pope Urban VI disembarked at Dunkirk, captured the city and they were ejected by King Charles VI of France, but left great devastations in and around the town. Upon the extinction of the Counts of Flanders with the death of Louis II in 1384, Flanders was acquired by the Burgundian, the fortifications were again enlarged, including the construction of a belfry daymark. As Maximilian was the son of Emperor Frederick III, all Flanders was immediately seized by King Louis XI of France. However, the defeated the French troops at the 1479 Battle of Guinegate. The area remained disputed between Spain, the United Netherlands, England and France. At the beginning of the Eighty Years War, Dunkirk was briefly in the hands of the Dutch rebels, Spanish forces under Duke Alexander Farnese of Parma re-established Spanish rule in 1583 and it became a base for the notorious Dunkirkers. The Dunkirkers briefly lost their home port when the city was conquered by the French in 1646, in 1658, as a result of the long war between France and Spain, it was captured after a siege by Franco-English forces following the battle of the Dunes. The city along with Fort-Mardyck was awarded to England in the peace the following year as agreed in the Franco-English alliance against Spain and it came under French rule when Charles II of England sold it to France for £320,000 on 17 October 1662. The French government developed the town as a fortified port, the towns existing defences were adapted to create ten bastions. The port was expanded in the 1670s by the construction of a basin that could hold up to thirty warships with a lock system to maintain water levels at low tide. The basin was linked to the sea by a channel dug through coastal sandbanks secured by two jetties and this work was completed by 1678. The jetties were defended a few years later by the construction of five forts, Château dEspérance, Château Vert, Grand Risban, Château Gaillard, an additional fort was built in 1701 called Fort Blanc
3.
Piracy
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Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship- or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates, the earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, a land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes. While the term can include acts committed in the air, on land, or in major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against people traveling on the vessel as the perpetrator. Piracy or pirating is the name of a crime under customary international law. They also use larger vessels, known as ships, to supply the smaller motorboats. The international community is facing challenges in bringing modern pirates to justice. In the 2000s, a number of nations have used their naval forces to protect ships from pirate attacks. The English pirate is derived from the Latin term pirata and that from Greek πειρατής, brigand, in turn from πειράομαι, I attempt, from πεῖρα, attempt, the meaning of the Greek word peiratēs literally is one who attacks. The word is cognate to peril. The term is first attested to c, spelling was not standardised until the eighteenth century, and spellings such as pirrot, pyrate and pyrat were used until this period. It may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce, the earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters in the 14th century BC. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, the ancient Greeks condoned piracy as a viable profession, it apparently was widespread and regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living. References are made to its perfectly normal occurrence many texts including in Homers Iliad and Odyssey, by the era of Classical Greece, piracy was looked upon as a disgrace to have as a profession. In the 3rd century BC, pirate attacks on Olympos brought impoverishment, among some of the most famous ancient pirateering peoples were the Illyrians, a people populating the western Balkan peninsula. Constantly raiding the Adriatic Sea, the Illyrians caused many conflicts with the Roman Republic and it was not until 229 BC when the Romans finally decisively beat the Illyrian fleets that their threat was ended
4.
Dutch Republic
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It preceded the Batavian Republic, the Kingdom of Holland, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and ultimately the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. Alternative names include the United Provinces, Seven Provinces, Federated Dutch Provinces, most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg. In 1549 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain. This was the start of the Eighty Years War, in 1579 a number of the northern provinces of the Low Countries signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Spanish army. This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II. In 1582 the United Provinces invited Francis, Duke of Anjou to lead them, but after an attempt to take Antwerp in 1583. After the assassination of William of Orange, both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined the offer of sovereignty, however, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England, and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general. This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became a confederacy, the Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by the Spanish Empire until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. During the Anglo-French war, the territory was divided into groups, the Patriots, who were pro-French and pro-American and the Orangists. The Republic of the United Provinces faced a series of revolutions in 1783–1787. During this period, republican forces occupied several major Dutch cities, initially on the defence, the Orangist forces received aid from Prussian troops and retook the Netherlands in 1787. After the French Republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, the Batavian Republic was replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland, the Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names United Provinces of the Netherlands, on 16 March 1815, the son of stadtholder William V crowned himself King William I of the Netherlands. Between 1815 and 1890 the King of the Netherlands was also in a union the Grand Duke of the sovereign Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. After Belgium gained its independence in 1830, the state became known as the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world, the free trade spirit of the time received a strong augmentation through the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries. The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, while Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands, the worlds first stock exchange, that of the Dutch East-India Company, went public in six different cities. Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in a city so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles
5.
Mercenary
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A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or party to the conflict and is motivated to take part in the hostilities by desire for private gain. Mercenaries fight for money or other recompense instead of fighting for ideological interests, in the last century, and as reflected in the Geneva Convention, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protections by rules of war than non-mercenaries. However, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, Protocol Additional GC1977 is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Article 47 of the protocol provides the most widely accepted definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, a mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war. All the criteria must be met, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the GC III, a captured soldier must be treated as a lawful combatant and, therefore, as a protected person with prisoner-of-war status until facing a competent tribunal. That tribunal, using criteria in APGC77 or some equivalent domestic law, may decide that the soldier is a mercenary. The only possible exception to GC IV Art 5 is when he is a national of the authority imprisoning him, if, after a regular trial, a captured soldier is found to be a mercenary, then he can expect treatment as a common criminal and may face execution. As mercenary soldiers may not qualify as PoWs, they cannot expect repatriation at wars end, the four mercenaries sentenced to death were shot by a firing squad on 10 July 1976. The legal status of civilian contractors depends upon the nature of their work, on 4 December 1989, the United Nations passed resolution 44/34, the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It entered into force on 20 October 2001 and is known as the UN Mercenary Convention. Article 1 contains the definition of a mercenary, Article 1.1 is similar to Article 47 of Protocol I, however Article 1. – under Article 1.2 a person does not have to take a part in the hostilities in a planned coup détat to be a mercenary. Critics have argued that the convention and APGC77 Art,47 are designed to cover the activities of mercenaries in post-colonial Africa and do not address adequately the use of private military companies by sovereign states. While the United States governed Iraq, no U. S. citizen working as a guard could be classified as a mercenary because he was a national of a Party to the conflict. S. However, those who acknowledge the United States and other forces as continuing parties to the conflict might insist that U. S. armed guards cannot be called mercenaries. The laws of countries forbid their citizens to fight in foreign wars unless they are under the control of their own national armed forces. If a person is proven to have worked as a mercenary for any other country while retaining Austrian citizenship, in 2003, France criminalized mercenary activities, as defined by the protocol to the Geneva convention for French citizens, permanent residents and legal entities
6.
Admiral
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Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually abbreviated to Adm or ADM, in the Commonwealth and the U. S. a full admiral is equivalent to a full general in the army, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet. In NATO, admirals have a code of OF-9 as a four-star rank. The word admiral in Middle English comes from Anglo-French amiral, commander, from Medieval Latin admiralis and these themselves come from Arabic amīr, or amīr al-, commander of, as in amīr al-baḥr, commander of the sea. The term was in use for the Greco-Arab naval leaders of Norman Sicily, the Norman Roger II of Sicily, employed a Greek Christian known as George of Antioch, who previously had served as a naval commander for several North African Muslim rulers. Roger styled George in Abbasid fashion as Amir of Amirs, i. e. Commander of Commanders, the Sicilians and later Genoese took the first two parts of the term and used them as one word, amiral, from their Aragon opponents. The French and Spanish gave their sea commanders similar titles while in Portuguese the word changed to almirante, the word admiral has today come to be almost exclusively associated with the highest naval rank in most of the worlds navies, equivalent to the army rank of general. However, this wasnt always the case, for example, in some European countries prior to the end of World War II, admiral was the third highest naval rank after general admiral and grand admiral. The rank of admiral has also been subdivided into various grades, the Royal Navy used colours to indicate seniority of its admirals until 1864, for example, Horatio Nelsons highest rank was vice admiral of the white. The generic term for these naval equivalents of army generals is flag officer, some navies have also used army-type titles for them, such as the Cromwellian general at sea. Admiral is a German Navy OF-9 four-star flag officer rank, equivalent to the German Army, see also Post-WWII rank is Bakurocho or Chief of Staff, Joint Staff 幕僚長 with limited function as an advisory staff to Minister of Defense, compared to Gensui during 1872–1873 and 1898–1945. Admiral of Castile was a post with a long and important history in Spain
7.
Nine Years' War
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It was fought on the European continent and the surrounding seas, Ireland, and in North America. Louis XIV of France had emerged from the Franco-Dutch War in 1678 as the most powerful monarch in Europe, Louis XIVs decision to cross the Rhine in September 1688 was designed to extend his influence and pressure the Holy Roman Empire into accepting his territorial and dynastic claims. The main fighting took place around Frances borders, in the Spanish Netherlands, the Rhineland, Duchy of Savoy, the fighting generally favoured Louis XIVs armies, but by 1696 his country was in the grip of an economic crisis. The Maritime Powers were also exhausted, and when Savoy defected from the Alliance all parties were keen for a negotiated settlement. By the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick Louis XIV retained the whole of Alsace, Louis XIV also accepted William III as the rightful King of England, while the Dutch acquired their Barrier fortress system in the Spanish Netherlands to help secure their own borders. In the years following the Franco-Dutch War Louis XIV of France – now at the height of his powers – sought to impose religious unity in France, and to solidify and expand his frontiers. Louis XIV, along with his chief advisor Louvois, his foreign minister Colbert de Croissy, Vauban had advocated a system of impregnable fortresses along the frontier that would keep Frances enemies out. To construct a system, however, the King needed to acquire more land from his neighbours to form a solid forward line. The King grabbed the necessary territory through what is known as the Réunions, a strategy that combined legalism, arrogance, the Treaty of Nijmegen and the earlier Treaty of Westphalia provided Louis XIV with the justification for the Reunions. These treaties had awarded France territorial gains, but because of the vagaries of the language they were notoriously imprecise and self-contradictory, unsurprisingly, these courts usually found in Louis XIVs favour. By 1680 the disputed County of Montbéliard had been separated from the Duchy of Württemberg, the Chamber of Reunion of Metz soon laid claims to land around the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and most of the Spanish Duchy of Luxembourg. The fortress of Luxembourg itself was blockaded with the intention of it becoming part of Louis XIVs defensible frontier. By forcibly taking the Imperial city the French now controlled two of the three bridgeheads over the Rhine, on the same day that Strasbourg fell French forces marched into Casale in northern Italy. Thus, the Reunions were carving territory from the frontiers of Germany, since Leopold Is intervention in the Franco-Dutch War Louis XIV had considered the Emperor his most dangerous enemy, yet the French king had little reason to fear him. Leopold I was weak in Germany, and was in danger along his Hungarian borders where the Ottoman Turks were threatening to overrun all central Europe from the south. Louis had encouraged and assisted the Ottoman drive against Leopold Is Habsburg lands, when the Turks besieged Vienna in the spring of 1683 Louis did nothing to help the defenders. Taking advantage of the Ottoman threat in the east Louis XIV invaded the Spanish Netherlands on 1 September 1683 and renewed the siege of Luxembourg, spains military options were highly limited, yet the Ottoman defeat before Vienna on 12 September had emboldened them. In the hope that Leopold I would now make peace in the east and come to their assistance, however, the Emperor had decided to continue the Turkish war in the Balkans and, for the time being, compromise in the west
8.
Battle of Texel (1694)
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De Vries was captured by the French, but shortly after died of wounds. In 1692 and 1693 there were massive harvest failures in France, leading to acute famine, from 1693 to 1694 over 2 million people died. Therefore, France needed to import large quantities of grain from neutral countries like Poland, Sweden, on May 29,1694, Jean Bart was instructed to sail to Norway, to escort a huge fleet of 120 ships full of grain to France. The convoy didnt wait for the arrival of Barts squadron and left under the protection of 3 neutral warships, the convoy was immediately captured by the Dutch without a shot being fired. Jean Bart searched for the convoy and found it on June 29 at 3,00 a. m. before the Dutch island of Texel, despite having fewer guns than the Dutch, at 5,00 a. m. Jean Bart attacked the Dutch flagship of Hidde de Vries, after a fierce battle which lasted only half an hour, the Prins Friso was captured, with Hidde Sjoerds de Vries severely wounded and taken prisoner. Two other Dutch ships were taken, with the remaining five fleeing to their harbor. The Dutch losses amounted to 100 killed,129 wounded and 455 prisoners, Jean Bart repaired the damage to his ships and took the convoy to Dunkirk, where it arrived on July 3, received by an enormous crowd celebrating their hero. On July 5, Jean Bart, his son François Cornil and his brother-in-law were invited to Versailles, Jean Bart was raised into the nobility on August 4,1694. Hidde Sjoerds de Vries died of his wounds on July 1,1694,40120 or more merchant ships - captured that day or soon after Haws, Duncan, Hurst, Alexander Anthony. The Maritime History of the World, A Chronological Survey of Maritime Events from 5,000 B. C, until the Present Day, Supplemented by Commentaries. An account of the battle by Jean Bart La Bataille du Texel
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Barth, Jean". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
