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Siege of Toulon
The Siege of Toulon (29 August to 19 December 1793) was a decisive military operation during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), conducted by a French Republican army to retake the port city of Toulon from rebels, who were supported...
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The Assassination of Julius Caesar
Veni, vidi, vici! This was the simple message the Roman commander Julius Caesar sent to the Senate in Rome after a resounding victory in the east against King Pharnaces of Pontus - a message that demonstrated both arrogance as well as great...
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Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror, or simply the Terror (la Terreur), was a climactic period of state-sanctioned violence during the French Revolution (1789-99), which saw the public executions and mass killings of thousands of counter-revolutionary 'suspects'...
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XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a diplomatic incident that occurred in 1797-98, involving diplomats from the United States and Revolutionary France. Amidst rising tensions between the two nations, President John Adams sent envoys to Paris to negotiate...
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Quasi-War
The Quasi-War (1798-1800) or 'Half War' was a limited, undeclared naval conflict fought between the United States and the First French Republic. Hostilities arose when French privateers began attacking neutral American shipping, resulting...
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Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus ('Tarquin the Proud') was traditionally the seventh and last king of ancient Rome before it became a republic. He belonged to the Etruscan Tarquinii clan, reigned from 534 to 510 BCE, and was infamous for his tyrannical...
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Secession of the Plebs - One of History's First Class Conflicts
The Secession of the Plebs (secessio plebis) refers to a series of general strikes in the early history of the Roman Republic, when the plebeians – or commoners – left the city en masse and set up camp on the nearby Sacred Mountain, to protest...
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Ten Ancient Rome Facts You Need to Know
Ancient Roman culture affected vast numbers of people across the known world of its time, beginning with the rise of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) and throughout the duration of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - c. 476 CE in the West and 1453...
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Fall of Maximilien Robespierre
The fall of Maximilien Robespierre, or the Coup of 9 Thermidor, was a series of events that resulted in the arrests and executions of Robespierre and his allies on 27-28 July 1794. It signaled the end of the Reign of Terror, the end of Jacobin...
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Authority in Ancient Rome: Auctoritas, Potestas, Imperium, and the Paterfamilias
Authority in ancient Rome was complex, and as one can expect from Rome, full of tradition, myth, and awareness of their own storied history. Perhaps the ultimate authority was imperium, the power to command the Roman army. Potestas was legal...