Definitions

Of all the battles of the Texas Revolution, the Battle of the Alamo (6 March 1836) is the most famous. It is not only among the best-known and most widely studied in American history but also around the world. The battle was the culmination...

The Siege of the Alamo (23 February to 6 March 1836) was an engagement of Texian forces with the Mexican Army, leading up to the Battle of the Alamo on the morning of 6 March 1836. The 13-day siege and battle has become legendary and is among...

The Schlieffen Plan, prepared by German Chief of Staff General Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) in 1905, was a secret plan of attack by German armed forces against France, should the two countries go to war. The objective was to quickly...

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was an American military officer and politician who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. From humble beginnings as a frontier lawyer in Tennessee, he rose to national prominence...

The January Uprising of 1863 was a conflict between Tsarist Russia and Polish insurgents striving for independence. The uprising continued until October 1864, when it was suppressed by the Russian forces, effectively erasing the already limited...

The Mercenary War, or Truceless War, was a brutal conflict fought between Carthage and its mutinous soldiers from 241 to 237 BCE, during a lull in the Punic Wars. When Carthage's mercenary soldiers were denied the payment that they had been...

The Russian Civil War (1917-22) began shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. The Bolsheviks (the Reds) immediately found themselves in conflict with various opposition forces who disagreed with Bolshevik policies like abolishing...

Pisistratus (circa 600-527 BCE), or Peisistratus, was an ancient Greek tyrant who ruled the city-state of Athens. Initially a student of the lawgiver and political philosopher Solon, Pisistratus presented himself as the champion of the poor...

Xolotl was the dog god of the Mexica people, commonly known as the Aztecs. He is represented in codices, statuary, and other extant examples of Aztec art as a dog or a god with the head of a dog. While this figure might seem obscure, his...

The Constantinian Excerpts, or Excerpta Constantiniana is the conventional name given to the mid-10th Century Byzantine palace encyclopedia commissioned by the scholar emperor Constantine VII ‘Porphyrogenitus’ (reign 945-959). It was a work...