100 years war

HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. This name is given to the protracted conflict between France and England from 1337 to 1453, which continued through the reigns of the French kings Philip VI, John II, Charles V, Charles VI, Charles VII, and of the English kings Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI. The principal causes of the war, which broke out in Guienne in 1337,were the disputes arising in connexion with the French possessions of the English kings, in respect to which they were vassals of the kings of France; the pretensions of Edward III to the French throne after the accession of Philip VI; Philip's intervention in the affairs of Flanders and Scotland; and, finally, the machinations of Robert of Artois.

During Philip VI's reign fortune favoured the English. The French fleet was destroyed at Sluys on the 24th of June 1340. After the siege of Tournai a truce was arranged on the 25th of September 1340; but the next year the armies of England and France were again at war in Brittany on account of the rival pretensions of Charles of Blois and John of Montfort to the succession of that duchy. In 1346, while the French were trying to invade Guienne, Edward IIIlanded in Normandy, ravaged that province, part of the Ile de France and Picardy, defeated the French army at Crecy on the 26th of August 1346, and besieged Calais, which surrendered on the 3rd of August 1347. Hostilities were suspended for some years after this, in consequence of the truce of Calais concluded on the 28th of September 1347.

The principal feats of arms which mark the first years of John the Good's reign were the taking of St Jean d'Angely by the French in 1351, the defeat of the English near St Omer in 1352, and the English victory near Guines in the same year. In 1355Edward III invaded Artois while the Black Princewas pillaging Languedoc. In 1356 the battle of Poitiers (September 19), in which John was taken prisoner, was the signal for conflicts in Paris between Stephen Marcel and the dauphin, and for the outbreak of the Jacquerie. The treaty of Bretigny, concluded on the 8th of May 1360, procured France several years' repose.

Under Charles V hostilities at first obtained only between French, Anglo-Navarrais (Du Guesclin's victory at Cocherel, May 16, 1364) and Bretons. In 1369, on the pretext that Edward III had failed to observe the terms of the treaty of Bretigny, the King of France declared war against him. Du Guesclin, having been appointed Constable, defeated the English at Pontvallain in 1370, at Chize in 1373, and drove them from their possessions between the Loire and the Gironde, while the duke of Anjou retook part of Guienne. Edward III thereupon concluded the truce of Bruges (June 27, 1375), which was prolonged until the 24th of June 1377. Upon the death of Edward III (June 21, 1377) Charles V recommenced war in Artois and Guienne and against Charles the Bad, but failed in his attempt to reunite Brittany and France. Du Guesclin, who had refused to march against his compatriots, died on the 13th of July 1380, and Charles V on the 16th of the following September.

In the beginning of Charles VI's reign the struggle between the two countries seemed to slacken. An attempt at reconciliation even took place on the marriage of Richard II with Isabella of France, daughter of Charles VI (September 26, 1396). But Richard, having been dethroned by Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV), hostilities were resumed, Henry profiting little by the internal discords of France. In 1415 his son, Henry V, landed in Normandy on the expiry of the truce of the 25th of September 1413, which had been extended in 1414 and 1415. He won the victory of Agincourt (October 25, 1415), and then seized Caen and part of Normandy, while France was exhausting herself in the feuds of Armagnacs and Burgundians. By the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1415) he obtained the hand of Catherine, Charles VI's daughter, with the titles of regent and heir to the kingdom of France. Having taken Meaux on the 2nd of May 1429, and made his entry into Paris on the 30th of May, then died on the 31st of August in the Bois de Vincennes, leaving the throne to his son, Henry VI, with the Duke of Bedford as regent in France. 
Charles VI died shortly afterwards, on the 21st of October. His son, who styled himself Charles VII, suffered a series of defeats in the beginning of his reign: Cravant on the Yonne (1423), Verneuil (1424), St James de Beuvron (1426) and Rouvray (1429). Orleans, the last bulwark of royalty, had been besieged since the 12th of October 1428, and was on the point of surrender when Joan of Arcappeared. She saved Orleans (May 8, 1429), defeated the English at Patay on the 16th of June, had Charles VII crowned at Reims on the 17th of July, was taken at Compiegne on the 24th of May 1430, and was burned at Rouen on the 30th of May 1431.

From this time on the English lost ground steadily, and the treaty of Arras (March 20, 1435), by which good relations were established between Charles VII and Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, dealt them a final blow. Normandy rose against them, while the constable De Richemont¹ drove them from Paris (1436) and retook Nemours, Montereau (1437) and Meaux (1439). The quickly repressed revolt of the Praguerie made no break in Charles VII's successes. In 1442 he relieved successively Saint Sever, Dax, Marmande, La Reole, and in 1444 Henry VI had to conclude the truce of Tours. In 1448 the English were driven from Mans; and in 1449, while Richemont was capturing Cotentin and Fougeres, Dunois conquered Lower Normandy and Charles VII entered Rouen.

The defeat of Sir Thomas Kyriel, one of Bedford's veteran captains, at Formigny in 1450, and the taking of Cherbourg, completed the conquest of the province. During this time Dunois in Guienne was taking Bordeaux and Bayonne. Guienne revolted against France, whereupon Talbot returned there with an army of 5000 men, but was vanquished and killed at Castillon on the 17th of July 1453. Bordeaux capitulated on the 9th of October, and the Hundred Years' War was terminated by the expulsion of the English, who were by this time so fully occupied with the Wars of the Roses as to be unable to take the offensive against France anew. 

THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

The land and environment of Italy provided the Romans with a secure home from which to expand. Italy is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the sea and protected to the north by the Alps mountain range. The climate is generally temperate, although summers are hot in the south. Rome was part of a region near the Tiber River in central Italy that was called Latium (now part of Lazio). Its Latin-speaking inhabitants originally joined the waves of Indo-European peoples who crossed the Adriatic Sea from the Balkan Peninsula and settled in central Italy about 1000 bc.

To the north, the Etruscans had established a vigorous civilization (see Etruscan Civilization) in the region called Etruria. These people probably originated in Asia Minor and spoke an entirely different language than neighboring Indo-European peoples. In southern Italy and on the large island of Sicily, colonists fleeing from famine and political conflict in Greece founded new cities between 800 and 500 bc. The city of Naples derives its name from the Greek words Nea Polis (New City).

Volcanoes like Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius dot the western coast of Italy and its offshore islands, leaving sections of Latium, Campania near Naples, and Sicily fertile from the residue of volcanic ash. The mountains were once rich in timber and had meadows where sheep and goats grazed in the warmest months before they were driven to the plains for the winter. There was salt along the Tiber River and large deposits of iron were located in Etruria. North-south land routes allowed for overland trade, and so commerce as well as agriculture, pasturage, and metalwork drove the economy.

Romulus and Remus

The story of Rome’s founding survives only in primitive myths and meager archaeological remains. An island in the Tiber River afforded the easiest crossing point, and archaeology shows that some Latins established a settlement on the nearby Palatine Hill; perhaps they hoped to rob, or collect tolls, from traders crossing the river on their way from Etruria to southern Italy.

Roman myth created a more glorious tale of the city’s beginnings. These legends trace Rome’s origins to Romulus, a son of the god Mars and also a descendent of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who brought his people to Italy after the city of Troy burned. Romulus and his twin brother Remus were grandsons of King Numitor of the ancient city of Alba Longa in Latium. Numitor was deposed by his brother, who also tried to kill the twins by having them thrown into the Tiber. Instead, the infants washed ashore and were suckled by a she-wolf who became—and remains today—the symbol of Rome. When the brothers grew up, they restored Numitor to his throne and then founded a new city on the Palatine Hill above the river.

There are no contemporary written records of the Roman monarchy, so the stories of the early kings are primarily preserved in the works of historians Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote seven centuries after the time of Romulus. These legends and even some of the kings themselves are probably mythical creations, and the dates that they reigned are either inventions or rough approximations. Nevertheless, such myths often contain bits of historical information that are passed on and transformed through repeated telling.

The Romans believed that Romulus and Remus founded Rome in 753 bc, and that Romulus erected a wall around the site of the new city. When Remus tried to assert his leadership by scornfully leaping over the inadequate wall, Romulus killed him and became the city’s first king, giving it his name. He then invited his neighbors east of the Tiber River, the Sabines, to a festival and kidnapped the Sabine women—called the “rape of the Sabine women”—to provide the wives necessary for the Roman population to grow. Other legends about Romulus include his mysterious disappearance in a storm cloud, an event that led the Romans to proclaim him a god.

The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, was a Sabine who was regarded as especially just and devoted to religion. Many of Rome’s religious traditions were later attributed to Numa, including the selection of virgins to be priestesses of the goddess Vesta. He also established a calendar to differentiate between normal working days and those festival days sacred to the gods on which no state business was allowed. His peaceful reign lasted from 715 to 673 bc.

Under Tullus Hostilius (672–641 bc) the Romans waged an aggressive foreign policy and began to expand their lands by the conquest of nearby cities like Alba Longa. When the warlike King Hostilius contracted the plague, the people thought it was a punishment for the neglect of the gods so they named Ancus Marcius, a highly religious grandson of Numa, as the fourth king (640–617 bc). Marcius founded the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber.

A wealthy man from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, came to live in Rome and became such a favorite of King Ancus that he managed to succeed him even though he was considered a foreigner. Tarquinius, who ruled between 616 and 579 bc, was said to have drained the marshes between the hills and paved an area for the market place that became known as the Roman Forum. His successor, Servius Tullius (578–535 bc), organized the Roman army into groups of 100 men called centuries and was said to have built a new wall around the city. The cruel seventh king, Lucius Tarquinus Superbus or Tarquin the Proud (534–510 bc), was expelled in 510 after his son cruelly raped Lucretia, a virtuous Roman matron and the wife of his kinsman Collatinus.

Archaeology shows that there is some truth to these legends. There were huts on the Palatine Hill above the Tiber River by the 8th century bc, and the evidence of both burials and cremations indicate that two different cultures like the Romans and the Sabines had intermingled. The Forum was first covered with a pebble pavement about 575 bc and its draining dates to the period of Etruscan kings. On the other hand, archaeologists believe that the earliest wall around the city was built in the 4th century bc—two centuries after the reign of Servius Tullius. Even if the names, dates, and legends of early Rome remain highly questionable, remnants of Roman material culture help to document significant transformations in Roman life.

The Etruscans had enormous cultural, social, and political influence on early Rome. The origins of this seafaring people remain obscure, but most scholars now believe that the Etruscans brought their language, their religion, and their love of music and dance from the Near East to northern Italy. Their distinctive culture was further shaped in the Italian region of Tuscany, which bears their name.

Tomb paintings provide a record of Etruscan civilization and illustrate their cultural sophistication, intense religious beliefs, and artistic accomplishments. Their skill at urban planning, engineering, and waterworks had a deep influence on the development of Rome. In Rome itself, projects attributed to the Etruscan kings included the building of city walls, the engineering of the Forum, and the construction of the great drain to channel both rainfall and sewage into the Tiber. For centuries the Romans also built and decorated their temples in the Etruscan style. They were in awe of the extraordinary metalwork of Etruscan craftworkers shown in products ranging from iron plows to bronze mirrors, silver bowls, and fine gold jewelry. Elaborate aristocratic tombs in central Italian towns such as Praeneste (now Palestrina) as well as rural drainage trenches cut into rock to preserve topsoil show that Etruscan influences even spread to the countryside around Rome.

Hellenistic Greece

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

This article is part of a series on the
History of Greece
Greek Bronze Age[show] Helladic civilization Cycladic civilization Minoan civilization Mycenaean civilization
Ancient Greece[show] Greek Dark Ages Archaic Greece Classical Greece Hellenistic Greece Roman Greece
Medieval Greece[show] Byzantine Greece Frankish and Latin states Ottoman Greece
Modern Greece[show] War of Independence Kingdom of Greece National Schism Second Hellenic Republic 4th of August Regime Axis occupation Civil War Military Junta Third Hellenic Republic
History by topic[show] Art Constitution Economy Military Names
Greece portal
v t e

in Greek history, Hellenistic Greece corresponds to the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek heartlands by Rome in 146 BC. This entry focuses on the history of 'Greece proper' (effectively the area of modern Greece) during this period.
During the Hellenistic period the importance of Greece proper within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply. The great centers of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria respectively. Cities such as Pergamon, Ephesus, Rhodes and Seleucia were also important, and increasing urbanization of the Eastern Mediterranean was characteristic of the time.

Contents  [hide]  1 Macedonian dominance 2 Philip V 3 Rise of Rome 4 End of Greek independence 5 See also 6 Further reading

[edit] Macedonian dominance

Coin depicting Cassander, First post-Argead leader of Hellenistic Greece and Founder of Thessaloniki

The quests of Alexander had a number of consequences for the Greek city-states. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BC seem petty and unimportant. It led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and ambitious, to the new Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until the end of the 1st century BC.
The defeat of the Greek cities by Philip and Alexander also taught the Greeks that their city-states could never again be powers in their own right, and that the hegemony of Macedon and its successor states could not be challenged unless the city states united, or at least federated. The Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence.
Following Alexander's death a struggle for power broke out among his generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire and the establishment of a number of new kingdoms. Macedon fell to Cassander, son of Alexander's leading general Antipater, who after several years of warfare made himself master of most of the rest of Greece. He founded a new Macedonian capital at Thessaloniki and was generally a constructive ruler.
Cassander's power was challenged by Antigonus, ruler of Anatolia, who promised the Greek cities that he would restore their freedom if they supported him. This led to successful revolts against Cassander's local rulers. In 307 BC Antigonus's son Demetrius captured Athens and restored its democratic system, which had been suppressed by Alexander. But in 301 BC a coalition of Cassander and the other Hellenistic kings defeated Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus, ending his challenge.

Hellenistic Greek tomb door bas relief, Leeds City Museum.

After Cassander's death in 298 BC, however, Demetrius seized the Macedonian throne and gained control of most of Greece. He was defeated by a second coalition of Greek rulers in 285 BC, and mastery of Greece passed to the king Lysimachus of Thrace. Lysimachus was in turn defeated and killed in 280 BC. The Macedonian throne then passed to Demetrius's son Antigonus II, who also defeated an invasion of the Greek lands by the Gauls, who at this time were living in the Balkans. The battle against the Gauls united the Antigonids of Macedon and the Seleucids of Antioch, an alliance which was also directed against the wealthiest Hellenistic power, the Ptolemies of Egypt.
Antigonus II ruled until his death in 239 BC, and his family retained the Macedonian throne until it was abolished by the Romans in 146 BC. Their control over the Greek city states was intermittent, however, since other rulers, particularly the Ptolemies, subsidised anti-Macedonian parties in Greece to undermine the Antigonids' power. Antigonus placed a garrison at Corinth, the strategic centre of Greece, but Athens, Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek states retained substantial independence, and formed the Aetolian League as a means of defending it. Sparta also remained independent, but generally refused to join any league.
In 267 BC Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Antigonus, in what became the Chremonidian War, after the Athenian leader Chremonides. The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and her democratic institutions. The Aetolian League was restricted to the Peloponnese, but on being allowed to gain control of Thebes in 245 BC became a Macedonian ally. This marked the end of Athens as a political actor, although it remained the largest, wealthiest and most cultivated city in Greece. In 255 BC Antigonus defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, under his rule as well.

[edit] Philip V

Philip V, "the darling of Hellas", wearing the royal diadem.

Antigonus II died in 239 BC. His death saw another revolt of the city-states of the Achaean League, whose dominant figure was Aratus of Sicyon. Antigonus's son Demetrius II died in 229 BC, leaving a child (Philip V) as king, with the general Antigonus Doson as regent. The Achaeans, while nominally subject to Ptolemy, were in effect independent, and controlled most of southern Greece. Athens remained aloof from this conflict by common consent.
Sparta remained hostile to the Achaeans, and in 227 BCSparta's king Cleomenes III invaded Achaea and seized control of the League. Aratus preferred distant Macedon to nearby Sparta, and allied himself with Doson, who in 222 BC defeated the Spartans and annexed their city – the first time Sparta had ever been occupied by a foreign power.
Philip V, who came to power when Doson died in 221 BC, was the last Macedonian ruler with both the talent and the opportunity to unite Greece and preserve its independence against the "cloud rising in the west": the ever-increasing power of Rome. He was known as "the darling of Hellas". Under his auspices the Peace of Naupactus (217 BC) brought conflict between Macedon and the Greek leagues to an end, and at this time he controlled all of Greece except Athens, Rhodes and Pergamum.
In 215 BC, however, Philip formed an alliance with Rome's enemy Carthage, which drew Rome directly into Greek affairs for the first time. Rome promptly lured the Achaean cities away from their nominal loyalty to Philip, and formed alliances with Rhodes and Pergamum, now the strongest power in Asia Minor. The First Macedonian War broke out in 212 BC, and ended inconclusively in 205 BC, but Macedon was now marked as an enemy of Rome. Rome's ally Rhodes gained control of the Aegean islands.
In 202 BC Rome defeated Carthage, and was free to turn her attention eastwards, urged on by her Greek allies, Rhodes and Pergamum. In 198 the Second Macedonian War broke out for obscure reasons, but very likely because Rome saw Macedon as a potential ally of the Seleucids, the greatest power in the east. Philip's allies in Greece deserted him and in 197 BC he was decisively defeated at the Cynoscephalae by the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus.
Luckily for the Greeks, Flamininus was a moderate man and an admirer of Greek culture. Philip had to surrender his fleet and become a Roman ally, but was otherwise spared. At the Isthmian Games in 196 BC, Flamininus declared all the Greek cities free, although Roman garrisons were placed at Corinth and Chalcis. But the freedom promised by Rome was an illusion. All the cities except Rhodes were enrolled in a new League which Rome ultimately controlled, and democracies were replaced by aristocratic regimes allied to Rome