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Major battles

  • Thirteen years after the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Battle of Actium put an end to a long period of internal strife in the Roman Republic. It involved some of the most famous leaders in history: Octavius, who went on to become the first Roman emperor, Mark Antony, a firm supporter of Julius Caesar, and his lover Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. The...
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  • The Battle of Algiers unfolded over nine months in 1957 and was a particularly painful and brutal period in the Algerian War, which saw the citizens of this French colony fight for their independence. The French authorities responded to a campaign of guerrilla warfare by the National Liberation Front (FLN) with forced disappearances, torture and summary executions, which tarnished their reputation later on. In...
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  • The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was a crucial episode of the Napoleonic Wars and is widely seen as one of Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest successes. On 2 December 1805, Napoleon's Grande Armée showed its tactical and technological superiority over its enemies, inflicting a crushing defeat on the forces of the Russian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. However, the battle...
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  • The Battle of Britain was the most colossal air combat in history, pitting the forces of Nazi Germany against Great Britain, which by that point stood alone in Europe, its allies having already been beaten down by Adolf Hitler's forces. The battle took place in the autumn of 1940, at an early stage in the Second World War. The stakes could not...
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  • The Battle of Gettysburg is widely regarded as one of the turning points of the American Civil War between the Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South. From the outbreak of the war until mid-1863, the Confederate troops had the upper hand over their Union counterparts, but when they attempted to break into Union territory, they were...
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  • The Battle of Kursk was one of the major clashes between German and Soviet troops during the Second World War and one of the most important tank battles in history. Having launched Operation Barbarossa to invade the USSR in 1941, the Nazis sought to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front with this new offensive in the summer of 1943. However, the Red Army was...
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  • The Battle of Lepanto was a struggle for control of the Mediterranean between the Holy League, bringing together the Papal States, Spain and the Republic of Venice, and the mighty Ottoman Empire. This 1571 conflict remains one of the largest naval battles of all time, and was a decisive moment in European history. The unexpected victory of the Holy League put an end to...
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  • The Battle of Marathon in 490 BC brought the first Greco-Persian War to a close and put a stop to the Persian king Darius I's attempt to extend his hegemony to the Aegean Sea and mainland Greece. Thanks to the courage and fighting skills of the Greek hoplites, who risked their lives to defend their land and maintain their independence, the Persian...
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  • The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the major battles of the Second World War, and saw the German Wehrmacht and Stalin's Red Army fight savagely, often in close quarters, for control of the city. The combat also involved civilians and was unprecedented in its scale; the Battle of Stalingrad is now widely regarded as one of the largest and bloodiest battles in history. It marked...
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  • The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War, and mobilized extraordinary numbers of men and material on both the Allied and Axis sides. The battle was of major strategic significance: control of the seas would have allowed the Germans to bring Britain to its knees by preventing it from receiving supplies from the USA and its...
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  • The Battle of the Bulge began in late 1944 with the last major German offensive of the Second World War. Following the Normandy landings earlier that year, the German army was in a weakened state, so this offensive was an attempt to cripple the Allied armies by dividing them and cutting off their supplies. Although the Allies were initially caught by...
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  • The Battle of the Marne was one of the earliest battles in the First World War, and ended in a decisive victory for the Allies on the Western Front. Prior to this battle, German troops had been advancing relentlessly across Western Europe, sweeping through France and Belgium in spite of the latter's neutrality. This all changed with the counter-attack by British and...
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