bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Turin
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The world of European politics is rarely so confusing as when a succession struggle arises. In 1700 Charles II of Spain died without issue, and the scramble to succeed him attracted candidates from across western Europe. Charles had named as his successor Phillipe, the duke of Anjou, but nobles with equally valid claims to the throne included Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy. Leopold and Victor, although with legitimate claims, were mainly afraid that if Phillipe assumed the throne Spain would come directly under the control of France, for France’s King Louis XIV was Phillipe’s uncle. Everyone in Europe had cause to fear any action that increased Louis’ authority, for he was one of the most brilliant and ambitious monarchs in all of European history. Emperor Leopold organized a coalition to combat Phillipe’s claim, joining Great Britain, the Netherlands, Prussia, and Hanover to his own Holy Roman Empire. Louis responded by gathering together allies of his own: Bavaria, Mantua, Piedmont, and, initially, Savoy, which had long been aligned with France.
Fort Niagara
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
When both England and France began colonizing the eastern part of North America in the seventeenth century, it was inevitable that their centuries-old European rivalry would manifest itself in the western hemisphere as well. The French in Canada and the English along the east coast of North America remained isolated from each other for about a century, but in the early 1750s the English colonists pushing west confronted French forces moving south into the area just below the Great Lakes Ontario and Erie. At the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers English colonists from Virginia began claiming land by constructing a fort. Before it was completed it was captured and strengthened by French and Indian forces who named it Fort Duquesne. A Virginia militia attempt to retake the fort in 1754 (led by George Washington in his first command) failed in its mission. After some 150 years of salutary neglect, the London government committed troops to the colonies in an attempt to beat back the French incursion. Major General Edward Braddock’s they had been abandoned by their Indian allies and numbered but 600 soldiers, marines, and Canadian militia. They rushed the English position but were blasted by seven volleys of English fire, then harried on their retreat by the hidden Iroquois.
Quebec
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
British victory gave them control of the St. Lawrence River, stopping any further French reinforcement or resupply of their personnel in Canada during the French and Indian War. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada m 1588, England began pursuing a policy of colonization in North America. Unlike the Spanish, who went to the western hemisphere The death of General Wolfe during the battle of Quebec in 1759. (Library of Congress) north of the Great Lakes. The remainder of their claims west of the Mississippi they ceded to Spain. Thus, the loss of Canada ended France’s hope for a western hemisphere empire. References: Lawrence H. Gipson, The Great War for Empire, vol. 7 (New York: Knopf, 1936); Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (Toronto: Ryerson, 1964); Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins, vol. 1 (New York: McGrawHill, 1976); C. P. Stacey, Quebec, 1159 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1959).
Boston
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The British should never have lost Boston. Any serious attempt to keep the garrison supplied would have made the defense too strong for Washington ever to have successfully assaulted. Conversely, the besieging force (although large in number) was poorly organized and trained. Although Washington did wonders once he took command, any time before that point a vigorous British sortie would probably have collapsed the entire colonial effort. Gage, whose twenty years’ residence in the colonies had softened him to effective action, was succeeded by Howe, whose shocking experience on the slopes of Breed’s Hill ruined him for any future aggressive action. Their inactivity was made worse by their snobbery. Many Bostonians remained loyal to the Crown and volunteered to fight, but as would happen so many times throughout the American Revolution the British officers sneered at colonial assistance. In Boston, as in so many other regions throughout the war, the British succeeded in making enemies out of friends.
Badajoz
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
After Napoleon took control of Spain in 1808 and enthroned his brother Joseph in Madrid, French designs on Portugal intensified. Great Britain responded by sending troops to Portugal’s aid. The British commander, General Sir Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, beat back every French invasion attempt for three years, then readied his own invasion out of Portugal into Spain. To do this he had but two viable paths into the country: Ciudad Rodrigo in the north and Badajoz in the south, both of which he needed to control in order to secure his rear from any possible French encircling attack. Both cities were strongly walled and manned and both had French armies in support: General Auguste Marmont behind Ciudad Rodrigo, Marshal Nicolas Soult at Badajoz. In May and June 1811, while probing the French defenses around Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington had sent his chief subordinate, General William Beresford, to relieve a French siege of the Portuguese defenders in Badajoz. By the time he arrived, the French had taken the city and Beresford was obliged to begin his own attack. Lacking sufficient engineers and without any siege guns, the effort proved futile. Wellington, famous for his attention to supply, failed in this instance to provide for his men and the French held on to the city.
Cuautla
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Since the days of the conquistador Hernan Cortes in the 1520s, Mexico had been a Spanish possession, a source of immense riches for the Spanish monarchy. By the early 1800s, however, Spain’s wealth and power had long since dissipated. Napoleon Bonaparte, the new power in Europe, forced Spain to bow to his will. When the Spanish King Charles refused to follow directions, Napoleon deposed him and placed his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne in 1808. A popular rising against the foreign king soon swept Spain. The French occupation and the resulting rebellion had effects in Spain’s colonies. The deposed King Charles wanted to maintain his empire bur had no power to wield. In Spanish Mexico, liberal forces began to agitate for independence in the face of the empire’s weakness. Conservative, powerful factions, including the Catholic Church and the military, did their best to maintain Spanish authority, but their long history of abusing the Mexican population, especially the Indians, proved too strong a motivation for the Mexican peasantry to resist. Under the leadership of Father Miguel Hidalgo they began a rebellion in 181O, more against the abuses of the upper classes than directly against Spanish authority.
Rome
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
When Napoleon Bonaparte established French domination in Italy in the 1790s, he brought with him the principles of the French Revolution and thus the seeds of his own destruction. Nationalism and republican government became the catchwords of post-Napoleonic Europe, even while monarchs scrambled to reestablish their own authority. In Italy, revolts in 1820 and 1830 attempted to set up an Italian Republic by overthrowing the Austrians and Spanish, to which the Concert of Europe had granted authority in the northern and southern parts of the peninsula after 1815. The difficulty of establishing a republic was compounded by the fact that the Italian peninsula was divided into a number of smaller states, each vying for either independence or hegemony. One of those entities was the Vatican, which ruled what were called the Papal States in the region immediately around Rome. To further complicate the international interest in Italy, Pope Pius IX was able to secure a guarantee from France that her soldiers would maintain his authority. All of this came to a boil in 1848, when nationalist movements rose up around the Continent. Many European monarchies were threatened, and in France the Second Republic came into being. Italian nationalists seized the opportunity to break away from Austria, for Vienna had its hands full with revolutionary movements at home. On 22 November 1848, Pope Pius, disguised as a common priest, stole out of the Vatican and fled to the coastal city of Gaeta, from where he appealed for French aid to restore him to power. In February 1849 a newly elected parliament announced the formation of the Roman Republic with Giuseppe Mazzini as chief minister.
Puebla
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
After the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, Mexico entered a period of national crisis. The government of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had fallen in late 1847, bringing about the end of the war. The government that succeeded it was unpopular for signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded vast stretches of northern Mexico to the United States, although the nation was compensated with a $15 million indemnity. The money was insufficient to pay the debt incurred by the war or to save the government. After years of political wrangling and a civil war, Benito Juarez was elected president of the United States of Mexico in 1858, with the mandate of enforcing the newly passed constitution. Juarez, a full-blooded Zapotec Indian who was trained for the priesthood but became a lawyer, was dedicated to democratic reforms and extending rights to the bulk of the Mexican people. To improve their lot in life through schools, hospitals, and the like was an expensive task. The government had been paying its bills primarily through the use of foreign loans, mainly from Spain, England, and France. Reelected in 1861, Juarez announced a two-year suspension of debt payments in order for him to straighten out his nation’s finances and get his reforms started. The European countries refused to accept the delay, deciding instead to send troops to Mexico to force payment.
Petersburg
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Although Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had blunted every Union attempt to reach the Confederacy’s capital of Richmond, Virginia, his two attacks on Northern territory had proved his undoing. His failure to operate in the North at will in September 1862 meant a lack of foreign recognition and direct military aid. His army’s defeat at Gettysburg in July 1863 forced him to retreat into Virginia, where he could only win the war by a successful defense that would lengthen the war sufficiently to bring to the fore a growing peace movement in the Union. Between July 1863 and May 1864, little fighting took place in Virginia, and Lee was able to rebuild his ragged force to 50,000 to 60,000 men. After a string of unsuccessful generals, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln transferred Ulysses Grant from the western theater of the war over to Virginia. Grant’s persistent nature contrasted sharply with the timidity of most References: Shelby Foote, The Civil Wtir: A Narrative, vol. 3 (New York: Random House, 1974); Jeff Kinard, The Battle of the Crater (Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation, 1998); Noah Trudeau, The Last Citadel (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991).
Fort Fisher
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
When America’s Civil War broke out in April 1861, the newly created Confederate States of America embarked on an almost impossible task. Far outmatched by the Northern states in all materiels of war, the Confederacy’s only hope was to trade her one advantage, cotton, for weaponry and support from overseas. This proved a daunting task as well, for although a large percentage of the soldiers of the United States Army resigned their positions and joined the Southern cause, virtually none of the United States Navy did. This disparity in shipping was immediately put to good use when Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of Southern ports. Early in the conflict, the senior commander in the United States Army, Major General Winfield Scott, developed a grand strategy to defeat the Confederacy. The Anaconda Plan, as its name implies, was designed to squeeze the South to death. The first phase of that plan was to cut them off from the rest of the world, and Lincoln’s blockade did that within a matter of weeks. The United States Navy was stationed off every Southern port to keep cotton in and foreign aid out. To counter this, Confederate agents in Europe (primarily in England) purchased or commissioned the construction of fast ships to run the blockade. These ships had some success, but unfortunately for the Confederate cause, many cargoes were full of scarce trade goods instead of scarce weaponry. Still, enough supplies got through to give some aid to the Southern armies.
Humaita
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
After the removal of Spanish rule in South America in the 1820s, Paraguay resisted Argentine domination by declaring its independence from the former viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata. Under two successive dictators, Dr. Jose Francia and Carlos Antonio Lopez, Paraguay became a progressive and prosperous nation. They established economic and cultural ties with Europe, and phased out slavery yet had little feudalism or peonage. Paraguay had one of the highest literacy rates on the continent. In 1864, Lopez felt threatened by Brazil’s interference in a civil war in neighboring Uruguay, through which land-locked Paraguay had access to the port city of Montevideo at the mouth of the Uruguay River. If a hostile government were to come to power there, Paraguay would have to depend on the good will of Argentina to allow sea access through Buenos Aires. Lopez’s protests concerning Brazilian interference in Uruguay fell on deaf ears, so he decided to apply direct pressure on them by attacking the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso. This being a rugged and uninhabited territory, the attack had no effect. Lopez, attempting to assist Uruguay, then asked permission of Bartolome Mitre, Argentina’s leader, for access through his country, a request he refused. Feeling this to be an unfriendly act, Paraguay declared war on Argentina in March 1865 and launched an invasion.
Chitral
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
All the physical obstacles were overcome by January 1885. The advance force had fought the elements as well as the dervishes at Abu Klea and Abu Kru to be within striking distance of Khartoum, when the force commander Sir Charles Wilson stopped three days to rest and tend his wounded. When ships arrived on the Nile at his camp, he boarded his men and steamed four days to Khartoum, there to find the Mahdi in control, as he had been for the previous two days. Hearing of the approach of the relief force, the Mahdi decided to storm Khartoum. He had hesitated to do this, but demands by some of his advisers forced his hand. He did not want to capture the city and then find himself besieged by the British, but neither could he stand to have Gordon’s religion defeat his own. One last call for surrender was again rejected, so the assault began at dawn on 26 January. The Mahdi ordered his men to take Gordon alive, for apparently he had come to respect the Briton’s religious zeal. Although Gordon ordered every male from eight to eighty to man the defenses, few had the strength or will to do so. The popular story of Gordon’s death is that he stood atop the staircase at the governor’s palace unarmed, there to be speared and beheaded. Eyewitnesses, however, claimed that he went down fighting so ferociously that he seemed possessed.
Mafeking
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The South African Boers had for years watched the British expansion from the southern Cape Colony with great apprehension and caution. The lure of vast deposits of gold and diamonds along with the strategic potential of the Cape of South Africa drew the British to the region like iron to a magnet. In 1895, a British freebooter, Leander Jameson, organized a raid out of Mafeking into the Transvaal to spark a revolt of the English residents of Johannesburg. The Uitlanders (Outlanders, mainly British) were denied citizenship and the franchise while being required to pay taxes and otherwise support the Boer establishment. The expected uprising did not occur. Boer commandoes quickly rounded up the Jameson Expedition like so many cattle. Jameson and his cohorts were turned over to British authorities, who tried them under the Foreign Enlistment Act, slapped them on the wrist, and released them. Boer-British relations sank to a record low. A series of conferences between the Boer and British governments finally caused the Transvaal Volksraad to pass a Franchise Bill in an attempt meet the demands of the Uitlanders. The bill was withdrawn after the British rejected it. The Boers rebuffed further invitations to negotiate a settlement to the Outlander problem.
Port Arthur
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The negotiations dragged on for months and ultimately the Chinese government was forced to pay an indemnity of $333 million to the offended nations. Of this the United States received $25 million, of which they accepted only half. They dedicated the remainder to establishing a fund for Chinese students to study in America. This gesture may have had the longest-lasting effect of the entire incident. High damage claims and looting the Chinese expected from foreigners, but to have one of the invaders invest in the future of China was shocking. From that point the United States enjoyed a much closer relationship with China than any other Western power, one that lasted through World War II and until the victory of communism in 1949. The Chinese for the most part became no less xenophobic, but the organized resistance to foreign influence that the Boxers symbolized had only a brief life.
Madrid
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Additional. German and Italian money, manpower, and equipment were vital to Franco’s success, and Soviet aid via weapons, advisers, and sponsorship of the international brigades was also a major factor in delaying the Nationalist victory. Franco, who had been named head of state just before the siege of Madrid began, ruled as dictator until 1975. His originally stated intention, to restore the monarchy, fell by the wayside and that restoration did not occur until after his death. Long after fascism and Nazism collapsed, Franco’s ultraconservative rule remained in Spain. References: Jack Gibbs, The Spanish Civil War (London: Ernest Benn, 1973); Gabriel Jackson, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (New York: John Day, 1974); Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1963 [1961]).
Bilbao
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
On the eve of Spanish Civil War, neither the government nor the rebels could be sure which side the Basques of northern Spain would take. On the one hand the Basque Nationalists had been solidly supporting the reformers in government the previous few years, but they also were a staunchly Catholic population and the Church was solidly on the side of General Francisco Franco. The opening of the conflict on 18 July 1936 found the Basque military men in the north seizing rebellious soldiers and declaring their loyalty. Unfortunately for the government, it was questionable just how loyal the mainly conservative Basques would be to an administration that rapidly turned socialist. Unfortunately for the rebellious Nationalists, the Basques disliked anything resembling a military dictatorship, since the Republic had just recently granted them autonomy. There was hardly political unanimity in the northern provinces, however. The Basque Nationalists were dominant in the eastern provinces of Vizcaya and Guipozcoa. The province of Santander in the center was more socialist in its outlook, the labor movement Union General def Trabajadores (UGT) being the strongest party. The westernmost province of Asturias had an outlook that was almost completely communist, but was unwilling to take direction from any outside authority, including the government they fought for. This political strife was reflected in the region’s military performance, which was haphazard at best since rival units often refused to take orders from anyone else.
Tobruk
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
World War II was nine months old when combat began in North Africa. Italy officially entered the war on 10 June and the following day suffered casualties inflicted by British raids striking out of Egypt. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s long-term dream was to reestablish the Roman Empire, making the Mediterranean Sea “an Italian lake.” Italy had controlled Libya since 1912, and that was the base from which Mussolini hoped to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern oil fields for the Axis. With France under German attack simul­taneously, the British were in no position to commit any more troops to Egypt than were already stationed there. As it turned out, that would be sufficient in the short run. For the first few weeks the British raided regularly up the coast road into the Libyan province of Cyrenaica, shooting up enemy facilities and capturing prisoners. Italian Marshal Rodolpho Graziani responded on 13 September by sending his 10th Army slowly but successfully into Egypt. When it halted to bring up road building equipment, two British divisions struck and proceeded to annihilate the Italian force. By 9 February 1941 Major General Richard O’Connor’s British troops controlled Cyrenaica and had inflicted 130,000 casualties on the Italians.
Sevastopol
Authors: Davis Paul K 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
When Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, three army groups aimed at specific targets: Army Group North to capture Leningrad, Army Group Center to capture Moscow, and Army Group South to drive for the oil fields of the Caucasus. As German forces drove toward the Black Sea in the south, the Soviet naval base at Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, became a prime target. Possession of Sevastopol would deprive the Soviets of their only warm water port. It did not take the Germans long to expel the bulk of Soviet forces from the Crimean peninsula, accomplishing that task in the autumn of 1941. Occupation of the Crimea and capture of the port of Sevastopol fell to General Erich von Manstein, commanding XI Army. The opening assault began on 30 October and lasted until 21 November, but the Germans made little headway against the three defensive lines. Ships of the Black Sea Navy gave fire support to the defenders and played a key role in beating back the attacks. A second major assault began on 17 December and went on for two weeks; the Germans made more progress during this attempt with gains on the northern and eastern perimeters. Manstein was forced to seal off the city with five divisions, however, when the Soviets launched a counteroffensive in late December 1941. In one of the largest Soviet amphibious operations of World War II, 40,000 troops landed on the Kerch peninsula, extending off the eastern coast of the Crimea. The Soviets enjoyed early success, capturing the city of Feodosia, where they found their first evidence of Nazi atrocities: thousands of Jews were buried in trenches just outside town. The arrival of these Russian forces threatened to encircle Manstein, so he was obliged to leave a holding force at Sevastopol and turn to meet the menace to his rear.