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Henri-Joseph Paixhans
Henri-Joseph Paixhans (; January 22, 1783, Metz – August 22, 1854, Jouy-aux-Arches) was a French artillery officer of the beginning of the 19th century. Henri-Joseph Paixhans graduated from the École Polytechnique. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars, was the representative ( Député) for the Moselle department between 1830 and 1848, and became "General de Division" in 1848. In 1823, he invented the first shell guns, which came to be called Paixhans guns (or "canon-obusiers" in the French Navy). Paixhans guns became the first naval guns to combine explosive shells and a flat trajectory, thereby triggering the demise of wooden ships, and the iron hull revolution in shipbuilding. Paixhans also invented a "Mortier monstre" ("Monster Mortar"), using 500 kg bombs, which was used to terrible effect in the Siege of Antwerp in 1832. He was also a naval theorist claiming that a few aggressively armed small units could destroy the largest naval units of the time, making him a prec ...
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Metz
Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand Est region. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany and Luxembourg,Says J.M. (2010) La Moselle, une rivière européenne. Eds. Serpenoise. the city forms a central place of the European Greater Region and the SaarLorLux euroregion. Metz has a rich 3,000-year history,Bour R. (2007) Histoire de Metz, nouvelle édition. Eds. Serpenoise. having variously been a Celtic ''oppidum'', an important Gallo-Roman city,Vigneron B. (1986) Metz antique: Divodurum Mediomatricorum. Eds. Maisonneuve. the Merovingian capital of Austrasia,Huguenin A. (2011) Histoire du royaume mérovingien d'Austrasie. Eds. des Paraiges. pp. 134,275 the birthplace of the Carolingian dynasty,Settipani C. (1989) Les ancêtres de Charlemagne. Ed. ...
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19th-century French Inventors
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost all of Africa under colonial rule. It was also marked by the collapse of the large ...
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Cochinchina
Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; vi, Đàng Trong (17th century - 18th century, Việt Nam (1802-1831), Đại Nam (1831-1862), Nam Kỳ (1862-1945); km, កូសាំងស៊ីន, Kosăngsin; french: Cochinchine; ) is a historical exonym for part of Vietnam, depending on the contexts. Sometimes it referred to the whole of Vietnam, but it was commonly used to refer to the region south of the Gianh River. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Vietnam was divided between the Trịnh lords to the north and the Nguyễn lords to the south. The two domains bordered each other on the Son–Gianh River. The northern section was called Tonkin by Europeans, and the southern part, , was called Cochinchina by most Europeans and Quinam by the Dutch. Lower Cochinchina (), whose principal city is Saigon, is the newest territory of the Vietnamese people in the movement of (Southward expansion). This region was also the first part of Vietnam to be colonized by the French. Inaugurated as the ...
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Henri Dupuy De Lôme
Stanislas Charles Henri Dupuy de Lôme (; 15 October 18161 February 1885) was a French naval architect. He was the son of a naval officer and was born in Ploemeur near Lorient, Brittany, in western France. He was educated at the École Polytechnique and ENSTA. He was particularly active during the 1840–1870 period. After finishing his professional education, he went to England about 1842, and made a thorough study of iron shipbuilding and steam navigation. He wrote a report, subsequently published under the title of ''Mémoire sur la construction des bâtiments en fer'' in 1844. The first steam battleship After his return from England, Dupuy de Lôme started work at the arsenal in Toulon. At the time the only armed steamships in the French Navy were propelled by paddle-wheels, and there was great opposition to the introduction of steam power into line-of-battle ships. The paddle-wheel was seen to be unsuited to such large fighting vessels, and there was no confidence in the ...
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John A
Sir John Alexander Macdonald (January 10 or 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario). As a lawyer, he was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which elected him in 1844 to the legislature of the Province of Canada. By 1857, he had become premier under the colony's unstable political system. In 1864, when no party proved capable of governing for long, Macdonald agreed to a proposal from his political rival, George Brown, that the parties unite in a Great Coalition to seek federation and political reform. Macdonald was the leading figure in the subsequent discussions and conferences, which resulted in the Brit ...
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HMS Warrior (1860)
HMS ''Warrior'' is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate"Ironclad" is the general term for armoured warships of this period. Armoured frigates were initially designed for the same role as traditional wooden frigates; this later changed as the size and expense of these ships forced them to be used in the line of battle. built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the ''Warrior''-class ironclads. ''Warrior'' and her sister ship were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled ''Gloire''. ''Warrior'' conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS ''Devastation'', she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883. She subsequently served as a storeship and de ...
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La Gloire
The French ironclad ''Gloire'' (, "Glory") was the first ocean-going ironclad, launched in 1859. It was developed after the Crimean War,The Battle of Sinop at the start of the war convinced the world's naval powers that wooden warships could not withstand the new weapons. in response to new developments of naval gun technology, especially the Paixhans guns and rifled guns, which used explosive shells with increased destructive power against wooden ships, and after the development of the ironclad floating batteries built by the British and French for the bombardment of Russian forts during the Crimean War. Design and description ''Gloire'' was designed by the French naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme as a 5,630-ton broadside ironclad with a wooden hull. Its 12 cm-thick (4.7 in) armour plates, backed with 43 cm (17 in) of timber, resisted hits by the experimental shooting of the strongest guns of the time (the French 50-pounder and the British 68-pounder) ...
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Warship
A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuverable than merchant ships. Unlike a merchant ship, which carries cargo, a warship typically carries only weapons, ammunition and supplies for its crew. Warships usually belong to a navy, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations. In wartime, the distinction between warships and merchant ships is often blurred. In war, merchant ships are often armed and used as auxiliary warships, such as the Q-ships of the First World War and the armed merchant cruisers of the Second World War. Until the 17th century it was common for merchant ships to be pressed into naval service and not unusual for more than half a fleet to be composed of merchant ships. Until the threat of piracy subsided in the ...
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Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of the Russian Empire in the preceding Russo-Turkish Wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe. The flashpoint was a disagreement over the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with the French promoting the rights of Roman Catholics, and Russia promoting those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The churches worked out their differences with the Ottomans and came to an agreement, but both the French Emperor Napoleon III and the Russian Tsar Nicholas I refused to back down. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that demanded the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire be placed ...
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