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Subjects | Fact sheet | Samples
History: Sample biographies
Charlemagne, Charles I the Great (742–814)
King of the Franks from 768 and Holy Roman Emperor from 800. By inheritance (his father was Pepin the Short) and extensive campaigns of conquest, he united most of Western Europe by 804, when after 30 years of war the Saxons came under his control.
Pepin had been mayor of the palace in Merovingian Neustria until he was crowned king by Pope Stephen II (also known as Stephen III, died in 757) in 754, and his sons Carl (Charlemagne) and Carloman were crowned as joint heirs. When Pepin died in 768 Charlemagne inherited the northern Frankish kingdom, and when Carloman died in 771 he also took possession of the rest of his father's lands. He was involved in the first of his Saxon campaigns (772–77) when the Pope's call for help against the Lombards reached him; he crossed the Alps, captured Pavia, and took the title of king of the Lombards in 773.
The defeat and Christianizing of the Saxon peoples occupied the greater part of Charlemagne's reign. In 792 northern Saxony surrendered, and in 804 the whole region came under his rule. In 777 the emir of Zaragoza asked for Charlemagne's help against the
emir of Córdoba. Charlemagne crossed the mountains of the Pyrenees in 778 and reached the River Ebro in northeast Spain. However, he had to turn back from Zaragoza. During the retreat of Charlemagne's forces, Roland, warden of the Breton March, and other Frankish nobles were ambushed and killed by Basques at Roncesvalles. The battle was later glorified in the Chanson de Roland.
In 795 the district between the Pyrenees and the Llobregat, on the southern side of the mountain range, was organized as the Spanish March. The independent duchy of Bavaria was brought into Charlemagne's kingdom in 788, and the Avar people were defeated in war between 791 and 796. Charlemagne's last campaign was against a Danish attack on his northern frontier in 810.
The power and supremacy of the Frankish king in Europe was recognized by the decision of Pope Leo III to crown Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, on Christmas Day 800. Charlemagne died on 28 January 814 in Aachen, where he was buried. Soon a cycle of heroic legends and romances developed around him, including epics by the Italian poets Ariosto, Boiardo, and Tasso.
Charlemagne enjoyed links and government contacts with Byzantium, Baghdad, Mercia, Northumbria, and other regions in and around Europe. Jury courts were introduced and the laws of the Franks rewritten. The laws of conquered peoples were also recorded in writing, some for the first time. A new coinage was introduced, weights and measures were reformed, and communications were improved. Charlemagne also took a lively interest in theology, organized the church in his empire, and encouraged missionary work and reform of the monasteries. The Carolingian Renaissance of learning began when he persuaded the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin to enter his service in 782. Charlemagne gathered a collection of great scholars and religious thinkers around him. Although he never learned to read, he collected the old heroic sagas, began a Frankish grammar, and promoted religious instruction in the language of the ordinary people. The arts were also encouraged; Carolingian art included illuminated manuscripts and metalwork.
Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)
English general and politician, Puritan leader of the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War. He raised cavalry forces (later called 'Ironsides'), which aided the victory at Marston Moor in 1644, and organized the New Model Army, which he led (with General Fairfax) to victory at Naseby in 1645. He declared Britain a republic (the Commonwealth) in 1649, following the execution of Charles I. As Lord Protector (ruler) from 1653, Cromwell established religious toleration and raised Britain's prestige in Europe on the basis of an alliance with France against Spain.
Cromwell was born at Huntingdon, northwest of Cambridge, son of a small landowner. He entered Parliament in 1629 and became active in the events leading to the Civil War. Failing to secure a constitutional settlement with Charles I 1646–48, he defeated the 1648 Scottish invasion at Preston. A special commission, of which Cromwell was a member, tried the king and condemned him to death, and a republic, known as 'the Commonwealth', was set up.
The Levellers demanded radical reforms, but he executed their leaders in 1649. Cromwell's Irish campaign (1649–50) used terror to crush Irish resistance to Parliamentary rule; although not especially cruel by the standards of the time, its ferocity left a lasting legacy of hatred for British rule among the Catholic Irish. He then defeated the Scots, who had acknowledged Charles II, at Dunbar in 1650 and Worcester in 1651. In 1653, having forcibly expelled the corrupt Rump Parliament he summoned a convention ('Barebones Parliament'), which was soon dissolved as too radical. Under a constitution (the 'Instrument of Government') drawn up by the army leaders, Cromwell became Protector (king in all but name), beginning the period known as the Protectorate (1653–59). The Parliament of 1654–55 was dissolved as uncooperative, and after a period of military dictatorship, his last Parliament offered him the crown; he refused because he feared the army's republicanism.
Cromwell was seen by Royalists of the time as an ambitious and ruthless tyrant – at best a 'brave, bad man', and at worst 'The English Devil'. However, he was admired by the Whig historians of the 19th century, who saw him as the saviour of Parliament and the father of modern democracy; Cromwell's statue stands outside the House of Commons at Westminster. Although some modern
historians have compared Cromwell to Hitler and many – particularly Irish historians – deplore his ruthlessness at the battles of Drogheda and Wexford, others claim that he was merely following the rules of war at the time, and that he was 'a good constable' rather than a dictator.
Genghis Khan (or Chingiz Khan) (c. 1155–1227)
Greek 'World Conqueror'
Mongol conqueror, ruler of all Mongol peoples from 1206. He conquered the empires of northern China 1211–15 and Khwarazm 1219–21, and invaded northern India in 1221, while his lieutenants advanced as far as the Crimea. When he died, his empire ranged from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea; it continued to expand after his death to extend from Hungary to Korea. Genghis Khan controlled probably a larger area than any other individual in history. He was not only a great military leader, but the creator of a stable political system.
The ruins of his capital Karakorum are southwest of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia; his alleged remains are preserved at Ejin Horo, Inner Mongolia.
Temujin, as he was originally called, was the son of a Mongol chieftain. At his birth the Mongols were a scattered nomad people living in family groups, feuding among themselves, and raiding Tatar settlements and the Juchen Jin or Chin Empire which occupied northern China; his own tribe ranged along the Kerulin River in Mongolia. Temujin became chief at the age of 13 after his father, Yesugei, was killed. Demonstrating early political acumen and military flair, he ruthlessly disposed of rivals through the
making and breaking of alliances and gradually welded together a force capable of subjugating the neighbouring Naiman and Kereit tribes. His leadership of the Mongols was confirmed in 1206 when he was acclaimed Chingis (perfect warrior) or Genghis Khan by an assembly of Kuriltai (chieftains). He organized the tribes into semi-feudal clans bound together by unquestioning allegiance to the khan; a sophisticated military organization based on the decimal system; and the Great Yasa or jasagh (1206), an imperial code of laws to which he himself was subject. For his personal protection, Genghis Khan created a 10,000-strong imperial guard.
Masters of cavalry tactics and merciless in war, the Mongols were invincible under Genghis's command;
according to the Yasa the Mongols under their khan were divinely appointed to rule the world and any attempt to resist them was a blasphemy justifying any atrocity. He campaigned against the empire of the Jin dynasty from 1211 to 1214, reaching the walls of Peking (now Beijing) before turning to the west. Between 1219 and 1225 he defeated the Khitans and overcame the Turkish empire of the Khwarizm shah (now encompassing Iran, Iraq, and a portion of Turkestan). His armies penetrated as far west as the Caucasus,
and almost to the Arctic Ocean to the north. At his death, during a campaign against the Tanguts in northern China, he was ruler of the whole of Central Asia.
Haile Selassie, Ras (Prince) Tafari (1892–1975)
called 'the Lion of Judah'
Emperor of Ethiopia 1930–74. He pleaded unsuccessfully to the League of Nations against the Italian conquest of his country 1935–36, and was then deposed and fled to the UK. He went to Egypt in 1940 and raised an army, which he led into Ethiopia in January 1941 alongside British forces, and was restored to the throne on 5 May. He was deposed by a military coup in 1974 and died in captivity the following year. Followers of the Rastafarian religion believe that he was the Messiah, the incarnation of God (Jah).
Born near Harar, in eastern Ethiopia, he was educated by Jesuit missionaries and teachers at the imperial court. At the age of 14 he was appointed governor of Gora Muleta and four years later he took the governorship of Harar, previously held by his father. He was appointed heir to the empress Zauditu in 1916, and became her close adviser, securing Ethiopia's admission into the League of Nations in 1923. After he became emperor in 1930 he worked to centralize power and achieve administrative reform. Following his restoration, he regained Ethiopian sovereignty in 1945 and played a leading role in the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU; later African Union) in 1963. He incorporated Eritrea into Ethiopia in 1962, giving rise to a long-running civil war.
In November 2000, 25 years after his death, he was reburied in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. He had originally been buried near a latrine.
Hannibal (247–182 BC)
called 'the Great'
Carthaginian general from 221 BC, son of Hamilcar Barca. His siege of Saguntum (now Sagunto, near Valencia) precipitated the Second Punic War with Rome. Following a campaign in Italy (after crossing the Alps in 218), Hannibal was the victor at Trasimene in 217 and Cannae in 216, but he failed to take Rome. In 203 he returned to Carthage to meet a Roman invasion but was defeated at Zama in 202 and exiled in 196 at Rome's insistence.
Hannibal's invasion of Italy, his seemingly endless string of devastating victories over the Romans, and his inspiring personality earned him immortality as a military genius and iconic hero. Fulfilling an oath sworn at the age of 9 to always hate the Romans, Hannibal ravaged Italy for 16 years. Though defeating the Roman army in almost a dozen battles, relentless Roman resistance and the problems of supplying his invasion army prevented him from achieving a decisive victory. When the Romans finally fielded a general willing to experiment and innovate in battle as much as he had done, Publius Cornelius Scipio, Hannibal had to come to the defence of his own homeland. He was defeated at Zama in 202. He tried a political career, but was forced out of Carthage by opponents in 195 BC and spent the remainder of his life as a curiosity and mercenary among foreign courts, finally committing suicide.
As the son of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal was brought up in a strongly military family. His father had instilled in him a deep hatred of the Romans, fuelled by a belief that the peace imposed by Rome after the First Punic War had been unjust and that Carthaginian politicians had ended the war when it could still have been won. Hamilcar had brought his family to settle in Spain in 237 BC and died in action there in 229 BC. The prestige of his family and his own personal popularity and military ability lead to Hannibal's election as commander of the Carthaginian army in Spain in 221 BC at the age of 26.
He resolved almost immediately to undertake an invasion of Italy. Knowing that Rome controlled the seas, Hannibal decided to invade by the one route the Romans thought impossible – by land. When he provoked war in 219 BC the plans for invasion were in place, and in 218 he led his army across the Alps into the Po Valley of Italy. He would not leave again until 202 BC. Needing a quick victory to restore his troops' morale and impress the Gallic tribes, he defeated the first Roman army sent against him by ambushing it. The Roman generals were slow to learn that Hannibal, though commanding an organized conventional field army, was not always interested in fighting battles conventionally. He varied his
deployments, used feints, and kept reserves hidden for surprise attacks. He also had an exceptional interest in military intelligence and reconnaissance, acquiring as much knowledge as possible about his enemy. His abilities as a tactician were shown to the full at Cannae in 216 BC, his greatest achievement.
Hannibal's victories persuaded large numbers of Rome's Italian allies to defect. These were crucial as the Carthaginian supply
lines from Carthage were long and unreliable, and the more troops and supplies he could obtain locally the stronger his position. However, despite his series of victories, Rome refused to capitulate, and breaching the walls of the capital were beyond the capability of the Carthaginian army. Hannibal slowly lost the initiative and in 202 BC he was recalled to Carthage to defend his own capital. There he was defeated at Zama by Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Scipio 'Africanus').
Herodotus (lived 5th century BC)
Greek historian, described as the 'Father of History'. He wrote a nine-book account of the Greek-Persian struggle that culminated in the defeat of the Persian invasion attempts in 490 and 480 BC. The work contains lengthy digressions on peoples, places, and earlier history. Herodotus was the first historian to apply critical evaluation to his material while also recording divergent opinions.
He was born in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor and appears to have spent most of his life travelling, eventually settling in Thouria, in southern Italy.
His credibility has long been questioned, but the evidence tends to support him, and judging by what he says he took some care to find out the truth. It should be remembered that he was the first to write what is now regarded as 'history' and that he relied almost exclusively on oral sources.
Perón, Juan Domingo (1895–1974)
Argentine politician, dictator 1946–55 and from 1973 until his death. His populist appeal to the poor was enhanced by the charisma and political work of his second wife Eva ('Evita') Perón. After her death in 1952 his popularity waned and, with increasing economic difficulties and labour unrest, he was deposed in a military coup in 1955. He fled to Paraguay and, in 1960, to Spain. He returned from exile to the presidency in 1973, but died in office in 1974, and was succeeded by his third wife, Isabel Perón.
A professional army officer, Perón took part in the right-wing military coup that toppled Argentina's government in 1943. As secretary of labour and social welfare in the new government, he developed a pro-labour programme that won him popularity with the descamisados ('shirtless ones') – former trade unions that were converted into militant organizations. With their support and the aid of his wife Eva, he was elected president in 1946. Perón instituted social reforms, but encountered economic difficulties, and his increasingly dictatorial methods caused him to lose the support of the Roman Catholic Church. He was
instrumental in initiating long-lasting changes in the national political arena, and today Peronism remains a powerful political force.
Sitting Bull (c. 1834–1890)
Sioux Tatanka Iyotake, 'Sitting Buffalo Bull'
American Indian chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux during the Plains Wars of 1865–90, the struggle between the Plains Indians and the USA. In 1868 Sitting Bull agreed to Sioux resettlement in North and South Dakota, but when gold was discovered in the Black Hills region, miners and the US army invaded Sioux territory. With the treaty broken, Sitting Bull led the Sioux against Lt-Col Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana, in 1876.
Sitting Bull was pursued by the US Army and forced to flee to Canada. He was allowed to return in 1881, and he toured in the Wild West show of 'Buffalo Bill' Cody. He settled in South Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation and was killed by Red Tomahawk, a Sioux police officer, during his arrest on suspicion of involvement in Indian agitations. His death represented one of the final
acts of the defeat of the freedom and traditional way of life of the Plains Indians.
The warrior and mystic
Sitting Bull was a hero to the young warriors of the Hunkpapa Sioux. He earned his reputation as a war chief through his bravery in battle. It was said that on one occasion Sitting Bull walked out into the middle of a battlefield, and sat down while he smoked a pipe, with bullets flying around him. It was this seeming invincibility in battle that drew warriors to him at a time when the Plains Indians were losing their battle for the Plains.
Sitting Bull was not only a chief, he was also regarded as a mystic and seer of visions. Prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he took part in an extended religious ceremony and then had a vision of victory, in which American soldiers fell out of the sky over the valley walls and down into his camp, where they were all killed. The prophecy came true at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, when Custer led his 7th Cavalry headlong into the Sioux camp and was completely wiped out. Sitting Bull also had a vision that he would be killed by one of his own people, and this was also borne out.
Peace and war
During the American Civil War (1861–65) Sitting Bull led attacks on white settlers in Iowa and Minnesota. In 1868 he agreed to the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie with the USA following the victories of the Sioux in Red Cloud's War (1865–68). The treaty gave the Sioux most of South Dakota west of the Mississippi, including the Black Hills region. It also allowed the Sioux to hunt in the Powder River country of Montana, part of their traditional hunting grounds to the west of the Black Hills, although the US government reserved the right to ban them from this land. In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills and prospectors flooded in. The US government tried to buy the area from the Sioux but were refused as the Black Hills were sacred ground. The Sioux were ordered back to their reservations, but Sitting Bull and Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse stayed in the Powder River country. In 1876 the US Army were sent in to remove the Sioux from Montana.
On 25 June 1876 Lt-Col Custer led his 7th Cavalry into the Sioux encampment on the Little Bighorn River in Montana. Scouts had warned him not to attack the huge camp, a major gathering of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, but Custer ignored all advice and his detachment was massacred. However, although Sitting Bull led the Plains Indians to overwhelming victory against Custer's forces, he found it impossible to keep the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho together. Insufficient food supplies and the threat of retaliatory attacks from a vengeful US Army forced the Indian groups to disperse. He led his band of a few hundred Sioux northwards to escape the pursuing forces and went over the border into Canada where he was allowed to stay. However, he always wanted to go back to his spiritual home of the Black Hills, and life in Canada was as hard as on any reservation.
Retirement and death
In 1881 Sitting Bull was allowed to return and went to live on the Oglala Sioux reservation of Standing Rock. Here he lived the life of an elder chief and counselled peace with the USA. In a twist to this more settled life, Sitting Bull went to work for William Cody, 'Buffalo Bill', in his travelling Wild West show for a one-year period in 1886. In this he re-enacted the Battle of the Little Bighorn for the American crowds. His part in the show typified the mixing together of fact and fiction by the creators of the Western story by people such as Buffalo Bill.
However, Sitting Bull's aims for peace were shattered with the arrival of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement on the Oglala reservation in 1890. Sitting Bull did not believe that the Ghost Dance would bring back the old way of life, but allowed his people to participate as he recognized their need for hope. Unfortunately the reservation's Indian agent, James McLaughlin, from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, accused him of stirring up trouble on the reservation by allowing the Ghost Dance to take place. A group of reservation police, Sioux working for the US government, were sent to arrest him, and in the struggle he was shot dead on 15 December 1890.
The death of Sitting Bull, supposedly while resisting arrest, caused the Hunkpapa and other Sioux peoples on the reservations involved in the movement to flee. This led to the tragic events of 29 December 1890 when members of Chief Big Foot's Miniconjou Sioux from the Cheyenne River Reservation and Sitting Bull's remaining Hunkpapa were killed at the Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry.
Trotsky, Leon (1879–1940)
adopted name of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein
Russian revolutionary. He joined the Bolshevik party and took a leading part in the seizure of power in 1917 and in raising the Red Army that fought the Civil War 1918–20. In the struggle for power that followed Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin defeated Trotsky, and this and other differences with the Communist Party led to his exile in 1929. He settled in Mexico, where he was assassinated at Stalin's instigation. Trotsky believed in world revolution and in permanent revolution, and was an uncompromising, if liberal, idealist.
Trotsky was isolated by Stalin, who used the opposition to Trotsky's belief that socialist revolution had to be exported by the USSR to the rest of the world, as well as the personal feud between Trotsky and Grigory Zinovyev, head of the communist International, to oust him. Trotsky was left without support and lost his power in the party. Trotsky had been described as capable but arrogant by Lenin, and it was this perceived arrogance and intellectual capacity that made him unpopular with many of the other Bolshevik leaders after Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin was then able to use Trotsky's ideas for the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union through five-year plans, despite attacking the idea when Trotsky promoted it before his exile from Russia.
Trotsky became a Marxist in the 1890s and was imprisoned and exiled for opposition to the tsarist regime. He lived in Western Europe from 1902 until the 1905 revolution, when he was again imprisoned but escaped to live in exile until 1917, when he returned to Russia and joined the Bolsheviks. Although as a young man Trotsky admired Lenin, when he worked with him organizing the revolution of 1917, he objected to Lenin's dictatorial ways. He was second in command until Lenin's death, and was minister for foreign affairs 1917–18 and minister for war 1918–January 1925. Trotsky's brilliant organizational skills and inspirational leadership of the Red Army gained victory for the Bolsheviks over the White Russian tsarists in the Russian civil war (1918–21), although the Bolsheviks controlled only one third of the country and suffered attack from abroad. In exile in Mexico, he was killed with an ice pick. Official Soviet recognition of responsibility for his assassination through the secret service came in 1989.
Trotsky's later works are critical of the Soviet regime; for example, The Revolution Betrayed (1937). His greatest work is his magisterial History of the Russian Revolution (1932–33).
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