Came up in a history class I'm in, teacher didn't have the answer. If the question is incorrect or I don't understand the topic, feel free to correct me.

Shelby Foote mentions in his Civil War history Robert E. Lee at the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse suddenly decided he would personally lead a brigade in an attack. It happened 3 or 4 times. In all those instances the troops refused to attack until Lee went safety to the rear.

Do historians and biographers of Lee think that Lee wanted to die in battle rather than live and be defeated by Grant?

This particular image/narrative of Ancient Rome always seems to pop in any discussion about the decline and eventual fall of Rome. That is, Rome became a decadent, wanton society where everyone had sex in wild orgies and ate lavish banquets until they puked, and that is why Rome fell, or so the narrative goes.

I'm no expert on Rome, but the argument that Rome fell because of loose sexual morals and "debauchery/decadence/other similar scary word" seems really flimsy and moralistic to me. Where did this view of Rome come from? And is it actually taken seriously by any historians?

I've been reading a book that deals with the Russian Revolution in one section and it mentions these communes frequently, though I'm not sure exactly what they are or how they work, can anyone help explain?

From what I've read, it seems that the Germans understood how desperate their strategic situation was after the invasion of France, and all their actions afterwards were based on the slight chance of immediate surrender from the parties they attacked. Was their a similar appreciation of the predicament which Nazi Germany had placed themselves in in the British and Soviet high commands? If not, then when did they first figure it out?

I once heard someone mention a apparently celtic tradition where the leaders of armies would meet before a battle and name their ancestors to a certain number of generations (great great grandfathers maybe?), in order to avoid killing kinsmen. Did something like this exist in a European society?

Did the U.S.A colonize the Philippines, or did they just occupie it during WWII

If they traveled for example from Rome to England, how long would this take?

I know in the Canterbury Tales one of the stories is about a rather ungodly Friar. I've also seen illuminated manuscripts of monks performing less than holy acts.

I was wondering when exactly the Greek idea that they were "Roman" actually stopped and became totally replaced with a Greek identity. I've read that the Ottoman millet system referred to the Greek millet as the Roman millet, so in some cases they were still being treated as "Romans" up until their independence. In other places it seems that Greek identity was surpassing Byzantine/Roman identity long before the Ottomans conquered Greece. In Niketas Choniates' history of the Byzantine Empire he uses Hellene and Roman almost interchangeably, and that was written well before the rise of the Ottomans.

When exactly did Greeks stop seeing themselves as Romans?

I wonder if it is okay to summon an expert to an overlooked thread that falls within his specialty and might interest him. Also, sorry if I used the META label wrong.

It seems like there is no good reason for anyone to make a great power that can potentially declare war on them in the future

I've seen Robespierre made out to be everything from bloodthirsty tyrant to scapegoated victim. What, exactly, was his position in the Committee of Public Safety and in Revolutionary France in general? How did it change over time? How responsible was he for the Reign of Terror (at least, the parts of it that happened in Paris).

Academic preferably...I've searched on Amazon but all the books on cagots have zero reviews...Saying that, I'd love enjoyable non academic books or even historical fiction on cagots for the fun of it too, I guess. Or even documentaries? I speak okayish French so French language would be okay and I have read L'Histoire des Cagots (Osmin Ricau) which I didn't find too useful...? Sorry for putting my wishlist on you all!

Is this a modern phrase for something that was referred to differently in medieval times, or is it a term that is interpreted differently now because the meanings of the words have changed, or did it mean the same then as now? My understanding is that the word "rape" meant, in medieval times, the taking of a woman without the husband's or father's consent; the woman could consent and it would still be called rape. So, when armies would rape and pillage, was it exactly what it sounds like today?

I know that Nicholas II and Wilhelm II had a really good relationship but they were on opposite sides in WWI. Why?

I've been reading some of Eric Hobsbawm's work on 'social bandits,' but also a lot of criticisms of the idea. It seems like a lot of recent academic work sees the concept of the social bandit as overly romanticized and as one which does not stand up to close empirical analysis. So are there any... bandit scholars here?

What were the actual MO of bandit groups like, in reality and not in folklore? What sort of illegal / semi-legal activity did they engage in? Who were their victims and why? Who harbored them and why? What overtly political agenda, if any, did they espouse? Let's limit the discussion to relatively modern times say 18th-20th century where hard evidence is easier to come by.

Also it seems like bandit groups fluctuated wildly in size. How did part-time bandits live?

Finally a lot of the work I've read largely dismisses the bandit group as a relic of times past, suppressed by the growing power of the state, but aren't, say, drug cartels, a continuation of the tradition? Can Pablo Escobar be seen as a sort of social bandit (in folk memory if not in fact) ?

I'd imagine that translations would change not just because languages change, but also because--as a somewhat political text--certain phrases or passages would change as identity changed. Did translations differ when the people of modern day Italy identified themselves as members of particular city states versus the unification movement vs Italy becoming a modern nation state?

Thanks for any response

What types of dishes constitute the traditional cuisine of the city of Rome? What dishes were consumed by different social classes? How has Roman cuisine affected that of contemporary Italy?