A little while ago a book I was reading had a throwaway reference to the Austrian troops in France going home after Austria sued for peace.

Can anybody tell me more about this please?

How did troops from Austro-Hungary end up on the Western Front?

Were they involved in any notable actions and how were they regarded by their German allies?

Thanks.

So he died in a hunting accident, but who shot him? Was it an accident or an 'accident'? Was there any fall-out from this?

I love looking at early photographs, and I recently realized that I haven't really seen anyone with cystic acne, or acne in general. Does anybody have examples I haven't seen, or an explanation? Was there primitive photo shop going on?

Say, I'm from a small village in rural Bohemia. What are my chances of meeting a black person? A traveller from northern Africa? An Asian traveller perhaps?

Also, did people from different ethnicities live in the Bohemia region? How were they treated? What were their rights? Could they own lands, houses, work...? Were they prosecuted? Did they have the same rights as natives?

Anything you can think of. Thanks.

I love Medieval (especially English, German, French and Viking history) studies, but this is something I have no idea really about - the reasons.

Reading about the Second Punic War it seems that there was absolutely no way in hell for Rome to have won after Cannae. After the disastrous string of defeats at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae, Rome had lost not only most of its army but a good chunk of its entire young male population. The Macedonians were allying with Carthage in the East, Gaul was in revolt, and almost the entire southern Italian peninsula was allied against Rome.

So how did Rome not get sacked and the war ended? Was Hannibal simply not able to besiege Rome, even with all these advantages? Was there some incompetence or reluctance on his or other Carthaginians' part?

When did he become so prominent as a deity and why? It seems weird to me that he is singled out.

So I know that most Patrician families disappear from the records in the East around the 7th-8th century. While their disappearance in the West makes sense due to the collapse, I'm wondering what could have led to the same thing in the East, where Constantinople remained unconquered until the 13th century.

What I mean is, at some point during our evolution was there any moment in time when all of humanity spoke one language? If civilization started in mesopotamia (correct me if I'm wrong), and then spread throughout the globe, when did we go from being one civilization in the middle east with presumably one language, to a species with many languages spread all over the world?

Is it often the case that history is written by the winners, or is it a cliche?

I've been reading a lot of Anthony Trollope lately. His characters often refer to "the ballot" as a new thing. What changed in the 19th century about how members of parliament were selected? (This is my first ever Reddit post, it's not for homework help, I'm just a 59 yr old reader.)

edit- In European history

I don't feel like I ever understood how dowry worked. This is probably due just to lack of knowledge about social dynamics of the times. What seems likely to me, in a civ that doesn't treat women the way we try to now, is that a man who is seeking a wife would be paying her father, not the other way around.

To me a suitor paying a father to take one of (the father's) daughters makes it seem like having a daughter was a burden the father wished to be relieved of, rather than that she was an asset he...eh, produced?...that would be valuable to be traded (for something like a dowry) to someone who needs it (a guy who needs a baby factory or whatever).

I was hoping to learn a bit more so I understand why my thoughts are completely wrong from what actually happened. Thanks

These two cities dominate discussion of ancient Greece [1], but why did these two cities come to be so important? Based on the discussion yesterday, it doesn't seem that Athens was blessed with particular fecundity, though nor was it cursed with a poverty of resources, so what distinguished it from other major Greek polises (polei? poles?). Were the silver mines the big factor? Or was it institutional, something internal to Athens's social and political system that gave it the ability to accumulate, organize, and deploy resources?

And similarly with Sparta: was it a particularly resource-blessed area? Or was it the peculiar institutional structure of Helot-exploitation combined with incredible martial prowess that made it a particularly important player in Greek power-politics.

[1] The dominance that I see is, I think, a function of what materials I'm consuming about ancient Greece. I'm sort of near the end of the academic cycle, mostly reliant on world history or western civ textbooks, often that are themselves a decade or more older. Since I'm interested in this material in the service of my western civilization survey course, I don't really have the time to devote to the recent monographs and journals. It does seem, however, that the textbooks I've been drawing from are not giving the Classical world its historiographical due. Instead, they tend to focus on the old-fashioned "Western Civ" narrative: Athens was super terrific because of philosophy, arts, culture, etc; Sparta was super terrific because of Thermopylae, etc; and isn't it all too bad that Athens and Sparta fought each other in the Peloponnesian War after they kicked so much non-Western ass in the Persian Wars. Unfortunately, these kinds of treatments are actually impeding what I'm much more interested in: a more grounded social and cultural history of ancient Greece.

I'm curious as to what the Native Americans thought about the Inuit peoples but I'm having trouble finding any information. Any help would be appreciated greatly!

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but if it isn't I'm sure someone can direct me.

When was guerrilla warfare first used as a major military tactic? What situations allowed it to be more effective? What strategies were invented to counter it? What sort of weapons would guerrilla soldiers use before the invention of modern weapons?

It's a broad question, but any sort of information would help. Thanks!

Wouldnt the knowledge that Constantine did not actually give the catholic church the power that everyone was told completely invalidate the catholic churches authority? Even for Catholics?

Not sure where I heard this first, but is there any evidence of a young man from Napoleon's army being captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp/gulag only to be forgotten about and freed by Communist revolutionaries nearly a century later?