It's not exactly a tale of triumph in the long term - but it's hard to think of anyone who knowingly took on significantly longer odds than did Shakushain, an octogenarian Ainu leader who led a rebellion against Japan in 1669.

It was a resolutely old-fashioned conflict – one of the key flashpoints was Ainu resentment at Japanese incursions into Hokkaido that left them unable to capture enough bears for a vitally important annual festival – and the revolt pitted around 30,000 tribesmen, armed with stone age military technology, against a Japanese nation of 25 million equipped with modern firearms. Unsurprisingly (and despite winning a bloody initial victory when a co-ordinated series of surprise attacks on the Japanese in Ainu-controlled Hokkaido wiped out all but 20 of the enemy), Shakushain lost. Indeed, the samurai army sent against him suffered a grand total of one man dead in the course of a two-month campaign, and the immediate result was the incorporation of Ainu-land into the Tokugawa state. But the fact that the Japanese were scared enough of the old man's influence to have him treacherously assassinated at the great feast they organised to celebrate peace gave him a moral victory that continues to resonate even today among the indigenous peoples of his native island. Much more here for anyone who finds his story of interest.

The First Servile War is fascinating for a variety of reasons but one of my favorite facets of the conflict is that it's chief instigator was a brazen-tongued Syrian magician turned slave who (allegedly) breathed fire from his mouth during his performances. Taken into slavery on the island of Sicily in the province of Enna, he was forced by his master to entertain guests at symposia. In his routine he engaged in comedic 'patter' between acts of practical magics and one of his lines was swearing revenge on all the guests, except those who tipped him well. He, in chains, would someday be king and they drinking wine would all be slaves or dead. Big laughs. Of course, he eventually led a bloody revolt consisting of tens of thousands of freed slaves who would overrun the cities and disrupt the rule of the elite. Though it lasted a mere three years, he established his larger than life personality as the new slave-king of Enna and indeed did decide the fate of those who jeered at him. An excellent writeup by Mike Dash that goes into deep detail including Eunus' involvement with Seleucidian cults and other fun stuff - King, magician, general...slave

When you look at the Big Three at Weird Tales in the 1920s-1930s - H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith - these are men that faced considerable personal difficulties and yet persevered, at least for a bit, and have acquired some lasting fame. H. P. Lovecraft's father died in a sanitarium when he was 8, the death of his grandfather when he was 14 left the family impoverished, and he never graduated highschool, was denied enlistment in the military during WWI (although there's a story there), and was basically unable to hold a "regular" job his entire adult life...and yet became one of the most esteemed and influential American fiction writers; Clark Ashton Smith was born in poverty and lived there most of his life, taking care of aging parents, also never progressing far in school but by his own dedication translating Baudelaire from French to English and composing his own poetry in Spanish, unwilling to take office work and preferring the hard labor of cutting wood, picking fruit seasonally and, in his older years, working as a gardener, but he too found his place in American literature; Robert E. Howard, their Texan contemporary, did at least graduate high school, but faced a tremendous prejudice from his neighbors, to whom the idea of writing for a living was unfathomable...as he put it in his own words:

When you seem to read hostility towards literature in my remarks, remember this: that I was first to light a torch of literature in this part of the country, however small, frail and easily extinguished that flame may be. I am, in my way, a pioneer. To the best of my knowledge I am the first writer to be produced by a section of country comprising a territory equal to that of the state of Connecticut. In the last few years large numbers of youngsters have taken to writing; some of them show real merit; some have already far surpassed me. But I was the first writer of the postoak country; my work’s lack of merit can not erase that fact. By first, I do not, of course, mean in point of excellence, God knows; I mean in point of time. There are some real writers growing up in this country now, whose work will be read and applauded long after my junk has passed to the oblivion it will earn. But when I set my hand to my chosen profession, there was none other in the land except me. At least if there was, I never heard of him.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, July 1933, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 3.81

The story of the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg is a great "underdog" story among the greater battle.

On July 2, The US Army needed to reinforce the left flank due to Sickles action in advancing his troops to the Emmitsburg Road, famous sites such as the Peach Orchard, Wheatfield, and Devil's Den.

Winfield Scott Hancock, the II Corps Commander who was in command of the middle of the Union line that resembled the fishhook rode towards his left flank where he saw the 1st Minnesota regiment, 262 men, standing alone on a crucial spot on Cemetery Ridge. Hancock exclaimed "My god, is this all the men we have", he then asked what regiment it was. After hearing it was the 1st Minnesota, he ordered Col. William Colvill to "take those colors" of Wilcox's Alabama Brigade, 5x the size of Colvill's 1st Minnesota. The charge by Colvill and the 1st Minnesota lasted roughly 10 minutes, in which of the 262 men that charged, only 47 were left unharmed. 175 were wounded and 40 were killed. The 1st Minnesota suffered an 82% casualty rate of their size at Gettysburg, the largest percentage of any regiment in the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg.

However the time they gave Hancock, roughly 15 minutes of stalling Wilcox's Alabamians, proved enough time to reinforce this spot on Cemetery Ridge for the Union Army on July 2, 1863, a definite must see area when you visit the field, however not relatively known story of the battle when you compare it with the efforts on LRT or Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge.

If you want more information about the 1st Minnesota, along with their efforts throughout the war, without reading the few books about them, I would suggest this or this

Are we allowed to post requests here? By all means, delete this if not -- but if there are any Australian historians with some insights to share on the bushranger Ned Kelly's two years in the wilderness, defying all odds to be captured and brought to justice after the police killings at Stringybark Creek, I'd love to see them shared with the international readership of this sub. For mine, and based on all the historical accounts I've read, it's a fascinating story, and the moral questions posed by the Victorian community's complicity in harbouring him, and Kelly's motives/actions, are still fiercely debated to this day.

Pope Julius II cultivated an image of a "Warrior Pope," but perhaps he would better be called the "Coward Bully Pope." In his History of Venice, Norwich outlines that there was no specific catalyst for the creation of the League of Cambrai, which set the stage for half a decade of warfare involving the Republic of Venice. Sure, Venice had seized the cities of the Romagna in the previous decade, but there had been an understanding between Julius' administration in Rome and the Republic that it was done as a mutually beneficial effort to remove Cesare Borgia from his fiefs.

In fact, the Venetian Senate, at the solicitation of the Papal Ambassador Giangiorgio Trissino, had been in conversation with the Papal Court looking toward the maintenance of nominal Papal possession of the Romagna (including tax collection) while allowing Venice to maintain a military and administrative presence to secure the area south of the River Po. Julius found this arrangement unsatisfactory, and came to an agreement with Emperor Maximilian, who would descend from Tyrol onto Verona (the "Door that keeps the barbarians locked out" according to the contemporary Venetian commentator Andrea Minucci). After Maximillian's inevitable victory against the Venetians, as part of the peace treaty the Romagna would return to the Papacy.

A wrench got thrown into the whole arrangement when the Venetian army under General Bartolomeo d'Alviano routed the Imperial army after a few weeks of campaigning. Detachments occupied Austrian cities in the Friuli, and Maximillian, already morbidly obsessed with his own mortality anyway, was more than happy to settle for a truce.

Julian, baffled, evidently thought Venice's victory was a fluke. In March of 1508 the Venetian Senate moved to appoint a new Bishop of Verona from the shortlist presented by that city's council, as the previous one had dropped dead at the premature age of thirty-six. "Aha!" cried Pope Julian, and used this pretext to convey a meeting in the French town of Cambrai attended by Ferdinand of Aragon (and Naples, as well as Regent of Castille), Alfonso of Este (ruler of Ferrara), Charles of Savoy, Francesco Gonzaga (the ruler of Mantua), Ladislav of Hungary, Louis XII of France, and old Max of Austria.

The following deal was struck: Emperor Max would get the whole of the Veneto and the Friuli; Louis of France, recently confirmed Duke of Lombardy after Ludovico Sforza's removal, would get Venice's Lombard cities of Bergamo and Brescia, nevermind the fact that the Venetians were half the reason he held Milan in the first place; Ferdinand would get a number of free-ports in Puglia guaranteed by Venice, and consequentially be allowed to kick out the Venetian consuls; Ladislav would get Dalmatia; Alfonso would get the Po Delta, which Venice had seized some thirty years prior because it was a haven for piracy; Chucky of Savoy would get the Island of Cyprus, which he technically was the heir to; and Franky Gonzaga would basically get the Minico River floodplain between Verona and Brescia, fundamentally designating him the official Franco-Austrian babysitter (not sure it that move was incredibly clever or just lazy on Julius' part). And of course, Pope Julius would get his beloved cities in the Romagna.

So in the spring of 1509 Pope Julius excommunicated the Republic, and a French army marched out of Milan. Venice was up against France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Mantua, Ferrara, and the Papacy. This did not look good.

The Republic's government banned the dissemination of the excommunication, while a second army under Niccolò Orsini was raised to support d'Alviano. Pleas for help were dispatched to the lesser German rulers, as well as to the newly crowned Henry VIII of England. Even the Grand Prince of Muscovy Vasil III was contacted. None came to the Republic's aid.

The Republic would have to fend for itself. The two Venetian captain-generals, d'Alviano and Orsini, immediately distinguished themselves by being completely at odds in every conceivable way. D'Aviano marched to meet the French head-on as they were en route to Bergamo, however Orsini elected to avoid pitched battle. The result was that the Venetian armies were defeated in detail; d'Alvaino was even captured by the French. The Venetian senate, in a panic, voted to "jettison the cargo to save the ship," and dissolved the Venetian cities of all ties of fealty. The Lombard cities submitted to the King of France, while Orsini, in full retreat until he could regroup the Venetian forces in Treviso, did nothing to stop the cities of Verona, Vicenza, and Padua from receiving imperial emissaries.

By early summer, Orsini withdrew to a perimeter around the old watchtower at Mestre, the Republic's medieval border. It would seem that the Republic's days as a power in Italy were over.

However, by midsummer the tide was already changing. The emissaries sent to the Emperor by council of the city of Treviso were mobbed in the street before they could leave the city; the Trevisans wanted to fight. The joint commanders and sent seven hundred footmen to march down the Terraglio Road in double time; the walls of Treviso were manned, and the citizens began gathering stockpiles for a siege.

The siege never came; Imperial garrisons in the Veneto could barely keep order in the cities they occupied, a much larger force commitment would be needed for the Emperor to take any additional actions against the Venetians. By mid-July, a second Venetian detachment was deployed to Padua; the city's rebellious citizens had kept the gates open (Norwich narrates that this was done by way of an Oxcart crash) such that a small company of Venetian Knights headed by the Proveditore Generale Andrea Gritti could enter the city. Noe flanked by mounted men at arms, the mob expelled the Imperial Landsknechts. Gritti, at the time little over fifty years of age, as Provveditore was something of a cross between a procurement officer and a political officer; he had spent the better part of the past few years overseeing the reconstructions of fortifications in the Friuli. However, he had elected to personally oversee the dangerous sally to retake Padua; a testament to the fact that some elements of the Venetian ruling class still had some fight left in them.

Emperor Maximillian was pushed to action; Padua would have been an invaluable addition to the Austrian demesne, and he was set on taking it back. An Enormous imperial army set forth from the Brenner to take the city. After linking with French and Spanish regiments, by September of 1509 the city was encircled.

However, Orsini had set up headquarters in Padua with the bulk of his forces (perhaps on Gritti's behest). The Imperial artillery breached the walls, but the ferocious defense mounted by the Venetian army supported by the citizenry meant that by the end of September, the Imperial forces began withdrawing.

Orsini, unexpectedly reversing his position on the usefulness of taking the initiative, pursued the withdrawing Imperial forces. He found the Vicenza in total rebellion against the Imperial occupation and entered the city with minimum fuss; however in spite of the bulk of the Imperial forces withdrawing to the Tyrol, the detachment left in Verona kept the city subdued and supply lines into Italy open. A brief siege was mounted; Orsini even managed to beat back the Papal relief expedition, but upon spotting French reinforcements on the horizon withdrew back to Padua. The Venetian fleet, which had kept the cities of Dalmatia well-supplied in spite of Hungarian incursions, attempted to cut off the French and Austrians from their Italian allies by establishing dominance on the River Po; however the fleet proved no match for Ferrarese artillery. A small victory came when a detachment of Venetian soldiers seized the stronghold at Este, not only securing the northern bank of the lower river Adige, but also humiliating the ruling house of Ferrara: Este is their ancestral home. But overall, in the winter of 1509, the conflict was at a stalemate.

All the while, the Venetian diplomatic machine had been meticulously working behind the scenes; Pope Julius was told of the massive size of the Austrian and French armies; the Venetian ambassador in Rome whispered that the cities of Bologna and Perugia were in endemic revolt, and what if the Emperor chose to seize those too? Perhaps the Austrians would come to an agreement with the Aragonese; perhaps they were discussing Julian's downfall right now. Wouldn't it make sense for them to seize Emilia and Umbria, now that they already held half the Veneto?

Pope Julius, dastardly coward that he was, saw that the Venetians had a point. However, he drove a hard bargain: not only would Venice have to abandon all claims in the Romagna, the Republic would allow the Papacy to appoint bishops in its cities. The terms were humiliating, but by February of 1510 the Senate accepted.

Listening to the Revolutions podcast, episodes 5.*, Bolívar.

José Antonio Páez, the Battle of Las Queseras del Medio, about 2 April 1819. Páez's took 150 rebel cavalry over the river to attack Morillo's 6,000 men. Morillo took 1,200 cavalry and came after Páez. Morillo maneuvered his cavalry wings to flank Páez on both sides. Páez sent a squadron forward to punch the Spanish in the middle. The Spanish wings folded inward to trap the little bait. The bait turned at just the last moment and rode for the narrowing gap, barely making it. The Spanish wings smashed into a confused mass in the middle. Páez attacked the Spanish scrum, massacring some and sending the rest flying.

Result: Páez attacked at 8-1 odds against him. 400 Spanish casualties at the cost of two (2) men killed, six (6) men wounded.