title: Coco Gauff

text: Cori Dionne "Coco" Gauff (born March 13, 2004) is an American professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of world No. 4 in singles, reached on October 24, 2022, and world No. 1 in doubles, achieved on August 15, 2022. Gauff won her first WTA Tour singles title at the 2019 Linz Open aged 15, making her the youngest singles title-holder on the Tour since 2004. She has won two WTA Tour singles titles and six doubles titles – three partnering with Caty McNally and three with Jessica Pegula. Gauff rose to prominence with a win over Venus Williams in the opening round of 2019 Wimbledon.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Born to parents with NCAA Division I collegiate backgrounds in basketball and track and field, Gauff experimented with a variety of sports as a child. She chose tennis, inspired by the Williams sisters and preferring an individual sport.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff had success as a junior, earning a sponsorship to train at Patrick Mouratoglou's academy in France. She began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit at 13 and finished runner-up at the junior 2017 US Open in just her fourth ITF event, the youngest finalist in the tournament's history. She became the No. 1 junior in the world after winning the junior 2018 French Open singles title over McNally. She also won a junior Grand Slam doubles title at the 2018 US Open, this time partnering McNally.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff made her WTA Tour debut in March 2019 at the Miami Open and won her opening match. She received a wildcard into the qualifying draw at the 2019 Wimbledon Championships, where she became the youngest player in the tournament's history to qualify for the main draw. There she reached the fourth round, and each of her matches was the most-watched of the day through the first week of television coverage in the United States. Later that summer, still aged 15, she reached the third round of the US Open. In 2021, she reached her first major final in women's doubles at the US Open, and reached her first major singles final at the 2022 French Open.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff was born on March 13, 2004, to Candi () and Corey Gauff, both of whom are from Delray Beach, Florida. She has two younger brothers, Codey who is four years younger and Cameron who is nine years younger. Her father played college basketball at Georgia State University and later worked as a health care executive, while her mother was a track and field athlete at Florida State University and worked as an educator. Gauff grew up in Atlanta, and became interested in tennis at the age of four after watching Serena Williams win the 2009 Australian Open on television. Her parents encouraged her to try many sports, including basketball and track. She began playing tennis at age six and decided she wanted to pursue it as a career because it was an individual sport and because of her early success in winning the "Little Mo" eight-and-under nationals at the age of eight. Gauff recalled, "I wasn't much of a team person. I loved tennis. I was so-so about it in the beginning because when I was younger I didn't want to practice at all. I just wanted to play with my friends. When I turned eight, that was when I played 'Little Mo' and after that I decided to do that for the rest of my life."


title: Coco Gauff

text: When Gauff was seven, her family moved back to Delray Beach so that she would have better training opportunities. They initially lived with her mother's parents before getting their own house. While in Florida, she worked with Gerard Loglo at the New Generation Tennis Academy starting from age eight. Gauff's parents gave up their careers to focus on training their daughter. Her father later became her primary coach while her mother oversaw her homeschooling. Her father had limited experience playing tennis growing up. At age ten, Gauff began to train at the Mouratoglou Academy in France run by Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams's longtime coach. Mouratoglou commented, "I'll always remember the first time I saw Coco. She came over to the Mouratoglou Academy in 2014 to try out and she impressed me with her determination, athleticism and fighting spirit... When she looks at you and tells you she will be number one, you can only believe it." He helped sponsor Gauff through his Champ'Seed foundation, which he created to provide funding for talented juniors who did not have the financial resources to afford high-level training.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff continued to have success – winning the USTA Clay Court National 12-and-under title at age 10 years and 3 months – to become the youngest champion in the tournament's history.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff is a former world No. 1 junior. She entered the prestigious Les Petits As 14-and-under tournament in 2016 at age 12 and made it to the semifinals. Gauff began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit at the age of 13, skipping directly to the highest-level Grade A and Grade 1 tournaments. She finished runner-up to Jaimee Fourlis in her third career event, the Grade 1 Prince George's County Junior Tennis Championships in Maryland. At her next event, Gauff made her junior Grand Slam debut at the 2017 US Open and finished runner-up to Amanda Anisimova. She did not drop a set before the final in either tournament. Gauff became the youngest girls' singles finalist in US Open history.


title: Coco Gauff

text: After beginning 2018 with a semifinal at the Grade 1 Traralgon Junior International in Australia, Gauff lost her opening round match at the Australian Open. She did not enter another tournament in singles until the French, where she won her first career junior Grand Slam tournament title. She did not drop a set until the final, where she came from behind to defeat McNally in three sets. With the title, Gauff became the fifth youngest girls' singles champion in French Open history. A month later following another final win against McNally at the Grade 1 Junior International Roehampton, she became the No. 1 junior in the world.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff reached the quarterfinals in singles at the final two Grand Slam tournaments of the year. She fared better in doubles at both tournaments, reaching the semifinals at Wimbledon with partner María Lourdes Carlé and winning her first junior Grand Slam doubles title at the US Open with McNally. Gauff and McNally defeated compatriots Hailey Baptiste and Dalayna Hewitt in the final, all in straight sets. In September, Gauff represented the United States at the Junior Fed Cup with Alexa Noel and Connie Ma. The team reached the final against Ukraine. After Gauff won her singles rubber and Noel lost hers, Gauff and Noel won the Junior Fed Cup by defeating Lyubov Kostenko and Dasha Lopatetskaya 11–9 in a match tiebreak. Gauff finished the year with another Grade A title in singles at the Orange Bowl. She ended the season ranked world No. 2 behind Clara Burel.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff made her debut on the ITF Women's Circuit in May 2018 as a qualifier in the $25K event at Osprey, where she won her first professional match. She received a wild card into qualifying at the US Open, but lost her opening match 5 months after turning 14 years old. In her first 2019 tournament, she finished runner-up in doubles at the $100K Midland Tennis Classic alongside Ann Li. Two weeks later, Gauff played her next event at the $25K level in Surprise and reached the finals in both singles and doubles. Although she finished runner-up in singles, she won her maiden WTA title in doubles alongside Paige Hourigan against compatriots Usue Maitane Arconada and Emina Bektas. In March, Gauff made her WTA main draw debut as a wild card at the Miami Open and recorded her first WTA match win against Caty McNally. She lost her next match to Daria Kasatkina.


title: Coco Gauff

text: After losing in the second round of qualifying at the French Open, Gauff qualified for the main draw at Wimbledon, after entering the qualifying draw using a wildcard. She upset world No. 92, Aliona Bolsova, the top seed in the qualifying draw, in the first round and defeated No. 128, Greet Minnen, in the third and final qualifying round while only losing two games. Gauff also became the youngest player to reach the main draw at Wimbledon by qualifying in the Open Era at the age of 15 years and 3 months. In her main draw debut, she upset five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in straight sets. She continued her run into the fourth round with victories over Magdaléna Rybáriková and No. 60, Polona Hercog, saving two match points against Hercog. The hype surrounding her first round match win led to her third rounder moving to Centre Court. She was eliminated with a fourth round loss to eventual champion Simona Halep. All four of her matches were most-watched matches on ESPN on their respective days during the first week of coverage. With this performance, Gauff rose to world No. 141.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff played in one US Open Series tournament at the Washington Open, where she qualified for the main draw but lost in the first round. She also entered the doubles event with McNally and defeated Fanny Stollár and Maria Sanchez in the final for their first career WTA title in their first joint WTA. At the US Open, Gauff wildcarded into the singles and doubles main draws. She continued her Grand Slam success in singles with two three-set wins over Anastasia Potapova and Tímea Babos, both on Louis Armstrong. She was defeated in the third round by world No. 1 and defending champion, Naomi Osaka. In doubles, Gauff and McNally also won two matches, including an upset over ninth seeds Nicole Melichar and Kveta Peschke. They lost in the third round to eventual runners-up Ashleigh Barty and Victoria Azarenka. Gauff entered two more tournaments following the US Open. Although she lost in qualifying at the Linz Open, she entered the main draw as a lucky loser and won the title, notably upsetting top seed Kiki Bertens in the quarterfinals for her first top ten victory. She defeated Jeļena Ostapenko in the final to become the youngest WTA player to win a singles title since 2004. With this title as well as a semifinal in doubles with McNally, she made her top 100 debuts in both the WTA singles and doubles rankings. Gauff and McNally ended their year with a second WTA doubles title at the Luxembourg Open over Kaitlyn Christian and Alexa Guarachi.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Starting the year ranked No. 67, Gauff started 2020 playing at the Auckland Open in New Zealand. In singles she defeated Viktoria Kuzmova before losing to Laura Siegemund in the second round. Playing doubles with McNally, Gauff reached the semifinals, losing to eventual champions Taylor Townsend and Asia Muhammad.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At the Australian Open, Gauff defeated Venus Williams in straight sets in the first round and Sorana Cirstea in the second round, making it three straight Grand Slams where she reached the third round. She defeated defending champion Osaka in the third, becoming the youngest player to defeat a top-5 player since Jennifer Capriati beat Gabriela Sabatini at the 1991 US Open. In the fourth round, she lost to the eventual champion, Sofia Kenin, in three sets. This was her second of three majors she had played where she made it to the second week. In doubles, Gauff and McNally recorded their best result in a Grand Slam championship to date, reaching the quarterfinals before falling to second seeds and eventual champions, Kristina Mladenovic and Tímea Babos, in two sets.


title: Coco Gauff

text: On the resumption of the WTA Tour following the COVID-19 pause, Gauff beat two top-50 players at the Lexington Challenger before losing in straight sets to world No. 49, Jennifer Brady. At the Western and Southern Open, played in New York, Gauff lost in the first round to world No. 21, Maria Sakkari. At the US Open, Gauff was defeated in the first round by Anastasija Sevastova.


title: Coco Gauff

text: As the tour moved onto clay Gauff, ranked 53, beat world No. 34, Ons Jabeur, in the first round of the Italian Open before losing to two-time Grand Slam champion Garbiñe Muguruza. At the French Open, Gauff defeated the ninth seed and world No. 13, Johanna Konta, in the first round, but went on to lose to eventual quarterfinalist Martina Trevisan in a second-round match in which Gauff hit 19 double faults. It was the first time Gauff lost to a player outside the top 100 since she had lost to Tamara Korpatsch in the second round in qualifying at the Linz Open.


title: Coco Gauff

text: The final stages of the 2020 season saw Gauff take a wildcard into the qualifying draw at the Ostrava Open. Gauff qualified for the main draw and was defeated by world No. 12, Aryna Sabalenka, in the second round.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Starting the year ranked No. 48, Gauff entered the Abu Dhabi Open, a leadup event to the Australian Open. In the first round, she beat Norwegian Ulrikke Eikeri before falling in the next round to Maria Sakkari. At the Gippsland Trophy, another Australian Open leadup, she beat Jil Teichmann in the round of 64, before falling in the next round to Katie Boulter. In doubles, she and McNally entered the Yarra Valley Classic where they reached the quarterfinals. At the Australian Open, in singles, Gauff again beat Teichmann in the first round, but fell in the round of 64 to the fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina, in straight sets. In doubles, she and McNally fared better, falling to Demi Schuurs and Nicole Melichar in the quarterfinals.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At Adelaide, she was the top seed in qualifying, beating Francesca Jones and the eighth seeded Kaja Juvan to enter the main draw. In a run to the semifinals, all of her matches ran three sets, beating qualifier Jasmine Paolini, sixth seeded Petra Martić, and compatriot Shelby Rogers before falling to second seeded Belinda Bencic. In doubles, she partnered with Canadian Sharon Fichman, and they bowed out in the first round to Duan Yingying and Zheng Saisai. This run brought her to a then-career-high of No. 38 in singles.


title: Coco Gauff

text: She entered the Dubai Championships, where she beat Ekaterina Alexandrova, 12th seed Markéta Vondroušová, and qualifier Tereza Martincová before falling to Jil Teichmann, in straight sets in the quarterfinals. This brought her to a career high of No. 35 in singles.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In the Miami Open, she played her first WTA 1000 event while seeded (as the 31st). After receiving a bye, she lost in a tight three-setter to Sevastova in the round of 64. In the doubles event, she and partner McNally won easily in the first round before beating the second seeded (and then top Porsche Race ranked) team of Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková in a tight three-setter to play Gabriela Dabrowski and Giuliana Olmos in the quarterfinals where they lost.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In May, Gauff reached the first semifinal at a WTA 1000 in her career at the Italian Open due to then-No. 1, Barty, retiring with a right arm injury in their quarterfinal match. As a result, she entered top 30 for the first time. She then lost to the eventual champion, Iga Świątek. At the same tournament, she reached quarterfinals in doubles with Veronika Kudermetova but lost again to eventual champions, alternates pair Dabrowski/Olmos.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In Italy a week later, Gauff won her second singles and third doubles (with McNally) titles at the Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma. She became the youngest player to win both the singles and doubles titles at an event since Maria Sharapova won both titles at the 2004 Birmingham Classic. Gauff thus rose to new career-high rankings of world No. 25 in singles and No. 41 in doubles. Gauff became the youngest American to make her top 25 debut in nearly 23 years (Serena Williams, June 8, 1998).


title: Coco Gauff

text: Seeded 24th at the French Open (her first time being seeded at a Grand Slam), she beat Aleksandra Krunić and Wang Qiang in straight sets, received a walkover when leading one set to love against 13th seed and Australian Open runner-up Jennifer Brady, and beat 25th seed Ons Jabeur in just 53 minutes to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal. As a result, she became the youngest female player (17 years, 3 months) to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal since Nicole Vaidisova at the 2006 French Open, the youngest American to reach a quarterfinal at Roland Garros since Jennifer Capriati in 1993 and the youngest American to reach the quarterfinals of any Grand Slam since Venus Williams reached the 1997 US Open final. Subsequently, Gauff was eliminated after losing in straight sets to the eventual champion, unseeded Barbora Krejčíková. As a result, she reached a new career-high of No. 23 on 14 June 2021.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At Wimbledon, Gauff reached the fourth round for a second consecutive time defeating Elena Vesnina in straight sets in 70 minutes, and Kaja Juvan in straight sets in the third round. Gauff lost her next match to Angelique Kerber in straight sets, eliminating her from the tournament. She also reached the third round in doubles with Caty McNally and as a result entered the top 40 in the doubles rankings at No. 38 on July 12, 2021.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At 17 years old, she was selected for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo becoming the second youngest American player after Jennifer Capriati competed at 16 and the youngest Olympic tennis player since Mario Ančić in 2000. However, she tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to withdraw.


title: Coco Gauff

text: She reached the quarterfinals at the Canada Masters in the National Bank Open edition in Montreal after a retirement and a walkover from Anastasia Potapova and Johanna Konta, respectively.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At the Cincinnati Open, Gauff reached the second round. She won her first match against qualifier Hsieh Su-wei in straight sets, but lost to second seed and world No. 2, Naomi Osaka.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At the US Open, she beat Magda Linette in the first round before falling to Sloane Stephens in the next. In women's doubles, Gauff and her doubles partner McNally stormed into their first Grand Slam semifinal without dropping a set and defeated the top seeds Hsieh and Mertens in straight sets in the quarterfinals. They progressed to the final when their semifinal opponents, Luisa Stefani and Gabriela Dabrowski, retired after Stefani sustained an injury during the first set tiebreak. In the final, they lost to Sam Stosur and Zhang Shuai.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Seeded 18th at the Australian Open, Gauff lost in the first round against Wang Qiang in straight sets.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In February, she reached the quarterfinals at the Qatar Open by defeating Shelby Rogers, Caroline Garcia and third seed Paula Badosa. In the quarterfinals, she lost to sixth seed Maria Sakkari. In doubles, she paired with Jessica Pegula to win her first WTA 1000 doubles title, beating third seeded pair of Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens in the final. With the win, she climbed to a career high No. 10 in the doubles rankings on 28 February 2022.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff reached her first Grand Slam singles final at the French Open, defeating Rebecca Marino, Alison Van Uytvanck, Kaia Kanepi, 31st seed Elise Mertens, Sloane Stephens, and Martina Trevisan before losing to Iga Świątek in straight sets. She reached the final in doubles with Jessica Pegula where they were defeated by Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic. As a result, she secured a new career-high of world No. 13 in singles and the top 5 in doubles.


title: Coco Gauff

text: After winning her first two matches at Wimbledon Championships as the 11th seed against unseeded Romanians Elena-Gabriela Ruse and Mihaela Buzărnescu, Gauff lost in the third round to 20th Amanda Anisimova in three sets. As a result, she reached a new career-high ranking of world No. 11, on 11 July 2022.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Seeded sixth at the Silicon Valley Classic, she reached the quarterfinals defeating Anhelina Kalinina in the first round, and next Naomi Osaka who saved seven match points. In her quarterfinal match, she struggled with her serve and lost in straight sets to Paula Badosa.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At the Canadian Open, she became the youngest player to reach back-to-back quarterfinals in Canada since Jennifer Capriati in 1990 and 1991. She beat sixth seed Aryna Sabalenka, a day after ousting Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, winning both matches in a third-set tiebreak. She lost to eventual champion Simona Halep, in straight sets. Seeded third in doubles at the same tournament she reached the semifinals with Pegula defeating fifth seeds Desirae Krawczyk and Demi Schuurs. Next they defeated Madison Keys/Sania Mirza in the semifinals and Nicole Melichar/Ellen Perez in the final to win their second WTA 1000 title together. As a result, Gauff became the No. 1 doubles player in the world.


title: Coco Gauff

text: At the US Open, she reached the quarterfinals of this major for the first time with wins over 20th seed Madison Keys and Zhang Shuai becoming the youngest American woman to achieve this feat since 2009, when Melanie Oudin was 17. As a result she guaranteed herself a top 10 debut in the singles rankings at world No. 8 after the tournament. Subsequently, Gauff was defeated by Caroline Garcia, in straight sets. Seeded second in doubles, Gauff and partner Pegula were defeated in the first round by Leylah Fernandez and Daria Saville.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In October, Gauff became the youngest player in singles since Maria Sharapova in 2005 to qualify for the year-end WTA Finals championships. She and partner Jessica Pegula also both qualified for the doubles' championships. Gauff and Pegula are the first Americans since Serena and Venus Williams in 2009 to qualify for both the singles and doubles year-end championships.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff uses a Head Boom MP 2022 with 16 main and 19 cross strings. She wears New Balance clothing and tennis shoes.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In October 2018, Gauff signed her first multi-year sponsorship contract, with New Balance. At the 2021 French Open, Gauff wore a New Balance outfit of bold mismatched color splotches to contrast with the all white ensemble of doubles partner Venus Williams.


title: Coco Gauff

text: In March 2019, she announced a multi-year sponsorship agreement with Italian food company Barilla, which also sponsors Roger Federer.


title: Coco Gauff

text: Gauff's tennis idols are Serena and Venus Williams. "Serena Williams has always been my idol...and Venus," she has said. "They are the reason why I wanted to pick up a tennis racquet." Gauff first met Serena when she won the Little Mo national tournament at the age of eight, and later met her again to film a commercial for Delta Air Lines and at the Mouratoglou Academy. After defeating Venus at Wimbledon in 2019, Gauff commended Venus when they shook hands at the net. "I was just telling her thank you for everything she's done for the sport," she said. "She's been an inspiration for many people. I was just really telling her thank you."


title: Coco Gauff

text: In a 2020 post on "Behind the Racquet," created by professional tennis player Noah Rubin, Gauff stated she had experienced depression and stress related to her sporting career. Her parents said that she was not diagnosed with depression and had not sought medical attention relating to her psychological wellbeing.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French Revolutionary Wars () were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies. They are divided in two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–97) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and the Rhineland in Europe and abandoned Louisiana in North America. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: As early as 1791, the other monarchies of Europe looked with outrage at the revolution and its upheavals; and they considered whether they should intervene, either in support of King Louis XVI, to prevent the spread of revolution, or to take advantage of the chaos in France. Austria stationed significant troops on its French border and together with Prussia, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which threatened severe consequences should anything happen to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette. After Austria refused to recall its troops from the French border and to back down on the perceived threat of using force, France declared war on Austria and Prussia in the spring of 1792; both countries responded with a coordinated invasion that was eventually turned back at the Battle of Valmy in September. This victory emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy. A series of victories by the new French armies abruptly ended with defeat at Neerwinden in the spring of 1793. The French suffered additional defeats in the remainder of the year and these difficult times allowed the Jacobins to rise to power and impose the Reign of Terror to unify the nation.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In 1794, the situation improved dramatically for the French as huge victories at Fleurus against the Austrians and at the Black Mountain against the Spanish signaled the start of a new stage in the wars. By 1795, the French had captured the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. The French also put Spain and Prussia out of the war with the Peace of Basel. A hitherto unknown general named Napoleon Bonaparte began his first campaign in Italy in April 1796. In less than a year, French armies under Napoleon decimated the Habsburg forces and evicted them from the Italian peninsula, winning almost every battle and capturing 150,000 prisoners. With French forces marching toward Vienna, the Austrians sued for peace and agreed to the Treaty of Campo Formio, ending the First Coalition against the Republic.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The War of the Second Coalition began in 1798 with the French invasion of Egypt, headed by Napoleon. The Allies took the opportunity presented by the French effort in the Middle East to regain territories lost from the First Coalition. The war began well for the Allies in Europe, where they gradually pushed the French out of Italy and invaded Switzerland – racking up victories at Magnano, Cassano and Novi along the way. However, their efforts largely unraveled with the French victory at Zurich in September 1799, which caused Russia to drop out of the war. Meanwhile, Napoleon's forces annihilated a series of Egyptian and Ottoman armies at the battles of the Pyramids, Mount Tabor and Abukir. These victories in Egypt further enhanced Napoleon's popularity back in France, and he returned in triumph in the autumn of 1799, although the Egyptian Campaign ultimately ended in failure. Furthermore, the Royal Navy had won the Battle of the Nile in 1798, further strengthening British control of the Mediterranean and weakening the French Navy.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Napoleon's arrival from Egypt led to the fall of the Directory in the Coup of 18 Brumaire, with Napoleon installing himself as Consul. Napoleon then reorganized the French army and launched a new assault against the Austrians in Italy during the spring of 1800. This brought a decisive French victory at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800, after which the Austrians withdrew from the peninsula once again. Another crushing French triumph at Hohenlinden in Bavaria forced the Austrians to seek peace for a second time, leading to the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. With Austria and Russia out of the war, Britain found itself increasingly isolated and agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleon's government in 1802, concluding the Revolutionary Wars. However, the lingering tensions proved too difficult to contain, and the Napoleonic Wars began over a year later with the formation of the Third Coalition, continuing the series of Coalition Wars.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The key figure in initial foreign reaction to the revolution was Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, brother of Louis XVI's Queen Marie Antoinette. Leopold had initially looked on the Revolution with equanimity, but became more and more disturbed as the Revolution became more radical, although he still hoped to avoid war. On 27 August 1791, Leopold and King Frederick William II of Prussia, in consultation with emigrant French nobles, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which declared the interest of the monarchs of Europe in the well-being of Louis and his family, and threatened vague but severe consequences if anything should befall them. Although Leopold saw the Pillnitz Declaration as a non-committal gesture to placate the sentiments of French monarchists and nobles, it was seen in France as a serious threat and was denounced by the revolutionary leaders.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: France eventually issued an ultimatum demanding that the Habsburg monarchy of Austria under Leopold II, who was also Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, renounce any hostile alliances and withdraw its troops from the French border. The reply was evasive, and the French Assembly voted for war on 20 April 1792 against Francis II (who succeeded Leopold II), after a long list of grievances presented by foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule as they had earlier in 1790. However, the revolution had thoroughly disorganized the army, and the forces raised were insufficient for the invasion. Following the declaration of war, French soldiers deserted "en masse" and in one case murdered their general, Théobald Dillon.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganized its armies, a mostly Prussian Allied army under Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Koblenz on the Rhine. The duke then issued a proclamation called the Brunswick Manifesto (July 1792), written by the French king's cousin, Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, the leader of an émigré corps within the Allied army, which declared the Allies' intent to restore the king to his full powers and to treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law. This, however, had the effect of strengthening the resolve of the revolutionary army and government to oppose them by any means necessary.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On 10 August, a crowd stormed the Tuileries Palace, seizing the king and his family. On 19 August 1792, the invasion by Brunswick's army commenced, with Brunswick's army easily taking the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun. The invasion continued, but at Valmy on 20 September, the invaders came to a stalemate against Dumouriez and Kellermann in which the highly professional French artillery distinguished itself. Although the battle was a tactical draw, it gave a great boost to French morale. Further, the Prussians, finding that the campaign had been longer and more costly than predicted, decided that the cost and risk of continued fighting was too great and, with winter approaching, they decided to retreat from France to preserve their army. The next day, the monarchy was formally abolished as the First Republic was declared (21 September 1792).


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Meanwhile, the French had been successful on several other fronts, occupying Savoy and Nice, which were parts of the Kingdom of Sardinia, while General Custine invaded Germany, occupying several German towns along the Rhine and reaching as far as Frankfurt. Dumouriez went on the offensive in the Austrian Netherlands once again, winning a great victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November and occupying the entire country by the beginning of winter.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Spain and Portugal entered the anti-French coalition in January 1793. Britain began military preparations in late 1792 and declared that war was inevitable unless France gave up its conquests, notwithstanding French assurances they would not attack Holland or annex the Low Countries. Britain expelled the French ambassador following the execution of Louis XVI and on 1 February, France responded by declaring war on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: France drafted hundreds of thousands of men, beginning a policy of using mass conscription to deploy more of its manpower than the autocratic states could manage to do (first stage, with a decree of 24 February 1793 ordering the draft of 300,000 men, followed by the general mobilization of all the young men able to be drafted, through the famous decree of 23 August 1793). Nonetheless, the Coalition allies launched a determined drive to invade France during the Flanders Campaign.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: France suffered severe reverses at first. They were driven out of the Austrian Netherlands, and serious revolts flared in the west and south of France. One of these, at Toulon, was the first serious taste of action for an unknown young artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte. He contributed to the siege of the city and its harbour by planning an effective assault with well-placed artillery batteries raining projectiles down on rebel positions. This performance helped make his reputation as a capable tactician, and it fueled his meteoric rise to military and political power. Once the city was occupied, he participated in pacifying the rebelling citizens of Toulon with the same artillery that he first used to conquer the city.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: By the end of the year, large new armies had turned back foreign invaders, and the Reign of Terror, a fierce policy of repression, had suppressed internal revolts. The French military was in the ascendant. Lazare Carnot, a scientist and prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety, organized the fourteen armies of the Republic, and was then nicknamed the Organizer of the Victory.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The year 1794 brought increased success to the French armies. On the Alpine frontier, there was little change, with the French invasion of Piedmont failing. On the Spanish border, the French under General Dugommier rallied from their defensive positions at Bayonne and Perpignan, driving the Spanish out of Roussillon and invading Catalonia. Dugommier was killed in the Battle of the Black Mountain in November.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On the northern front in the Flanders Campaign, the Austrians and French both prepared offensives in Belgium, with the Austrians besieging Landrecies and advancing towards Mons and Maubeuge. The French prepared an offensive on multiple fronts, with two armies in Flanders under Pichegru and Moreau, and Jourdan attacking from the German border. The French withstood several damaging but inconclusive actions before regaining the initiative at the battles of Tourcoing and Fleurus in June. The French armies drove the Austrians, British, and Dutch beyond the Rhine, occupying Belgium, the Rhineland, and the south of the Netherlands.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On the middle Rhine front in July, General Michaud's Army of the Rhine attempted two offensives in July in the Vosges, the second of which was successful but not followed up, allowing for a Prussian counter-attack in September. Otherwise this sector of the front was largely quiet over the course of the year.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: At sea, the French Atlantic Fleet succeeded in holding off a British attempt to interdict a vital cereal convoy from the United States on the Glorious First of June, though at the cost of one quarter of its strength. In the Caribbean, the British fleet landed in Martinique in February, taking the whole island by 24 March and holding it until the Treaty of Amiens, and in Guadeloupe in April, where they captured the island briefly but were driven out by Victor Hugues later in the year. In the Mediterranean, following the British evacuation of Toulon, the Corsican leader Pasquale Paoli agreed with admiral Samuel Hood to place Corsica under British protection in return for assistance capturing French garrisons at Saint-Florent, Bastia, and Calvi, creating the short-lived Anglo-Corsican Kingdom.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: By the end of the year French armies had won victories on all fronts, and as the year closed they began advancing into the Netherlands.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The year opened with French forces in the process of attacking the Dutch Republic in the middle of winter. The Dutch people rallied to the French call and started the Batavian Revolution. City after city was occupied by the French. The Dutch fleet was captured, and the stadtholder William V fled to be replaced by a popular Batavian Republic, a sister republic which supported the revolutionary cause and signed a treaty with the French, ceding the territories of North Brabant and Maastricht to France on 16 May.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: With the Netherlands falling, Prussia also decided to leave the coalition, signing the Peace of Basel on 6 April, ceding the west bank of the Rhine to France. This freed Prussia to finish the occupation of Poland.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French army in Spain advanced in Catalonia while taking Bilbao and Vitoria and marching toward Castile. By 10 July, Spain also decided to make peace, recognizing the revolutionary government and ceding the territory of Santo Domingo, but returning to the pre-war borders in Europe. This left the armies on the Pyrenees free to march east and reinforce the armies on the Alps, and the combined army overran Piedmont.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Meanwhile, Britain's attempt to reinforce the rebels in the Vendée by landing troops at Quiberon failed, and a conspiracy to overthrow the republican government from within ended when Napoleon Bonaparte's garrison used cannon to fire grapeshot into the attacking mob (which led to the establishment of the Directory).


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On the Rhine frontier, General Pichegru, negotiating with the exiled Royalists, betrayed his army and forced the evacuation of Mannheim and the failure of the siege of Mainz by Jourdan. This was a moderate setback to the position of the French.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In northern Italy, victory at the Battle of Loano in November gave France access to the Italian peninsula.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French prepared a great advance on three fronts, with Jourdan and Moreau on the Rhine, and Bonaparte in Italy. The three armies were to link up in Tyrol and march on Vienna. Jourdan and Moreau advanced rapidly into Germany, and Moreau had reached Bavaria and the edge of Tyrol by September, but Jourdan was defeated by Archduke Charles, and both armies were forced to retreat back across the Rhine.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Napoleon, on the other hand, was completely successful in a daring invasion of Italy. He left Paris on 11 March for Nice to take over the weak and poorly supplied Army of Italy, arriving on 26 March. The army was already being reorganised and supplied when he arrived, and he found that the situation was rapidly improving. He was soon able to carry out the plan for the invasion of Italy that he had been advocating for years, which provided for an advance over the Apennines near Altare to attack the enemy position of Ceva.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The Montenotte Campaign opened after Johann Beaulieu's Austrian forces attacked the extreme French eastern flank near Genoa on 10 April. Bonaparte countered by attacking and crushing the isolated right wing of the allied armies at the Battle of Montenotte on 12 April. The next day he defeated an Austro-Sardinian force at the Battle of Millesimo. He then won a victory at the Second Battle of Dego, driving the Austrians northeast, away from their Piedmontese allies. Satisfied that the Austrians were temporarily inert, Bonaparte harried Michelangelo Colli's Piedmontese at Ceva and San Michele Mondovi before whipping them at the Battle of Mondovì. A week later, on 28 April, the Piedmontese signed an armistice at Cherasco, withdrawing from the hostilities. On 18 May they signed a peace treaty at Paris, ceding Savoy and Nice and allowing the French bases to be used against Austria.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: After a short pause, Napoleon carried out a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, and crossed the Po at Piacenza, nearly cutting the Austrian line of retreat. The Austrians escaped after the Battle of Fombio, but had their rear-guard mauled at Lodi on 10 May, after which the French took Milan. Bonaparte then advanced eastwards again, drove off the Austrians in the Battle of Borghetto and in June began the Siege of Mantua. Mantua was the strongest Austrian base in Italy. Meanwhile, the Austrians retreated north into the foothills of the Tyrol.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: During July and August, Austria sent a fresh army into Italy under Dagobert Wurmser. Wurmser attacked toward Mantua along the east side of Lake Garda, sending Peter Quasdanovich down the west side in an effort to envelop Bonaparte. Bonaparte exploited the Austrian mistake of dividing their forces to defeat them in detail, but in so doing, he abandoned the siege of Mantua, which held out for another six months (Carl von Clauswitz mentioned in On War that the siege might have been able to be kept up if Bonaparte had circumvallated the city). Quasdanovich was overcome at Lonato on 3 August and Wurmser at Castiglione on 5 August. Wurmser retreated to the Tyrol, and Bonaparte resumed the siege.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In September, Bonaparte marched north against Trento in Tyrol, but Wurmser had already marched toward Mantua by the Brenta valley, leaving Paul Davidovich's force to hold off the French. Bonaparte overran the holding force at the Battle of Rovereto. Then he followed Wurmser down the Brenta valley, to fall upon and defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Bassano on 8 September. Wurmser elected to march for Mantua with a large portion of his surviving troops. The Austrians evaded Bonaparte's attempts to intercept them but were driven into the city after a pitched battle on 15 September. This left nearly 30,000 Austrians trapped in the fortress. This number rapidly diminished due to disease, combat losses, and hunger.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The Austrians sent yet another army under József Alvinczi against Bonaparte in November. Again the Austrians divided their effort, sending Davidovich's corps from the north while Alvinczi's main body attacked from the east. At first they proved victorious over the French at Bassano, Calliano, and Caldiero. But Bonaparte ultimately defeated Alvinczi in the Battle of Arcole southeast of Verona. The French then turned on Davidovich in great strength and chased him into the Tyrol. Wurmser's only sortie was late and ineffectual.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The rebellion in the Vendée was also finally crushed in 1796 by Hoche, but Hoche's attempt to land a large invasion force in Ireland was unsuccessful.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On 14 February, British admiral Jervis met and defeated a Spanish fleet off Portugal at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. This prevented the Spanish fleet from rendezvousing with the French, removing a threat of invasion to Britain. However, the British fleet was weakened over the rest of the year by the Spithead and Nore mutinies, which kept many ships in port through the summer.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On 22 February French invasion force consisting of 1,400 troops from the "La Legion Noire" (The Black Legion) under the command of Irish American Colonel William Tate landed near Fishguard (Wales). They were met by a quickly assembled group of around 500 British reservists, militia and sailors under the command of John Campbell, 1st Baron Cawdor. After brief clashes with the local civilian population and Lord Cawdor's forces on 23 February, Tate was forced into an unconditional surrender by 24 February.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In Italy, Napoleon's armies were laying siege to Mantua at the beginning of the year, and a second attempt by Austrians under Joseph Alvinczy to raise the siege was driven off at the Battle of Rivoli, where the French scored a decisive victory. Finally, on 2 February, Wurmser surrendered Mantua and 18,000 troops. The Papal forces sued for peace, which was granted at Tolentino on 19 February. Napoleon was now free to attack the Austrian heartland. He advanced directly toward Austria over the Julian Alps, sending Barthélemy Joubert to invade the Tyrol.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Archduke Charles of Austria hurried from the German front to defend Austria, but he was defeated at the Tagliamento on 16 March, and Napoleon proceeded into Austria, occupying Klagenfurt and preparing for a rendezvous with Joubert in front of Vienna. In Germany, the armies of Hoche and Moreau crossed the Rhine again in April after the previous year's failure. The victories of Napoleon had frightened the Austrians into making peace, and they concluded the Peace of Leoben in April, ending hostilities. However, his absence from Italy had allowed the outbreak of the revolt known as the Veronese Easters on 17 April, which was put down eight days later.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Although Britain remained at war with France, this effectively ended the First Coalition. Austria later signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, ceding the Austrian Netherlands to France and recognizing the French border at the Rhine. Austria and France also partitioned Venice between them.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: With only Britain left to fight and not enough of a navy to fight a direct war, Napoleon conceived of an invasion of Egypt in 1798, which satisfied his personal desire for glory and the Directory's desire to have him far from Paris. The military objective of the expedition is not entirely clear, but may have been to threaten British dominance in India.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Napoleon sailed from Toulon to Alexandria, taking Malta on the way, and landing in June. Marching to Cairo, he won a great victory at the Battle of the Pyramids; however, his fleet was sunk by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, stranding him in Egypt. Napoleon spent the remainder of the year consolidating his position in Egypt.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French government also took advantage of internal strife in Switzerland to invade, establishing the Helvetic Republic and annexing Geneva. French troops also deposed Pope Pius VI, establishing a republic in Rome.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: An expeditionary force was sent to County Mayo, in Ireland, when it was part of the Republic of Connacht, to assist in the rebellion against Britain in the summer of 1798. It had some success against British forces, most notably at Castlebar, but was ultimately routed while trying to reach Dublin. French ships sent to assist them were captured by the Royal Navy off County Donegal.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French were also under pressure in the Southern Netherlands and Luxembourg where the local people revolted against conscription and anti-religious violence (Peasants' War). The French had taken this territory in 1794, but it was officially theirs in 1797 due to a treaty with Austria. The French forces easily handled the Peasants' rebellion in the Southern Netherlands, and were able to put down the revolting forces in under 2 months.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French in 1798 fought an undeclared war at sea against the United States, that was known variously as the "Quasi-War", the "Half War" and the "Pirate Wars". It was resolved peaceably with the Convention of 1800.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Britain and Austria organized a new coalition against France in 1798, including for the first time the Russian Empire, although no action occurred until 1799 except against the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In Egypt, Napoleon had consolidated his control of the country for the time being. Soon after the beginning of the year, he mounted an invasion of Syria, capturing El Arish and Jaffa. On 17 March, he laid siege to Acre, and defeated an Ottoman effort to relieve the city at the Battle of Mount Tabor on 17 April. However, his repeated assaults on Acre were driven back by Ottoman and British forces under the command of Jezzar Pasha and Sir Sidney Smith. By May, with plague rampant in his army and no sign of success against the city, Napoleon was forced to retreat into Egypt. In July, Turkey, with the help of the British navy, mounted an invasion by sea from Rhodes. Napoleon attacked the Turkish beachheads and scored a crushing victory at the Battle of Abukir, capturing and killing the entire enemy army. In August, Napoleon decided to return to Europe, hearing of the political and military crisis in France. Leaving his army behind with Kléber in command, he sailed through the British blockade to return to Paris and resolved to take control of the government there in a coup.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In Europe, the French Army of Observation, organized with 30,000 men in four divisions, crossed the Rhine at Kehl and Basel in March 1799. The following day, it was renamed the Army of the Danube. Under command of Jourdan, the army advanced in four columns through the Black Forest. First Division, the right wing, assembled at Hüningen, crossed at Basel and advanced eastward along the north shore of the Rhine toward Lake Constance. Masséna, commanding the Army of Switzerland, sent a Demi-brigade to secure the Swiss town of Schaffhausen, on the north shore of the Rhine, which guaranteed communications between the two forces. The Advanced Guard crossed at Kehl, and Vandamme led it north-east through the mountains via Freudenstadt. This column eventually became the left flank. It was followed across the Rhine, also at Kehl, by the II. Division. The Third Division and the Reserve also crossed at Kehl, and then divided into two columns, III. Division traveling through the Black Forest via Oberkirch, and the Reserve, with most of the artillery and horse, by the valley at Freiburg im Breisgau, where they would find more forage, and then over the mountains past the Titisee to Löffingen and Hüfingen.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The major part of the imperial army, under command of the Archduke Charles, had wintered immediately east of the Lech, which Jourdan knew, because he had sent agents into Germany with instructions to identify the location and strength of his enemy. This was less than distant; any passage over the Lech was facilitated by available bridges, both of permanent construction and temporary pontoons and a traverse through friendly territory.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In March 1799, the Army of the Danube engaged in two major battles, both in the southwestern German theater. At the intensely fought Battle of Ostrach, 21–2 March 1799, the first battle of the War of the Second Coalition, Austrian forces, under the command of Archduke Charles, defeated Jourdan's Army of the Danube. The French suffered significant losses and were forced to retreat from the region, taking up new positions to the west at Meßkirch (Messkirch, Mößkirch), and then at Stockach and Engen. At the second battle, in Stockach, on 27 March 1799, the Austrian army achieved a decisive victory over the French forces, and again pushed the French army west. Jourdan instructed his generals to take up positions in the Black Forest, and he himself established a base at Hornberg. From there, General Jourdan relegated command of the army to his chief of staff, Jean Augustin Ernouf, and traveled to Paris to ask for more and better troops and, ultimately, to request a medical leave.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The Army was reorganized, and a portion placed under the command of André Masséna and merged with the Army of Helvetia. Following the reorganization and change in command, the Army participated in several skirmishes and actions on the eastern part of the Swiss Plateau, including the Battle of Winterthur. After this action, three forces of the imperial army united north of Zürich, completing a partial encirclement of Massena's combined Army of the Danube and Army of Switzerland. A few days later, at the First Battle of Zurich, Massena was forced west, across the Limmat. In late summer, 1799, Charles was ordered to support imperial activities in the middle Rhineland; he withdrew north across the Rhine, and marched toward Mannheim, leaving Zürich and northern Switzerland in the hands of the inexperienced Alexander Korsakov and 25,000 Russian troops. Although the highly capable Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze remained in support, his 15,000 men were not able to counter Korsakov's poor defensive arrangements. Three weeks later, at the Second Battle of Zurich, the Russian force was annihilated, and Hotze was killed south of Zürich. This left Massena in control of northern Switzerland, and forced Suvorov into an arduous three-week march into the Vorarlberg, where his troops arrived, starving and exhausted, in mid-October.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Napoleon himself invaded Syria from Egypt, but after a failed siege of Acre retreated to Egypt, repelling a British-Turkish invasion. Alerted to the political and military crisis in France, he returned, leaving his army behind, and used his popularity and army support to mount a coup that made him First Consul, the head of the French government.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In Italy, the Austrians under General Melas attacked first, and by the third week in April had advanced to the Var, with Massena and half his army in Genoa besieged by land, by the Austrians and under tight blockade by the Royal Navy. In response Berthier moved – not to the threatened frontier, but to Geneva – and Massena was instructed to hold Genoa until 4 June. The Army of the Reserve was joined by Napoleon, and in mid-May set out to cross the Alps to attack the Austrian rear. The bulk of the army crossed by the Great St Bernard Pass, still under snow, and by 24 May 40,000 troops were in the valley of the Po. Artillery was man-hauled over with great effort and ingenuity; however an Austrian-held fort on the Italian side (although bypassed by infantry and cavalry) prevented most of the artillery reaching the plains of Northern Italy until the start of June.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Once over the Alps, Napoleon did not proceed directly to the relief of Genoa. Instead, he advanced on Milan, to improve his lines of communication (via the Simplon and St Gotthard passes) and to threaten Melas's lines of communication with Mantua and Vienna, in the belief that this would cause Melas to raise the siege of Genoa. He entered Milan on 2 June and by crossing to the South bank of the Po completely cut Melas's communications. Taking up a strong defensive position at Stradella, he confidently awaited an attempt by the Austrian Army to fight its way out.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: However, Melas had not raised the siege of Genoa, and on 4 June, Masséna had duly capitulated. Napoleon then faced the possibility that, thanks to the British command of the Mediterranean, far from falling back, the Austrians could instead take Genoa as their new base and be supplied by sea. His defensive posture would not prevent this; he had to find and attack the Austrians before they could regroup. He therefore advanced from Stradella towards Alessandria, where Melas was, apparently doing nothing. Convinced that Melas was about to retreat, Napoleon sent strong detachments to block Melas's routes northwards to the Po, and southwards to Genoa. At this point, Melas attacked, and for all the brilliance of the previous campaign, Napoleon found himself at a significant disadvantage in the consequent Battle of Marengo (14 June). Napoleon and the French came under huge pressure in the early hours of the battle. Melas believed he had already won and turned over delivery of the final blow to a subordinate. Suddenly, the prompt return of a detached French force under Desaix and a vigorous French counter-attack converted the battle into a decisive French victory. The Austrians lost half of their army, but Desaix was one of the French victims.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Melas promptly entered into negotiations, which led to the Austrians evacuating Northern Italy west of the Ticino and suspending military operations in Italy. Napoleon returned to Paris after the victory, leaving Brune to consolidate in Italy and begin a march toward Austria.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In the German theater, the armies of France and Austria faced each other across the Rhine at the beginning of 1800. Feldzeugmeister Pál Kray led approximately 120,000 troops. In addition to his Austrian regulars, his force included 12,000 men from the Electorate of Bavaria, 6,000 troops from the Duchy of Württemberg, 5,000 soldiers of low quality from the Archbishopric of Mainz, and 7,000 militiamen from the County of Tyrol. Of these, 25,000 men were deployed east of Lake Constance (Bodensee) to protect the Vorarlberg. Kray posted his main body of 95,000 soldiers in the L-shaped angle where the Rhine changes direction from a westward flow along the northern border of Switzerland to a northward flow along the eastern border of France. Unwisely, Kray set up his main magazine at Stockach, near the northwestern end of Lake Constance, only a day's march from French-held Switzerland.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: General of Division Jean Victor Marie Moreau commanded a modestly-equipped army of 137,000 French troops. Of these, 108,000 troops were available for field operations while the other 29,000 watched the Swiss border and held the Rhine fortresses. First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte offered a plan of operations based on outflanking the Austrians by a push from Switzerland, but Moreau declined to follow it. Rather, Moreau planned to cross the Rhine near Basel where the river swung to the north. A French column would distract Kray from Moreau's true intentions by crossing the Rhine from the west. Bonaparte wanted Claude Lecourbe's corps to be detached to Italy after the initial battles, but Moreau had other plans. Through a series of complicated maneuvers in which he flanked, double flanked, and reflanked Kray's army, Moreau's army lay on the eastern slope of the Black Forest, while portions of Kray's army was still guarded the passes on the other side. On 3 May 1800 Moreau and Kray fought battles at Engen and Stockach. The fighting near Engen resulted in a stalemate with heavy losses on both sides. However, while the two main armies were engaged at Engen, Claude Lecourbe captured Stockach from its Austrian defenders under Joseph, Prince of Lorraine-Vaudemont. The loss of this main supply base at Stockach compelled Kray to order a retreat to Meßkirch, where they enjoyed a more favourable defensive position. However, it also meant that any retreat by Kray into Austria via Switzerland and the Vorarlberg was cut off.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: On 4 and 5 May, the French launched repeated and fruitless assaults on the Meßkirch. At nearby Krumbach, where the Austrians also had the superiority of position and force, the 1st Demi-Brigade took the village and the heights around it, which gave them a commanding aspect over Meßkirch. Subsequently, Kray withdrew his forces to Sigmaringen, followed closely by the French. Fighting at nearby Biberach an der Ris ensued on 9 May; action principally consisted of the 25,000-man-strong French "Center", commanded by Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr. After being flanked by General Moreau, who approached Ulm from the east and overwhelmed his outposts at Battle of Höchstädt, Kray retreated to Munich. Again, on 10 May, the Austrians withdrew with heavy losses, this time to Ulm.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: A several month armistice followed, during which Kray was replaced by the Archduke John, with the Austrian army retiring behind the river Inn. Austrian reluctance to accept negotiated terms caused the French to end the armistice in mid-November, effective in two weeks. When the armistice ended, John advanced over the Inn towards Munich. His army was defeated in small engagements at the battles of Ampfing and Neuburg an der Donau, and decisively in the forests before the city at Hohenlinden on 3 December. Moreau began a march on Vienna, and the Austrians soon sued for peace, ending the war on the continent.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: By 9 February, the Austrians had signed the Treaty of Lunéville, ending the war on the continent. The war against the United Kingdom continued (with Neapolitan harbours closed to her by the Treaty of Florence, signed on 28 March), and the Turks invaded Egypt in March, losing to Kléber at Heliopolis. The exhausted French force in Egypt, however, surrendered in August.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The naval war also continued, with the United Kingdom maintaining a blockade of France by sea. Non-combatants Russia, Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden joined to protect neutral shipping from British attacks, but were unsuccessful. British Admiral Horatio Nelson defied orders and attacked the Danish fleet in harbour at the Battle of Copenhagen, destroying much of it. An armistice prevented him from continuing into the Baltic Sea to attack the Russian fleet at Reval (Tallinn). Meanwhile, off Gibraltar, the outnumbered French squadron under Linois rebuffed a first British attack under Saumarez in the First Battle of Algeciras, capturing a line-of-battle ship. In the Second Battle of Algeciras, four days later, the British captured a French ship and sank two others, killing around 2000 French for the loss of 12 British.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In 1802, the British and French signed the Treaty of Amiens, ending the war. The peace held for less than a year but still constituted the longest period of peace between the two countries during the period 1793–1815. The treaty is generally considered to be the most appropriate point to mark the transition between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, although Napoleon was not crowned emperor until 1804.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: The French Revolution transformed nearly all aspects of French and European life. The powerful sociopolitical forces unleashed by a people seeking liberté, égalité, and fraternité made certain that even warfare was not spared this upheaval. 18th-century armies – with their rigid protocols, static operational strategy, unenthusiastic soldiers, and aristocratic officer classes – underwent massive remodeling as the French monarchy and nobility gave way to liberal assemblies obsessed with external threats. The fundamental shifts in warfare that occurred during the period have prompted scholars to identify the era as the beginning of "modern war".


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In 1791 the Legislative Assembly passed the "Drill-Book" legislation, implementing a series of infantry doctrines created by French theorists because of their defeat by the Prussians in the Seven Years' War. The new developments hoped to exploit the intrinsic bravery of the French soldier, made even more powerful by the explosive nationalist forces of the Revolution. The changes also placed a faith on the ordinary soldier that would be completely unacceptable in earlier times; French troops were expected to harass the enemy and remain loyal enough to not desert, a benefit other Ancien Régime armies did not have.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Following the declaration of war in 1792, an imposing array of enemies converging on French borders prompted the government in Paris to adopt radical measures. 23 August 1793, would become a historic day in military history; on that date the National Convention called a levée en masse, or mass conscription, for the first time in human history. By summer of the following year, conscription made some 500,000 men available for service and the French began to deal blows to their European enemies.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: Armies during the Revolution became noticeably larger than their Holy Roman counterparts, and combined with the new enthusiasm of the troops, the tactical and strategic opportunities became profound. By 1797 the French had defeated the First Coalition, occupied the Low Countries, the west bank of the Rhine, and Northern Italy, objectives which had defied the Valois and Bourbon dynasties for centuries. Unsatisfied with the results, many European powers formed a Second Coalition, but by 1801 this too had been decisively beaten. Another key aspect of French success was the changes wrought in the officer classes. Traditionally, European armies left major command positions to those who could be trusted, namely, the aristocracy. The hectic nature of the French Revolution, however, tore apart France's old army, meaning new men were required to become officers and commanders.


title: French Revolutionary Wars

text: In addition to opening a flood of tactical and strategic opportunities, the Revolutionary Wars also laid the foundation for modern military theory. Later authors that wrote about "nations in arms" drew inspiration from the French Revolution, in which dire circumstances seemingly mobilized the entire French nation for war and incorporated nationalism into the fabric of military history. Although the reality of war in the France of 1795 would be different from that in the France of 1915, conceptions and mentalities of war evolved significantly. Clausewitz correctly analyzed the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras to give posterity a thorough and complete theory of war that emphasized struggles between nations occurring everywhere, from the battlefield to the legislative assemblies, and to the very way that people think. War now emerged as a vast panorama of physical and psychological forces heading for victory or defeat.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Paul Bevan Lieberstein (born February 22, 1967) is an American actor, screenwriter, television director and television producer. A Primetime Emmy Award winner, he is best known as writer, as executive producer, and as supporting cast member Toby Flenderson on the NBC sitcom "The Office". He served as the series' showrunner from seasons five to eight.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Judith and Stanley Lieberstein. He is Jewish.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: He attended Conard High School where he wrote his first sitcom with some friends and played the vibraphone in band. He then attended Hamilton College, where he joined Chi Psi and graduated in 1989 with a major in economics (he "wanted to be a financier of some kind"). Lieberstein wrote references to the fact that "Office" character Andy Bernard was a Chi Psi from Cornell into the storyline of several episodes of the show.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: After college, Lieberstein moved to New York City, where his first job was as an auditor at Peat Marwick International, a job that lasted six months. He followed that with part-time work at his father's law firm, "working as little as [he] could so [he] could write".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein and a writing partner got an agent with William Morris and moved to Los Angeles, living just off Hollywood Boulevard. He landed his first writing job on "Clarissa Explains It All", but was fired after one season when he and his writing partner split up.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein then had short stints in a few other writer rooms, including "Weird Science" and "The Naked Truth", before his brother-in-law Greg Daniels asked him to join the "King of the Hill" staff.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein served as a co-executive producer for 25 episodes in Season 6 of "The Drew Carey Show", and also served as a supervising producer for two episodes in that season: the season opening "Drew Pops Something on Kate" (which he also wrote, along with "Drew and the Motorcycle" and "Drew and the Activist, Part I"), and "Buzzie Wuzzie Liked His Beer".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein also worked as producer on the third and final season of the television drama series "The Newsroom". In November 2017, it was announced that he would replace Kevin Etten as showrunner of "Ghosted". In 2018, Lieberstein wrote and directed his first feature film, "Song of Back and Neck", which made it into Tribeca Film Festival. On April 3, 2020, he announced plans for a sitcom about office life while isolated due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the project eventually became the television film "Out of Office".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: On June 12, 2008, "Variety" magazine reported that Lieberstein would become one of the executive producers of "The Office". He worked in the writer's room from the start of the US adaptation and was asked by Greg Daniels to act as well, as Daniels wanted some of the writers to know what it was like on the other side of the camera. Lieberstein has said he "attended 'The Office' acting school" and was often thrown by Steve Carell's improv during scenes.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: On March 22, 2012, it was announced that Lieberstein would step down from his showrunner role to focus on a planned spin-off series featuring Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, tentatively called "The Farm". Lieberstein was set to be the showrunner, but in October 2012, it was announced that NBC was not accepting the series.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: In a SuicideGirls interview, Lieberstein said that "as an actor, which is just a very small percentage of me, I don’t feel Toby while I’m writing. It’s the hardest of the characters to access". In an interview for his alma mater, Hamilton College, he commented on the bigger picture:


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein's sister Susanne was the president of programming for YouTube Premium (previously holding this position at MTV), and is married to screenwriter and producer Greg Daniels. His brother, Warren Lieberstein, was married to his co-star Angela Kinsey. His cousin, Paul Faust, inspired and portrayed "Cool Guy Paul", as seen in "The Office" episode "Chair Model".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein was married for a second time, to Janine Serafin Poreba, on July 19, 2008, at the New York City restaurant Battery Gardens. They reside in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein has served on the advisory board of directors for Young Storytellers, an arts education nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles.


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein's first Emmy Award was as a producer, sharing a 1999 Emmy for "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or Less)" for his work in "King of the Hill".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein's work on "The Office" has resulted in numerous awards. In June 2007, Lieberstein shared in a Daytime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Broadband Program – Comedy", for his work on "The Office: Accountants" webisodes. As an actor, Lieberstein shared in a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series"; as a writer, he shared a 2006 Writers Guild of America Award for the series, in addition to a WGA Award nomination for "The Coup". As co-executive producer, he shared a 2006 Emmy Award for "Outstanding Comedy Series".


title: Paul Lieberstein

text: Lieberstein received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Hamilton College on May 22, 2011.


title: History of writing

text: The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundation of literacy and literacy learning, with all the social and psychological consequences associated with literacy activities.


title: History of writing

text: In the history of how writing systems have evolved in human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by "proto-writing", systems of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier). "True writing", in which the content of a linguistic utterance is encoded so that another reader can reconstruct, with a fair degree of accuracy, the exact utterance written down, is a later development. It is distinguished from proto-writing, which typically avoids encoding grammatical words and affixes, making it more difficult or even impossible to reconstruct the exact meaning intended by the writer unless a great deal of context is already known in advance.


title: History of writing

text: The earliest uses of writing in ancient Sumeria were to document agricultural produce and create contracts, but soon writing became used for purposes of finances, religion, government, and law. These uses supported the spread of these social activities, their associated knowledge, and the extension of centralized power. Writing then became the basis of knowledge institutions such as libraries, schools, universities and scientific and disciplinary research. These uses were accompanied by the proliferation of genres, which typically initially contained markers or reminders of the social situations and uses, but the social meaning and implications of genres often became more implicit as the social functions of these genres became more recognizable in themselves, as in the examples of money, currency, financial instruments, and now digital currency.


title: History of writing

text: Symbolic communication systems are distinguished from writing systems. With writing systems, one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, symbolic systems, such as information signs, painting, maps, and mathematics, often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of humanity (see Origin of language). However the development of writing systems, and their partial replacement of traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, and slow. Once established, writing systems on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts and often preserve features and expressions that no longer exist in the spoken language.


title: History of writing

text: There are considered to be three writing criteria for all writing systems. Firstly, writing must be complete: it must have a purpose or some sort of meaning to it, and a point must be made or communicated in the text. Secondly, all writing systems must have some sort of symbols which can be made on some sort of surface, whether physical or digital. Lastly, the symbols used in the writing system must mimic spoken word/speech, in order for communication to be possible.


title: History of writing

text: The greatest benefit of writing is that it provides the tool by which society can record information consistently and in greater detail, something that could not be achieved as well previously by spoken word. Writing allows societies to transmit information and to share and preserve knowledge.


title: History of writing

text: The origins of writing appear during the start of the pottery-phase of the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Actual writing is first recorded in Uruk, at the end of the 4th millennium BCE, and soon after in various parts of the Near East.


title: History of writing

text: Scholars make a reasonable distinction between prehistory and history of early writing but have disagreed concerning when prehistory becomes history and when proto-writing became "true writing". The definition is largely subjective. Writing, in its most general terms, is a method of recording information and is composed of graphemes, which may, in turn, be composed of glyphs.


title: History of writing

text: The emergence of writing in a given area is usually followed by several centuries of fragmentary inscriptions. Historians mark the "historicity" of a culture by the presence of coherent texts in the culture's writing system(s).


title: History of writing

text: Writing was long thought to have been invented in a single civilization, a theory named "monogenesis". Scholars believed that all writing originated in ancient Sumer (in Mesopotamia) and spread over the world from there via a process of cultural diffusion. According to this theory, the concept of representing language by written marks, though not necessarily the specifics of how such a system worked, was passed on by traders or merchants traveling between geographical regions.


title: History of writing

text: However, the discovery of the scripts of ancient Mesoamerica, far away from Middle Eastern sources, proved that writing had been invented more than once. Scholars now recognize that writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland areas of Mesoamerica (by 500 BCE).


title: History of writing

text: Regarding ancient Egypt, several scholars have argued that "the earliest solid evidence of Egyptian writing differs in structure and style from the Mesopotamian and must therefore have developed independently. The possibility of 'stimulus diffusion' from Mesopotamia remains, but the influence cannot have gone beyond the transmission of an idea."


title: History of writing

text: Regarding China, it is believed that ancient Chinese characters are an independent invention because there is no evidence of contact between ancient China and the literate civilizations of the Near East, and because of the distinct differences between the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to logography and phonetic representation.


title: History of writing

text: Debate surrounds the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation, the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, and the Vinča symbols dated around 5500 BCE. All are undeciphered, and so it is unknown if they represent authentic writing, proto-writing, or something else.


title: History of writing

text: The Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3100 BCE, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE. The Proto-Elamite script is also dated to the same approximate period.


title: History of writing

text: A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general series of developmental stages:


title: History of writing

text: In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BCE).


title: History of writing

text: The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of symbol systems that cannot be classified as proper writing, but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as "proto-writing". They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no natural language.


title: History of writing

text: These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BCE, and include:


title: History of writing

text: Even after the Neolithic, several cultures went through an intermediate stage of proto-writing before they used proper writing. The quipu of the Incas (15th century CE), sometimes called "talking knots", may have been such a system. Another example is the pictographs invented by Uyaquk before the development of the Yugtun syllabary for the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language in about 1900.


title: History of writing

text: Writing emerged in many different cultures in the Bronze Age. Examples are the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Indus script, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica. The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts around 1600 BCE. The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had independent origins.


title: History of writing

text: It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing was developed around 2000 BCE for Semitic workers in the Sinai by giving mostly Egyptian hieratic glyphs Semitic values (see History of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet). The Geʽez writing system of Ethiopia is considered Semitic. It is likely to be of semi-independent origin, having roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system. Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design. In Italy, about 500 years passed from the early Old Italic alphabet to Plautus (), and in the case of the Germanic peoples, the corresponding time span is again similar, from the first Elder Futhark inscriptions to early texts like the "Abrogans" ().


title: History of writing

text: The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BCE, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing by using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. By the 29th century BCE, writing, at first only for logograms, using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform) developed to include phonetic elements, gradually replacing round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing by around 2700–2500 BCE. About 2600 BCE, cuneiform began to represent syllables of the Sumerian language. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. From the 26th century BCE, this script was adapted to the Akkadian language, and from there to others, such as Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.


title: History of writing

text: Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train as scribes, in the service of temple, royal (pharaonic), and military authorities.


title: History of writing

text: Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably [were], invented under the influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". Despite the importance of early Egypt–Mesopotamia relations, given the lack of direct evidence "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Instead, it is pointed out and held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt".


title: History of writing

text: Since the 1990s, the discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, may challenge the classical notion according to which the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one, although Egyptian writing does make a sudden appearance at that time, while on the contrary Mesopotamia has an evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to circa 8000 BCE. These glyphs, found in tomb U-J at Abydos are written on ivory and are likely labels for other goods found in the grave.


title: History of writing

text: Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar argued that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and in "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality" although he acknowledged the geographical location of Egypt made it a receptacle for many influences.


title: History of writing

text: The undeciphered Proto-Elamite script emerges from as early as 3100 BCE. It is believed to have evolved into Linear Elamite by the later 3rd millennium and then replaced by Elamite Cuneiform adopted from Akkadian.


title: History of writing

text: Markings and symbols found at various sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation have been labelled as the Indus script citing the possibility that they were used for transcribing the Harappan language. Whether the script, which was in use from about 3500–1900 BCE, constitutes a Bronze Age writing script (logographic-syllabic) or proto-writing symbols is debated as it has not yet been deciphered. It is analyzed to have been written from right-to-left or in boustrophedon.


title: History of writing

text: The first "abjads", mapping single symbols to single phonemes but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol, emerged around 1800 BCE in Ancient Egypt, as a representation of language developed by Semitic workers in Egypt, but by then alphabetic principles had a slight possibility of being inculcated into Egyptian hieroglyphs for upwards of a millennium. These early abjads remained of marginal importance for several centuries, and it is only towards the end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script splits into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet () Byblos syllabary and the South Arabian alphabet (). The Proto-Canaanite was probably somehow influenced by the undeciphered Byblos syllabary and, in turn, inspired the Ugaritic alphabet ().


title: History of writing

text: Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous hieroglyphic script native to western Anatolia, used to record the Hieroglyphic Luwian language. It first appeared on Luwian royal seals from the 14th century BCE.


title: History of writing

text: The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze from the late Shang dynasty. The earliest of these is dated to around 1200 BCE.


title: History of writing

text: There have recently been discoveries of tortoise-shell carvings dating back to , like Jiahu Script, Banpo Script, but whether or not the carvings are complex enough to qualify as writing is under debate. At Damaidi in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to have been discovered, featuring 8,453 individual characters, such as the sun, moon, stars, gods, and scenes of hunting or grazing. These pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese. If it is deemed to be a written language, writing in China will predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, long acknowledged as the first appearance of writing, by some 2,000 years; however it is more likely that the inscriptions are rather a form of proto-writing, similar to the contemporary European Vinca script.


title: History of writing

text: Cretan hieroglyphs are found on artifacts of Crete (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BCE, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). Linear B, the writing system of the Mycenaean Greeks, has been deciphered while Linear A has yet to be deciphered. The sequence and the geographical spread of the three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems can be summarized as follows:


title: History of writing

text: A stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing, the Cascajal Block, was discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and is an example of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere, preceding the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about 500 BCE.


title: History of writing

text: Of several pre-Columbian scripts in Mesoamerica, the one that appears to have been best developed, and has been fully deciphered, is the Maya script. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE, and writing was in continuous use until shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century CE. Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs: a combination somewhat similar to modern Japanese writing.


title: History of writing

text: The Phoenician alphabet is simply the Proto-Canaanite alphabet as it was continued into the Iron Age (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE). This alphabet gave rise to the Aramaic and Greek alphabets. These in turn led to the writing systems used throughout regions ranging from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. For its part the Greek alphabet introduced for the first time explicit symbols for vowel sounds. The Greek and Latin alphabets in the early centuries of the Common Era gave rise to several European scripts such as the Runes and the Gothic and Cyrillic alphabets while the Aramaic alphabet evolved into the Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac abjads, of which the latter spread as far as Mongolian script. The South Arabian alphabet gave rise to the Ge'ez abugida. The Brahmic family of India is believed by some scholars to have derived from the Aramaic alphabet as well.


title: History of writing

text: A previously unknown script was discovered in 2015 in Georgia, over the Grakliani Hill just below a temple's collapsed altar to a fertility goddess from the seventh century BCE. These inscriptions differ from those at other temples at Grakliani, which show animals, people, or decorative elements. The script bears no resemblance to any alphabet currently known, although its letters are conjectured to be related to ancient Greek and Aramaic. The inscription appears to be the oldest native alphabet to be discovered in the whole Caucasus region, In comparison, the earliest Armenian and Georgian script date from the fifth century CE, just after the respective cultures converted to Christianity. By September 2015, an area of 31 by 3 inches of the inscription had been excavated.


title: History of writing

text: According to Vakhtang Licheli, head of the Institute of Archaeology of the State University, "The writings on the two altars of the temple are really well preserved. On the one altar several letters are carved in clay while the second altar's pedestal is wholly covered with writings." The finding was made by unpaid students. In 2016 Grakliani Hill inscriptions were taken to Miami Laboratory for Beta analytic radiocarbon dating which found that the inscriptions were made in .


title: History of writing

text: The history of the Greek alphabet began in at least the early 8th century BCE when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet for use with their own language. The letters of the Greek alphabet are more or less the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and in modern times both alphabets are arranged in the same order. The adapter(s) of the Phoenician system added three letters to the end of the series, called the "supplementals". Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed. One, known as Western Greek or Chalcidian, was used west of Athens and in southern Italy. The other variation, known as Eastern Greek, was used in present-day Turkey and by the Athenians, and eventually the rest of the world that spoke Greek adopted this variation. After first writing right to left, like the Phoenicians, the Greeks eventually chose to write from left to right. Occasionally however, the writer would start the next line where the previous line finished, so that the lines would read alternately left to right, then right to left, and so on. This was known as "boustrophedon" writing, which imitated the path of an ox-drawn plough, and was used until the sixth century.


title: History of writing

text: Greek is in turn the source for all the modern scripts of Europe. The most widespread descendant of Greek is the Latin script, named for the Latins, a central Italian people who came to dominate Europe with the rise of Rome. The Romans learned writing in about the 5th century BCE from the Etruscan civilization, who used one of a number of Italic scripts derived from the western Greeks. Due to the cultural dominance of the Roman state, the other Old Italic scripts have not survived in any great quantity, and the Etruscan language is mostly lost.


title: History of writing

text: With the collapse of the Roman authority in Western Europe, literacy development became largely confined to the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire. Latin, never one of the primary literary languages, rapidly declined in importance (except within the Roman Catholic Church). The primary literary languages were Greek and Persian, though other languages such as Syriac and Coptic were important too.


title: History of writing

text: The rise of Islam in the 7th century led to the rapid rise of Arabic as a major literary language in the region. Arabic and Persian quickly began to overshadow Greek's role as a language of scholarship. Arabic script was adopted as the primary script of the Persian language and the Turkish language. This script also heavily influenced the development of the cursive scripts of Greek, the Slavic languages, Latin, and other languages. The Arabic language also served to spread the Hindu–Arabic numeral system throughout Europe. By the beginning of the second millennium, the city of Córdoba in modern Spain had become one of the foremost intellectual centers of the world and contained the world's largest library at the time. Its position as a crossroads between the Islamic and Western Christian worlds helped fuel intellectual development and written communication between both cultures.


title: History of writing

text: By the 14th century a rebirth, or "renaissance", had emerged in Western Europe, leading to a temporary revival of the importance of Greek, and a slow revival of Latin as a significant literary language. A similar though smaller emergence occurred in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. At the same time Arabic and Persian began a slow decline in importance as the Islamic Golden Age ended. The revival of literacy development in Western Europe led to many innovations in the Latin alphabet and the diversification of the alphabet to codify the phonologies of the various languages.


title: History of writing

text: The nature of writing has been constantly evolving, particularly due to the development of new technologies over the centuries. The pen, the printing press, the computer and the mobile phone are all technological developments which have altered what is written, and the medium through which the written word is produced. Particularly with the advent of digital technologies, namely the computer and the mobile phone, characters can be formed by the press of a button, rather than making a physical motion with the hand.


title: History of writing

text: There is no very definite statement as to the material which was in most common use for the purposes of writing at the start of the early writing systems. In all ages it has been customary to engrave on stone or metal, or other durable material, with the view of securing the permanency of the record. Metals, such as stamped coins, are mentioned as a material of writing; they include lead, brass, and gold. There are also references to the engraving of gems, such as with seals or signets.


title: History of writing

text: The common materials of writing were the tablet and the roll, the former probably having a Chaldean origin, the latter an Egyptian. The tablets of the Chaldeans are small pieces of clay, somewhat crudely shaped into a form resembling a pillow, and thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters. Similar use has been seen in hollow cylinders, or prisms of six or eight sides, formed of fine terracotta, sometimes glazed, on which the characters were traced with a small stylus, in some specimens so minutely as to require the aid of a magnifying-glass.


title: History of writing

text: In Egypt the principal writing material was of quite a different sort. Wooden tablets are found pictured on the monuments; but the material which was in common use, even from very ancient times, was the papyrus, having recorded use as far back as 3,000 BCE. This reed, found chiefly in Lower Egypt, had various economic means for writing. The pith was taken out and divided by a pointed instrument into the thin pieces of which it is composed; it was then flattened by pressure, and the strips glued together, other strips being placed at right angles to them, so that a roll of any length might be manufactured. Writing seems to have become more widespread with the invention of papyrus in Egypt. That this material was in use in Egypt from a very early period is evidenced by still existing papyrus of the earliest Theban dynasties. As the papyrus, being in great demand, and exported to all parts of the world, became very costly, other materials were often used instead of it, among which is mentioned leather, a few leather mills of an early period having been found in the tombs. Parchment, using sheepskins left after the wool was removed for cloth, was sometimes cheaper than papyrus, which had to be imported outside Egypt. With the invention of wood-pulp paper, the cost of writing material began a steady decline. Wood-pulp paper is still used today, and in recent times efforts have been made in order to improve bond strength of fibers. Two main areas of examination in this regard have been "dry strength of paper" and "wet web strength". The former involves examination of the physical properties of the paper itself, while the latter involves using additives to improve strength.