historybehindassassinscreed

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Rome is the capital city of Italy.

On March 15th, 44 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed and killed in the Theatre of Pompey by forty senators, calling themselves the "Liberatores", who secretly were Hidden Ones. These Liberatores were led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, and helped by the Egyptian Hidden One Aya.

In 1476, cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, Grand Master of the Italian Templars and a powerful figure in Vatican politics, briefly left the city to discuss his Order's plans, before returning to affirm Papal approval. Assent was given by Pope Sixtus IV, and the Templars were provided with military support for their endeavors.

In 1492, Rodrigo became Pope Alexander VI, and head of the Papal States and Catholic Church. Ruling from Rome, he was left alone by the Assassins for the most part until 1499, when Ezio Auditore da Firenze learned that the Vatican Vault was located in Rome, beneath the Sistine Chapel.

In 1500, following the Siege of Monteriggioni that was led by Cesare Borgia, Ezio returned to Rome to exact his revenge. At the time, the city had fallen far behind those of Florence and Venice, and had grown stagnant in terms of development, due to the influence of the Borgia.

The Borgia maintained oppression over the city with towers located throughout Rome, which prevented shops from opening. In order to free Rome of the Borgia influence, Ezio killed the overlords of the towers and burned the structures themselves to the ground, taking them over for the Assassin Order afterwards.

In Real Life:

Rome's history spans twenty eight centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The city's early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans, and Sabines. Eventually, the city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded as the birthplace of Western civilization and by some as the first ever metropolis.

During the Renaissance, the wealthy families who ruled the cities competed with each others to assure the best artists to magnify their courts. One of the most famous and generous family were the Medici, the ruler of Florence, who gathered around their court the best sculptures, poets, architects, and genial minds of their period. In Rome it was the pope who assumed the role of artistic Maecenas.

The restoration of the city and the first steps towards the re-establishing of the papacy supremacy over Rome and central Italy began in 1420, with Pope Martin V, a member of the important and rich Roman family. Soon the supremacy of the pope was recognized by the Commune self, and the cuty acknowledged its dependency on the papacy. Once re-established the pontifical monarchy, in 1447, Rome underwent a period of restoration and enrichment.

On of the richest patrons of his time was Sixtus IV, a member of Della Rovere family. In 1471 he founded the oldest public art collection in the world when he donated to the city the sculptures which now form the nucleus of the Capitoline museums, and he considerably increased the holdings of the Vatican library and made it public. He rebuilt the 'Sistine' Chapel (named after him) and constructed the Ponte Sisto across the Tiber. 

(Image source)

He also reorganized the streets of the city. In the meanwhile, his nephew Cardinal Raffaello Riario commissioned the erection of the splendid Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria, the grandest of all the wealthy cardinals' residences of that time. But Rome became the real centre of the High Renaissance at the beginning of the 16th century, under the papacy of Julius II, who spent untold riches on ambitious artistic projects designed to glorify the papacy as successor to the ancient Roman Empire.

One of the more influential popes of this time period was Pope Alexander VI, from the Spanish family Borgia. He first turned his attention to the defense of the Eternal City. He changed the Mausoleum of Adrian into a fortress, likewise Torre di Nona, to secure the city from naval attacks. His Via Alessandrina, now called Borgo Nuovo, remains to the present day the grand approach to St. Peter's. Though a scandalous pope, he was a patron of the arts and sciences, and in his days a new architectural era was initiated in Rome with the coming of Bramante. Raphael, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio. He commissioned Pinturicchio to lavishly paint a suite of rooms in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, which are today known as the Borgia Apartments. In addition to the structures erected by himself, his memory is associated with the many others built by monarchs and cardinals at his instigation.

Sources:

http://www.aboutroma.com/history-of-rome/renaissance.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Renaissance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome

https://www.britannica.com/place/Rome

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

George Washington was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783, and served as the first President of the United States from April 30th, 1789 to March 4th, 1797.

Born in the colony of Virginia in the British colonies of America, Washington joined the Virginian militia during his youth and participated in the French and Indian War with the British Army, fighting against the French and their indigenous allies. During the war, he ordered the burning of the neutral village of Kanatahséton.

Due to the lack of progress of his military career in the British Army, Washington instead turned to politics. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, Washington supported the Patriots. Following the creation of the Continental Army, the Continental Congress of 1775 appointed Washington as its Commander-in-Chief, though he didn't feel he was worthy of the command.

The Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton, also known as Connor, subsequently protected Washington from the Templar Charles Lee, who was angered that he had been passed over for the position. Though the Continental Army suffered many losses under Washington's command, the aid of Connor and his apprentices managed to gain the army small victories.

However, Washington fell out with Connor when the Assassin discovered he was responsible for the attack on his village, Kanatahséton, and signed for a second burning after Lee manipulated Connor's people into siding with the Loyalists. However, the Assassins continued to aid Washington when necessary, such as the investigation of a conspiracy at West Point.

After the Continental Army emerged victorious against the British Army in 1781, Washington obtained an Apple of Eden. It gave him a nightmarish vision of what would happen if he were crowned king of the United States with its power in his possession, and so he passed the Apple to Connor for it to be disposed of. This experience strengthened his belief in the Republican Constitution of the United States.

In Real Life:

George Washington was born February 22nd, 1732, the first child of Augustine Washington and his wife Mary Ball Washington, at Wakefield on their Popes Creek Estate in the Colony of Virginia. He was then a subject of the British Empire, under the reign of George II, descended primarily from the gentry of Sulgrave, England. His great-grandfather John Washington emigrated to Virginia in 1656. He was a tobacco planter who accumulated land and slaves, as did his son Lawrence and his grandson Augustine.

Washington spent his early years in the rich open farmlands of Virginia's Tidewater region. His father was a moderately wealthy planter, justice of the peace, and county sheriff who had 10 children, four by his first marriage to Jane Butler and six by his second marriage to Mary. Washington was one of seven surviving children, including older half-brothers Lawrence and Augustine, and full siblings Samuel, Elizabeth (Betty), John Augustine, and Charles.

He had early educational opportunities, learned mathematics, and soon launched a successful career as a surveyor which enabled him to make significant land investments. He then became a key leader of the Virginia militia in the French and Indian War.

(Image source)

In December 1752, Washington, who had no previous military experience, was made a commander of the Virginia militia. He saw action in the French and Indian War and was eventually put in charge of all of Virginia’s militia forces. By 1759, Washington had resigned his commission, returned to Mount Vernon and was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served until 1774. In January 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy widow with two children.

By the late 1760s, Washington had experienced firsthand the effects of rising taxes imposed on American colonists by the British, and came to believe that it was in the best interests of the colonists to declare independence from England. Washington served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 in Philadelphia. By the time the Second Continental Congress convened a year later, the American Revolution had begun in earnest, and Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army.

Washington proved to be a better general than military strategist. His strength lay not in his genius on the battlefield but in his ability to keep the struggling colonial army together. His troops were poorly trained and lacked food, ammunition and other supplies (soldiers sometimes even went without shoes in winter). However, Washington was able to give them the direction and motivation to keep going.

Over the course of the grueling eight-year war, the colonial forces won few battles but consistently held their own against the British. In October 1781, with the aid of the French (who allied themselves with the colonists over their rivals the British), the Continental forces were able to capture British troops under General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia. This action effectively ended the Revolutionary War and Washington was declared a national hero.

In 1783, with a peace treaty signed between Great Britain and the U.S., Washington, believing he had done his duty, gave up his command of the army and returned to Mount Vernon, intent on resuming his life as a gentleman farmer and family man. However, in 1787, he was asked to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and head the committee to draft the new constitution. His impressive leadership there convinced the delegates that he was by far the most qualified man to become the nation’s first president.

(Image source)

At first Washington balked. He wanted to return to a quiet life at home and leave governing the new nation to others. But public opinion was so strong that eventually he gave in. The first presidential election was held on January 7th, 1789, and Washington won handily. John Adams, who received the second-largest number of votes, became the nation’s first vice president. The 57-year-old Washington was inaugurated on April 30th, 1789, in New York City.

He promoted and oversaw implementation of a strong, well-financed national government, using the economic plans of his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, while remaining impartial in the fierce rivalry between Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. When the French Revolution plunged Europe into war, Washington proclaimed a policy of neutrality to protect American ships, while the controversial Jay Treaty of 1795 normalized trade relations with Great Britain. He set numerous precedents that have endured, such as the Cabinet advisory system, the inaugural address, and the title "Mr. President". His seminal Farewell Address strongly warned against political partisanship, sectionalism, and involvement in foreign wars.

In December 1799, he caught a cold after inspecting his properties in the rain. The cold developed into a throat infection and Washington died on the night of December 14 at the age of 67. He was entombed at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national historic landmark.

Sources:

https://www.biography.com/people/george-washington-9524786

https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/biography/

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/george-washington

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#French_and_Indian_War

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

The Tomb of Alexander the Great was a tomb located in Alexandria, Egypt, housing the remains of the Alexander the Great and his Staff of Eden.

In 48 BCE, Cleopatra enlisted the aid of Aya and her husband Bayek to gain access to the tomb so that she could use it to impress her lover Julius Caesar. The two Medjay were able to locate another entrance to the tomb and remove the blockade, allowing Caesar and Cleopatra access into the inner tomb.

Shortly after the Battle of the Nile, when Cleopatra was proclaimed the sole ruler of Egypt, Flavius Metellus, revealed to be a member of the Order of the Ancients, broke into the tomb alongside Lucius Septimius and stole the Staff. In the process, they also stole the Apple of Eden from Apollodorus, who discovered their true purpose in the tomb. Dispatching soldiers to deal with Apollodorus, the two members of the Order left the tomb and made their way to the vault in Siwa. Both Aya and Bayek arrived too late to stop them and save Apollodorus' life, succumbing to the injuries sustained during the fight.

Around the same time, Bayek also found one of the Papyrus Puzzles within the tomb.

In Real Life:

The location of the tomb of Alexander the Great is an enduring mystery. Shortly after Alexander's death in Babylon, the possession of his body became a subject of negotiations between Perdiccas, Ptolemy I Soter, and Seleucus I Nicator. According to Nicholas J. Saunders, while Babylon was the "obvious site" for Alexander's resting place, some favored interring the ruler in the Argead burial at Aegae, modern Vergina. Aegae was one of the two originally proposed resting places, according to Saunders, the other being Siwa Oasis and in 321 BC Perdiccas presumably chose Aegae. The body, however, was hijacked en route by Ptolemy I Soter. According to Pausanias and the contemporary Parian Chronicle records for the years 321–320 BC, Ptolemy initially buried Alexander in Memphis. In the late 4th or early 3rd century BC, during the early Ptolemaic dynasty, Alexander's body was transferred from Memphis to Alexandria, where it was reburied.

The so-called Alexander Sarcophagus, unrelated to Alexander's body and once thought to be the sarcophagus of Abdalonymus, is now believed to be that of Mazacus, a Persian governor of Babylon.

In 48 BC Alexander's tomb was visited by Caesar. To finance her war against Octavian, Cleopatra took gold from the tomb. Shortly after the death of Cleopatra, Alexander's resting place was visited by Octavian, who is said to have placed flowers on the tomb and a golden diadem upon Alexander's head. According to Suetonius, Alexander's tomb was then partially looted by Caligula, who reportedly removed his breastplate. In AD 199 Alexander's tomb was sealed up by Septimius Severus during his visit to Alexandria. Later, in 215 some items from Alexander's tomb were relocated by Caracalla. According to chronicler John of Antioch, Caracalla removed Alexander's tunic, his ring, his belt with some other precious items and deposited them on the coffin.

(Image source)

The Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities has officially recognized over 140 search attempts for Alexander's tomb. In 1850 Ambroise Schilizzi announced the discovery of alleged Alexander's mummy and tomb inside the Nabi Daniel Mosque in Alexandria. Later, in 1879 a stone worker accidentally broke through the vaulted chamber inside the basement of that mosque. Some granite monuments with an angular summit were discerned there, but the entrance was then walled up and the stone worker was asked not to disclose the incident (the image on a Roman lamp in the National Museum of Poznań and others at the British Museum and the Hermitage Museum are interpreted by some scholars as showing Alexandria with the Soma Mausoleum pictured as a building with a pyramidal roof). In 1888 Heinrich Schliemann attempted to locate Alexander's tomb within the Nabi Daniel Mosque, but he was denied permission to excavate.

In 1993 Triandafyllos Papazois developed the theory that it is not Philip II of Macedon who is buried in the royal tomb II at Vergina, Greece, but it is Alexander the Great together with his wife Roxanne, while his son Alexander IV is buried in tomb III. Also based on the ancient historical sources he came to the conclusion that the breastplate, the shield, the helmet and the sword found in tomb II, belong to the armor of Alexander the Great.

In 1995 Greek archaeologist Liana Souvaltzi announced she identified one alleged tomb in Siwa with that of Alexander. The claim was put in doubt by the then-general secretary of the Greek Ministry of Culture, George Thomas, who said that it was unclear if the excavated structure is even a tomb. Thomas and members of his team said that the style of the excavated object was not, as Souvaltzi contended, Macedonian, and that the fragments of tablets they were shown did not support any of the translations provided by Souvaltzi as proof of her finding.

According to one legend, the body lies in a crypt beneath an early Christian church.

The 2014 discovery of a large Alexander-era tomb at Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis in the region of Macedonia, Greece, has once again invited speculation about Alexander's final resting place. Some have speculated that it was built for Alexander but never used due to Ptolemy I Soter having seized the funeral cortege. They suggest that the Roman Emperor Caracalla, a great admirer of Alexander, may have had him re-interred in Amphipolis in the late second century AD. However, only future excavation at Amphipolis will reveal if there is any truth in the suggestion. In November 2014, a skeleton was discovered within the tomb, and its full examination is expected to last a few months in order to determine the characteristics of the deceased person in the effort to identify it.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Alexander_the_Great

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/tomb-alexander-great-already-found-archaeologist-claims-1020180

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/sarcophagus-egypt-mystery-tomb-1318196

[historybehindassassinscreed]

I know I don’t usually reblog things, but I think you guys might find this interesting :)

So I got a question about the sparing and padding post that you recently made. I like to read Assassin's Creed fanfictions that shows Altair (the main character) in his early years, which often includes his training to be an assassin. In most of these fics they focus more on the sword and knife fighting but some does include the hand to hand fighting too (without protection). So realistically what kind of injuries would someone training without any kind of protection should expect?

Death.

I’m only sort of kidding, because I know the kinds of fanfics you’re talking about and like every writer trying to be edgy, they have them spar without protections and with live weapons. There’s a reason why we use practice weapons during training and in sparring matches, where rules are in play. 

Now, the Assassin’s Creed variant of the Hashashin live for that super edgy, very stupid state of supposed badass where one must constantly prove their worth so I totally believe they’d do it. I’d also believe this would lead to an incredibly high turnover with their recruits, which is not sustainable in the real world.

I’m going to point out here that the “Asassins” or Hashashin were real. That’s the etymology for the word. The suicide jumping is also real and, instead of landing on bales of hay, they jumped to their deaths. There are a couple of stories about that piece of the order. The real Assassins were religious fanatics. These stories are not so much a testament to the quality of their training so much as their fanaticism.

For what it’s worth, the Knights Templar were also real and a prominent militant order up until they were excommunicated by the Pope.

The history of both groups is actually far more interesting than the Assassin’s Creed franchise. This is a persistent problem with the games, they invariably include historical figures who are far, far, far more interesting, competent, and badass than we’re presented with. If you encounter a historical personage in an Assassin’s Creed game, remind yourself of this simple fact: the real one is about 200x more awesome. It’s this weird inverse where the reality consistently surpasses the fiction. (Black Flag, I have my eye on you. Honestly, how do you mess up Stede Bonnet, The Gentleman Pirate? And that’s the least of your sins!)

The more serious answer is that unless you’re training with weapons or making an active effort to hit each other, in the real world we don’t train using pads on the regular. The pads are so you can essentially go full out against another person under controlled circumstances and then come back for training tomorrow. If your students are constantly getting injured that hampers their ability to train, then they fall behind and you turn out fewer fighters. Injuries on the training floor should not be a common occurrence.

Barring accidents and mishaps, if you’re simply practicing your techniques on your own or against a wooden dummy then all you should expect afterwards is standard muscle pain (maybe some bruising). The same should be true for practice with human opponents (which is not sparring) and sparring itself.

Anything else is a waste of time, energy, and resources.

Remember, injuries take time to heal and if you’re prepping someone to go out and murder that’s time you don’t have.

In the land of “edgy training”, try to remember that you want evil as opposed to incompetence.

The vast majority of training, like the kinds you listed, are edgy incompetence. They don’t serve a purpose other than sadism and your students don’t learn anything. Unfortunately, cruelty on its own doesn’t teach much (the Spartans were abusive jerks, but their methods worked). The beat up, abuse them, cruelty methodology simply doesn’t work unless you understand the kinds that work and, from a storytelling perspective, it also isn’t interesting.

The kind of “edgy training” you see in most stories is a round of Kinder’s First. People mimicking what Hollywood has taught them or what they’ve seen in fiction elsewhere. The assumption in this line of thinking is that the more brutal the training then the more dangerous the fighter. This isn’t true. More importantly, there are much better ways to sadistically mess with your students’ (and audience’s) heads.

1) Depending on your teaching style, you may murder a student on occasion to motivate the others. However, the control over who lives or dies remains with the instructor because the instructor is god. If a student gets a bright idea to kill another student without your approval, kill them.

2) Live weapons should never be used by students on each other except as a graduation gift. The graduation gift being only one of them will be accepted into the Order, so prove your worth. (In the real world, you’ll probably need them both but in fantasy land… why not?)

3) Use the threat of death to keep your students from getting comfortable, make good on this promise every so often. Bring in an established warrior to kill off your best student in demonstration to the others. (Why? It reminds them at no point are they safe.)

4) Encourage your students to break the rules, punish them severely if caught. (Playing favorites? Punish them more, push them harder.)

5) Limit their resources. Make them fight each other for their food. Survival isn’t a given. It’s earned.

6) In the early days, force them into physical exhaustion. Keep them up late. Wake them early. Limit their sleep to the minimum of hours they need to stay functional. Tired minds are easier to manipulate.

7) Force them into direct conflict with each other. There’s never a solid baseline they can achieve, and they’re always watching over their shoulder. Furthermore they never become loyal to each other. They are only loyal to you. Appeasing their teacher is their only means of survival.

8) Got a problem child who won’t play along? Don’t make an example of them. No, no, make them your new favorite. That’ll turn the others on them, and they’ll solve the problem for you.

9) Change the goalposts regularly, so they never know what to expect.

10) You’ve got someone who doesn’t want to participate? Say okay. When others move to join them, punish those students viciously instead. Do it in front of the class and for everyone to see. (This is called: creating heroes and wrecking them.)

11) Have your students inform on each other.

If this is starting to sound like abuse, well.. you’re right. It is. It also very successful in terms of achieving its goal. The goal is attacking the student’s perceptions, beliefs, and their understanding of the world while reshaping them into who you want them to be.

Real cruelty is clever and inventive. It is also patient. Like a good interrogator, this teacher will leave their students so they’re never sure of exactly what the teacher wants or how to please them. They give them hope, then snatch it away. Someone who excels at social manipulation will use this position of power to maneuver their students feelings and their expectations, indirectly point them at certain targets by stoking negative feeling such as jealousy, paranoia, anger, or fear. In the other hand, those rare moments of kindness offered will ensure gratitude. When a good teacher wants their uncooperative students to band together, they make themselves the target the students need to fight against. The abusive teacher does the opposite. They ensure they are the only boat in the storm and turn their charges on each other. They make sure their students never know what to expect. This includes going hot and cold. They change up to batter expectations, handle some problems themselves and let the students handle others.

An experienced teacher will have seen plenty of student characters, all the versions you can imagine. A good one will break the problem kids to bridle without them ever realizing it happened, and they exit the experience more hardcore than the ones who invested themselves honestly. The purpose of “brutal training” isn’t to churn out a better warrior. It’s to break the individual down so you can reshape their mind and ensure the weapon you’ve created is loyal to you. That level of conditioning is very difficult to break. You’ve re-oriented their entire training into status positions they’ve fought for and earned. This training becomes a foundation for their identity, and you’re not going to get it out of them.

So, before invoking the trope, choose wisely and understand the purpose for what it is. Actively abusive training is done with the express intent to recondition and brainwash. More than that, in competent hands, it’ll snap the “rebellious teenage hero” contingent like twigs.

As a member of a fanatical cult, Altair is a direct example of this sort of training writ large.

-Michi

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[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

The Byzantine Empire, known contemporaneously as the (Eastern) Roman Empire, was the predominantly Greek and Hellenized continuation of the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

During the early 16th century, as the Templars were being driven from Italy by the Assassins, the Byzantine Templars arose in the Ottoman Empire, appealing to members of the Greek population and other Christians who longed to see the Byzantine Empire restored and the Ottoman Empire destroyed. Led by the de jure Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Palaiologos, the Byzantine Templars set up their primary headquarters at Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, which had for centuries served as a haven for Greeks against Turkish encroachment. The Byzantine Templars' ultimate aim was to uproot the Ottoman Empire, retake control of Constantinople in particular, and ultimately bring the East and West back under a single rule.

By 1509, the Templars were aware of the five seals of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. Following this discovery, the Byzantine Templars became more active and militant in their desire to retake Constantinople and find the remaining four seals. The Masyaf expedition and Topkapı seal were entrusted to Manuel Palaiologos, who by then had been supplanted as Templar leader by the younger and more charismatic Ottoman prince Ahmet.

By the beginning of 1511, a Byzantine Templar captain named Leandros had occupied the region surrounding Masyaf, where the library of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad was located, though by May 1511, the region had been cleansed of Templars by the Mentor of the Italian Assassins, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who was visiting Masyaf to learn more of the Assassin Order.

By this time, the Templars were searching the Forum of the Ox and the Yerebatan Cistern in Constantinople for seals, though they were beaten to both of these seals by Ezio.

As the Templars plotted to overthrow the Ottomans, many Byzantine soldiers were present in Constantinople by mid-1511. These soldiers rivaled the Ottoman Assassins, and by the month of May, they had seized all of the Assassin Dens for themselves aside from two, with them being one in Galata, and one in the Imperial District, near the Grand Bazaar.

Shortly after Ezio's arrival in the city, the Templars launched an attack on both of the remaining dens, and though they were routed at Galata, they managed to take the den at the Grand Bazaar. However, this would prove to be a temporary victory, as the Assassins retook the den shortly after. Over the 11 months that Ezio spent in the city, he managed to retake the dens one by one and severely weaken the Templars, until March 1512.

Following this, Ezio left for Cappadocia in search of Palaiologos, who possessed the last seal. Ultimately, Ezio killed Manuel and claimed the seal for himself, though, as he was about to leave, Ahmet arrived on a ship with Byzantines, revealing that he was the true mastermind behind the Masyaf expedition, and that he would take Ezio's friend, Sofia Sartor, hostage.

Unable to reach him, Ezio was forced to pursue Ahmet back to Constantinople, where he discovered Ahmet had indeed taken Sofia hostage in her bookstore, in the process killing the leader of the Assassins Guild, Yusuf Tazim, to whose back he pinned a taunting note addressed to Ezio, with a dagger. Ezio rallied the Assassins Guild for a retaliatory attack on the Harbor of Theodosius, where Ezio once again confronted Ahmet, who threatened to kill Sofia unless the seals were all handed over at the Galata Tower.

After a tense handover on the battlements of the old Genovese walls adjoining the Tower, Ahmet pointed out what appeared to be Sofia with a burlap sack over her head being held by a Byzantine soldier at the top of the Tower. Upon rescuing her, Ezio realized she was a decoy and Sofia was actually being hanged in a remote square, seemingly too far to reach, but using a parachute, Ezio was able to glide over and save Sofia from suffocating. Promising her answers later, they both hijacked a nearby carriage and took off into the countryside after Ahmet, who was on his way to Masyaf to open the vault. After a prolonged chase through the countryside, Ezio and Ahmet were discovered by Ahmet's brother Selim and his Janissaries. After informing Ahmet of their father, Bayezid II's decision to abdicate to him, Selim threw Ahmet to his death over a cliff edge, thus destroying the Byzantine Templar Order.

In Real Life:

Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived for a thousand years after the western half had crumbled into various feudal kingdoms and which finally fell to Ottoman Turkish onslaughts in 1453.

It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe.

Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganized the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, and legalized Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use instead of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centered on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterized by Orthodox Christianity.

(Image source)

The borders of the empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries. During the reign of Maurice, the Empire's eastern frontier was expanded and the north stabilized. However, his assassination caused the Byzantine��Sasanian War of 602–628, which exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the seventh century. In a matter of years the empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire again expanded and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia.

The empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire formerly governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 14th and 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire. The last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years later in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond.

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/byzantine-empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

https://www.britannica.com/place/Byzantine-Empire

http://www.livius.org/articles/misc/byzantine-empire/

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Apollodorus the Sicilian was a loyal follower and friend to the last Ptolemaic pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra.

Apollodorus came to Alexandria as a young adult, serving in the court of Ptolemy XIII. Apollodorus befriended the pharaoh's older sister and co-ruler Cleopatra, becoming one of her close friends and later a loyal follower. When the Order of the Ancients manipulated the boy pharaoh to exile Cleopatra in 49 BCE, Apollodorus helped her escape the city through the canals, wrapping her in a carpet to avoid Ptolemies attention.

Having escaped Alexandria, Cleopatra would reside in Apollodorus' personal villa in the Kanopos Nome. He then set up a network of informants across Egypt to keep him updated with comings and goings of the local Egyptians who were oppressed by Ptolemy XIII. Sometime thereafter, Apollodorus returned to Alexandria, where he came upon a Greco-Egyptian woman named Aya, introducing her to Cleopatra and becoming her most trusted bodyguard.

Together with Aya, Apollodorus worked to investigate the Order that was behind Cleopatra's exile and the murder of Aya's son, Khemu. In 48 BCE, Apollodorus uncovered the identity of one member of the Order, Actaeon, leading Aya to go after the member. However, her assassination, along with the killing of another member Ktesos, led the city's Phylakitai Gennadios to declare her a wanted woman. Her cousin, Phanos the Younger, sought Apollodorus' aid, and they hid Aya beneath the Library of Alexandria.

At some point, Apollodorus entrusted one of his informants, Damastes, with a scroll meant for the Roman general Pompey. However, Damastes' ship was sank by the Ptolemies, leading to his capture and the scroll lost in the waters. At the lighthouse of Kanopos, Apollodorus met the Medjay Bayek, Aya's husband who had recently assassinated Eudoros, the royal scribe and the supposed leader of the Order and who at the moment was seeking for information. Apollodorus enlisted his aid to retrieve Damastes and the scroll. Bayek managed to do so and accompanied Apollodorus to his personal estate, where the Medjay was introduced to the pharaoh.

Along with Cleopatra and Pasherenptah, the High Priest Ptah in Memphis, Apollodorus explained that Eudoros, the man Bayek had killed, was known as the Hippo and was not the leader of the Order. The Snake was used to refer to the Order as a whole, who sought to use Ptolemy XIII as their puppet and had members controlling each major region of Egypt, namely the Scarab controlling the Nile Delta, the Hyena controlling Giza, the Lizard controlling Memphis and the Crocodile controlling the Faiyum. Bayek thus dedicated himself to hunting down the Order, becoming Cleopatra's Medjay. To begin, Apollodorus directed Bayek to contact his informant in Sais, Harkhuf, who had information on the Scarab.

Sometime after the assassination of the Lizard in Memphis, Apollodorus accompanied Cleopatra north to a villa in Herakleion, where they awaited news of the Crocodile's death. While there, Apollodorus captured Livius, an informant for the Order of the Ancients, and learned of an assassination plot on Cleopatra's life by the Gabiniani, a group of Romans left behind years ago in Alexandria to protect the Ptolemaic pharaohs and that at the moment served Ptolemy XIII. After Bayek completed his mission and arrived in Herakleion, Apollodorus and Cleopatra dispatched him to investigate and eliminate the ones behind the plot.

Aya, having returned from defending the seas with Phoxidas, met with Apollodorus and Cleopatra in the courtyard of the villa, where they were soon joined by Bayek, who had foiled the assassination attempt. Shortly thereafter, the group were ambushed by the Gabiniani led by Venator, who had led the assassination plot against Cleopatra. In the commotion, Apollodorus was injured, leaving Aya and Bayek to defend and eliminate Venator. With the Gabiniani eliminated, Aya and Bayek were then dispatched to find Pompey west in the shores of the Herakleion Nome, with Apollodorus and Cleopatra joining them shortly thereafter. They arrived too late to assist Pompey, who had been killed and beheaded by Lucius Septimius, a member of the Order. Having lost her support from Pompey's army, Cleopatra resolved to make an alliance with Julius Caesar instead, a Roman who was making his way to Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey.

In 47 BCE, Apollodorus, Aya, Bayek and Cleopatra boarded Phoxidas' trireme and set sail towards Alexandria. Despite facing numerous Ptolemaic ships, they were able to arrive in the harbor of the royal palace, which had been heavily guarded by Ptolemy's and Roman soldiers. As Cleopatra would be recognized straight away, she was wrapped in a carpet and was carried by Apollodorus, who posed as a Phylakitai of Heliopolis while Aya and Bayek posed as servants.

After the Battle of the Nile and the coronation of Cleopatra as the sole ruler of Egypt, Lucius Septimius was spared by Caesar, much to the dismay of both Aya and Bayek, who were also released from the service of Cleopatra. Apollodorus met with them in a market, informing them that their services were no longer needed, and offering a payment of gold. Apollodorus restrained Bayek from lashing out in order to prevent them from being discovered by Ptolemaic guards, saying that Caesar had accused them both for the death of Ptolemy XIII. He then informed them that he needed some time in order to ease their burden before leaving.

Later that night, Apollodorus investigated the Tomb of Alexander the Great, which he found to have been trespassed. Entering the tomb, he was ambushed by Flavius' and Lucius' men.

Although Bayek and Aya came to his rescue, it was too late and he succumbed to his wounds. Before dying, Apollodorus managed to tell them that Flavius had taken the orb and had gone to Siwa to finish what they started two years earlier.

In Real Life:

Apollodorus (Greek: Ἀπολλόδωρος) was a loyal follower of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII. In 48 BC he is supposed to have enabled Cleopatra to get in the palace of Alexandria to Julius Caesar and in this way to strengthen decisively her position in the power struggle with her brother Ptolemy XIII.

Apparently Ptolemy XIII tried to block his sister the access to Alexandria. Plutarch gives an account of her adventurous journey to the Egyptian capital. According to this report she chose from her retinue only one follower, Apollodorus the Sicilian, and traveled with him to Alexandria. The Roman poet Lucan claims, that when Cleopatra arrived near the city she bribed a guardian to remove the defensive chains in the harbor of Pharus. In any case, she entered the harbor of Alexandria by sea, because both Plutarch and Lucan say that she landed unobserved with her barque near the royal palace. According to Plutarch this happened in the twilight, and the Greek biographer adds that Cleopatra thought that her only chance to get to Caesar was to stretch herself at full length inside a bed-sack or carpet while Apollodorus tied it up with a cord and carried it past the guardians into the palace. The Egyptian Queen allegedly succeeded in that way in reaching the Roman general and in winning him over with this bold action. The credibility of this episode is disputed among scholars. But it is certain that Cleopatra gained Caesar’s support by her personal appearance.

Nothing else is known about Apollodorus.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollodorus_the_Sicilian

https://www.revolvy.com/page/Apollodorus-the-Sicilian

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

John Pitcairn was a British marine officer stationed in Boston, Massachusetts, for a time before the American Revolutionary War, and a member of the Colonial Rite of the Templar Order.

While in Boston, General Edward Braddock noticed Pitcairn's unauthorized presence and had him arrested and charged for desertion and treason. Haytham Kenway and Charles Lee arrived, revealing that both Lee and Pitcairn were in Haytham's service under Templar orders. Braddock reluctantly consented to give Lee to Haytham, but bitterly denied releasing Pitcairn and forced him to remain under his command.

In a plan to retrieve Pitcairn, Lee followed and pretended to be an angry citizen against the Redcoats, provoking Braddock into a chase by throwing horse manure on him. Lee lured Braddock and his men to a dead end, which allowed him, Haytham, and Pitcairn to attack and eliminate Braddock's patrol. Haytham spared Braddock, leaving him humiliated and furious as Pitcairn accompanied Haytham and Lee to Green Dragon Tavern.

Pitcairn joined Haytham's fold along with William Johnson, Thomas Hickey, Benjamin Church and Lee. At the tavern, Haytham proposed his plan to infiltrate Southgate Fort, murder Silas Thatcher, a notorious slaver, and free the Kanien'kehá:ka slaves. By freeing the captive slaves, Haytham would be able to gain favor with the Kanien'kehá:ka in order to gain information that would lead them to the mysterious precursor site.

Using a cart as a roadblock, Pitcairn and the others proceeded to ambush a slave convoy, killing the escorts, before disguising themselves in their uniforms and transporting the cart to the fort. Inside Southgate Fort, Haytham stealthily freed the slaves while Pitcairn blended with and distracted the guards. However, upon realizing that the slaves had escaped, Silas raised the alarm. To this, Pitcairn and the others triggered a battle, fending off the guards while Haytham and Church killed Silas, allowing them to free the remaining slaves.

During the American Revolution, Pitcairn led the British Army to Lexington and Concord in order to seize the rebel weapons and to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, the Patriot leaders, intending to negotiate a diplomatic solution.

Pitcairn and his forces marched into Lexington where he ordered rebels to leave, to which most of them fled, before Pitcairn made the first attack that forced the rebelling colonists to retreat to Concord. While en route to clear the remaining opposition, Pitcairn was halted by the Patriots, where they made their stand from across a river.

With only one bridge to travel across, Pitcairn had his men form firing lines to shoot down the rebels from afar; however Ratonhnhaké:ton, an Assassin, directed the opposing militia. As a result, Pitcairn suffered heavy losses and was forced to retreat and the continued conflict delayed Pitcairn's chances of a peaceful settlement.

Shortly after, the Continental Army led an assault on the city of Boston, led by General Israel Putnam. Pitcairn remained safely inside the city while a pair of British frigates provided cannon fire from the harbor, keeping the Continental Army at bay on Bunker Hill. Ratonhnhaké:ton once again assisted the Continentals, to which he was able to reach and sabotage the ships, forcing Pitcairn out of the city and to an encampment on top of Moulton's Hill, where he continued to command his troops. Completely unaware that Ratonhnhaké:ton was nearby, Pitcairn stationed himself out into the open.

Ratonhnhaké:ton was able to evade the firing lines, where he advanced and infiltrated the camp undetected, before he finally assassinated Pitcairn.

With his last words, Pitcairn stated that he wanted to make a truce with the rebels and blamed Connor for his death, stating that it would only worsen the war. As he perished, the Assassin took a letter from Pitcairn's body and fled the area, ultimately uncovering the Templar assassination plot of George Washington.

In Real Life:

John Pitcairn was born in 1722 to a Scottish family and eventually joined the British Marines. His parents were the Reverend David Pitcairn and Katherine (Hamilton) Pitcairn. By the time of the French and Indian War, Pitcairn had been promoted to the rank of Captain. He served with distinction throughout the war and was promoted to Major by 1771. He arrived in Boston in 1774 with 600 marines. A common belief that was expressed with those who knew Pitcairn was his love for his men.

Pitcairn was respected by the citizens in Boston as one of the more reasonable officers in the occupying force. He was in command of the advance party that marched on Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, which began the American War of Independence. His horse was shot from under him, and he lost a pair of matched pistols when the column's baggage was abandoned. Patriot leader Israel Putnam would carry them through the rest of the war.

(Image source)

At the Battle of Bunker Hill two months later, Major Pitcairn commanded a reserve force of about 300 Royal Marines. They landed at the south end of the Charlestown peninsula. When the first assaults failed, Pitcairn led his men up the hill toward the American position, only to fall victim to a musket shot, said to have been fired by a former slave named Peter Salem. He toppled into the arms of his son, William, also a Royal Marine officer, who cried out, "I have lost my father!" Some Marines tried to console the son, while others, overcome with emotion, openly wept. Pitcairn was carried back to Boston, where he died of his wound within hours. He is buried at the Old North Church in Boston.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pitcairn

https://www.americanrevolution.org/pitcairn.php

http://thehistoryjunkie.com/john-pitcairn-facts/

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

John Cockram was an Irish pirate based in Nassau. Like Josiah Burgess, he had a close relationship with Benjamin Hornigold, one of the leaders of the small pirate republic. After accepting the King's pardon, he was recruited into the Templar Order, and became a pirate hunter, working to eliminate his former allies.

In 1719, he and Burgess were sent to Príncipe, an island on the coast of west Africa, to track down the Sage Bartholomew Roberts. Through their Templar connections, the pair secured an alliance with the Portuguese based there. With the aid of the Portuguese, Cockram and Burgess found and ambushed the crew Roberts was part of, though Roberts himself slipped away.

As Cockram and Burgess made to leave to notify their Templar brethren, they were killed by Edward Kenway, who had teamed up with Roberts in exchange for the location of the Observatory. In their final moments, Cockram and Burgess claimed the Templars had been like a family for them and called Edward out on his selfish motivations.

In Real Life:

Very little is known about John Cockram’s early life. However, Cockram was among a group of pirates active in the Bahamas including Benjamin Hornigold, John West, and Daniel Stillwell who attacked Spanish ships and others from small open boats such as the periagua.

On his 1713 cruise he and his small crew “brought back Asian silks, copper, rum, sugar, and silver coins stolen from Spanish vessels off Florida and elsewhere” worth over £2,000. Fed up with Cockram and the other pirates disrupting island trade, Deputy Governor Thomas Walker of the Bahamas tried to put a stop to the piracies, arresting Daniel Stillwell; Hornigold freed him and threatened Walker not to intervene. After his stint of piracy at sea Cockram became a trader, bringing in goods from Charles Town and other settlements to trade with the pirates in and around New Providence. In March 1714 he married the daughter of another Bahamian trader and pirate supplier, Richard Thompson, and moved to Eleuthera. He set up business with Thompson on Harbour Island.

Cockram and Thompson sailed their own trading vessels such as the Richard and John, buying and selling with the pirates directly, and also acted as go-betweens for merchants from Curacao, Boston, and elsewhere. The pirates operating out of the Bahamas generally left the traders’ ship alone, as they depended on Cockram, Thompson, and others to import ammunition and other provisions. Thompson and Cockram became “the leading black market traders of the Golden Age of Piracy,” despite continuing threats of Royal Navy intervention and Spanish retaliation.

King George offered a pardon to all pirates who surrendered by September 1718; Hornigold, Stilwell, Cockram, and others accepted. Charles Vane refused the pardon, escaping Nassau in a hail of cannonfire. One of the first vessels he looted was Cockram’s Richard and John, marooning its captain, Cockram’s brother Joseph. Another brother, Philip, had been forced into service by the Spanish as a navigator, and on his release warned of increased Spanish aggression.

Bahamas Governor Woodes Rogers tasked the reformed Hornigold and Cockram with retrieving Vane and other lapsed pirates. Vane’s fleet was too strong for them to capture, but they succeeded in apprehending Nicholas Woodall’s sloop Wolf, which had been smuggling supplies to Vane. After their success against Woodall, Rogers sent them out again and this time they captured John Auger. Cockram’s activities afterwards are not recorded, and he may have returned to his trading and his home on Eleuthera.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cockram

https://csphistorical.com/2015/07/26/the-strongest-man-carries-the-day-life-in-new-providence-1716-1717/#more-155

https://books.google.com/books?id=W5sIuoBrFwYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Nicolaus Copernicus, also known as Mikołaj Kopernik and Niccolò Copernico, was a Polish Renaissance astronomer, mathematician, and priest.

In 1500, Copernicus visited the Vatican, where he was introduced to the Templar Order. Upon joining them, he was later told that they wanted him to keep his discoveries secret.

A day after, however, he enlightened the public on science and mathematics at the Il Campidoglio, encouraging them to question past teachings, as he could not keep his findings to himself. He went on to urge the crowd to visit him or his fellow scholars if they wished to know more.

As soon as the Borgia – the leading house in the Templar Order – heard of this, they sent their guards to kill Copernicus and the other scholars. The Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze watched the scene unfold and, upon realizing their common enemy, came to Copernicus' aid.

Copernicus admitted his affiliations to the Templars to Ezio, though the latter was willing to help Copernicus reach a safe location. Upon arriving in a secluded building in the Antico District, Copernicus asked Ezio to deliver some documents to his fellow scholars, which would inform them of the danger they were in. Though doubtful if he could trust him, Ezio agreed, and aided most of the scholars in going into hiding.

The Assassin returned some time later, and by then, Copernicus had concluded that the Master of the Sacred Palace was most likely behind the plot to kill him. Ezio sought out the Master and heard from him that there were six executioners walking around Rome, searching for the scholars. Ezio rushed to take these executioners down, and returned to Copernicus with the confirmation that his suspicion had been correct.

Copernicus, however, was persistent in going out into the open to study a lunar eclipse. The Master of the Sacred Palace seized this opportunity, and sent a Papal Guard to kill him. Ezio followed and killed the Master of the Sacred Palace before returning to Copernicus, with whom he took down the assailants. The pair then went their separate ways, with Copernicus staying behind to study the eclipse.

Following their encounter, Copernicus became an ally of the Assassin Order, and was assisted in further astronomical studies with Novara via the Order's protection, with one instance including the Assassins Francesco Vecellio and Cipriano Enu.

In Real Life:

Certain facts about  Nicolaus Copernicus’s early life are well established, although a biography written by his ardent disciple Georg Joachim Rheticus is unfortunately lost. According to a later horoscope, Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in Toruń, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River south of the major Baltic seaport of Gdańsk. His father, Nicolaus, was a well-to-do merchant, and his mother, Barbara Watzenrode, also came from a leading merchant family. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. After his father’s death, sometime between 1483 and 1485, his mother’s brother Lucas Watzenrode took his nephew under his protection. Watzenrode, soon to be bishop of the chapter of Varmia (Warmia), saw to young Nicolaus’s education and his future career as a church canon.

Between 1491 and about 1494 Copernicus studied liberal arts—including astronomy and astrology—at the University of Cracow (Kraków). Like many students of his time, however, he left before completing his degree, resuming his studies in Italy at the University of Bologna, where his uncle had obtained a doctorate in canon law in 1473. The Bologna period was short but significant. For a time Copernicus lived in the same house as the principal astronomer at the university, Domenico Maria de Novara.

(Image source)

Novara also probably introduced Copernicus to two important books that framed his future problematic as a student of the heavens: Epitoma in Almagestum Ptolemaei (“Epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest”) by Johann Müller (also known as Regiomontanus, 1436–76) and Disputationes adversus astrologianm divinatricenm (“Disputations against Divinatory Astrology”) by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). The first provided a summary of the foundations of Ptolemy’s astronomy, with Regiomontanus’s corrections and critical expansions of certain important planetary models that might have been suggestive to Copernicus of directions leading to the heliocentric hypothesis. Pico’s Disputationes offered a devastating skeptical attack on the foundations of astrology that reverberated into the 17th century. Among Pico’s criticisms was the charge that, because astronomers disagreed about the order of the planets, astrologers could not be certain about the strengths of the powers issuing from the planets.

Only 27 recorded observations are known for Copernicus’s entire life (he undoubtedly made more than that), most of them concerning eclipses, alignments, and conjunctions of planets and stars. The first such known observation occurred on March 9th, 1497, at Bologna. By the time he published this observation in 1543, he had made it the basis of a theoretical claim: that it confirmed exactly the size of the apparent lunar diameter. But in 1497 he was probably using it to assist in checking the new- and full-moon tables derived from the commonly used Alfonsine Tables and employed in Novara’s forecast for the year 1498.

In 1500 Copernicus spoke before an interested audience in Rome on mathematical subjects, but the exact content of his lectures is unknown. In 1501 he stayed briefly in Frauenburg but soon returned to Italy to continue his studies, this time at the University of Padua, where he pursued medical studies between 1501 and 1503. At this time medicine was closely allied with astrology, as the stars were thought to influence the body’s dispositions. Thus, Copernicus���s astrological experience at Bologna was better training for medicine than one might imagine today. Copernicus later painted a self-portrait; it is likely that he acquired the necessary artistic skills while in Padua, since there was a flourishing community of painters there and in nearby Venice.

In May 1503 Copernicus finally received a doctorate—like his uncle, in canon law—but from an Italian university where he had not studied: the University of Ferrara. When he returned to Poland, Bishop Watzenrode arranged a sinecure for him: an in absentia teaching post at Wrocław. Copernicus’s actual duties at the bishopric palace, however, were largely administrative and medical. As a church canon, he collected rents from church-owned lands; secured military defenses; oversaw chapter finances; managed the bakery, brewery, and mills; and cared for the medical needs of the other canons and his uncle. Copernicus’s astronomical work took place in his spare time, apart from these other obligations.

He proposed that the planets have the Sun as the fixed point to which their motions are to be referred; that Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow, long-term changes in the direction of this axis account for the procession of the equinoxes. This representation of the heavens is usually called the heliocentric, or “Sun-centred,” system—derived from the Greek helios, meaning “Sun.” Copernicus’s theory had important consequences for later thinkers of the scientific revolution, including such major figures as Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton. Copernicus probably hit upon his main idea sometime between 1508 and 1514, and during those years he wrote a manuscript usually called the Commentariolus (“Little Commentary”). However, the book that contains the final version of his theory, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”), did not appear in print until 1543, the year of his death.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolaus-Copernicus

https://www.space.com/15684-nicolaus-copernicus.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/copernicus.shtml

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

The Citadel of Alep was one of many castles that the Assassins used as their headquarters during the Third Crusade. The city was under the control of the Ayyubid Sultanate, but the Saracens and Assassins tolerated one another's presence and cooperated in the city. In 1190, it even served as the main base for Al Mualim and his lieutenant Harash.

As a result, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad operated primarily from this city that year. It was while returning to it after having completed one of his missions that he found the outskirts of the city attacked by Crusaders. The Crusaders were keen on locating the legendary relic called the Chalice, and had pursued an Assassin agent to a village just outside Alep for information. After retrieving this information from the Assassin, whom they killed, they proceeded to massacre the entire village and raze it to the ground.

Altaïr ultimately managed to assassinate the commanding officer of this Crusader detachment, and he and the survivors were able to alert the nearby Assassin citadel, which mounted a counter-attack shortly afterwards. As soon as he returned, Altaïr was briefed on his new assignment: to recover the Chalice lest it should fall into the hands of the Crusaders or Saracens.

When he returned later that year, Altaïr did so covertly, rather than as an ally. He had managed to find the Chalice, but it had turned out to be a woman, none other than a friend he loved named Adha. Adha had informed him of the treachery of Harash, Keeper of the Assassins, who had been bribed by the Templars to serve as their spy. As a result, the Assassins under direct control by Harash were colluding with the Templars, whether they knew it or not, and the Templars themselves were able to enter to meet with Harash in secret, compromising the stronghold's security. Although Altaïr managed to cleanse the fortress, killing Harash, Al Mualim relocated to Masyaf as their main base the next year.

Later, after Altaïr's failure at Solomon's Temple, the city was recalled by an informant in Damascus, during the assassination attempt on Abu'l Nuqoud. The man asked Altaïr about Adha and mentioned their past adventures in Alep, but the Assassin quickly dissolved the conversation, not wishing to be reminded of the tragedy that had followed from that point.

In Real Life:

Aleppo (Arabic Ḥalab, Turkish Halep) is a principal city of northern Syria. The exact age of Aleppo is unknown, although it is thought to be among the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. The first settlers are believed to have built homes on the hill at the center of the modern city, taking advantage of the area’s natural defensive advantages, fertile agricultural land, and proximity to a water source, the Quwayq River. However, the continuous occupation of the site to the present day has made the search for archaeological evidence of the site’s earliest history difficult.

The city’s Arabic name, Ḥalab, is of ancient Semitic origin. It is first mentioned in the archives of the ancient city of Ebla at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE as the site of an important temple dedicated to the Near Eastern storm god Hadad. In the late 20th century, archaeologists discovered the buried remains of this temple at the site of Aleppo’s medieval citadel, atop the hill at the city’s center. The oldest parts of the temple date to the 3rd millennium BCE, and the building was renovated several times over the succeeding millennia. The thickness of its ruined walls indicates that the temple was a tall tower that would have been visible for long distances.

(Image source)

In the 12th century Aleppo became a center of Muslim resistance to the Crusaders, who besieged it unsuccessfully in 1124–25. The Crusader threat was repelled by ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī, who took control of Aleppo in 1129, and by his son Nūr al-Dīn. After Nūr al-Dīn’s death, the city passed into the control of the Ayyūbid dynasty, founded by Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn). Under the Ayyūbid rulers, Aleppo experienced a period of exceptional prosperity. Treaties were established with the Venetians, thus restoring Aleppo’s role as an entrepôt for trade between Europe and Asia. The citadel was rebuilt, and the markets and suburbs of the city were expanded. The Ayyūbid rulers also constructed a number of madrasahs to promote the reestablishment of Sunnī Islam in Aleppo, which had become a Shīʿite stronghold under the Ḥamdānids.

Ayyūbid rule came to an abrupt end in 1260 when Aleppo was taken by the Mongols, who massacred its inhabitants. The Mongols were soon ejected from Syria by the Mamlūks of Egypt, but the city continued to suffer, enduring an outbreak of plague in 1348 and a devastating attack by Timur in 1400. A commercial revival in the 15th century was made possible by the decline of northern trade routes through Anatolia and the Black Sea.

In modern times a new political structure dominated by ʿAlawite (Shīʿite minority sect) military officers at the expense of the traditional Sunni urban elite led occasionally to outbreaks of violence. In 1979 a simmering insurgency against the regime of Pres. Ḥafiz al-Assadtook a brutal turn when militants massacred approximately 50 cadets, most of them ʿAlawites, at a military academy in Aleppo. The government responded with a massive military deployment to Aleppo in 1980, and several hundred people were killed by special forces hunting militants in the city.Aleppo initially remained quiet when demonstrations broke out against the regime of Pres. Bashar al-Assad in early 2011 and was thus spared the brutal reprisals by Syrian security forces. However, as the crisis evolved into a civil war, Aleppo became a center of armed opposition activity, and the city saw full-fledged combat beginning in the summer of 2012.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo

https://www.britannica.com/place/Aleppo

http://world.time.com/2012/07/27/brief-history-of-aleppo-a-great-world-city-now-in-the-grip-of-war/

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Cleopatra, was the last effective pharaoh of Egypt, ruling from 51 BCE to 30 BCE. She was the daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes and the elder sister of Ptolemy XIII.

In 49 BCE, Cleopatra was exiled by her younger brother Ptolemy XIII, who had been supported by the Order of the Ancients, causing her to flee Alexandria with the help of her loyal follower, Apollodorus. During her years in exile, Cleopatra lived in Apollodorus' personal estate. She later made the acquaintance of Aya, a former Medjay who was introduced to her by Apollodorus. The two shared a bond and became close friends, with Aya becoming her agent.

In 48 BCE, Cleopatra was introduced to Bayek of Siwa, Aya's husband who had hunted various members of the Order responsible for her exile. Cleopatra revealed to Bayek that the Snake, whom he thought to be Eudoros, was actually the Order itself and that he was known by the cryptonym, the Hippo.

Following this, Cleopatra began a liaison with Julius Caesar 47 BCE, who aided Cleopatra in her struggle against her younger brother. Through his aid, Cleopatra eventually gained sole control of Egypt under the watchful eye of the Order of the Ancients.

With Antony dead and her fate sealed, Cleopatra was confronted one last time by Amunet back at her palace in Alexandria. There, her former servant implored her to resign to Octavian's victory, to which the pharaoh acquiesced on the condition that Amunet take Caesarion with her and train him as a Hidden One. Amunet handed her a poison by which to commit suicide and left with Caesarion. Once Cleopatra was certain that her son was gone and far away, she thanked Akila for her servitude before consuming the poison.

Though Amunet had not directly killed Cleopatra, later Assassins romanticized her role in her death with the legend that she had assassinated the queen with a venomous asp. Statues of Amunet with a serpent coiled around her were erected in the Sanctuary under the Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni and in her cenotaph in Venice's St. Mark's Basilica, reinforcing the popular account.

In Real Life:

Since no contemporary accounts exist of Cleopatra’s life, it is difficult to piece together her biography with much certainty. Much of what is known about her life comes from the work of Greco-Roman scholars, particularly Plutarch. Born in 70 or 69 B.C., Cleopatra was a daughter of Ptolemy XII (Auletes). Her mother was believed to be Cleopatra V Tryphaena, the king’s wife (and possibly his half-sister). In 51 B.C., upon the apparently natural death of Auletes, the Egyptian throne passed to 18-year-old Cleopatra and her 10-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII.

Soon after the siblings’ ascension to the throne, Ptolemy’s advisers acted against Cleopatra, who was forced to flee Egypt for Syria in 49 B.C. She raised an army of mercenaries and returned the following year to face her brother’s forces at Pelusium, on Egypt’s eastern border. Meanwhile, after allowing the Roman general Pompey to be murdered, Ptolemy XIII welcomed the arrival of Pompey’s rival, Julius Caesar, to Alexandria. In order to help her cause, Cleopatra sought Caesar’s support, reportedly smuggling herself into the royal palace to plead her case with him.

(Image source)

Caesar needed to fund his own return to power in Rome, and needed Egypt to repay the debts incurred by Auletes. After four months of war between Caesar’s outnumbered forces and those of Ptolemy XIII, Roman reinforcements arrived; Ptolemy was forced to flee Alexandria, and was believed to have drowned in the Nile River. Entering Alexandria as an unpopular conqueror, Caesar restored the throne to the equally unpopular Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy XIV (then 13 years old). Caesar remained in Egypt with Cleopatra for a time, and around 47 B.C. she gave birth to a son, Ptolemy Caesar. He was believed to be Caesar’s child, and was known by the Egyptian people as Caesarion, or Little Caesar.

Sometime in 46-45 B.C., Cleopatra traveled with Ptolemy XIV and Caesarion to Rome to visit Caesar, who had returned earlier. After Caesar was murdered in March 44 B.C., Cleopatra went back to Egypt; Ptolemy XIV died soon after, and the three-year-old Caesarion was named co-regent with his mother, as Ptolemy XV. By this point, Cleopatra had strongly identified herself with the goddess Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. (This was consistent with the ancient Egyptian tradition of associating royalty with divinity in order to reinforce the position of kings and queens. Cleopatra III had also claimed to be associated with Isis, and Cleopatra VII was referred to as the “New Isis.”)

With her infant son as co-regent, Cleopatra’s hold on power in Egypt was more secure than it had ever been. Still, unreliable flooding of the Nile resulted in failing crops, leading to inflation and hunger. Meanwhile, a conflict was raging in Rome between a second triumvirate of Caesar’s allies (Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus) and his assassins, Brutus and Cassius. Both sides asked for Egyptian support, and after some stalling Cleopatra sent four Roman legions stationed in Egypt by Caesar to support the triumvirate. In 42 B.C., after defeating the forces of Brutus and Cassius in the battles of Philippi, Mark Antony and Octavian divided power in Rome.

Egypt grew more prosperous under Cleopatra’s rule, and in 37 B.C. Antony again met with Cleopatra to obtain funds for his long-delayed military campaign against the kingdom of Parthia. In exchange, he agreed to return much of Egypt’s eastern empire, including Cyprus, Crete, Cyrenaica (Libya), Jericho and large portions of Syria and Lebanon. They again became lovers, and Cleopatra gave birth to another son, Ptolemy Philadelphos, in 36 B.C.

(Image source)

After a humiliating defeat in Parthia, Antony publicly rejected his wife Octavia’s efforts to rejoin him and instead returned to Egypt and Cleopatra. In a public celebration in 34 B.C. known as the “Donations of Alexandria,” Antony declared Caesarion as Caesar’s son and rightful heir (as opposed to his adopted son, Octavian) and awarded land to each of his children with Cleopatra. This began a war of propaganda between him and the furious Octavian, who claimed that Antony was entirely under Cleopatra’s control and would abandon Rome and found a new capital in Egypt. In late 32 B.C., the Roman Senate stripped Antony of all his titles, and Octavian declared war on Cleopatra. 

On September 2nd, 31 B.C., Octavian’s forces soundly defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra’s ships deserted the battle and fled to Egypt, and Antony soon managed to break away and follow her with a few ships. With Alexandria under attack from Octavian’s forces, Antony heard a rumor that Cleopatra had committed suicide. He fell on his sword, and died just as news arrived that the rumor had been false.

On August 12th, 30 B.C., after burying Antony and meeting with the victorious Octavian, Cleopatra closed herself in her chamber with two of her female servants. The means of her death is uncertain, but Plutarch and other writers advanced the theory that she used a poisonous snake known as the asp, a symbol of divine royalty. According to her wishes, Cleopatra’s body was buried with Antony’s, leaving Octavian (later Emperor Augustus I) to celebrate his conquest of Egypt and his consolidation of power in Rome.

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/cleopatra

https://www.biography.com/people/cleopatra-vii-9250984

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cleopatra-queen-of-Egypt

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Louis-Michel le Peletier, Marquis de Saint-Fargeau was a French politician during the French Revolution and a member of the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order. An advisor of Grand Master François de la Serre from a young age, he eventually sided with François-Thomas Germain and plotted against de la Serre.

On May 5th, 1789, le Peletier attended the induction soirée of de la Serre's daughter, Élise, at the Palace of Versailleswith Lévesque, Sivert and Lafrenière. During the soirée, Sivert and his fellow Templar, the Roi des Thunes, murdered Grand Master de la Serre in the palace gardens, framing the Grand Master's adopted son, Arno Dorian, for the murder.

On the evening of March 31st, 1791, le Peletier and Lévesque went to the Hôtel de Beauvais to meet with Germain, who would explain the reason behind their orders. Since Lafrenière had discovered their betrayal of de la Serre, Lévesque feared that he would retaliate. Their fellow Templar Aloys la Touche informed them however, that Lafrenière had been killed hours earlier. Arno, now an Assassin, had been manipulated by Germain into killing Lafrenière, who had intended to strike at Germain's faction. Renouncing his opposition to the death penalty, he cast the deciding 361st vote for Louis' execution in 1793.

At the meeting, Frédéric Rouille presented evidence that King Louis had been plotting against the revolution. At Germain's request, le Peletier ensured that this evidence would become public. While a member of the National Convention, le Peletier worked covertly on a draft about education, suggesting that males and females were taught revolutionary ideas in state-run schools.

In celebration of the King's imminent execution, le Peletier attended a party at the Palais-Royal with his daughter, Louise-Suzanne, dining at the Café Fevrier. Unknown to him, Arno was also present. As le Peletier called for a bottle of wine, Arno placed a bottle cut with lead sugar at the bar. This bottle was served to le Peletier, who soon began to feel the effects of the poison.

Telling his daughter to find her nurse, le Peletier went into a hallway, where he was confronted by Arno. There, he told Arno that he was glad to see his daughter spared the sight of his death. He then claimed that all of his actions were done for the good of France, its people, and his own family. Noting that Arno was unmoved by this, he told the Assassin to kill him quickly. Arno complied, stabbing him with his Hidden Blade.

In Real Life:

Louis-Michel le Peletier, Marquis of Saint-Fargeau was born on May 29th, 1760 in Paris. He belonged to a well-known family, his great-grandfather, Michel Robert Le Peletier des Forts, count of Saint-Fargeau, having been Controller-General of Finances. After the death of his title-holding family, Le Peletier gained a vast amount of wealth.

He entered into politics by becoming a lawyer ("avocat") in the employ of the Place du Châtelet, a prison. In 1785 Le Peletier was advanced to avocat-general. In 1789 he was elected to the Parlement of Paris, and in that same year he became a deputy of the noblesse to the States-General.

Initially, he shared the conservative views of the majority of his class, but by degrees his ideas changed and became increasingly radical. On July 13th, 1789 he demanded the recall of Necker, whose dismissal by the king had aroused great excitement in Paris. In the Constituent Assembly he moved the abolition of the death penalty, of the galleys and of branding, and the substitution of beheading for hanging. This attitude won him great popularity, and on 21 June 1790 he was made president of the Constituent Assembly. He remained in this position until July 5th, 1790.

During the existence of the Legislative Assembly, he was elected President of the General Council for the Yonne département in 1791. He was then elected by this département to become a deputy to the Convention. Here he was in favor of the trial of Louis XVI by the Assembly and was a deciding vote for the death of the king.

On January 20th, 1793, the eve of the king's execution, Le Peletier was assassinated in a restaurant in the Palais Royal. His murderer, Philippe Nicolas Marie de Pâris, a member of the Garde du Corps, allegedly plunged a saber that he had hidden under his cloak into Le Peletier's chest. His assassin fled to Normandy, where, on the point of being discovered, he supposedly shot himself in the head. Other sources claim the real murderer fled to England where he died years later.

(Image Source)

The Convention honored Louis Michel Le Peletier with a magnificent funeral. His body was displayed in the Place Vendôme beneath the statue of King Louis XIV. Le Peletier was buried in the Panthéon in Paris in 1793. His body was removed by his family on February 14th, 1795.

Sources:

https://whokilledmarat.weebly.com/louis-michel-le-peletier.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Michel_le_Peletier,_marquis_de_Saint-Fargeau

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

John André was an officer of the British Army. He worked as a spy during the American Revolutionary War and aided in Major General Benedict Arnold's attempt to defect from the Continental Army to the British Army.

Serving under the name John Anderson while in the Continental Army, André conspired with Benedict Arnold to have the latter become a General in the British Army and surrender West Point to the British. However, he was followed by Ratonhnhaké:ton, an Assassin and ally of George Washington, following which André was captured by Patriots as he was making his way out of West Point.

Upon Ratonhnhaké:ton's advice, the Patriots searched André instead of shooting him on sight, where they discovered a letter revealing Arnold's betrayal. André was later hanged by the Continental Army.

In Real Life:

John André was born in London on May 2nd, 1750 to French Protestant (Huguenot) parents. His father was a merchant, born in Geneva, Switzerland; his mother was born in France and moved to England when she was young. He attended school in Geneva, returning to London in 1767, two years before his father died.

The young André was a charismatic and charming man whose manners and advanced education set him apart from his contemporaries in England. He was fluent in English, French, German, and Italian. He drew and painted, wrote lyric and comic verse, and played the flute.

At age 20, he entered the British Army and joined the 7th of Foot (Royal Fuzileers) in Canada in 1774 as a lieutenant. He was captured at Fort Saint-Jean by Continental General Richard Montgomery in November 1775, and held prisoner at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He lived in the home of Caleb Cope, enjoying the freedom of the town, as he had given his word not to escape. In December 1776, he was freed in a prisoner exchange. He was promoted to captain in the 26th Foot on January 18th, 1777.

(Image Source)

Sent to America in 1774, André became chief intelligence officer to the British commander in chief, General Sir Henry Clinton, in New York City. From May 1779 he carried on a secret correspondence with Arnold, who had become disillusioned with the American cause. In August 1780 Arnold was appointed commandant of the fort at West Point, New York, which, at a meeting with André on September 21, he agreed to surrender for £20,000.

In 1779, André became Adjutant General of the British Army in America with the rank of Major. In April of that year, he took charge of British Secret Service. By the next year (1780), he had briefly taken part in Clinton's invasion of the South, starting with the siege of Charleston, South Carolina.

Around this time, André had been negotiating with disillusioned American General Benedict Arnold. Arnold's Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen was one of the go-betweens in the correspondence. Arnold commanded West Point and had agreed to surrender it to the British for £20,000 (approximately $3.65 million in 2018 dollars)—a move that would have enabled the British to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies.

André went up the Hudson River on the British sloop-of-war Vulture on Wednesday, September 20, 1780 to visit Arnold. On the following night, a small boat furnished by Arnold was steered to the Vulture by Joshua Hett Smith. At the oars were two brothers, tenants of Smith's who reluctantly rowed the boat six miles on the river to the sloop. Despite Arnold's assurances, the two oarsmen sensed that something was wrong. None of these men knew Arnold's purpose or suspected his treason; all were told that the purpose was to do good for the patriot cause. Only Smith was told anything specific, and that was the lie that it was to secure vital intelligence for the American cause. The brothers finally agreed to row after threats by Arnold to arrest them. They picked up André and placed him on shore. The others left and Arnold came to André on horseback, leading an extra horse for André's use.

(Image source)

While returning to New York City, André was captured by three American militiamen; he failed to use the pass that Arnold had given him, and papers concerning West Point were found in one of his boots. A board of officers designated by General George Washington found him guilty of spying and condemned him to death. When General Clinton refused to exchange him for Arnold, who had escaped to British territory, André was hanged. He was mourned on both sides because of his personal charm and literary talent.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Andr%C3%A9

http://www.ushistory.org/march/bio/andre.htm

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Andre

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Juan Borgia, also known as Giovanni Borgia, was the second Duke of Gandia, and the first son of Rodrigo Borgia – the Grand Master of the Italian Templars – and his long-term mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei.

Juan was also the older brother of Cesare, Lucrezia and Jofré Borgia, and the grandfather of Francis Borgia.

Since Juan was his favorite son, Rodrigo made him the Captain-General of the Papal armies as soon after he became Pope in 1492. At around this time, Juan's younger brother, Cesare, became a Cardinal.

In 1496, Juan fought Bartolomeo d'Alviano at the Siege of Bracciano, wherein Bartolomeo sent a donkey out of the city, with a sign around its neck reading "Let me go for I am an ambassador to the Duke of Gandia." Bartolomeo had also tied a letter for Juan to the donkey's tail, which contained further insults.

By 1497, Cesare had realized that his life as a Cardinal would lead nowhere, and that if he wanted to gain power, he would need to get rid of his brother. Upon enticing Juan into a night spent in the company of courtesans, Cesare introduced him to Fiora Cavazza, a close ally of his. That night on June 14, Cesare watched as Fiora engaged Juan in a moment of passion, before she slit his throat with a dagger. Juan's body was later thrown into the Tiber.

Subsequent to the discovery of Juan's death, Cesare became Captain-General in his stead, and was never identified as his brother's killer.

In Real Life:

Giovanni Borgia was probably born in Rome to then-cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (later to become Pope Alexander VI), and his mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei, who was married to Domenico da Rignano. Giovanni married Maria Enriquez de Luna, the Spanish betrothed of his deceased older half-brother, Pedro Luis, in September 1493. He was made 2nd Duke of Gandia, Duke of Sessa, Grand Constable of Naples, Governor of St. Peter's, and Gonfalonier and Captain General of the Church.

Giovanni and Maria had three children: twins Juan de Borja y Enríquez (known as Juan Borgia, father of Francis Borgia, 4th Duke of Gandía), who became the 3rd Duke of Gandía, and Francisca de Jesús Borja, who became a nun at a convent in Valladolid. The younger Juan was the father of Saint Francis Borgia. Their third child, Isabel de Borja y Enríquez, was born after her father was killed; she grew up to be abbess of Santa Clara in Gandia.

(Image source)

Borgia was murdered the night of June 14th, 1497 near what later became the Piazza della Giudecca in the ghetto of Rome. Giovanni was last seen alive when he was leaving from a feast that his mother had in his honor at her villa with his other siblings Cesare, Lucrezia, and Gioffre; Gioffre's wife Sancha of Aragon, their cousin Juan Borgia Lanzol, and Vannozza's husband, Carlo Canale, were all in attendance.

The next morning his horse came back without its rider and with one of the stirrups cut. He was reported missing. A search party found his body in the Tiber with his throat slit, and about nine stab wounds on his torso. His grief-stricken father launched an intensive investigation into the murder, only to end it abruptly a week later. While the Orsini family had ample motive to kill Giovanni, it was later rumored that his younger brother Gioffre Borgia murdered him due to Giovanni's relationship with Gioffre's wife, Sancha. His richly-attired body was recovered from the Tiber River with 30 golden ducats untouched in the purse at his belt. To the immense grief of the pope, this act occasioned the epigram by Sannazzaro on the pope as "fisher of men." Borgia's only attendant was also slain, so there were no known witnesses.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Borgia,_2nd_Duke_of_Gandia

https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-suspects-in-the-murder-of-Giovanni-Juan-Borgia-and-who-was-most-likely-guilty#

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Juan-Borgia

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

William Ewart Gladstone was a British Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister four separate times, and was noted for his rivalry with Conservative Benjamin Disraeli.

During his time in parliament, he began to despise his rival Benjamin Disraeli who shared the same disgust to him. Gladstone had trouble finding a wife, but he eventually married Catherine Glynn.

Prime Minister Disraeli petitioned for the Corrupt Practices Act. The Templar Order opposed the act, planning to assassinate Disraeli and replace him with Gladstone, who they believed would be more easy to manipulate.

Sometime later, the Assassin Jacob Frye stole Gladstone and his wife's invitations for a ball in the Buckingham Palace, as well as stealing their carriage. Afterwards, Gladstone shared a carriage ride with Duleep Singh, who was seeking sympathetic politicians to recruit to his cause of freeing India from British rule. Gladstone refused on the principle that the British Empire is more than capable of governing India than Singh and stated that once he becomes Prime Minister, their dominion will continue to endure.

When Gladstone and his wife arrived at Buckingham Palace, they realized that their invitations were misplaced before noticing their own carriage roll into the palace.

In Real Life:

William Ewart Gladstone was born on December 29th, 1809 in Liverpool, England. Gladstone was born to Scottish parents.

He originally intended to take orders in the Church of England, but his father dissuaded him. He mistrusted parliamentary reform; his speech against it in May 1831 at the Oxford Union, of which he had been president, made a strong impression. One of his Christ Church friends, the son of the Duke of Newcastle, persuaded the Duke to support Gladstone as candidate for Parliament for Newark in the general election of December 1832; and the “Grand Old Man” of Liberalism thus began his parliamentary career as a Tory member.

Gladstone served as a minister in both of Robert Peel's governments, and in 1846 joined the breakaway Peelite faction, which eventually merged into the new Liberal Party in 1859. He was Chancellor under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Russell. Gladstone's own political doctrine—which emphasized equality of opportunity, free trade, and laissez-faire economic policies—came to be known as Gladstonian liberalism. His popularity amongst the working-class earned him the sobriquet "The People's William".

(Image source)

In 1868, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time. Many reforms were passed during his first ministry, including the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the introduction of secret voting. After electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as Leader of the Liberal Party; but from 1876 he began a comeback based on opposition to Turkey's reaction to the Bulgarian April Uprising. His Midlothian Campaign of 1879–80 was an early example of many modern political campaigning techniques. After the 1880 general election, Gladstone formed his second ministry, which saw the passage of the Third Reform Act as well as crises in Egypt (culminating in the Fall of Khartoum) and Ireland, where the government passed repressive measures but also improved the legal rights of Irish tenant farmers.

Back in office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed home rule for Ireland but was defeated in the House of Commons. The resulting split in the Liberal Party helped keep them out of office—with one short break—for twenty years. Gladstone formed his last government in 1892, at the age of 82. The Second Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords in 1893. Gladstone left office in March 1894, aged 84, as both the oldest person to serve as Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to have served four terms. He left parliament in 1895 and died three years later.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ewart_Gladstone

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Ewart-Gladstone

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/gladstone_william_ewart.shtml

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Akhenaten, previously known as Amenhotep IV, was a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt during the Amarna Period.

At some point during his reign, Amenhotep IV acquired an Apple of Eden, which he associated with Aten, the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology. Revering the Apple's power, he and his wife Nefertiti introduced a new monotheistic religion to Egypt centered around "Aten.”

The Aten was later passed down to his successor, and eventually to his son Tutankhamun who, instead of continuing his father's monotheistic beliefs, decided to restore the old Egyptian gods to prominence and passed the artifact to the priests of Amun.

Furthermore, Akhenaten's vision of the Aten eventually manifested as a form for his afterlife, where his spirit resided in.

In 38 BCE Akhenaten's spirit, alongside those of his wife and son, Tutankhamun, and the Great Pharaoh Ramesses II, were seemingly returned to the world of the living by the God's Wife of Amun, Isidora, who had possession of the Aten. The Hidden One Bayek, having investigated this, eventually travelled to Akhenaten's afterlife, where he sprinkled dust from a statue of Amun on his throne, summoning the spirit of the deceased pharaoh to combat him. Bayek eventually defeated the spirit, supposedly bringing his spirit to rest.

In Real Life:

Few scholars now agree with the contention that Amenhotep III associated his son Amenhotep IV on the throne for several years of coregency; it is assumed here, in accordance with general scholarly consensus, that the older king died before his son gained power. At or shortly after the time of his accession, Amenhotep IV seems to have married the chief queen of his reign, Nefertiti. The earliest monuments of Amenhotep IV depict the traditional worship of deities executed according to the artistic style of the preceding reign—with the exception of a prominent role accorded to the falcon-headed god Re-Harakhte, who is given an unusual epithet containing the phrase “who rejoices in his horizon, in his aspect of the light which is in the sun’s disk.”

Within the first few years of his rule, Amenhotep IV introduced sweeping changes in the spheres of religion, architecture, and art. Near the main precinct of the god Amon at Karnak, he founded several new temples dedicated to Re-Harakhte, who was now provided with a lengthy epithet placed in two royal cartouches and was described as “the light which is in the sun’s disk (aton).” Moreover, the new god, Aton, was no longer portrayed in anthropomorphic form but as the sun’s disk itself, elevated to the heavens and extending its multiple rays down over the royal family. Each ray ended in a tiny hand with which the Aton might offer the sign of life to the king and queen or even embrace their limbs and crowns.

(Image source)

Unlike the traditional ritual prescribed for most Egyptian deities, which was carried out in small, darkened sanctuaries in the innermost recesses of their temples, Amenhotep IV’s devotion to the Aton was celebrated through the presentation of foodstuffs on large numbers of offering tables and made in open sunlight. The Aton temples at Karnak therefore consisted of a series of vast open-air courts in which there was virtually no interior space at all. The only preserved architecture from Karnak indicates that these courts were flanked by roofed porticos with colossal statues of the king placed against the pillars. The new temples were built entirely of relatively small blocks of sandstone of uniform size, known as talatat, apparently for speed in construction.

The innovations of Amenhotep IV in several cultural spheres at once may be reasonably viewed as a manifestation of the intimate connection in Egyptian culture between art and religion. In devising a radically different cult based on the worship of the sun’s natural form, the king was forced to develop a new artistic idiom with which to express it. That Amenhotep IV was personally involved in these changes seems clear: the biographical text of one of the reign’s master sculptors indicates that he was instructed by the king himself.

In the fifth year of his reign, the king changed his name from Amenhotep (“Amon Is Content”) to Akhenaten (“Beneficial to Aton”). Nefertiti’s name was expanded to Neferneferuaten (“Beautiful Is the Beauty of Aton”)-Nefertiti. That same year Akhenaten moved his capital to a new site some 200 miles (300 km) north of Thebes. The location chosen for the new capital, named Akhetaton (“Horizon of the Aton”), was a virgin site on the east bank of the Nile River, a large desert embayment enclosed by limestone cliffs, in which a series of boundary stelae were carved. The boundary texts, dated the fifth, sixth, and eighth years of his rule, describe the planned city in some detail and reveal Akhenaten’s primary intention: to construct a city dedicated to the worship of the Aton separate from already established cults.

(Image source)

The last dated appearance of Akhenaten and the Amarna family is in the tomb of Meryra II, and dates from second month, year 12 of his reign. After this the historical record is unclear, and only with the succession of Tutankhamun is somewhat clarified. The general consensus seems to be that he died in the seventeenth year of his reign.

His body was removed after the court returned to Thebes, and recent genetic tests have confirmed that the body found buried in tomb KV55 was the father of Tutankhamun, and is therefore "most probably" Akhenaten, The tomb contained numerous Amarna era objects, including a royal funerary mask which had been deliberately destroyed. His sarcophagus was destroyed but has been reconstructed and now sits outside in the Cairo Museum.

With Akhenaten's death, the Aten cult he had founded gradually fell out of favor. His monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from the king lists. Traditional religious practice was gradually restored, and when some dozen years later rulers without clear rights of succession from the 18th Dynasty founded a new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors, referring to Akhenaten himself as "the enemy" or "that criminal" in archival records. He was all but lost from history until the discovery during the 19th century of the site of Akhetaten, the city he built and designed for the worship of Aten, at Amarna.

Sources:

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/pharaoh-akhenaten-different-view-heretic-king-005249

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Akhenaten

https://www.ancient.eu/Akhenaten/

[historybehindassassinscreed]

In Game:

Micheletto Corella, also known as Michele di Coreglia or Miguel de Corella, was a condottiero and a member of the Roman Rite of the Templar Order, as well as the personal bodyguard and assassin of Cesare Borgia.

Micheletto would go on to become the most loyal of Cesare's servants, often acting as the executioner of those who stood in his master's way. All these services led to him being named Cesare's right-hand man, though he still served the Borgia family as a whole.

Around this time, he became a condottiero, and was named the governor of Piombino for a short period of time.

In January 1500, Micheletto accompanied Cesare, Lucrezia Borgia, Juan Borgia, and Octavian de Valois to lay siege to Monteriggioni. After destroying the Auditore's defenses, the group walked through the gates of the town, having subdued Mario Auditore and captured both Caterina Sforza and the Apple of Eden.

Micheletto then watched his master speak to Ezio Auditore da Firenze, before Cesare shot Mario through the head. Successful in their objective, the party returned to Rome.

In August 1503, not long after the death of Octavian de Valois, Micheletto accompanied Cesare to a meeting with Francesco Troche, who had told his brother Egidio of Cesare's plans for Romagna. Egidio had sent letters to the ambassador of Venice to warn him, though these letters had been intercepted.

Francesco pleaded Cesare to spare his life, but he was ultimately strangled to death by Micheletto, and his body was thrown in the Tiber river.

Micheletto then went on to meet with a few Borgia guards, giving them costumes with which they could infiltrate the Colosseum play to kill Pietro Rossi, Lucrezia's latest lover. Unknown to him, he was being followed by the Assassin Ezio Auditore, who had sent his apprentices to assassinate all the aforementioned guards and steal the costumes they had been given.

Ezio continued to follow Micheletto to the Colosseum, where he assassinated all the Borgia arquebusiers posted there. Donning his own costume, Ezio followed Micheletto onstage, where they both joined the play.

As soon as Ezio came close to Micheletto, he stabbed him with his Hidden Blade. With the conversation that followed between the two, Micheletto revealed the fact that he had poisoned Pietro's wine as a fallback plan, and that Ezio would be too late to save him. However, Ezio did not kill Micheletto, instead sparing him and saying that in his quest to empower Cesare, Micheletto would cause his own downfall.

In Real Life:

Micheletto Corella (Micheletto Coreglia, Michele de Corella or Miguel de Corella) was a Valencian condottiero born on an unknown date in Valencia, 1470.

Known as Valentino's executioner, he and Cesare Borgia were thought to be close friends since childhood, going on to accompany one another during their studies at the University of Pisa.

On December 23rd, 1499, a Don Michele de Corella and the Bishop of Trani were left in Forli as lieutenants in Cesare Borgia's army around the time of the seizure of Forli.

In March, 1502, Corella was left by Cesare as his governor in Piombino. Corella was then dispatched to Pesaro with Ramiro de Lorqua under the order of Cesare Borgia in October, 1502. With his lances, on his way to Pesaro, Corella heard of the insurgence of the rebelling Fossombrone and Pergola, and ventured to those towns to sack them pitilessly as punishment.

Machiavelli describes a conversation Corella had with Oliverotto da Fermo on December 31st, 1502: "Therefore Don Michele rode off and joined Oliverotto, telling him that it was not right to keep his men out of their quarters, because these might be taken up by the men of the duke; and he advised him to send them at once to their quarters and to come himself to meet the duke."

On the night of December 31st, 1502, Vitellozzo Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo, who had been arrested under Cesare's command, were strangled to death, supposedly by Corella (hinted in Machiavelli's letter of December 31st).

In November 1503, Michele da Corella and della Volpe had gone north with seven hundred horse to support Cesare's Romagnuoli but the group were defeated in Tuscany by the army of Gianpaolo Baglioni (Rafael Sabatini, The Life of Cesare Borgia, Chapter III: Julius II) After Micheletto Corella and della Volpe were taken prisoner in 1503, Corella was first imprisoned in Florence and then in Rome where he was questioned and tortured. However, he refused to reveal the many secrets he knew about the Borgias.

He was liberated by Julius II in 1505, and thanks to Niccolò Machiavelli's mediation, was hired by Florence as bargello. He held this position for two years, until 1507.

He was killed in Milan in 1508 by some fellow countrymen although the instigator is unknown.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micheletto_Corella

https://books.google.com/books?id=0Sz2VYI0l1IC&pg=PA540&lpg=PA540&dq=micheletto+corella+real+life&source=bl&ots=4zRqYC6_uL&sig=zLeqSN5Lmar8teIRjvlwLkwC4bE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLtunsy6HdAhUnwFQKHXwWAsM4FBDoATAAegQIABAB#v=onepage&q=micheletto%20corella%20real%20life&f=false