Edward I opened his conquest of Scotland by storming its richest town. When Berwick refused to surrender, English troops broke in and massacred the inhabitants for two days; chroniclers claimed the dead numbered in the thousands, the town's prosperity extinguished in an orgy of slaughter meant to terrify Scotland into submission.
The atrocity at Berwick announced the character of the war and hardened Scottish resistance; it also ended Berwick's age as one of Britain's great trading ports.
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The Treaty of Paris formally ended the Crimean War on March 30, 1856. Russia ceded southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, returned Kars to the Ottoman Empire, and — most humiliatingly — agreed to the demilitarization of the Black Sea, prohibiting Russian warships and naval bases there. The Ottoman Empire was admitted to the Concert of Europe. Moldavia and Wallachia gained increased autonomy.
The treaty represented a fundamental reshaping of the European order. Russia's self-image as the continent's dominant power was shattered. The demilitarization of the Black Sea reversed Russian gains going back to Catherine the Great. The recognition of the Ottoman Empire as a participant in the European state system gave it temporary protection from further Russian encroachment. The treaty's results — particularly the empowerment of Sardinia — also accelerated Italian unification.
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North Vietnam's conventional invasion of South Vietnam with 120,000 troops and Soviet-supplied tanks. US ground forces had been largely withdrawn; South Vietnamese troops bore the brunt, supported by massive American air power. Nixon ordered B-52 strikes and the mining of Haiphong Harbor. The offensive was eventually repulsed at enormous cost, but revealed the South Vietnamese army's fragility without US air support.
Proved South Vietnam could not survive a conventional invasion without massive US air support — the central flaw in Vietnamization. Nixon's response, including bombing within miles of Hanoi, led to the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973. The Accords allowed North Vietnamese troops already in South Vietnam to remain — effectively guaranteeing the war's eventual outcome.
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