The restoration of the city now popularly…

Asher Lämmlein, a German born Jew who appears in Istria, near Venice, in 1502 and, encouraged by the works of Isaac Abrabanel, proclaims himself a forerunner of the Jewish Messiah, declares that if the Jews show great repentance and charity, the Messiah will not fail to appear in six months.

He gains a troop of adherents who spread his prophesies though Italy and Germany, and his message meets with such acceptance that the year becomse known as the "year of penance."

Existing institutions are willfully destroyed in the belief of coming redemption and a return to Jerusalem.

However, Lämmlein dies or suddenly disappears and the extravagant hopes of his followers come to an end.

A second assault by a Tyrolean force several weeks later is an even greater failure; Alviano not only routs the Imperial army but also seizes Trieste and Fiume, forcing Maximilian to conclude a truce with Venice.

...Istria, and ...

Stendhal introduces social realism to the French novel in his brilliant 1830 masterpiece, The Red and the Black, whose major theme is the individual against society, and whose title refers to the choices open to his protagonist: army or church, radicalism or reaction, courage or hypocrisy.

Having returned to government service after the July Revolution, he is appointed to a minor consular position in Trieste.

Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma, written in fifty-two days and published in 1839, is set in Italy, which he considers a more sincere and passionate country than Restoration France.

An aside in this novel, referring to a character who contemplates suicide after being jilted, speaks about his attitude towards his home country: "To make this course of action clear to my French readers, I must explain that in Italy, a country very far away from us, people are still driven to despair by love."

Drawing from the Napoleonic Era and the Italian Renaissance to create a fanciful setting for his reexamination of the theme of the individual against society, Stendahl tells the story of an Italian nobleman in the Napoleonic era.

Later admired by Balzac, Tolstoy, André Gide and Henry James, and eventually adapted for opera, film and television, the novel is inspired by an inauthentic Italian account of the dissolute youth of Alessandro Farnese.

Stendahl, born Henri Marie Beyle, the son of a doctrinaire, unimaginitive, well-to-do Grenoble lawyer that he grew up resenting, had entered the Polytechnic Institute in Paris in 1799.

Trained by his maternal grandfather in rationalism and emotionally close to his aunt following the death of his adored mother at seven years of age, the seventeen-year-old Beyle had dreamed of writing plays rather than attending classes.

The military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire were a revelation to Beyle.

He had been named an auditor with the Conseil d'État on August 3, 1810, and thereafter took part in the French administration and in the Napoleonic wars in Italy.

He had traveled extensively in Germany and had been part of Napoleon's army in the 1812 invasion of Russia.

Stendhal had witnessed the burning of Moscow from just outside the city.

Appointed Commissioner of War Supplies and sent to Smolensk to prepare provisions for the returning army, he had crossed the Berezina River by finding a usable ford rather than the overwhelmed pontoon bridge, which probably saved his life and those of his companions.

Stendhal had arrived in Paris in 1813, largely unaware of the general fiasco that the retreat had become.

Stendhal had become known, during the Russian campaign, for keeping his wits about him, and maintaining his "sang-froid and clear-headedness."

He also maintained his daily routine, shaving each day during the retreat from Moscow.

After the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, he left for Italy, where he has settled in Milan.

He forms a particular attachment to Italy, where he will spend much of the remainder of his career, serving as French consul at Trieste and Civitavecchia.

Stendhal's Memoirs of a Tourist, published in 1838, further contributes to the development of the cult of the self in literature.

Robert Whitehead equips the torpedo with a servomotor in 1876 to assure a predetermined path through the water.

Richard Francis Burton's best-known book is perhaps his translation of The Kama Sutra.

In fact, it is untrue that he was the translator, since the original manuscript was in ancient Sanskrit which he cannot read.

However, he had collaborated with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot on the work and provides translations from other manuscripts of later translations.

The Kama Shastra Society had first printed the book in 1883 and numerous editions of the Burton translation are in print to this day.

His English translation from a French edition of the Arabic erotic guide The Perfumed Garden is printed in 1886 as The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui: A Manual of Arabian Erotology.

Burton is awarded a knighthood (KCMG) by Queen Victoria on February 5, 1886 .

He has written a number of travel books in this period that have not been particularly well received.

His best-known contributions to literature are those considered risqué or even pornographic at the time and which are published under the auspices of the Kama Shastra society.

These books include The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883) (popularly known as the Kama Sutra), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) (more commonly known in English as The Arabian Nights because of Andrew Lang's abridged collection), The Perfumed Garden of the Shaykh Nefzawi (1886) and The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night (sixteen volumes 1886–1898).

Burton had long had an interest in sexuality and some erotic literature.

However, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 had resulted in many jail sentences for publishers, with prosecutions being brought by the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

Burton refers to the society and those who shared its views as Mrs. Grundy.

A way around this was the private circulation of books among the members of a society.

For this reason Burton, together with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, had created the Kama Shastra Society to print and circulate books that would be illegal to publish in public.

Burton has mastered at least twenty-five languages—or forty, if distinct dialects are counted.

One of the most celebrated of all his books is his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night in ten volumes, (1885) with six further volumes being added later.

The volumes are printed by the Kama Shastra Society in a subscribers-only edition of one thousand with a guarantee that there will never be a larger printing of the books in this form.

The stories collected are often sexual in content and are considered pornography at the time of publication.

In particular, the Terminal Essay in volume ten of the Nights contain a fourteen thousand word essay entitled "Pederasty" (Volume 10, section IV, D).

Burton postulates that male homosexuality is prevalent in an area of the southern latitudes named by him the "Sotadic zone".

Rumors about Burton's own sexuality are already circulating and are further incited by this work.

Robert Whitehead perfects the torpedo in 1895 with the addition of a gyroscope to return it to its original course if deflected from its target.

...Trieste, ...

The Germans had seized Trieste in 1943, intending to maintain it as a southern outlet to the sea for the Third Reich.

Tito’s Partisans, having occupied Trieste in May 1945 and claimed it for Yugoslavia, hope that its possession is assured, but the Allies force the establishment of a Free Territory of Trieste, consisting of a northern, Italian-administered zone in and around the city and ...