Despite the lack of formal secondary and tertiary level education, Nobel gained proficiency in six languages: Swedish, French, Russian, English, German and Italian.

Despite heavy casualties the Prussians attempted to storm the great battery, whilst the Danes, under Count Scholten, attempted to drive the French infantry out of the copses beyond the village.

Despite pleas from Nelson and Hamilton, King Ferdinand of Naples refused to lend his frigates to the British fleet, fearing French reprisals.

Despite strenuous efforts, Captain Hood's isolated ship came under heavy fire and was unable to cut off the trailing Justice as the French survivors escaped seawards, Zealous being struck by a number of French shot and losing one man killed.

Despite his unconventional portrayal of the ascendant bourgeoisie, early support came from patrons in the French aristocracy, including Louis XV.

Despite the drawbacks, sustained artillery fire proved deadly during the engagement, especially during the French cavalry attack.

Despite being deprived of his French troops after the conquest of those two cities, Borgia returned to Rome to celebrate a triumph and to receive the title of Papal Gonfalonier from his father.

Despite these improvements, a second invasion by the former Katangan gendarmerie, known as Shaba II in May – June 1978, was only dispersed with the despatch of the French 2e régiment étranger de parachutistes and a battalion of the Belgian Paracommando Regiment.

Despite the success of the expedition, the quelling of sporadic rebellions would take another eight years until 1905, when the island was completely pacified by the French under Joseph Gallieni.

Despite its modest critical and commercial success in Italy, and its warm reception by French critics, it failed to interest North American distributors.

Despite this preference for Anglophone works, he also read a number of French novels, such as General Dourakine, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

Despite the modern view that longbows had trouble penetrating high-quality plate armour after about 1350, as late as 1415 the hail of arrows created by massed ranks of thousands of longbowmen helped to win the battle against plate-armoured French knights at Agincourt.

Despite several brief interludes of British occupation, including once during the Seven Years ' War and twice during the Napoleonic Wars, Martinique has remained a French possession.

Despite the only French naval victory ( during the Napoleonic Wars ) of Battle of Grand Port on 19 and 20 August 1810 by a fleet commanded by Pierre Bouvet, Mauritius was captured on 3 December 1810 by the British under Commodore Josias Rowley.

Despite the weakness of its authority, the Alaouite dynasty distinguished itself in the 18th and 19th centuries by maintaining Morocco's independence while other states in the region succumbed to Turkish, French, or British domination.

Despite the occasional recurrence of a border conflict over Lete Island in the Niger River, Benin and Niger, both former French subjects of French West Africa, relations are close.

Despite his foreign origin, Lully established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672.

Despite this, Trudeau found himself an outsider – a French Catholic living for the first time outside of Quebec in the predominantly Protestant American Harvard University .< This isolation deepened finally into despair, and led to his decision to continue his Harvard studies abroad.

Despite this alliance between the Plantagenets and the Capetians, the dynasty on the French throne, the two houses were sometimes in conflict.

Despite this, numerous important individual poems appeared in the years 1923 – 1926 ( including Gong and Mausoleum ), as well as the abundant lyrical work in French.

Despite French attempts to maintain control by encouraging sectarian divisions and isolating urban and rural areas, the revolt spread from the countryside and united Syrian Druze, Sunnis, Shiites, Allawis, and Christians.

Despite its initial focus on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society.

Despite the increase in tensions due to the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, Bethmann Hollweg did improve relations with Britain to some extent, working with British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to alleviate tensions during the Balkan Crises of 1912-1913, and negotiating treaties over an eventual partition of the Portuguese colonies and the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

Despite the financial success of life in Tangier the family left to avoid the turbulence of Moroccan independence from the French protectorate.

Despite the overwhelming military and logistic superiority of the Spanish Armed Forces based in Western Sahara in relation to the Moroccan Armed Forces, the Spanish government feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to an open colonial war in Africa, which could put Franco's regime into question and lead to an abupt political change or a social instability and disaster.

Despite their inferior numbers, the Moroccan gunpowder weapons easily carried the day, resulting in a rout of the Songhai troops.

Despite Frankish advances in the years that followed, Alaric was not afraid to take the military initiative when it presented itself.

Despite this growth, the military still does not receive sufficient funds for modernization.

Despite the retreat of US and UN forces after several deaths due to local hostilities mainly led by Aidid, the introduction of a powerful military force opened the transportation routes, enabling the provision of supplies and ended the famine quickly.

Despite the increasing evidence of a military build-up on Cuba, no U-2 flights were made over Cuba from September 5 until October 14.

Despite some early cooperative military successes against Japan, by the time that the Japanese surrendered in 1945 neither the CPC nor the KMT trusted each other or were actively cooperating.

Despite this loss of an obvious military leadership in the camps by July 1940, with war in Europe and Asia, an increasing number of CCC projects focused on resources for national defense, developing infrastructure for military training facilities and forest protection.

Despite some military attempts by the Spanish to retake it in the 18th century, most notably in the Great Siege of 1779 – 1783, the Rock has remained under British control ever since.

Despite most Guatemalans ' attachment to the original ideals of the 1944 uprising, some private sector leaders and the military began to believe that Arbenz represented a Communist threat and supported his overthrow, hoping that a successor government would continue the more moderate reforms started by Arevalo.

Despite the democratic, constitutional framework, the military has exercised substantial power and interfered repeatedly in civilian leadership since multi-party elections were instituted in 1994.

Despite these problems, the growing inflow of American silver from mid-16th century, the justified military reputation of the Spanish infantry and even the navy quickly recovering from its Armada disaster, made Spain the leading European power, a novel situation of which its citizens were only just becoming aware.

Despite opposing the United States in favour of the Sandanistas on the country's northern border, stern warnings against the US Bay of Pigs invasion, along with repelling Nicaraguan dictator Somoza's invasion after turning to the Organization of American States, and border disputes with Nicaragua, Costa Rica has held firmly to its belief against ever having a military.

Despite his own great reputation as a military administrator, Hadrian's reign was marked by a general lack of major military conflicts, apart from the Second Roman-Jewish War.

Despite the need to start back at the bottom of the naval hierarchy, Cook realised his career would advance more quickly in military service and entered the Navy at Wapping on 7 June 1755.

Despite having received no military education, Julian proved to be an able military commander, obtaining an battle of Strasbourg | important victory in Gaul and leading a Roman army under the walls of the Sassanid Empire's capital.

Despite the safeguards built into the constitutions of most of these organizations, courts and tribunals, the concept of universal jurisdiction is controversial among those states which prefer unilateral to multilateral solutions through the use of executive or military authority, sometimes described as realpolitik-based diplomacy.

Despite common attitudes regarding women's traditional roles in the 1930s, independent and masculine women were directly recruited by the military in the 1940s, and frailty discouraged.

The armistice was celebrated in Pyongyang with a military parade in which Kim declared " Despite their best efforts, the imperialist invaders were defeated with great loss in men and material.

Despite these changes and its past reliance on this military and economic assistance, North Korea proclaims a militantly independent stance in its foreign policy in accordance with its official ideology of Juche, or self-reliance.

" Despite fears that too much propaganda could diminish Hollywood ’ s entertainment appeal, reducing its targeted audience and decreasing profits, military enlistment increased and morale was considered to be higher, in part attributed to America's innovative propaganda.

Despite 1983 constitutional amendments, which appeared to proscribe a political role for the military, the Panama Defense Forces ( PDF ), as they were then known, continued to dominate Panamanian political life behind a facade of civilian government.