Despite initial success, Shapur lifted his siege after his army missed an opportunity to exploit a collapsed wall.

Despite initial activity in the Lords, his career there was cut short by the House of Lords Act 1999.

Despite its initial recklessness, the alliance was very prestigious for both families.

Despite his initial high profile after the end of the Monkees, Jones struggled to establish himself as a solo artist.

Despite some initial success, bolstered by heavy advertising, the brand did not prove popular and was eventually withdrawn from sale.

Despite all this, the film is also one of the most widely seen Godzilla films in the United States — it was popular in its initial theatrical release, largely due to an aggressive marketing campaign, including elaborate posters of the two title monsters battling atop New York City's World Trade Center towers, presumably to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Dino De Laurentiis remake of King Kong, which used a similar image for its own poster.

Despite the initial popularity of the measure, the newspapers praised Cleveland's veto.

Despite initial successes, the German army was stopped close to Moscow in December 1941.

Despite some initial expressions of enthusiasm, Hoxha and Shehu mistrusted Nikita Khrushchev's programs of " peaceful coexistence " and " different roads to socialism " because they appeared to pose the threat that Yugoslavia might again try to take control of Albania.

Despite its initial dismal commercial showing, " Forever Changes " has since gained recognition as one of the all-time great rock albums.

Despite the initial distrust of the King and Crown Prince, and the loathing of Queen Augusta, Bismarck soon acquired a powerful hold over the King by force of personality and powers of persuasion.

Despite great initial excitement, the seed was found to be that of a European Juncaceae or Rush plant that had been glued into the fragment and camouflaged using coal dust.

Despite the initial success, the Olympic Movement faced hard times, as the 1900 ( in De Coubertin's own Paris ) and 1904 Games were both swallowed by World's Fairs, and received little attention.

Despite initial media reports, the affidavit made no mention of Clemens or Pettitte.

Despite the marginalised Left Opposition's demand for the restoration of Soviet democracy, Stalin developed a bureaucratic, authoritarian government, that was condemned by democratic socialists, anarchists and Trotskyists for undermining the initial socialist ideals of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution.

Despite a period of instability known as the Battle of the Booksellers when the initial copyright terms under the Statute began to expire, the Statute of Anne remained in force until the Copyright Act 1842 repealed it.

Despite an initial period of compliance, the principle of donating copies of books to certain libraries lapsed, partly due to the unwieldiness of the statute's provisions and partly because of a lack of cooperation by the publishers.

Despite initial opposition from her parents and difficulties presented by a sexist society, she gained education from books in her father's library and from correspondence with famous mathematicians such as Lagrange, Legendre, and Gauss.

Despite an initial reluctance to develop for video game consoles, Square entered the Nintendo Famicom market in December 1985 with the porting of Thexder.

Despite initial excitement, the guidance of longtime baseball executives, Eddie Leishman and Buzzie Bavasi as well as a new playing field, the team struggled ; the Padres finished in last place in each of its first six seasons in the NL West, losing 100 games or more four times.

Despite initial setbacks, he won increasing support among the natives.

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

Despite their initial cooperation against " revisionism ," Hoxha denounced Mao as a revisionist, along with almost every other self-identified Communist organization in the world.

Despite the initial failure of the story, it changed the course of Clarke's career.

Despite his unprecedented use of Army troops to enforce a federal desegregation order at Central High School in Little Rock, Eisenhower was criticized for his reluctance to support the civil rights movement to the degree which activists wanted.

Despite the reluctance to legally recognise the Premiership, ambivalence toward it waned in the 1780s.

Despite Washington's reluctance, Erhard envisaged offering Nikita Khrushchev, the leader in Moscow, massive economic aid in exchange for more political liberty in East Germany and eventually for reunification.

Despite the smashing victory that followed, Longstreet's performance at the battle was criticized by postbellum advocates of the Lost Cause, claiming that his slowness, reluctance to attack, and disobedience to Gen. Lee were a harbinger of his controversial performance to come on July 2, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Despite some reluctance on the part of the Athenian leaders, Athens finally accepts Philip II's entry into the Council of the League.

Despite the owner's reluctance to let her perform, McDaniel was eventually allowed to take the stage and became a regular.

Despite the reluctance of Cathal Goulding and the OIRA leadership, their volunteers on the ground were inevitably drawn into the violence.

Despite the Prussians ’ reluctance, Paul decided to move ahead with the war, promising 60, 000 men to support Austria in Italy and 45, 000 men to help England in North Germany and the Netherlands.

Despite his initial reluctance to take part in the competition, Ataru becomes extremely interested in the game when he meets Lum.

Despite his initial reluctance, like several former gospel singers Aretha Franklin, and Wilson Pickett, Burke was " molded into a more secular direction when he signed with Atlantic in the ' 60s ," and became one of " the " backsliders ," artists who " preferred a secular acclaim to the gospel obscurity ", after deciding eventually that " secular music was not the anithesis of the church but, rather, ' a new avenue, a new dimension to spread the gospel.

Despite Jumblatt's initial reluctance to engage in paramilitarism, it built a powerful private army, which proved to be one of the strongest in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990.

Despite initial reluctance, the Safavid Empire of Persia very rapidly acquired the art of making and using handguns.

Despite the reluctance of English officials to issue a patent to Colt, no fault could be found with the gun and he was issued his first patent ( Number 6909 ).

Despite these actions, which directly contradicted Sihanouk's policy of partial tolerance of North Vietnamese activity, it appears that Lon Nol himself had great personal reluctance to depose the Head of State: he initially may merely have wanted Sihanouk to apply more pressure to the North Vietnamese.

Despite their numerical advantage and the wide dispersal of British forces against an invasion attempt, the Americans, who were stationed in Lewiston, New York, were unable to get the bulk of their invasion force across the Niagara River due to the work of British artillery and reluctance on the part of the undertrained and inexperienced American militia.

Despite Carr's reluctance, the Vancouver Art Gallery, a major curator of Carr's work, records Carr in this period as abandoning the documentary impulse and starting to concentrate instead on capturing the emotional and mythological content embedded in the totemic carvings, which she did by jettisoning her painterly and practiced Post-Impressionist style in favour of creating highly stylized and abstracted geometric forms.

Despite her parents ' reluctance, the two were married on November 11, 1856, with Patrick Cleburne serving as best man.

Despite his reluctance, Scheider pledged to do the best job that he could, wanting to make Brody believable.

Despite showing initial reluctance, Forsythe began an acting career at the suggestion of his father.

Despite initial reluctance to concede men, John of Gaunt finally agreed to levy troops to reinforce the Portuguese army.

Despite Ponting's reluctance to weigh into the debate, Tasmanian coach Greg Shipperd thought he could handle the experience.

Despite not being a selector, Ponting was heavily criticised for Australia not playing Hauritz and his apparent reluctance to put faith in his spinners.

Despite the reluctance of the institution's governing board, CAC began opening the door to liberal arts in 1885, and by Ingersoll's last year at CAC the college had instituted a " Ladies Course " that offered junior and senior women classes in drawing, stenography and typewriting, foreign languages, landscape gardening and psychology.