The disastrous defeats of General Josiah Harmar (1753-1813) in October 1790 on the Miami river in Ohio, and of Governor Arthur St Clair on the 4th of November 1791 near Fort Recovery, Ohio, were followed in 1792 by the appointment of General Anthony Wayne to the command of the frontier.
When at the very height of power, all his schemes of aggrandisement came to sudden ruin through a succession of disastrous defeats at the hands of the Swiss at Grandson (March 2, 1476), at Morat (June 22, 1476) Austria.
War was declared in May 1652 after a fight between Blake and Tromp off Dover, and was continued with signal victories and defeats on both sides till 1654.
Though severely tried by disappointments and defeats he never lost hope, and when he died in 1584 he was preparing to renew the struggle and endeavouring to form for that purpose an alliance with England; his great idea, however, was not to be realized till more than a century later, and meanwhile the tsardom of Muscovy had to pass through a severe internal crisis in which its existence was seriously endangered.
It was not without secret satisfaction, therefore, that Prince Gorchakov watched the repeated defeats of the Austrian army in the Italian campaign of 1859, and he felt inclined to respond to the advances made to him by Napoleon III.; but the germs of a Russo-French alliance, which had come into existence immediately after the Crimean War, ripened very slowly, and they were completely destroyed in 1863 when the French emperor wounded Russian sensibilities deeply by giving moral and diplomatic support to the Polish insurrection.
