My Home is My Castle Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Epicydes was a Greek of Sicily in the 3rd century BC. He was one of the commanders of the defence of Syracuse during the Second Punic War. The siege lasted from 213 to 212 BC, and ended with the defeat of the Syracusans, who had sided with Hannibal and Carthage in the hope of restoring the ancient liberties of the Greeks, on which Rome was increasingly encroaching. One of the most famous victims of the siege was the philosopher and scientist Archimedes, slain by a Roman soldier, while attempting to solve a mathematical riddle.

Vercingetorix is widely known as the leader of the Gallic resistance against the Romans led by Julius Caesar. Of the Arverni tribe, he was chosen as leader of a wide coalition and initially scored many successes, like the defence of Gergovia. Yet Caesar ultimately defeated the Gauls holed up in the city of Alesia in 52 BC, and Vercingetorix had to capitulate. He was executed in prison in Rome shortly afterwards.

Eleazar ben Ya'ir was one of the leaders on the Jewish revolt against the Romans and the defender of Masada. He belonged to the radical zealots known as Sicarii, bitter opponents of Roman rule over their homeland of Judea. The suppression of the revolt was led by two successive Roman emperors, Vespasian and Titus. Eleazar fell in action, and Masada was overrun, but in the process the defence of the fort became a powerful symbol of resilience and self-sacrifice.

Mstislav Iziaslavych was a prince of the Riurik dynasty, ruling over Kyiv. In 1169 his city was attacked by the armies of Suzdal, led by Andrei Bogoliubsky. The city was plundered, its sacred chruches despoiled, and many people perished in a sack which, in the memory of the chroniclers, was more brutal even than the Mongol sack of 1240. Yet Mstyslav recovered Kyiv shortly afterwards, in 1170, ruling there for some months before his death.

Balian of Ibelin, also known as Barisan the Younger, was a Roman Catholic Crusader. In 1187, the Muslim Turks, led by the well-known Saladin, advanced against Jerusalem, having beaten the Crusaders in Hattin decisively. Balian was the leader of the Christian defenders, who, however, had no countermeasure for the siege engines nor for the assault strength of their enemies. Balian, assessing the situation as hopeless, offered surrender terms to Saladin, evacuating the city and paying a ransom for safe withdrawal of both combatants and civilians. Later Balian became a negotiator for the end of the Third Crusade, which was inaugurated as a response to his defeat. Again, the terms he brokered were extremely favorable to the Muslims and he spent the last months of his life as Saladin's vassal.

Constantine XI Palaeologus was the last ruler of the medieval Greek Byzantine Empire. Having previously ruled in the appanage Despotate of Mystra in the Peloponnese, he was summoned in Constantinople after the death of his brother, John. Inheriting a diminished and weakened Empire, Constantine bravely resisted the Ottoman onslaught in 1453. The Fall of Constantinople was accompanied by three days of massacre and plunder, as the blood of the victims flowed like a stream. Constantine's body was never found in the aftermath, thus helping create the myth of the Marble King.

Myklos Zrinyi was a Hungarian noble of Croatian origins. His fame stems from the defence of the fortress Szigetvar against the Ottomans in 1566. The fortress had for long blocked the Turks from advancing into Central Europe, a thorn that Suleiman I was determined to annihilate. Led by a Serbian janissery, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, and with Suleiman in formal command in his tent, the Ottomans threw shot, shell, and a multitude of assaults against Szigetvar, succeeding in storming it after a month and two days, killing the entire garrison, including Zrinyi, who perished while leading a desperate assault. Yet for all the leveling of the castle, they had achieved nothing of substance, with numerous losses, with all roads of further advance blocked, with the elderly Suleiman dying before the final assault, and with winter approaching. On the contrary, Zrinyi's bold defense made him renowned throughout the Christian world and an inspiration for the continued struggle of the Habsburgs.

Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg was an Austrian general. His most famous accomplishment was defending Vienna against the Ottomans in 1683. Having to face not only the superior numbers of the besiegers, but also their tremendously effective engineer and sapper corps, Starhemberg managed to keep the Turks out of the Habsburg bastion until the arrival of the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of some allied German states. The defensive triumph of Starhemberg and the sweeping counterattack of the King of the Commonwealth, Jan Sobieski, tunred the tide and began a series of important victories of the Christian Europeans against the Ottomans, culminating with the Treaty of Karlowicz in 1699.

Dmytro Chechel was a Ukrainian Cossack colonel and associate of Hetman Ivan Mazepa. He is most famous for his defence of Baturyn, the capital of the Hetmanate, in 1708 against the Musovite (since Muscovy took the medieval politonym Rus' in 1721, rebranding itself as the Russian Empire, it is still proper to speak of Muscovites) army of Aleksandr Menshikov, dispatched by Peter I to subdue Ukraine, which was in alliance with Sweden. In November 1708 the city fell after a brutal assault. More than ten thousand people were executed, their mutilated bodies crucified. Chechel was captured alive, taken to Hlukhiv, and his body was broken on the wheel, together with other Cossack notables. Skeletons of the victims of the Baturyn massacres continue to be found even three centures after the event.

John C. Pemberton was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Although he was born in Pennsylvania, a Northern state, his love for Martha "Pattie" Thompson, a Southern woman, led him to the Confederate side. Pemberton was entrusted with the defense of the strategic city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. Failing to prevent the operational encirclement of the city by Union forces, whose leader of none other but Ulysses S. Grant, Pemberton remained bottled up in Vicksburg. After 47 days of extreme starvation, with no relief in sight, the Pennsylvania-born Confederate agreed to surrender the city and his army. He was exchanged some months later and returned to the Southern capital of Richmond, but no other general was willing to work with him, until CSA President Jefferson Davis appointed him Lieutenant Colonel of artillery in the capital. For all the debate over whether Pemberton was an effective commander, his loyalty to the South was arguably greater than that of many Confederates who viewed their cause as inherited by birthright.

The five incorrect figures were not military people at all. Archestratus was an ancient Greek who wrote the world's earliest-known cookbook. Peter Abelard was a medieval philosopher, known for his contributions to the development of Scholasticism and for his love affair with Heloise. Francois Marie Arouet was the birth name of Voltaire. Jakob Grimm was one of the Brothers Grimm and an accomplished linguist. Charles Darwin was a naturalist and scientist who first formulated the theory of evolution via natural selection.