May 4
1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville in the American Civil War, which raged this day, was a bloody assault by the Union army in Virginia that failed to disperse the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Beginning on May 1, Federal forces under General Joseph Hooker attacked the Confederate soldiers of General Robert E. Lee, who directed a successful counterattack with the troops commanded by General Thomas Jonathan (“Stonewall”) Jackson, forcing a Union retreat. The South's greatest casualty was the loss of Jackson, who died May 10 of battle wounds.
1942: During World War II, U.S. air and naval fleets turned back a Japanese invasion force heading for the strategic Port Moresby, New Guinea, in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
1919: In what later became known as the May Fourth Movement, patriotic Chinese students protested the decision of the Paris Peace Conference that Japan retain defeated Germany's rights and possessions in Shantung.
1886: The Haymarket Riot in Chicago dramatized the labour movement's struggle for recognition in the United States when violence erupted between police and labour protesters.
1814: French leader Napoleon I landed at the island of Elba to serve the first of his two exiles.
Baron François Gérard
François Gérard, born this day in 1770, was a Neoclassical painter best known for his portraits of celebrated European personalities, particularly the leading figures of the French First Empire and restoration periods. A favourite of the revolutionaries, he also was able to ingratiate himself with the political faction in power.
"It acts as a very important composition of which the ideas are indicated in paint. I hope ardently in the interest of the work to be able to explain my intentions, and to come back to the observations that her Majesty has deigned to make."
François Gérard, requesting to attend the royal viewing of his painting The Entry of Henry IV into Paris, 22 March 1594, 1817
Confederates assaulted at Chancellorsville
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