The Battle of Arsuf – To Win the Day, One Man Must Defy His Own King
Beneath the relentless beating of the midday sun, under a seemingly endless rain of arrows, The Grand Master’s patience had all but run out. Garnier…
Four Men and One Woman – Five Mighty Leaders Whose Wars United Medieval England
In the late ninth century, England was not a united country. Viking raiders from Denmark controlled the north and east. Norwegian and Irish raids left…
The Battle of Morgarten – Against All The Odds, One Small Army Changed the Course of European Military History
The supremacy of heavy cavalry and mounted knights on the battlefield came to an end one cold November morning in 1315, and it began with…
The Four Kinds of Men Who Made Up Napoleon Bonaparte’s Great Conquering Army
The awesome power of the Napoleonic Empire was built on the blood and courage of millions of soldiers. Though Napoleon is remembered as an icon…
Groundbreaking Innovations of the Civil War
You often hear about how the Civil War brought submarines, iron-clad ships, or the telegraph into play, but that’s not exactly true. While they are…
The Janissaries – An Elite Ottoman Army Unit Who Became Public Enemy No1
The walls of Vienna trembled on 27th of September, 1529, as strange music echoed close by. The sound of hundreds of drums stopped the heartbeats…
Sappers and Siege engines – Ivan the Terrible Conquers The city of Kazan
The army had been in place under the city walls for weeks. Ivan the Fourth, Tsar of all the Russians, accompanied his force in the…
The Many Things the Movie ‘Braveheart’ Got Wrong… And One Thing It Got Right
Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart is both one of the most celebrated and one of the most reviled pieces of historical filmmaking ever. A heart-stirring and…
Different Ways Medieval Crusaders Might Have Thought And Felt About Their Wars
A knight stands on the walls of Jerusalem, staring out at the parched land beyond the city. He is weary from weeks of travel and…
Disease, Starvation, and the Brutal Russian Winter – Why Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia Failed
In 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée (Great Army) invaded Russia. Though made up of about 680,000 soldiers, they lost. Historians have given many reasons as to…
The Death Of A Medieval Grand Master – An Ancient Order of Knights Falls In A Merciless Last Battle
For more than two hundred years the might of the Order of Teutonic Knights had been steadily growing. It was forged in 1190, in the…
The Mysterious Death of the Legendary Confederate General Stonewall Jackson
While the Battle of Chancellorsville was Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, it was the beginning of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s ultimate defeat. On May 2, 1863, Confederate…