A Force to be Reckoned With – Mercenaries in the Hundred Years War
There have always been soldiers motivated more by pay than by their cause. In the Hundred Years War, many of these men fought in freelance…
Civil War Spies – The Bureau of Military Information
In 1959, Edwin C. Fishel of the National Security Agency found files concerning the Bureau of Military Information within the records of the Army of…
Ironclad Warships Battle it Out – The Battle of Hampton Roads In The Civil War
The Battle of Hampton Roads was an American Civil War battle fought at the meeting point of three rivers very close to Chesapeake Bay. A showdown…
Civil War Spies: The Confederacy’s Vast Web of Intelligence and Disruption
Reliable Confederate spy records are hard to find. When Union troops were on their way to the South’s capital in Richmond, the Confederate Secretary of…
Deadliest Battles Of The American Civil War
The American Civil War is a devastating mark on the country’s history. The number of lives lost was substantial, and the social and economic repercussions,…
The Impenetrable Castle of Krak des Chevaliers Was Captured With A Single Sheet of Paper
A hulking edifice of sun-bleached stone, Krak des Chevaliers loomed against a clear blue sky. How many men had died to hold those walls, and…
Saladin: The Powerful General Who Pushed Back the Might of the Crusades
In the brutal, hard-fought wars of the Middle Eastern crusades, few figures stand out as brightly as Saladin. Rallying Muslim forces, he drove back the…
Building Armies in the Harsh World of Medieval England
Recruiting an army could be a difficult business in the Middle Ages. Most people’s lives consisted of farming small patches of land. When people didn’t…
The Black Dispatches From the Civil War Spies
The typical Southern officer’s opinion of African Americans was that they were an inferior subhuman race, lacking in intelligence or cunning. Their ignorance and subsequent…
The beginning of the end for the Teutonic Knights, Grunwald 1410
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 Emperor Napoleon Held The Loyalty Of Many Different Kinds Of Men
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…
When Malaria Sided With Napoleon: The Doomed British Walcheren Expedition That Cost 4,000 Lives
The British expedition sent to Walcheren in the Netherlands in 1809 was one of the boldest moves of the Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately for the soldiers…