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 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…
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 One of the Bloodiest Medieval Wars Was Fought Because Of A Bucket
In 1325, two armies clashed near what is today the Italian town of Castello di Serravalle in the region of Emilia-Romagna. It was the largest…
The King Comes Back To Claim His Own – Last Battle of the Viking King
It was the age of the Great Mongol Khans. It was the age of Byzantium, of the Holy Roman Empire. The wars of the Reconquista…
Arab Women Shame Their Fleeing Men Back Towards the Fight At The Battle of Yarmouk
Most people are familiar with the general history of the Arab expansion after the death of Mohammad. The Arabs didn’t sit idly in Saudi Arabia,…
The Viking Mercenaries of the Byzantine Empire – The Varangian Guard
The Byzantines Hired Viking Mercenaries as Guards The relationship between the Byzantine Emperors and their Varangian Guard was a complex affair. The Byzantines were first…
Massive Towers, Unbreakable Walls, Terrifying Siege Engines – This Was The Hundred Years War
As the sun rises over the battlefield, a column of knights gallops towards the assembled infantry. Banners flutter and arrows hurtle through the air as…