Military History Archives

Military History

Retained English Longbowman, 1350-1425

The English longbow, originally adopted from the Welsh, was made from a single piece of Yew wood, and required skill to make and use. Read more

Military History

Dorylaeum: The First Christian-Muslim Clash of the Crusades

By Scott A. Richardson

The Battle of Dorylaeum, fought on July 1, 1097, marked the first full-scale military clash between the Christian armies of the West and the Muslim armies of the East. Read more

The huts of the Americans spread across sloping ground below the crest of Jockey Hollow, divided into eight infantry brigades. At lower right a regiment is formed in two ranks on the parade ground, while oxen drag timber for firewood at lower left.

Military History

General Washington: Keeping the Continental Army Intact At Morristown

By David Michlovitz

Despite never having gained the mythological fame of Valley Forge, the encampment of the Continental Army at Morristown, New Jersey, over the winter of 1779-80 was a horrendous trial, worse for the men than that at the Pennsylvania hollow, and dire for the revolutionary cause. Read more

Military History

Spy, counterspy, and schemes aplenty broiled the Mexican-U.S. border in 1917.

By John Mancini

Sabotage! Espionage! Mutiny!” Kurt Jahnke, German Chief of Naval Intelligence for North America, read the dispatch from Berlin in his Mexico City headquarters directing him to launch secret missions into Arizona. Read more

Military History

World War I’s Second Battle of Ypres: Salient of Death

By Mike Phifer

Despite the incessant German shelling that had been hammering away at the French lines to their immediate left near the rubble-strewn city of Ypres in northwestern Belgium, the largely untested soldiers of the Canadian 1st Division found the early spring day of April 22, 1915, surprisingly warm and pleasant. Read more

Military History

Napoleon’s Triumph over Prussia

By Arnold Blumberg

At 4 am on October 14, 1806, 37-year-old Jean Lannes, Marshal of France in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee and commander of that host’s V Corps, received his final instructions verbally from the emperor. Read more

Military History

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar

By William Stroock

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Castilian mercenary who served Christian kings and Muslim emirs alike in late 11th-century Spain, was born in 1043 in the village of Vivar, about six miles north of the city of Burgos. Read more

Jean Baptiste Jourdan astride a white horse launches his reserves in a decisive counterattack against the Allied center at Fleurus.

Military History

Revolutionary France’s Opening Salvo

By Victor Kamenir

The French Revolution of 1789, which began as a peaceful process of social and financial reform, rapidly descended into internal strife and violence. Read more

German troops man a real tripod- mounted MG-34 machine gun fitted with long-range sights.

Military History

WWII Nonfiring Automatic Weapons

By Peter Suciu

World War II saw great advancements in firearms technology. Many nations that entered the conflict with bolt-action rifles ended the war with a variety of complex submachine guns and assault rifles. Read more

Military History

Hussite Hand Cannons: A Revolution in Gunpowder Warfare

By Chuck Lyons

The Hussites, all but forgotten today, were a 15th-century sect of religious reformers, forerunners of the Protestant Reformation that was to come a century later. Read more

Military History

Into the Valley of Death: The Battle of Balaklava

By Eric Niderost

When Lt. Col. Lord George Paget rose early in the morning of October 25, 1854, he had no inkling of, as he later put it, “the day’s work in store for us.” Read more

Military History

The Short-range Shotgun

By Christopher Miskimon

Coming upon the enemy’s rear guard outside the western Kentucky village of Sacramento, four days after Christmas 1861, Confederate Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered his cavalry to advance. Read more

This painting by Graham Turner depicts Sir John Hawkwood pulling the Veronese standard bearer Francesco Visconti from his saddle during the 1387 Battle of Castagnaro. Following closely are Hawkwood’s own standard bearer and one of his captains, John Coe.

Military History

English Mercenary Captain John Hawkwood

By William E. Welsh

Long columns of heavily armed soldiers streamed southeast along the left bank of the Adige River in the Veneto region of northern Italy on March 11, 1387. Read more

First Maine Cavalry shown skirmishing with Spencer carbines at an unnamed battle in drawing by Alfred Waud.

Military History

The Spencer Carbine

By Kelly Bell

Confederate soldiers bitterly called it “that damned Yankee carbine they load on Sunday, and then fire all week.” Read more

Military History

George Washington and Lord Cornwallis at Germantown

By Eric Niderost

On a gloomy Friday morning, September 26, 1777, an advance party of the British Army marched into Philadelphia to take possession of the city. Read more

British forces land at Salonika, Greece, on April 25, 1915, in this engraving by Charles Dixon. The Brits called the Allied backwater “the birdcage.”

Military History

Gardening in Salonika: World War I in the Balkans

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

The Germans mocked it as their largest prisoner-of-war camp, and French Premier Georges Clemenceau was hardly less withering in his opinion of the Allied stronghold at Salonika, Greece. Read more

Military History

A Murderous Order at Culp’s Hill

By Joshua Sheperd

Although Union Colonel Silas Colgrove had previously led his men through some of the most horrific fighting in the eastern theater of the Civil War, the order he received on the morning of July 3, 1863, in the woods near Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, was the most unnerving he had ever received. Read more

Military History

Manhattan’s First Terror Attack: Decades Before 9/11

By Cowan Brew

In the summer of 1916, America was an island of peace in an ocean of war. The guns of August 1914 had been blazing away in Europe for nearly two years now, primed by a booming American munitions industry that found itself growing rich on the long-distance suffering of others. Read more