Military History Archives

Wracked by wintry weather, demoralized British soldiers trudge the snow in artist Richard Bevis’s painting, Retreat to Corunna.

Military History

Dismal British Retreat to Corunna

By Eric Niderost

It was December 1808, and the French Army was struggling though the 4,500-foot Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains in central Spain. Read more

Artillerists load a 4.5-inch howitzer in Richard Jack’s painting, The Battle of Vimy Ridge. Ranging innovations improved their aim.

Military History

Locating Enemies on the Western Front

By John E. Goodwin

All wars give rise to change and innovation. In the early years of the 20th century, a short but nasty territorial war erupted between Russia and Japan. 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

An American M-26 Pershing tank of the 89th Medium Tank Battalion passes a Russian-made North Korean tank destroyed by Fox Company of the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Division during the retreat of North Korean forces in August 1950.

Military History

Armored Clash on the Road to the Yalu

By Christopher Miskimon

The chase was on in early autumn 1950. The North Korean People’s Army, after its invasion of South Korea, fell back north with United Nations’ forces in close pursuit following the Battle of Inchon the previous month. Read more

Military History

The First Edged Weapon: The Knife

By William McPeak

While the sword usually comes to mind first when one thinks of edged weapons, it was not actually the first such weapon—the knife was. Read more

This painting by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) depicts a party of Huns ransacking a Roman villa in Gaul. Raids and tributes from the Roman Empire were the largest source of income for the Hunnic confederation under Attila.

Military History

For Nearly a Century the Nomadic Huns Dominated Much of Europe

By Ludwig H. Dyck

“A hitherto unknown race of men had appeared from some remote corner of the earth, uprooting and destroying everything in its path like a whirlwind descending from high mountains” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, a 4th century AD Roman officer and historian. Read more

Military History

Jedediah Hotchkiss’ Map

After his exploratory expedition to the Shenandoah Valley in 1716, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood encouraged Germans and Dutch farmers residing in eastern Pennsylvania to settle the region when he found Virginians in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of his state initially reluctant to settle beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Read more

Although Napoleon took up a strong position at Leipzig, he found his Grande Armée greatly outnumbered. The titanic clash involved upwards of 500,000 combatants.

Military History

Death Knell for Napoleon’s Empire

By Victor Kamenir

French Marshal Michel Ney found himself outmatched in a clash of arms with a Swedish-Prussian army at Dennewitz 40 miles southwest of Berlin on September 6, 1813. Read more

Military History

Soldier in the French Royal Regiment

By William E. Welsh

French King Louis XIV first standardized uniforms in 1657 when the king gave the companies of Masion du Roy blue uniforms. 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

Militiamen from the Carolina Colonies, most armed with rifles, fire on Loyalist American troops under the command of British Major Patrick Ferguson at the top of Kings Mountain, South Carolina. The hour-long battle on Oct. 7, 1780, was a victory for the Patriots and a turning point in the Revolutionary War. This painting by Don Troiami depicts the moment Major Ferguson, center left, was shot from his horse as he charged. Hit multiple times, Ferguson fell from his mount and was dragged by a foot caught in the stirrup. The Loyalists surrendered shortly after his death.

Military History

Pivotal Victory at Kings Mountain

By Mike Phifer

Kings Mountain was a battle of militia–American Patriots against American Loyalists. Short and intense, it was the last desperate stand of British Major Patrick Ferguson and a turning point in the American Revolution. Read more

Military History

Military History Book Reviews for Spring 2023

By Christopher Miskimon Full Reviews

Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Mark Galeotti, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2022, 384 pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index, $35, hardcover)

The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962 (Max Hastings, Harper Collins Publishing, New York NY, 2022, 544 pp., Read more

For what the U.S. Army called a “magnificent display of courage” while killing a dozen Vietnamese soldiers during a January, 1968, ambush in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Johnson was recommended for, and received, the Congressional Medal of Honor the same year. He was the City of Detroit's only Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner and the first African American soldier from Michigan to recieve the nation's highest military honor.

Military History

Tank driver Dwight Johnson in Vietnam

By William E. Welsh

The U.S. military had 409,000 soldiers and Marines in South Vietnam organized into approximately 100 infantry and mechanized battalions at the start of 1968. Read more

Military History

Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s War in Vietnam

By William Stroock

In late 1979, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was torn apart by a civil war pitting the weak Communist government of Hafizullah Amin against several moderate and fundamentalist Muslim rebel armies. 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

Soldiers of the 4th U.S. Colored Troops. The regiment participated in operations in Virginia and the coast of North Carolina.

Military History

Fourteen black soldiers received the Medal of Honor for feats of valor at Chaffin’s Farm on the outskirts of Richmond, Va.

By William E. Welsh

Union soldiers streamed across the pontoon bridge at Deep Bottom on the tidal portion of the James River in the early morning hours of September 29, 1864. Read more

Military History

The Praetorian Guard

By Arnold Blumberg

Its name has become synonymous with intrigue, conspiracy, betrayal, and assassination. It was responsible for the overthrow, abandonment, or murder of 15 out of the first 48 emperors who governed Rome between 27 bc and ad 305. Read more

Military History

Judas Maccabeus, Hammer of the Jews

By Kelly Bell

By 167 bc, when a full-scale revolt erupted in Judea, it had been more than 400 years since an organized Jewish army had taken up arms against an enemy. Read more

Miami warriors advance confidently into battle against U.S. Army forces in a modern painting by Todd Price. The army suffered two of its worst defeats in the Ohio Territory in 1790 and 1791.

Military History

The Battle of the Wabash: Slaughter in the Snow

By John E. Spindler

The warriors of the Western Confederacy crept silently along the snow-covered ground towards the U.S. Army camp on the banks of the upper Wabash River just before dawn on November 4, 1791. Read more

U.S. Marines endure heavy fire from North Vietnamese in well-concealed positions in Hue's 19th-century citadel.

Military History

First Sergeant John L. Canley’s Marines at Hue

By William E. Welsh

The crackle of small-arms fire on the night of January 30-31, 1968, alerted the South Vietnamese troops at an outpost three miles south of Hue City that the enemy was nearby. Read more

Military History

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From Around the Network

Ordnance: The British PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank) Gun

Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield

Michael Lynch’s ‘The Chinese Civil War 1945-49’

Hitler’s Second Bismarck