Military History
Almost from the beginning, the short, violent reign of Paraguayan strongman Francisco Solano Lopez devolved into a nightmare from which his unfortunate people could not awake. Read more
Military History
In the 1780s the Founding Fathers of the United States didn’t so much revise the old Articles of Confederation as devise an entirely new government as set forth in the Constitution. Read more
Military History
Defenders of the Reich: The Luftwaffe’s War against America’s Bombers (Robert Forsyth, Osprey Publishing, New York, NY, 480 pp., Read more
Military History
For more than a year and a half, 120 British sailors and Marines led a successful blockade of the French “Sugar Island” of Martinique, birthplace of Gen. Read more
Military History
Though the Western Roman Empire had fallen with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus at Rome in 476, elements of the Empire remained, in fact and influence, for centuries to come. Read more
Military History
From the deck of a quinquereme, one of 60 in his invasion fleet, Roman Consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus surveyed Syracuse’s Little Harbor on the coast of Sicily. Read more
Military History
For more than three centuries, from 1520 in the reign of King Henry the Eighth up until the advent of steam-powered ironclads in the American Civil War, ships under sail ruled the world’s oceans. Read more
Military History
After more than 10 years of the costliest civil war in history, China was writhing in the spring of 1860, the sprawling nation gutted by the fratricidal holocaust history would call the Taiping Rebellion. Read more
Military History
The Chinese Army of the mid-19th century was in serious decline, its decay a reflection of the Qing Dynasty that produced it. Read more
Military History
King William I of Prussia stood resplendent in the uniform of a Prussian Guard officer on a hill in eastern France on a sunny day in late summer 1870. Read more
Military History
Anyone who has ever visited Europe—particularly France, Italy, and the Netherlands—knows that the people in those countries love their bicycles. Read more
Military History
British Army privates Thomas Highgate, Ernest Jackson, and Louis Harris shared a distinction in World War I that they undoubtedly would rather not have had. Read more
Military History
Jan Zizka belongs to the elite group of leaders who never lost a battle. He was born on or around 1360 in the village of Trocnov in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Read more
Military History
Four months earlier Major General John Burgoyne had left Canada with a large army. He intended to deliver a fatal blow to the colonial revolt that had begun on April 19, 1775. Read more
Military History
On August 12, 1772, a wandering Don Cossack named Emelian Pugachev crossed the Polish frontier into Imperial Russia on an official passport that entitled him, after spending six weeks in quarantine, to resettle as a free citizen on the Irgiz River in southeast Russia. Read more
Military History
The mortar is perhaps the oldest surviving ordnance piece developed during the Middle Ages. The earliest known forerunner to the mortar, introduced by Spanish Muslims about ad 1250, was essentially an iron-reinforced bucket that hurled stones with gunpowder. Read more
Military History
Even in the age of ultra-sophisticated nuclear submarines, with their advanced computers, sonar, navigation, and communication systems, the hard truth is inescapable: the sea is the most hostile environment on Earth. Read more
Military History
Smoke and ash drifted across the shattered ground. Dead faces peered up with lidless eyes from pools of stagnant water. Read more
Military History
Almost as long as there have been history buffs there have been scale models. Toy soldiers have been popular among children for hundreds of years, but it was the introduction of specialized military vehicles that really gave birth to scale models after World War I. Read more
Military History
Tacfarinas, a former soldier of Rome’s Numidian cavalry, reined in his steed at the edge of the cliff with the ease of one born in the saddle. Read more
