Military History
In November 1177, Saladin launched his first significant military campaign against a crusader state. With 26,000 men, siege engines, a huge baggage train, and his own personal force of elite Mamluk bodyguards, Saladin marched his Ayyubid army across the Sinai Desert from Egypt into southern Palestine. Read more
Military History
In the early evening of September 12, 1683, the citizens of Vienna watched from the ramparts of their beleaguered city as 3,500 winged horsemen poured down the slopes of the Kahlenberg Heights and into the heart of the besieging Turkish army. Read more
Military History
A rocky, jumbled mass of boulders known as Mount Harriet just west of the city of Stanley in the Falkland Islands had no claim to fame before the night of June 11-12, 1982, but it achieved renown after a harrowing engagement that occurred between British and Argentine forces that night. Read more
Military History
In normal times 18th-century Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a small farming community of about 800 souls clustered around a common. Read more
Military History
On March 14, 1590, King Henry IV of France achieved his greatest military victory on the field of Ivry. Read more
Military History
Moonlight bathed the dusty narrow path leading into the village of Ganjal shortly before sunrise on September 8, 2009, as nearly 100 soldiers climbed out of more than a dozen vehicles a mile from the seemingly peaceful village. Read more
Military History
Those rare qualities that set the extraordinary military commanders apart from the average ones were present in Alexander the Great, wrote the Greek historian Arrian, who drew on the account of Alexander’s general, Ptolemy. Read more
Military History
When Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France in December 1799, he consolidated the two seperate guard bodies, one for the directory and one for the legislature, into the Guarde des Consuls. Read more
Military History
The stereotypical Viking and his method of warfare have long been etched in the popular mind. Images of hairy, axe-wielding, and horned-helmeted barbarians raiding coastlines amid a frenzy of rape and pillage have for centuries filled our collective consciousness, as well as our desire to be entertained. Read more
Military History
Petty Officer R. J. Thomas, a U.S. Navy SEAL, wound up in deep trouble one day in 1969. Read more
Military History
The lash bit into the flesh of the woman’s back, beaten raw by metal balls tied into the ends of leather thongs. Read more
Military History
As the sun dipped low in the west on August 13, 1799, Russian Field Marshal Count Alexander Suvorov rode slowly south towards the heights on which was perched the walled town of Novi, in Italy’s Piedmont region. Read more
Military History
In 491 bc, heralds sent by Persian Emperor Darius I traveled throughout Greece with a message for each of the city-states of the Greek peninsula. Read more
Military History
Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of the Romans and one of the great rulers of the Middle Ages, was in the midst of a battle that might determine the fate of Northern Italy. Read more
Military History
The narrow barge drifted slowly along the Thames River on a muggy summer day in July 1258. Read more
Military History
King Frederick II “The Great” of Prussia faced a formidable challenge at the outset of the campaign season in 1759. Read more
Military History
As the Battle of Inkerman veered into chaos, British Maj. Gen. George Cathcart stepped into the role of a line officer, leading several hundred men to cut into the flank of an approaching Russian column. Read more
Military History
One of the “stranger than fiction” stories in military lore involves Charles Edward Stuart’s evasion of British forces following his defeat at Culloden on April, 16, 1746. Read more
Military History
The Ottoman army’s bombards played a key role in its successful conquest of Constantinople during the epic siege of 1453. In the 15th century the great powers of medieval Europe paid talented gunsmiths to build massive bombards to batter walls and shorten the length of sieges. Read more
Military History
The Ottoman janissary corps was recruited from military slaves. These slaves were either prisoners captured by Ottoman armies during the course of war or boys and young men conscripted from occupied Christian populations. Read more
