Military History
In May 1867, French ruler Napoleon III hosted a gala Great Universal Exposition that proved to be the high-water mark of his ornate but tissue-thin Second Empire. Read more
Military History
One of history’s—or at least literature’s— greatest villains is King Richard III, the second and last English monarch to wear the white rose of York. Read more
Military History
French immigrant Alfred Duffie may have fought for the Union during the Civil War, but the meddlesome presence of thousands of other French troops in Mexico almost led to a post-Civil War confrontation between the nation of his birth and the nation of his choice. Read more
Military History
The peripatetic Archibald Forbes had made his reputation as a war correspondent during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, when he bet rightly on the Prussians to win the war and attached himself accordingly to King Wilhelm I’s field headquarters. Read more
Military History
In the late summer 1541, 40 warships appeared off the shores of Sardinia, part of a grand armada gathered by Charles the V of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor. Read more
Military History
The doomed young English poet Wilfred Owen achieved posthumous fame for his heartbreaking poems about common soldiers in World War I, but another British writer has seen his reputation sink precipitously as a result of his quite different take on the war. Read more
Military History
As I write this editorial, the news is just coming through about the demise of the world’s arch-terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Read more
Military History
On April 30, 1975, the American-backed government in Saigon, South Vietnam, fell to the Communists. For those who served in what was then our nation’s longest war, it was a time of sadness, bitterness, and anger. Read more
Military History
Robert E. Lee never knew his father, Revolutionary War hero “Light Horse Harry” Lee. True, he saw him a few times, on the infrequent occasions of the elder Lee’s visits to his family at their gloomy mansion, Stratford, in Westmoreland County, Virginia But Light Horse Harry, living up to his nickname, was never anywhere for very long—certainly not in the confining bosom of his family. Read more
Military History
One of the unlikeliest—and unluckiest—Confederate leaders was Pennsylvania-born general John C. Pemberton, who “married South,” as the saying went, only to go down in infamy as the man who surrendered Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Read more
Military History
Originally a part of Sweden, Finland was absorbed by Russia in the early 19th century. It was not until the late 1800s, when Russia began to impose new taxes on the Finns, draft their citizens into its military, and station troops within its borders, that Finland yearned for its freedom. Read more
Military History
When a young British lieutenant named Winston Churchill charged into a swirling mob of Dervishes at Omdurman on the afternoon of September 2, 1898, it was not the first time the well-born cavalryman had faced combat in his nation’s far-flung wars. Read more
Military History
Major John M. Chivington, Colorado’s “fighting parson,” played a large role in the Union victory at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in 1862. Read more
Military History
Dear Editor:
As someone who has followed and written about the 1990’s war in Bosnia, my attention was drawn to the article entitled, “Himmler’s Recruits” (Insight, September 2010 issue). Read more
Military History
Dreams of “Yugo Slavia” or South Slavia, began in the 1860s, and by World War I intellectuals in the region pined away for a Greater Serbia that would stretch east from the Black Sea to the Aegean, uniting all Serbs. Read more
Military History
The Song of Roland is an epic retelling of a supposed encounter between the Franks and the Muslim occupiers of Christian Spain. Read more
Military History
Dear Editor:
I would like to commend you, your staff, and Mr. Frank Chadwick on the excellent article entitled “King Company at Bloody Lindern” in the June/July edition of WWII History. Read more
Military History
For collectors, finding out that an item believed to be authentic is actually a fake can feel like being punched in the stomach. Read more
Military History
Besides his many proven crimes, Mexican guerrilla leader Pancho Villa was also accused in some circles of being responsible for one of the most celebrated disappearances in American history—the vanishing of controversial author-journalist Ambrose Bierce in December 1913. Read more
Military History
It is an irony of war that the model 1857 gun-howitzer that Union artillerists used to help turn the tide at Gettysburg was the brainchild of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who championed the development of the new field piece while serving as secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. Read more
