Subsequent failed campaigns to capture regions of the Byzantine Empire led Igor I of Keiv to be considered one of the worst leaders in history.   More »

By Alex Zakrzewski

In late 1917, the most successful cavalry charge of World War I took place not on the muddy killing fields of the Western Front, but at the foot of the Judean Hills in southern Palestine. The sun had just begun to set over the desert town of Beersheba   More »

By Tim Miller

On October 28, ad 312, a Roman emperor was drowning. The sight must have amazed his soldiers. All summer Rome had been filled with rumors of the western emperor, Constantine, and the ease with which he and his army had crossed the Alps and, once on Italian soil,   More »

By William E. Welsh
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. The introduction of bombards meant that artillery replaced mining as the surest way to breach a stronghold.
Bombards were massive guns, the   More »

Mary, Queen of Scots was let down by a faulty cipher and her misplaced trust in the reputed cleverness of her co-conspirators.   More »

“An obol for Belisarius!” became a catchphase for the shabby treatment governments meted out to their ex-soldiers. But what was the origin of the legend?   More »

During the Russo-Turkish war, the Russian invasion seemed to be a triumphant march clear to Constantinople. Until, that is, they reached the town of Plevna.   More »

Following an amphibious landing on the Crimean Peninsula, the allied army of France and Great Britain marched on Sevastopol.   More »

Charles Gordon’s thirst for danger ultimately led to his death in Khartoum at the hands of fanatical Mahdists.   More »

Czar Nicholas I’s warships destroyed a squadron of unsuspecting Ottoman ships at Sinop in the Black Seat at the outset of the Crimean War.   More »