Category: Military
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2902 – Battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium and Salamis
The year 2020 represents the 2,500th anniversary of three battles which played a major part in shaping the future of the western Mediterranean world: the battles of Thermopylae, Artemisum, and Salamis. This episode was written by Murray Dahm. Murray is an ancient and medieval military historian from New Zealand, living in Australia. He has written…
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2901 – The ‘Lewis and Clark’ Air Rifle
The American West contains many epic tales and stories, perhaps the most astounding is the story of Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery. Over the course of seventeen months a group of over forty individuals traveled seven thousand miles through hostile native tribes from the middle of America through previously unexplored mountain ranges…
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2810 – The Battle of Stony Point, 1779
July 15th 1779. The night was dark, the soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets and unload their rifles. Men exhausted; a 14 mile road march in the dead of summer that started at noon got them to this point. Anxiety filled the air as Washington’s men set to take back Stony Point. What took 20…
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2809 – John Hawkwood, The Greatest Mercenary of His Age pt.2
By 1365 the English mercenary John Hawkwood had an army of 7,000 horses with 43 corporals under him serving cities in Italy. With this army his reputation grew and grew. With his new force Hawkwood turned his attention on Florence. The Florentines (as one of the richest cities in Italy) responded by paying off Hawkwood…
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2808 -John Hawkwood, The Greatest Mercenary of His Age
The greatest mercenary commander of the 14th century, inspiration for historians, poets, novelists and playwrights, John Hawkwood is a name everyone should know. 14th century Europe was a plagued with incessant warfare. The Hundred Years’ War began between France and England in 1337 and would last until the middle of the next century. Other conflicts…
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2807 – The Battle of Stamford Bridge
By the beginning of September 1066, King Harold II was in a quandary. Expecting Duke William of Normandy to invade, he had summoned the fyrd (what passed for the army in Anglo-Saxon times; made up of a proportion of the freemen of each shire who were required to perform military service in defence of the…
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2806 – Lieutenant-General Sir Jeffrey Amherst and the Conquest of New France
The Seven Years War, fought from 1756 to 1763, pitted the alliance of France, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, Russia and Spain; against Great Britain, Prussia and Hanover. The first truly world war, campaigns in the war were fought in Europe, India, North America, and on the oceans throughout the world. In the North American theater of…
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2805 – The ubiquity of the Cretan archer in ancient warfare pt. 2
One thing to note in regard to Cretans is that when they are mentioned in our sources they are always referred to as Cretan archers or just ‘Cretans’ or, occasionally just archers and we must work out from the context that they were Cretan. This episode was written by Murray Dahm, Murray Dahm is an…
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2804 – The ubiquity of the Cretan archer in ancient warfare
When a contingent of archers is mentioned in the context of Greek and Roman armies, more often than not the culture associated with them is that of Crete. Indeed, when we just have archers mentioned in an army without a specified origin, Cretan archers are commonly assumed to be meant, so ubiquitous with archery and…
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2803 – Bougainville: Civil War leads to new nation
Bougainville is a 9000 sq. km pacific island and was first subject to European contact in 1768 when Louis Antoine De Bougainville landed there and, in an act of typical vainglory, named it for himself. People had been on Bougainville for 28,000 years but it was the Austronesian people who 4,000 years ago established pigs, chickens,…