Category: Military
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3801 – Alvarado’s Leap: Construction of a Legend
“Modern historical scholarship has little lenience for hyperbole, and any event that appears exaggerated is heavily scrutinised. The Spanish Conquest of Mexico provides ample folklore for historians to examine. One tale depicts renowned conquistador Pedro de Alvarado vaulting across a canal to escape certain doom. An episode since identified as the Salto de Alvarado (Alvarado’s…
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3710 – Soccer pitch invasion! Vienna’s battlefield and Carnuntum, AD 170
“In late October 2024, under a Vienna sports field (Ostbahn-XI-Platz) on the Danube in the Simmering district, a site of ancient mass burial was discovered. 129 bodies were discovered (intermixed bones may mean there were up to 150 bodies buried), all male, mostly between 20 and 30 years old, all roughly 1.7 metres tall, and…
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3709 – Waterloo and the Irishmen of the 27th (Part2)
‘The French infantry passed by the farm at La Haye Saint and advanced up to the ridge where Picton’s 5th Brigade were literally lying in wait. Dutch skirmishers retreated back to their parent regiments in Allied lines. The British troops of Picton’s 5th Brigade were stationed 100 yards behind the Dutch who were now trading…
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3708 – Waterloo and the Irishmen of the 27th
‘On the 20th of March 1815, Europe was once again plunged into chaos as exiled Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped his imprisonment from the island of Elba. Just 100 days after his escape, the armies of France, Prussia, Great Britain and The Netherlands fought Europe’s most famous battle, in Belgium, near a town…
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3707 – The Battle Of The Wabash
“American Indian Wars” in the modern perspective focuses mostly on the American West in the second half of the 19th century with cowboys, Custer and the cavalry, but the worst defeat of an American Army in the Indian Wars happened over eighty years earlier when George Washington was president. This episode was written by Doug…
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3706 – I sing of (Welsh) arms and the man: the battles of Taliesin – Part 2
‘Another poem, “Gwaith Argoed Llwyfain”, refers to another campaign against the Angles of Bernicia. It also provides remarkable insights. Here, the leader of the Angles is named as Fflamddwyn – perhaps meaning “flamebearer” or “flamboyant one.” It may refer to Theodoric of Bernicia (r. ca. 584-591) whose reign coincides with Urien’s. The idea that it…
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3705 – I sing of (Welsh) arms and the man: the battles of Taliesin
“The works of the sixth century AD Brittonic poet and bard, Taliesin, survive in a fourteenth century Welsh manuscript of the Llyuyr Taliessin, The Book of Taliesin. Taliesin is one of the most important figures in Welsh literature, one of the Five British Poets of Renown listed in the ninth century Historia Brittonum. Taliesin himself…
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3704 – Australia’s Irish rebellion
‘On 5 March, 1804, a group of 233 convict rebels revolted against their incarceration in the British colony of New South Wales (corresponding to modern Sydney, Australia). They were met by the local garrison, consisting of only 28-30 regulars and a few loyalist militia, at a place some 40km north-west of Sydney soon dubbed Vinegar…
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3703 – The battle of Abritus, AD 251 (part 2)
It is the dream of every ancient historian that some new discovery will solve a mystery of the past – some newly discovered fragment of a lost historian which will make everything clear. Such circumstances are very rare, but the Gothic War of Decius is one recent occasion where exactly the new discovery historians dream…
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3702 – The battle of Abritus, AD 251 (part 1)
“The battle of Abritus saw the death of two emperors in battle against a foreign enemy – Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, usually known as Trajan Decius (r. 249-251) and his son and co-emperor Quintus Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius, known as Herennius Etruscus (r. 251). They lost their lives intercepting an invasion of Goths led…