Category: Military
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3304 – Epaminondas of Thebes – Part 2
Epaminondas’ victory at Leuctra created the Theban Hegemony, a brief period where Thebes dominated Greek politics. There has always been criticism that when Thebes defeated Sparta at the battle of Leuctra they had no real plan to replace the Spartan domination of Greece with one of their own. Hence the Theban hegemony of Greece was…
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3303 – Epaminondas of Thebes, part 1
Epaminondas of Thebes is one of the greatest and most revolutionary commanders in military history, destroying the might of Sparta in a single day at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. At that battle, Epaminondas led the outnumbered Theban phalanx to an overwhelming victory over an army of feared Spartan hoplites. Theban victory that…
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3302 – The Battle of Alcazar
By mid-afternoon on the 4th of August 1578, three monarchs lay dead on the battlefield of Alcazar in Morocco: two Sultans and King Sebastian I of Portugal. The consequences of their deaths would resonate for decades throughout Europe and North Africa. The Battle of Alcazar is known by several names, all of which are attempts…
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3301 – Charles Hazlitt Upham V.C. and Bar
Just before his 31st birthday in September 1939, Charles Upham volunteered as a private in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He had been in the Territorials but refused to join at any higher rank. He was soon singled out for his natural leadership qualities and made temporary lance corporal, but refused to attend the…
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3210 – The White Death: Finnish marksman Simo Häyhä
Simo Häyhä tormented Soviet forces invading his native Finland between December 1939 and March 1940, killing 542 enemy soldiers in only 98 days. In the hostile, minus forty-degree conditions of the Finnish winter of 1939-40, a man clad all in white lay with packed snow mounded in front of him as he awaited his enemy.…
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3209 – The Castilian Civil War, 1350-1369
‘A bitter war between legitimate and illegitimate heirs was fought for the throne of fourteenth century Castile. The ensuing conflict pulled in many powers, large and small, including both the kingdoms of England and France. On March 26th, 1350, Alfonso XI King of Castile, León and Galicia died during yet another siege (the fifth) of…
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3208 – Alexander faces the Great King: The Battle of Issus
‘At the battle of Issus, fought in early November 333 BC, Alexander faced the Persian King Darius in person for the first time. Massively outnumbered, the Macedonian army faced the numberless might of the Persian military machine. The outcome would decide the future of both the Persian and the Macedonian empire.’ This episode was written…
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3207 – The Northwest Indian War (part 2)
“At last, the rule of the tomahawk and musket, which for more than twenty years had made the forests, the rivers, and the plains beyond the Alleghenies a torture chamber and a burial ground… had reached its end”. – historian Thomas Boyd This episode was written by Christopher Waters Christopher Waters is an armchair historian…
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3206 – The Northwest Indian War (part 1)
“At dawn they came. Howling their war chants that cut through in the early morning mists. In the camp, men readied their weapons in preparation of the horrors that awaited them. The unseen enemy had already killed several of their company in small, fast strikes when the invaders had searched for food and fodder. Now…
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3205 – Saladin
On 4 July 1187, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, An-Nasir Yusuf Salah ad-Din ibn Ayyub—better known to us as Saladin—won a tremendous victory, one of the most famous of the Middle Ages. Beneath the Horns of Hattin, the twin peaks of an extinct volcano, his forces destroyed the largest army that the Crusader states…