Category: Season 32
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
3204 – Ross Lewis Mangles and William Fraser McDonell at the Siege of Arrah
We saw in episodes 3104 and 3007 that due to the remarkable actions of several civilians who took up arms under military orders during the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and 1858 that the newly instituted Victoria Cross was altered to allow such acts of bravery to be recognised. Although Thomas Henry Kavanagh was recognised as…
-
3203 – The Battle of Poitiers
On the death of King Charles IV of France in 1328, Edward III of England was his closest male heir and therefore the legitimate successor to the throne of the childless Charles. This was due to the ancient Salian (or Salic) law which prevented female succession (it had, however, only been enacted in 1316). Despite…
-
3202 – The Gothic Genius of Fritigern – Part 2
In the year AD 378, the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens left Antioch to return via Constantinople to deal with the Gothic threat which had been ravaging Thrace and the surrounding provinces since 376. He also sought help from his nephew and the Western Roman Emperor, Gratian. Gratian was prevented from coming quickly to Valens’ aid…
-
3201 – The Gothic Genius of Fritigern – Part 1
The Gothic leader Fritigern (possibly based on the Gothic Frithugairns) is, perhaps, one of the most under-appreciated commanders in the ancient world. At the head of a complex confederation of Gothic tribes, he imposed a devastating defeat on the forces of the Western Roman empire at the battle of Adrianople (or Hadrianople) on August 9th,…