Battlefield Travels

This episode examines one of history's most famous last stands — the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, where King Leonidas of Sparta and a small Greek coalition held the narrow coastal pass of the 'Hot Gates' against Xerxes' vast Persian invasion force for three days. The episode explores how the Greeks used the restrictive terrain of the Thermopylae defile to nullify Persian numerical superiority...

This episode examines one of the most contested questions in Jacobite War historiography — did the Duke of Cumberland's army use a modified bayonet drill at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, and does the evidence support it? The standard academic position holds that a November 1746 retraction in The Scots Magazine, combined with the absence of a written general order in Cumberland's papers,...

This episode examines the Battle of Chancellorsville from 30 April to 6 May 1863, Robert E. Lee's most audacious victory of the American Civil War and a masterclass in aggressive manoeuvre against a superior force. General Joseph Hooker's 130,000 strong Army of the Potomac,  crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers and positioned itself on Lee's flank at Chancellorsville in what Hooker describe...

This episode examines the Battle of Cowpens on 17 January 1781, one of the most tactically sophisticated engagements of the American Revolutionary War and one of the rare examples in military history of a deliberate double envelopment executed by an outnumbered force against a superior enemy. American Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, commanding approximately 1,900 Continental regulars and militia...

This episode examines the Dalton Gang raid on Coffeyville, Kansas on 5 October 1892, the most dramatic bank robbery in the history of the American West, and the event that ended the Dalton Gang in a single fifteen-minute gunfight. Bob, Grat, and Emmet Dalton, along with Bill Power and Dick Broadwell, rode into Coffeyville that morning intending to rob two banks simultaneously: the First National B...

This episode examines the First Battle of Elephant Pass from 10 July to 9 August 1991 , the largest single battle of the Sri Lankan Civil War and one of the most intense siege operations in modern Asian military history. Elephant Pass is the narrow isthmus connecting the Jaffna Peninsula to the Sri Lankan mainland, the only overland route to Jaffna, flanked by the Jaffna Lagoon to the west and the...

This episode examines Operation Hirondelle, the French airborne raid on Lang Son, 17-18 July 1953, one of the most audacious deep penetration operations of the Indochina War and a remarkable demonstration of French airborne capability fourteen months before the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Approximately 2,000 paratroopers of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps dropped behind Viet Minh lines onto the...

This episode examines the Siege of Fort William Henry in August 1757, one of the most dramatic and controversial engagements of the French and Indian War, and the event that inspired James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. The French force under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Montcalm, approximately 8,000 regulars, Canadian militia, and Native American warriors drawn from 41 nation...

This episode examines the Sieges of Kerak Castle, the series of military confrontations between 1183 and 1188 that made this Crusader fortress in modern Jordan one of the most strategically contested strongholds of the twelfth-century Levant. Kerak, in the ancient Kir Moab, capital of the biblical land of Moab, commanded the King's Highway, the ancient trade and pilgrimage route connecting Damascu...

This episode examines the Siege of Alesia in 52 BC, the decisive engagement of Caesar's Gallic Wars and one of the most remarkable feats of military engineering in ancient history. Facing the Gallic confederation under Vercingetorix at the hilltop stronghold of Alesia in modern Burgundy, Julius Caesar constructed a double circumvallation — an inner contravallation to contain the garrison and an ou...

This episode examines Operation Kingpin: the Son Tay Raid of 21 November 1970, planned and rehearsed under the code name Operation Ivory Coast. One of the most audacious special operations missions of the Vietnam War. A joint task force of US Army Special Forces and Air Force crews penetrated deep into North Vietnam to liberate American POWs held at Son Tay Prison, 23 miles west of Hanoi. Drawing...

This episode examines Operation Deadstick, the glider assault on the Caen Canal and Orne River bridges in the opening minutes of D-Day, 6 June 1944. Six Horsa gliders carrying D Company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry under Major John Howard landed within metres of their objectives at 00:16 hours, the first Allied ground action of the Normandy invasion. Drawing on the...

This episode examines the Ambush at Bắc Lệ on 23 June 1884, the skirmish in northern Tonkin that ended French diplomatic negotiations with China and triggered the Sino-French War of 1884-1885. A French column of approximately 1,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Dugenne, advancing on the Mandarin Road between Hanoi and Lang Son to secure the border region, was ambushed by Chinese Guangxi re...

This episode examines the Battle of the Little Bighorn on 25-26 June 1876, the most iconic engagement of the Great Sioux War and the most analysed military disaster in American history. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment, operating as part of General Alfred Terry's three-pronged campaign to force the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne onto reservations, encountered a...

This episode examines the Battle for La Fière Causeway, 6-9 June 1944, one of the most savage small-unit actions of the entire Normandy campaign and one of the least known. The La Fière causeway crossed the flooded Merderet River valley west of Sainte-Mère-Église, connecting the Cotentin Peninsula's road network to Utah Beach. General Matthew Ridgway called it the most critical terrain feature in...

This episode examines the Battle of Suomussalmi and the destruction of the Soviet 44th Division on the Raate Road, the defining engagement of Finland's Winter War of 1939-1940 and one of the most complete tactical defeats in modern military history. In December 1939 and January 1940, Finnish forces under Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo destroyed the Soviet 44th and 163rd Rifle Divisions in the forests o...

This episode examines the capture of Aqaba on 6 July 1917, the audacious operation that transformed T.E. Lawrence from a liaison officer into a strategic architect of the Arab Revolt and established the Hejaz Arab Army as a serious military force in the Palestine campaign. Working with Sherif Nasir of Medina and the Howeitat tribal leader Auda abu Tayi, Lawrence led an irregular Arab force on a 1,...

This episode examines the Battle of Polygon Wood, 26 September 1917, the second of General Plumer's methodical bite-and-hold offensives during the Third Battle of Ypres, and one of the most tactically successful Allied operations of the entire war. The Australian 4th and 5th Divisions, supported by a precisely timed creeping barrage, seized the fortified Polygon Wood and the Butte de Polygon from...

This episode examines the Battle of Franklin on 30 November 1864, one of the most devastating and tactically inexplicable engagements of the American Civil War. It was the battle that effectively destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee as an offensive force. Confederate General John Bell Hood ordered a frontal assault across two miles of open ground against heavily entrenched Union positions h...

This episode examines the Battle of Rocroi on 19 May 1643, the engagement that ended Spanish military supremacy in Europe and announced the emergence of France as the dominant continental power of the seventeenth century. The newly appointed French commander, the 21-year-old Duke of Enghien, later known as the Great Condé, met the Spanish Army of Flanders under General Francisco de Melo on the pla...

This episode examines the Battle of Spion Kop on 23-24 January 1900, one of the most analysed British defeats of the Second Anglo-Boer War and a defining moment in the historiography of terrain perception and command failure. A British force of approximately 1,700 men under General Edward Woodgate seized the summit of Spion Kop by night assault on 23 January, believing they held the dominant groun...

This episode examines the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, the decisive engagement of the Austro-Prussian War and one of the most consequential single days in European military history. The battle established Prussian hegemony over Germany and set the conditions for the Franco-Prussian War four years later. The analysis goes beyond the standard needle gun versus Lorenz rifle comparison to exam...

This episode examines the Battle of Route Coloniale 4, the Cao Bang Ridge Disaster of 16 September to 18 October 1950, the most catastrophic French colonial defeat prior to Dien Bien Phu, and the engagement that effectively ended French control of the Chinese border region in Tonkin. The disaster unfolded across 137 kilometres of jungle road between Cao Bang and Lang Son. Ordered to evacuate the i...