Bitesize Battles

The series finale, the final end of the Angevin Empire. It didn't start with a defeat, but a victory. King John's half-brother, William Longspee, sailed down the River Zwyn and found a French invasion armada. The battle that followed led inexorably to another - one of the Middle Ages' greatest battles - the Battle of Bouvines. King John fought to regain the The Angevin Empire that Philip Augustus...

The Lionheart was dead. His brother John was set to inherit the throne. Or was he? Because there was another with a claim - his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. The struggle between the two, and a brutal, sadistic murder, would see the beginning of the end of the Angevin Empire. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, support me on Patreon , visit the website at www.bitesizebattles.com...

Richard the Lionheart faced the decision of his life - Jerusalem or his Kingdom? Saladin still held the former, his brother John threatened the latter. Delaying any further risked becoming a King in name only, his Kingdom suborned and conquered. With gritted teeth, he left the Third Crusade only ultimately unfulfilled.  And worse - he was being hunted by most of the most powerful lords of Europe a...

Jerusalem had fallen. All of Europe was aghast.  Muslim Saracens of the Ayyubid Dynasty had slaughtered a Christian army at Hattin, and then gone on to take the Holy City itself. Their leader, Saladin, swept all before him. But Richard the Lionheart's crusading fever became inflamed when he heard, and once his father, Henry II, had died, he committed the entire Angevin Empire to Jerusalem's recapt...

Henry II's life rose and fell like a rough sea. After winning the English throne at just 21 years old, he put England back together again after the ravages of the civil war known as The Anarchy. He wed the beautiful and famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, and had with her 7 children who survived into adulthood - including Richard the Lionheart and the later King John.  And it was he who created the Angev...

The year is 1120 and the mood aboard The White Ship is exultant. The young lords of England and Normandy are celebrating beating the French by drinking and carousing late into the night. Among them, England's heir - William Aetheling.  But leaving for a crossing of the English Channel so late and completely half-cut, the party was about to be cut savagely short. The outcome led to one of England's...

This is it. It all comes down to this moment.  Ever since Alfred the Great had come surging out of the swamps he had been hiding in to defeat the Vikings at Edington, he and his children and grandchildren had been inexorably pushing the Vikings out of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Aethelred was soon to conquer Northumbria which had been held by the Danes for a hundred years, and England was born. But...

The King of Wessex had been hunted as a fugitive by marauding Vikings, and he'd been hiding as one in a swamp. Wessex had been overrun and King Alfred had fled, setting up camp amidst the reeds of the Somerset Levels. But despite his survival, it seemed the same could not be said of Wessex. But in one of history's greatest comeback stories, he rebuilt his forces whilst in hiding, conducted a guerr...

When the Viking warlord, Guthrum, ambushed King Alfred the Great of Wessex while he was celebrating Christmas at Chippenham, Alfred had no choice but to run with his family and a few guards.  Hearing that Guthrum's forces were spreading out all over Wessex, the only safe place for Alfred to go was the marshland of Somerset which he knew as a boy. Alfred was now a fugitive in his own kingdom, hidin...

The Vikings shot onto the international scene when they ransacked, burned, looted and slaughtered their way through the peaceful monastic community on the island of Lindisfarne in 793 AD. But it wasn't an isolated incident.  It began the so-called Viking Age and 300 years of bitter warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Viking for control of the fertile land of England.  For 60 years after Lindisfarne th...

The Battle of Osowiec in 1915 was darkly horrifying despite the bright summer's morning. The Germans gassed the stubborn Russian defenders of the Osowiec Fortress with a vicious mix of chlorine and bromine, killing every single one. Or so they thought. Because as the Germans advanced they spotted a single figure jerk suddenly upright, skin blistered and torn, eyes peeled back, teeth bared where li...

Once Vercingetorix was in chains and the Gallic Wars over, you might have thought Caesar would be in for a well-earned rest. But Pompey and the Optimates in the Roman Senate were jealous and wanted Caesar back in Rome so they could prosecute him for any number of crimes - including his conquest of Gaul, which they had never given permission for. But Caesar wasn't about to spend the rest of his lif...

​Vercingetorix was a proud, young Gallic chieftain who gave Caesar his first bloody nose of the Gallic Wars and led a rebellion so serious that it nearly cost Caesar everything.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on IG and FB @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com . Thanks for listening.

This is where Caesar made himself a Roman legend. He fought hundreds of thousands of Gauls, saw off Germanic invasions, and even had a little jaunt over the sea to Britannia.  The Senate had been desperate to prosecute him for crimes during his Consulship, but he had taken a governorship of provinces bordering Gaul which gave him immunity for five years. He then used those years to craft seemingly...

It was Alexander the Great who spurred Julius Caesar to new heights. When Caesar saw a statue of him when he was 31, he realised that at his age Alexander had conquered half the world. Caesar was so distraught at his own relative lack of achievements, it's said he wept at Alexander's feet. In just a few years Caesar had become the Chief Priest of Rome, Consul, and one of the members of Rome's firs...

Julius Caesar is one of the world's most famous and successful military genius' of all time. He conquered the fierce and warlike multitudes of Gaul with a few thousands men, and he beat some of the best Roman commanders in a civil war he ignited by crossing the Rubicon. But where did Caesar come from? Where did it all start? This episode covers the extraordinary groundwork of this extraordinary ma...

In the face of the crushing ideologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, hundreds of thousands of civilians and former soldiers banded together in resistance right across Europe and Asia. These created tales that need telling, and while some of them are already famous, I want to bring you some of those that are lesser-known but equally gripping. Much as you’d imagine from WW2, these stories are...

The Middle East of WWI was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, but it was beginning to unravel. Arab nationalism was rising, and Britain told them that they would be allowed to establish a new, independent Arab nation following WWI. So the Arab Revolt broke out. But in secret, Britain also settled on the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France, which divided the area between them instead, leaving nothing...

The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD was one of Rome's worst ever defeats. Just a few years either side of the death of Christ, the Romans had been subjugating many of the Germanic tribes just east of the Rhine – some by treaty, some by force. But the Germans resented the encroachment and the will to resist was building. All they needed was an opportunity to fight back. And soon, there was s...

There was once a group of unsung heroes from World War II, a pioneering band of jungle warfare specialists fighting the Japanese behind enemy lines. This elite force was named after the mythical Burmese beast, the Chinthe, a fearsome blend of eagle and lion. To its commander, Orde Wingate, the Chinthe symbolised his vision of the close co-ordination of air and land forces. The Chindits braved sear...

On 9/11, 2001, the United States and the world watched in shocked disbelief as al-Qaeda hijacked passenger airliners were flown directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, causing them to collapse into dust, blood and tears. Nearly 3000 people were killed. The Pentagon, a symbol of the United States’ military prestige, was hit too, and a final airliner crashed when its heroic passenge...

In the wake of 9/11, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States. It joined the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and soon its special forces were engaged all over the country. In one mission, the largest concentration of SAS firepower since World War II took on crack al-Qaeda terrorists guarding an elevated, fortified opium factory at the base of a mountain.  The Regiment had to draw...

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The last words of Nathan Hale, an American patriot sent to spy on New York by George Washington, but captured by the British and hanged. George Washington was hit hard and resolved never to use amateurs to do his spying for him again. Instead, he set up the United States' first professional spy network - the Culper Ring. They saved t...

16th century England was a seething hotbed of religious rivalry, a cauldron of conspiracies, treason, rebellion, persecution and war. At stake was the life of Queen Elizabeth I, English Protestantism, and England itself. Into this mix strode Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's ingenious and pioneering spymaster. He was an expert in subterfuge, a creator of international networks of informants, a code-...

In the midst of the fury and horror of World War 2, a secret war was waged in the towns, cities and countryside of Europe. Spy games respected neither borders nor neutrality, and the agents that played them knew that if caught, they would be first interrogated, probably tortured, and then either shot or hanged. The spies of WWII took on assignments that made hearts hammer and palms grow sweaty, bu...