Great Battles in History

Send us Fan Mail The armies of the Crusader States were the finest and most formidable western fighting forces of the Middle Ages. Their potency was based on their adaptation of European military techniques to the challenges and conditions of the Middle East. 

Send us Fan Mail A crucial reason for the success of the First Crusade was Muslim disunity. In the 1090s, the Seljuk Empire that ruled the heart of the Islamic world fell into crisis and civil war. The Middle East fragmented into innumerable mini-states ruled by warlords. The power of these warlords was based on their command of armies of some of the finest fighting men of the premodern age: Turki...

Send us Fan Mail In 1095, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade. Four years later, the crusaders conquered Jerusalem. In this part of the episode, we will examine why Europeans took up the cross and how they succeeded in accomplishing their goal of capturing Jerusalem. We will also look at the states the Crusaders established in the lands they conquered.

Send us Fan Mail The Battle of Hattin is the most famous battle of the Crusades. On July 4, 1187, the army of the Muslim warlord Saladin destroyed the host of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin. In the battle’s aftermath, Saladin overran the Crusader States. On October 2, he entered Jerusalem. Yet Hattin was not a decisive battle that ended the Crusades. It ushered in a centu...

Send us Fan Mail Trailer for episode three of Great Battles in History , the Battle of Hattin, coming in February.  The music is Prince of Persia by Zapac (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial  (3.0) license.  http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Zapac/62569 

Send us Fan Mail In 216 BCE, the Roman Republic made a maximum military effort. It raised the largest army in its history and sent it to destroy Hannibal Barca. The Carthaginian warlord also wanted to fight a decisive battle. On August 2, the Roman and Carthaginian armies clashed near the hill town of Cannae in southern Italy. At the end of the day, the Roman army had been completely wiped out.

Send us Fan Mail After Cannae, Hannibal was at the zenith of his success. Yet in the years after the battle, he squandered all his opportunities for final victory over Rome. Meanwhile, the Romans recovered from their crushing defeat. More importantly, they formulated a strategy that countered Hannibal’s battlefield genius. At last, in Scipio Africanus, the Romans found a general who could match th...

Send us Fan Mail Rome declared war on Carthage in 218 BCE, beginning the Second Punic War. Hannibal immediately put in motion a bold and risky plan. He marched his army from Spain across southern Gaul, crossed the Alps, and fell on Italy like a thunderbolt. In the next two years, he won brilliant victories at the Trebia and Lake Trasimene. Shocked by their defeats, the Romans appointed a Dictator,...

Send us Fan Mail After being defeated in the First Punic War, Carthage was reduced to an African city-state. Its remarkable revival was initiated by Hamilcar Barca, the most successful Carthaginian general and de facto ruler of the republic. Hamilcar and his family, the Barcids, conquered a new empire in Spain. In 221 BCE, Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar, came to power in Spain and Carthage. Inher...

Send us Fan Mail War was not inevitable between Rome and Carthage. But in 264 BCE, they were drawn into conflict over Sicily. The result was the First Punic War, a twenty-three-year-long struggle that pushed both republics to their limits. In the end, Rome was triumphant and Carthage humbled.

Send us Fan Mail The Roman legions are the most famous fighting force of the ancient world. In this part of the podcast, we will examine how the legions of the Punic Wars were raised, organized, trained and armed. Above all, we will see how they fought. In doing so, we shall catch a glimpse of the fierce face of Roman battle. 

Send us Fan Mail By the third century BCE, the Western Mediterranean was dominated by two great republics, Carthage and Rome. From its matchless position on the coast of present-day Tunisia, Carthage dominated commerce in the Western Mediterranean basin. Its navy ruled the waves from the straits of Sicily to the Pillars of Hercules. It also ruled a considerable land empire that included much of No...

Send us Fan Mail A note to listeners: In addition to the complete episode, I am publishing the Battle of Cannae in eight parts.  On August 2, 216 BCE, at Cannae in southern Italy, the largest army ever fielded by the Roman Republic was wiped out by the Carthaginian warlord Hannibal Barca and his army of African, Spanish, and Gallic veterans. The battle of Cannae is a tactical masterpiece that has...

Send us Fan Mail On August 2, 216 BCE, at Cannae in southern Italy, the Carthaginian warlord Hannibal Barca and his army of veteran African, Spanish, and Gallic mercenaries destroyed the largest force ever fielded by the Roman Republic. Since then, Cannae has been studied by scholars and soldiers as a tactical masterpiece—a perfect battle. It remains a byword for slaughter, for the total annihilat...

Send us Fan Mail The Battle of Cannae. Coming in September.

Send us Fan Mail After the Persian wars, the Spartans transformed the Battle of Thermopylae from a defeat into a heroic last stand that paved the way for final victory. The legend of Thermopylae then became part of the cultural heritage of the western world. It has proven astonishingly useful and malleable, being taken up for strikingly different ends by people as varied as French revolutionaries,...

Send us Fan Mail Thwarted by Leonidas and his advance guard at Thermopylae, the Persians faced the failure of their invasion. Their mastery of intelligence and espionage now came to their rescue when a Greek traitor informed them of a way around the Greek position. The climax of the Battle of Thermopylae saw the Persian army overwhelm and wipe out Leonidas’ force. Following their victory, the Pers...

Send us Fan Mail As the Persians bore down on Greece, the city-states of the resistance decided to use their army to block the pass of Thermopylae. At the same time, their fleet would confront the Persian navy in the nearby waters off Artemisium. Before the Greek forces could set out, disaster struck: the Olympic and Carneian religious festivals imposed a taboo on war-making. At this moment of sup...

Send us Fan Mail During the second half of the sixth century BCE, Persian expansion encroached on the Greek world. In 499 BCE, Athens sent military aid to Greeks rebelling against the Great King. In retaliation, Great King Darius mounted the first Persian invasion of Greece. In 490 BCE, the Athenians defeated this invasion at the Battle of Marathon. Darius’s son Xerxes then planned to conquer all...

Send us Fan Mail Originally just a minor tribe from the southern mountains of Iran, the Persians embarked on a spectacular career of conquest that led to the creation of the superpower of the ancient world. The Great Kings of Persia were masters of grand strategy, logistics, and espionage. At their command was a vast army of dazzling ethnic diversity and imposing fighting power. Yet this army had...

Send us Fan Mail By the fifth century BCE, the Greek world stretched from the Black Sea to the shores of southern France. It was divided into thousands of fiercely independent city-states. The major Greek city-states had developed a distinctive way of fighting based on heavily armed and armored infantrymen called hoplites arrayed in the serried ranks of the phalanx and closing with their enemies t...

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Send us Fan Mail Around 431 BCE, Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote up his Inquiry—in Greek, Historia —in which he sought to explain the origins and course of the conflicts between the Persians and the Greeks. This work inaugurated the western historical tradition and earned for its author the title Father of History. We’ll examine who Herodotus was, how he came to write his History, and why it is t...

Send us Fan Mail In the late summer of 480 BCE, a Greek force of 1,000 hoplites from Thebes, Thespiae, and, most famously, Sparta, under the command of the Spartan king Leonidas, was surrounded and wiped out in the pass of Thermopylae by the invading Persian army of Great King Xerxes. The Battle of Thermopylae is the most well-known battle of the ancient wars between the Greeks and the Persians. I...

Send us Fan Mail The introduction to the podcast.