The History Network

Benedict Arnold spent years becoming a respectable merchant in Connecticut and the coming of the American War of Independence presented him with an opportunity to increase his standing even further. His bravery in battle was unquestioned, but his desire for reward led him to dubious actions. Congress had little money to pay the soldiers, so Arnold decided to pay himself through the sale of capture...

Benedict Arnold, a name in the American lexicon that is synonymous with treason. History remembers Arnold solely for his attempted betrayal and his subsequent return to the American War of Independence as a British general, this was only the sudden climax to a story that saw Arnold rise from humble beginnings as an apothecary apprentice to one of the most competent generals in the Continental Army...

On a clear day in 1960, a conversation took place between the pilot of a South African Airways passenger aircraft and Heathrow Airport's ground control. The pilot had a special request. He wanted to do a low-level circuit in London. In turn, the tower asked the reason for the special request. The pilot simply replied…I wish to show the Sailor his London. Dur: 26mins File: .mp3

The entry for the year AD 991 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Olaf Tryggvason (later king of Norway) sailed with a fleet of ninety-three ships and raided the English coast. He began in Kent raiding Folkestone and then Sandwich, and then moved on to Ipswich in Suffolk. After overrunning Ipswich, the fleet moved onwards to Maldon in Essex, sailing up the River Blackwater and establishing a...

1951 had begun disastrously for the United Nations forces in Korea. On December 31st, 1950, the Chinese 13th Army breached UN defences below the 38th parallel as part of the Third Phase Campaign and, on January 3rd, Seoul was evacuated by the US Eighth Army. The Eighth Army was commanded by Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway, who had been in office for little over a week, taking up his command...

On their seemingly inexorable advance south in 1942, the Japanese had occupied Aitape in northern New Guinea on their advance south. Allied offensives to halt the Japanese advance began in 1943 and in April 1944 units of the United States Army, especially the 163rd Regimental Combat Team from the 41st Infantry Division landed at Aitape and retook parts of the area (centred on the Wewak airstrip)....

On 27 September 1918, Captain Frisby and Lance Corporal Jackson led the assault against enemy machine-gun positions during the battle of the Canal du Nord, Nord-pas-de-Calais region of Northern France. Following the successes of the German Spring Offensive in March 1918, the Allies launched a series of successful counter-attacks from May to July 1918 which forced the Germans to fall back.

The battle of Montgisard (fought near Ramla in central Israel) saw the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem unexpectedly defeat the forces of Saladin. The Latins were vastly outnumbered and fought thinking that they faced certain defeat. Their victory put an end to the inexorable advances that the Muslim conqueror Saladin had won up to that point. Dur: 19mins File: .mp3

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 short-lived. One consideration to keep in mine is that Thebes only...

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 day forever changed the political map of Greece. Dur: 20mins File:...

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 at Anglicizing the town of El-Ksar el-Kebir in Morocco where the battle w...

Just before his 31st birthday in September 1939, Charles Upham volunteered as a private in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF). 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 Officer Cadet Training Unit since he feared that such training...

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. The man was Simo Häyhä and he was armed with only a regulation, bolt action rifle...

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. Dur: 17mins File: .mp3

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. Dur: 20mins File: .mp3

The Legion of the United States was America's first attempt to establish a permanent military capable of defending its new borders, from hostile Native Americans, as a reaction to the defeats of the hastily raised regular and militia units during the Harmar Campaign and St. Clair's Defeat. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

In late 1791, during the Battle of the Wabash, also known as St. Clair's Defeat, saw the largest defeat of the American military at the hands of the Native Americans. Out of a force of about 1,000 men, the American suffered a 97% casualty rate: including 632 killed and 264 wounded. In addition, 200 camp followers, women and children included, were also killed against around 60 causalities on the N...

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 ever fielded, killing or capturing the great majority of knights and foot soldiers...

We saw in Season 31 Episode 4 and Season 30 Episode 7 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 the 'first' civilian Victoria Cross for his action during t...

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 Edward's legitimate claim, the French crowned Philip, Count of Valois, King Philip V...

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. Dur: 18mins File: .mp3

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 9 th , AD 378. Dur: 21mins  File: .mp3

The Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944 were the largest amphibious operation ever undertaken in military history. Across five separate beaches, over 150,000 men made up the landing forces from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. To protect the men on the beaches, a massive bombardment of naval gunfire and aerial bombs struck German fortified defences, troop concentrations, and...

At the end of the Seven Years War, the Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British, which granted any lands west of the Appalachian Mountains in the Ohio Valley of North America to the Native Americans. American colonists could not settle any of these lands and would be forcibly removed by British forces if necessary. Dur: 18mins File: mp3

In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Raphael Lemkin says that "genocide is composite and manifold, and that it signifies a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of life of a [specific] group." Collective dispossession, including plunder and spoliation, is only one of the many crimes that accompany and even fortify genocidal policies—...