The History Network

The year 2020 represents the 2,500th anniversary of three battles which played a major part in shaping the future of the western Mediterranean world: the battles of Thermopylae, Artemisum, and Salamis. Dur: 19mins. File: .mp3

The American West contains many epic tales and stories, perhaps the most astounding is the story of Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery. Over the course of seventeen months a group of over forty individuals traveled seven thousand miles through hostile native tribes from the middle of America through previously unexplored mountain ranges to the Pacific Ocean and returned healthy and well wit...

July 15th 1779. The night was dark, the soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets and unload their rifles. Men exhausted, a 14 mile road march in the dead of summer that started at noon got them to this point. Anxiety filled the air as Washington's men set to take back Stony Point. What took 20 minutes left the southern and western and northern flanks of the point covered in blood. Dur: 16mins File: ....

The greatest mercenary commander of the 14th century, inspiration for historians, poets, novelists and playwrights, John Hawkwood is a name everyone should know. 14th century Europe was a plagued with incessant warfare. The Hundred Years' War began between France and England in 1337 and would last until the middle of the next century. Other conflicts engulfed various parts of Europe as well, espec...

The greatest mercenary commander of the 14th century, inspiration for historians, poets, novelists and playwrights, John Hawkwood is a name everyone should know. 14th century Europe was a plagued with incessant warfare. The Hundred Years' War began between France and England in 1337 and would last until the middle of the next century. Other conflicts engulfed various parts of Europe as well, espec...

By the beginning of September 1066, King Harold II was in a quandary. Expecting Duke William of Normandy to invade, he had summoned the fyrd (what passed for the army in Anglo-Saxon times; made up of a proportion of the freemen of each shire who were required to perform military service in defence of the land) back in April and they had long since passed the usual two to three months' service. And...

The Seven Years War, fought from 1756 to 1763, pitted the alliance of France, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, Russia and Spain; against Great Britain, Prussia and Hanover. The first truly world war, campaigns in the war were fought in Europe, India, North America, and on the oceans throughout the world. Dur: 27mins File: .mp3

One thing to note in regard to Cretans is that when they are mentioned in our sources they are always referred to as Cretan archers or just 'Cretans' or, occasionally just archers and we must work out from the context that they were Cretan. Dur: 25mins. File. mp3

When a contingent of archers is mentioned in the context of Greek and Roman armies, more often than not the culture associated with them is that of Crete. Indeed, when we just have archers mentioned in an army without a specified origin, Cretan archers are commonly assumed to be meant, so ubiquitous with archery and groups of mercenary archers were the Cretans. The Cretans are the most famous, but...

Bougainville is a 9000 sq. km pacific island and was first subject to European contact in 1768 when Louis Antoine De Bougainville landed there and, in an act of typical vainglory, named it for himself. People had been on Bougainville for 28,000 years but it was the Austronesian people who 4,000 years ago established pigs, chickens, dogs and cultivation with obsidian tools.  The Comte De Bougainvil...

The year 1776 began joyously for the American rebels. After the Battle of Bunker Hill and the subsequent siege of Boston, the rebel army, now formally organized into the Continental Army commanded by George Washington, successfully forced the British army under William Howe to withdraw from Boston and sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Howe licked his wounds and awaited reinforcements. Dur: 28mi...

The year 1776 began joyously for the American rebels. After the Battle of Bunker Hill and the subsequent siege of Boston, the rebel army, now formally organized into the Continental Army commanded by George Washington, successfully forced the British army under William Howe to withdraw from Boston and sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Howe licked his wounds and awaited reinforcements. Dur: 33mi...

At the moment when the Galwegians were at their most hard pressed, it seems as if Prince Henry led his Battle in a charge (the detail is not in Richard of Hexham). Henry 'hurled himself, fierce as a lion, upon the opposing wing.' He put the English to flight on that wing (the English left) and continued on against the men stationed with the horses (some distance away from the English line if we us...

King David I of Scotland invaded England in the summer of 1138 in support of his niece, the Empress Matilda, who was embroiled in a fight against her cousin, King Stephen (of Blois) for control of the English throne. This period of civil war, known as the Anarchy, raged in England from 1135 until 1153. It was caused by the succession crisis following the drowning death of William Adelin in the Whi...

In August 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire and systematically set about its conquest. At the core of Alexander's army were 10,000 members of the phalanx, the phalangites. Armed with a long pike and fighting in formations up to 16 ranks deep, these grizzled veterans were the mainstay of the Macedonian army. Facing them were the myriad armies of the peoples that made up the Per...

The treatise How to Survive Under Siege by Aineias Tacticus, is among the earliest treatises to survive from the genre of didactic military literature. Its author was regarded as the pre-eminent authority on military science in subsequent centuries because he wrote many other works. None of these survive. This single surviving treatise (although incomplete) covers nearly everything that a city nee...

In the First World War, one of the main aims of the French was to retake the "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been occupied by the Germans since the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. But this was only one phase of a long cycle of power imbalances leading to invasions and thirst for revenge between these two countries. Dur: 24mins File: .mp3

The British now occupied the tip of the Aboukir peninsula directly opposite the French forces. The flanks of both armies were secured by the Mediterranean Sea on the one side, and the marshy ground of the dried up Lake Mareotis on the other. Following the landing on the 8 March, the British built defences, heaved supplies ashore and buried the dead. A short action took place on 13 March, during wh...

If one was to ask about the contribution of the British army during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, some of the immediate responses would concern the Duke of Wellington, the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo. These subjects have acquired great fame over the past two decades, thanks in part to Bernard Cornwall's popular Sharpe novels, and to the bicentenary of the Battle of Wa...

The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763 ending the Seven Years War. The victorious British moved west into the Ohio Valley of North America and occupied the forts and outposts of the defeated French. New and drastic policies were instituted on the Native tribes inhabiting the area. These tribes rose up and attacked the British and displaced colonists from the territory. This began a summer of confl...

Sertorius spent the winter training his Iberian troops and accustoming himself to their nature and tactics. He had a core of veteran Roman legionaries who followed him through many battles. A small number of Iberians were heavy infantry armed in the Roman style but the majority were light troops. Dur: 35mins File: .mp3

Quintus Sertorius could lay claim to a position among the greatest generals of ancient times. A loyal Roman, who lost an eye defending the Roman frontier, fortune then pitted him against the Roman military machine and some of its premier commanders, including Pompey the Great. Dur: 22mins File: .mp3

The boys are back to remind you that the great war-game survey is now 'live', you can find it here , so please go fill it in. In this episode Guy updates us with what in new in the hobby and we get a chance to listen to the panel discussion he took part in at the Joy of Six .

On 27th February 1782 the British parliament voted to immediately cease the war in America; Britain had lost the War of Independence, (or the Revolutionary war as it is known in America). But Great Britain was not fighting America alone; by 1782 they were at war with 3 European countries and had survived the most serious invasion threat since the Spanish armada. The war had escalated far beyond th...

The government troops approached from the east, their redcoats standing out against the green of the glen and the dark waters of the River Shiel. The skies overhead were clear, it was the height of the summer, unusually hot for the Scottish Highlands and marching up Glen Shiel were 850 infantry, over 100 dragoons on horseback and a similar number of Highland levies. A long trail pack horses follow...