Malta – The Greatest Siege in History Part 5 – The Fall of St Elmo
As the fight over Fort St Elmo raged incessantly, with neither Muslim nor Christian yielding in their determination, and the death of many brave men…
Forget Thermopylae, This Is The Battle That Actually Won The war
The battle of Plataea is not an event that gets instant recognition like the famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis. It often gets overlooked…
The Siege of Malta Part 4 – Waiting For The Relief Forces
The Carafa Enceinte. The towers on top of the bastions are concrete coastal defences built in World War II, Via The garrison of Fort St…
The Death of the Carthaginian Empire 149-146 BCE
The Siege of Carthage makes for quite a sad story when put into context. A proud trading empire fights two long wars, only to lose…
Death in the Desert: The End of the Crusader Kingdoms of the Levant
A Memluk Warrior of the Crusading Period Much like today, the Middle East in the mid thirteenth century was a swirling maelstrom of competing powers,…
How Caesar Defeated 250,000 Gallics Coming At Them From Two Sides With Only 60,000 Legionnairs
Alesia: The Roman Army at the Height of Its Power Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars had been raging for over five years when his legions faced…
Malta – the greatest siege in history Part III- Defending St Elmo from the Ottomans
The garrison of St Elmo consisted a hundred knights and some seven hundred soldiers. Amongst the latter were four hundred Italian mercenaries. Into the ranks…
Rome’s Worst Defeat: The Battle of Cannae 216 B.C.E.
The battle of Cannae was an almost perfect tactical victory for Hannibal Barca. Facing a Roman army almost twice the size on a level field,…
Malta – the greatest siege in history Part II
At the head of the Knights of Saint John who stood ready to repel the invading Muslim army was the renowned Grand Master Jean Parisot…
Series: Malta – the greatest siege in history Part 1
In the annals of warfare one reads of the clash of arms, the pitting of warrior against warrior, of tales of heroism, of endurance and…
Great Sieges of the Ancient World: Tarentum
The siege and battles of Tarentum were an underappreciated and often forgotten aspect of the second Punic War.The second Punic war between Carthage and Rome…
Marathon – Greek ‘David’ crushes Persian ‘Goliath’
When you are a small city-state enjoying a precarious existence and surrounded by potentially hostile other city states, and especially the military state of indomitable…