Bitesize Battles

<p>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...

<p>This is it. It all comes down to this moment. </p><p>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...

<p>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...

<p>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. </p><p>Hearing that...

<p>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.</p><p>But it wasn't an...

<p>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...

<p >Once Vercingetorix was in chains and the Gallic Wars over, you might have thought Caesar would be in for a well-earned rest.</p><p >But Pompey and the Optimates in the Roman Senate were jealous and wanted Caesar...

<p>​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.</p><p> </p><p>Subscribe to us here on...

<p>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. </p><p>The Senate had been desperate to...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p >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.</p><p >These created...

<p >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...

<p >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...

<p >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...