Cavalry
The Strangest Race
JEB Stuart, White House, VA, June 29, 1862 The summer of 1862 witnessed one of the most unusual skirmishes of the entire American Civil War. Confederate cavalry commander Jeb Stuart received information that there were 5,000 Union soldiers guarding a nearby depot and decided to attack. As the sun rose the following day, Stuart’s troopers arrived at the location, only…
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The Huns
SHORT COMPOSITE BOW: right drawn, centre normal and left spent. This illustration shows the short composite bow of wood, horn and sinew, held together by animal glue. All the materials were obtainable in the steppe lands of Inner Asia. Curved bows like this were immensely powerful and short enough to…
Battle of Paulus Hook 1779
Powder soaked but ferocity unabated. Lee’s picked force of dismounted dragoons takes advantage of the garrison’s confusion to force the drawbridge at Paulus Hook with clubbed muskets and the bayonet. The British had previously sent out a foraging party of their own, for whom Lee’s advancing force was mistaken –…
Peter’s Dragoons
The major difference between the Russian army that besieged the fortress at Narva in 1700 and the Russian army at Poltava in 1709 was the large number of dragoon regiments that Peter ordered to be recruited and trained. These regiments proved a match for the Swedish dragoon and cavalry regiments…
Balaklava: 25 October 1854 – What If Part I
Lord Raglan is utterly incompetent to lead an army through any arduous task. He is a brave good soldier, I am sure, and a polished gentleman, but he is no more fit than I am to cope with any leader of strategic skill. WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL We are commanded by…
IMPERIAL RUSSIAN ARMY – RUSSO–JAPANESE WAR
On the eve of the Russo–Japanese War, Russian land forces were the biggest in the world, numbering 41,079 officers and 1,067,000 other ranks, and with full deployment of more than 3 million including the reserves. The sum of Russian troops stationed at that time east of Lake Baikal (the Priamur…
The Military Revolution—Dutch and Swedish Reforms I
My troops are poor Swedish and Finnish peasant fellows, it’s true, rude and ill-dressed; but they smite hard and they shall soon have better clothes. GUSTAV II ADOLF The early campaigns of Gustav Adolf and the beginning of Sweden’s rocky rise to power. This was a time when some of…