Cossack
Chukotka
The Chukchi warriors On July 14, 1728 – three and a half years after leaving St. Petersburg – the explorer Vitus Bering’s newly constructed ship, the St. Gabriel, stocked with enough food to sustain its crew of forty for a year, sailed from the mouth of the Kamchatka River. Following the coast of the peninsula northward for five days, Bering…
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Army of the Levant
1er Régiment Etranger de Cavalerie, 1er REC. The only cavalry regiment in the French Foreign Legion, since the 2nd Foreign Cavalry Regiment (2e REC) has been disbanded. 1er REC has been stationed at Quartier Labouche in Orange, France since it moved from Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria in October 1967. The regiment was…
Dresden: Another Victory Without a Future
The false Congress of Prague afforded the new members of the Coalition time to rebuild their militaries to create a crushing superiority. The 300,000 men of the French army and its allies now faced 600,000 enemy combatants. Their initial dispositions were in the form of a pincers, reflecting a strategy…
Napoleon out of Russia 1812
The Russian campaign was the decisive turning-point of the Napoleonic Wars that ultimately led to Napoleon’s defeat and exile on the island of Elba In Napoleon’s Memoirs, as recorded by his private secretary, we have a curious disjuncture. On one hand, the hideous retreat of Napoleon’s army was almost a…
First Battalion of Hessian Lifeguards Part I
The Ordeal of Captain Roeder: from the Diary of an Officer in the First Battalion of Hessian Lifeguards During the Moscow Campaign of 1812-13 / Translated and Edited from the Original Manuscript by Helen Roeder At three o’clock on the morning of the 17th the Hessians prepared to march against…
First Battalion of Hessian Lifeguards Part II
The Captain did not travel long in the Colonel’s chaise. On the 23rd, when the cold weather set in once more, he marched on foot for seven hours to Bobr. ‘I did not think I should come through today. Asked the Colonel for his chaise, but it was already occupied.…
Soviet advance on Warsaw II
The panic of the 13th had also brought forward the day for starting the great encircling sweep from the Wieprz. Pilsudski had left the capital to take charge of the Strike Force on the 12th. He was horrified at the state of his men’s equipment. He described the men of…