49 Spanish were well equipped, theirsoldiers armed with the German Mauser Model 1893 rifle, a modern bolt-action repeater with a high rate of fire that held five high-velocity smokeless 7x57 mm Mauser rounds in a box magazine. Spanish artillery units were similarly well armed, mainly with quick-firing, breech-loading Krupp guns, also procured from Germany. By contrast,American artillery units were using the 3.2-inchM1897, an outmoded field gunwith a slowrate of fire due to bagged powder charges and the lack of a recoil mechanism.The M1897 also used less powerful black powder, limiting its effective range of fire support. Regardless, under Lt. Col. Roosevelt’s bold command, the Rough Riders garnered headlines nationwide fortheir charge up Kettle Hill in support of Regular U.S. Army units. Roosevelt had the only horse, as the rest of the regiment’s mounts had not been off-loaded from the transport ship in time for battle. Amid the fight he rode conspicuously to and from the line of departure and the forefront of the advance up Kettle Hill, all the while under fire from the Spaniards’ Mauser rifles and Krupp guns. After his horse became entangled in barbed wire, Roosevelt was forced to walk the last stretch to the crest of the hill. The Americans ultimately captured San Juan Heights, though L in the attempt they suffered twice as many casualties as IBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: U.S. ARMY the Spanish, with 200 killed and more than 1,000 wounded.The Spaniardsfought to the bitter end, yielding few prisoners. Quick to recognize Roosevelt’s personal courage in leading the attack up Kettle Hill, hissuperiors recommended him for the Medal of Honor. However, Army brass, annoyed at his headlinegrabbing antics, blocked it. Returning home a hero, Colonel Roosevelt was promptly elected governor of New York and then vice president of the United States under President William McKinley. Sworn in as the 26th president after McKinley’s 1901 assassination, Rooseveltwon re-election in 1904. Regardless, the Medal of Honor snub forever haunted him. In 2001 a century-old wrong was finally corrected when Lt. Col.Theodore Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his valiant charge up San Juan Heights. With that award he and Ted Jr. became only the second father and son yet to receive the Medal of Honor.The first were Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr. (decorated as a first lieutenant during the Civil War) and General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur(decorated during World War II). Theodore’s other two sons, Archibald and Kermit, also served in bothWorldWars(Archiewith the U.S.Army, Kermitwith the U.S. and British armies) and were wounded. Several of the president’s grandsons also served in wartime—with the Army, the Navy SEALs and the Office of Strategic ServicesfromWorldWarIIthrough the Vietnam War. Thus, the courage under fire demonstrated by Theodore Roosevelt and his sons served as inspiration not just for the Roosevelt family, but also for the nation it served in uniform over multiple generations. MH Retired U.S. Marine Colonel John Miles writes and lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he recommends The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War, by Edward J. Renehan Jr.; The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt, by Eric Burns; The Namesake: The Biography of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., by Robert W. Walker; and Charging Up San Juan Hill: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of Imperial America, by John R. Van Atta. was granted his Medal of Honor a century after his celebrated charge up San Juan Heights, it marked onlythe second time a father and son were so honored. Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr. and General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur were the first. Medalfor Two Envious members of the Army brass denied the headlinegrabbing Colonel Roosevelt a deserved Medal of Honor. Not until 2001 was that snub rectified with a posthumous award.
In 1264 the future king of England was still a 20-something novice when he put father HenryIII’s army and throne in mortal peril against rebelling barons By Chuck Lyons 50 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 n mid-May 1264 Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, gambled. As English King Henry III pushed north from Hastings toward London, Montfort broke off his siege of the castle at Rochester and moved south to Fletching. After praying there in the church of St. Andrew and St. Mary the Virgin, he marched histroops another 8 miles acrossthe East Sussex countryside and, during the night of May 13/14, toward Offham Hill, a 400-foot prominence rising from the downs. In its shadow, at the Priory of St. Pancras in Lewes, slumbered the king, amid an army already close to double the size of Montfort’s and awaiting the arrival of additional mercenary troops sent by Henry’s queen and consort, Eleanor of Provence. Montfort’s bid forthe heights, in thewords of author and historianThomasCostain, called for“magnificent audacity.” Were the king’s men blocking the routes leading to the summit,Montfort could lose everything—hisforce defeated, his rebellion destroyed, he himself killed or imprisoned. Were the passes open, he would gain the high ground, and Henry’s large army would at least be forced to fight uphill. It was perhaps Montfort’s only chance for victory. Nothing but darkness and stillness greeted the earl’s men as they climbed, Montfort riding at the fore, alert for any sound—a voice, a cough, thewhinny of a horse, a dropped gauntlet—any stirring thatwould revealthe presence ofroyal guards. But they encountered only one sleeping sentry, captured him and reached the heights, from which they could see lights below from the village of Lewes. The sound of a horse galloping away from their position suggested they’d been seen and the kingwould soon knowwhere theywere. The rest of the night,Costainwrote,“wasspent in prayer and the hearing of confessions.” Even as priestsled his men in prayer, however, Montfort readied his forces. “[He] ordered hissoldiersto fastenwhite crossestheir breasts and backs, above their armor,” noted chronicler and Benedictine monkWilliamRishanger,“thattheymight be knownby their enemies and to show that they were fighting for justice.” Then Montfort waited for the dawn.
51 Standing 6 feet 2 inches, Prince Edward Longshanks was notorious for having a temperamental nature. His emotional immaturity cost his father, Henry III, victory at Lewes amid the Second Barons’ War and very nearly cost them both the throne.
52 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 PREVIOUS SPREAD: WESTMINSTER ABBEY; THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: LIFE PHOTO COLLECTION (2); GRANGER; CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO) the king 50,000 marksif he would abide by the provisions. The king flatly refused, while Henry’s son and heir Prince Edward reportedly replied, “Peace is forbidden to them, unlessthey all bind themselves with halters on their necks and bind themselves overto usfor hanging orfor drawing.” Inevitable, then, was a pitched battle between the two English armies,something that had not happened in England since 1217 and a resort medieval commanderstended to avoid when they could.“In comparison with the staple tactical set pieces of siege and plunder,” British historian Dan Jones wrote, “battles were wasteful, uncertain and chaotic. So strenuously did medieval commanders avoid them that few, if any, of the knights on eitherside [at Lewes] had ever fought in one.” When a number of feudal lords came together asthey were to do at Lewes, British military historian C.W.C. Oman noted,“each blindly jealous of his fellows and recognizing no superior but the king,” discipline and control gave way to impetuous action and selfcentered decisions, uncertain and chaotic. As the sun burned off the morning haze on May 14, Montfort slipped a plain surcoat over his chain mail and buckled his double-edged sword. On the flats belowoutside Lewesthe king’sforcesspread out across a mile of ground. The River Ouse flowed behind the village, and a marsh hemmed in Henry’s left. Montfort was unquestionably one of the outstanding personalities of the 13th century.The namesake son of the 5th Earl of Leicester, Montfortwas born in Normandy circa 1208 and arrived in England in 1229 as little more than a soldier of fortune seeking title to his family’s hereditary claim to Leicester. (Ranulf of Chester, a cousin to Simon’s father, had inherited the elder Montfort’s other titles and lands.) Petitioning the king, Montfort won Henry’s favor, in time gaining the Leicestertitle and lands, and marrying the king’s sister Eleanor, widow of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke.The couple even named their first child, a boy, after Henry. Montfort fought in the Holy Land during the 1239–41 Barons’ Crusade and then in France, earning an ever-growing reputation for military acumen and prowess. For decades England had been beset by bad harvests, famine, disease, ceaseless demands from the Church of Rome, threatened revolution and civilwar. Six years before that night at Lewes the king had applied to Parliament for fundsto meetthe crises.In return the realm’s barons pushed for reform, resulting in the Parliament of 1258 (aka the “Mad Parliament”),which passed the Provisions of Oxford, delineating the rights of the barons and the limitations of the king’s power.At the time Henry swore to abide by the provisions, but three yearslater he revoked them, and England stumbled in its centuries-long drift toward democracy. The aggrieved parties asked King Louis IX of France to arbitrate the English disagreement, and in January 1264 he took Henry’s side, annulling the Provisions of Oxford with the Mise ofAmiens. Civilwarfollowed inwhat has come to be known asthe Second Barons’ War. (In June 1215 Henry’s father, King John, had signed the Magna Carta, which established similarrights and limitations, but neither John nor his aristocratic supporters had abided by its provisions, leading to the First Barons’ Warthatsame year.) Montfort, who’d been a member of the parliamentary Council of Fifteen formed under the provisions to advise and control the king,rose quickly to command the rebel army, flush with what he considered the righteousness of his cause. Discussions with Bishop of Lincoln Robert Grosseteste and other Franciscan intellectuals had inspired Montfort with visions of a new state order.“He had learnt that the king must reign under and through the law,” British historian G.M. Trevelyan observed, “and that the Crown opposed to the nation was less strong than the Crown in Parliament.” On May 13 Montfort, perhaps considering the numerical disadvantage of hisforces, made one last appeal to the king to complywith the provisions. Sending the bishops of London and Worcesterto Henry at the priory, the earl offered Fittingly, it was the famed warrior-king Richard the Lionheart who in 1198 originated England’s coat of arms, bearing a trio of golden lions on a red background. The lions are thought to represent Richard’s concurrent titles as king and duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. Royal Crest Henry III Simon de Montfort Eleanor of Provence
53 Around the time of the crusade, however, Montfort had a falling out with Henry, first for having used the king’s name assurety for a loan, apparently without Henry’s permission, and then with growing rancor. Montfortwas a difficult man.“Obstinate and consumed by ambition,” Jones wrote, “he wore a hair shirt, ate and drank frugally, and stayed up late in saintly devotions.” Yet, hewas filled,Trevelyanwrote,“with a religiousspirit…[and] devoted to the cause of reform as being the will of God.” At the time of his 1264 showdown with the king Montfort was 56 years old and recovering from a broken leg. His men had been wheeling the earl about the countryside in a four-wheeled, steel-plated cart, though Montfort had ridden a horse—with considerable discomfort, it wassaid —during the ascent of Offham Hill. Seeking to convince the king he remained immobile with a broken leg, Montfort had his men leave the cart on the slope in conspicuous sight, under a decoy guard and flying his personalstandard. In fact,the cart’s only occupantswere four civilian prisoners accused of having conspired against the earl. Montfort fielded fewerthan 5,000 men.Commanding the center of hislinewas Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, while Montfort’ssons Henry and Guy commanded his right.The left, comprising a few score knights and a rabble T of unruly Londoners, was under Nicholas Segrave. OP: GRAHAM TURNER, FROM CAM 285, LEWES AND EVESHAM 1264-65 BY RICHARD BROOKS (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING); RIGHT: LOOK AND LEARN (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES) When the combatant armies faced off at Lewes, all odds favored Henry III (at right, bearing England’s lionesque coat of arms on his red tunic). His army was twice the size of that fielded by the barons. Had Edward kept his head, victory was likely. Instead, the king’s center broke (below), and Henry fled the field.
54 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 The king, by contrast, fielded an army of 10,000. Commanding from the center beneath his scarlet and gold dragon banner was Henry. On the right was a force of mostly cavalry under 24-year-old Prince Edward, to the left a division under Henry’s brother Richard of Cornwall. Jones described Edward and Richard as “royal princes in foul and bloody mood, hell-bent on vengeance againstrebels who had defied royal rule for too long.” A dispatch sent by courierfrom Henry and Edward that morning had deemed Montfort“a perfidioustraitor” and vowed they would “do our utmost to inflict injury alike upon your persons and your possessions.” But therewas another, equally reviled object of Edward’sire—namely the Londoners among Montfort’s host. A year earlier the prince’s French-born mother, Eleanor of Provence,whowas notoriously unpopularwith the English populace, had been targeted by a London mob. Amid rioting in the city she’d been descending the River Thames on her barge, when a mob standing on London Bridge had hurled down insults and showered the barge with mud, paving stones and refuse as she passed. This morning Edward almost certainly knew he faced some of those very Londoners. Surviving details of the Battle of Lewes are sparse. Rishanger wrote that skirmishing erupted at dawn when TOP: LAKEVIEW IMAGES (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES, UK (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES) “the baronial army suddenly attacked the king’s guards, who had gone out to seek for food or fodder, and killed many of them.”Thatwas enough to trigger Edward. Moved by the bitter memory of his mother’s humiliation coupled with the impetuosity of youth, the prince led his cavalry on a headlong charge against Montfort’s left. Slicing through the thin line of Segrave’s knights and felling as many as 60 of them, by Rishanger’s estimate, Edward and his men chopped and slashed their way into the mob of London tailors, glovers and fishmongers. The anonymous author of the 13th century Song of Lewes, 1264 placed the number of Londoners at 300. Though willing supporters of the rebellion, they were neither trained nor well-armed. As a body they turned and ran from Edward’s knights and trailing infantry,some jumping into the Ouse, only to drown. Though Edward had destroyed Montfort’s left, he remained in a foul and bloody mood and led his cavalry in a miles-long pursuit of the Londoners. Itwas a critical error, one thatswung the battle in Montfort’s favor. Seizing what Costain called “the golden moment,” with the king’s cavalry absent from the field, the earl called up hisreserves and charged the king’s center and right:“Itwas man against man, a clashing of battle-ax and mace and sword, a bloody give-and-take with the dead falling under the feet of the combatants and the wounded lying unheeded in agony while the battle swayed back and forth overthem.”Amid the melee a body ofthe king’s men spotted the earl’s cart, whose decoy guard presumably ran off at their approach.Inside they found the four captive civilians. Unaware of their loyalties to the king, they slew all four. In the humiliating aftermath of his defeat at Lewes, the captive Henry III, slumped despondently in the chair at left, signed over his powers to a council of barons, leaving Montfort, above, as de facto ruler. Drafted bythe Archbishop of Canterbury in 1215 to broker peace between the contemptible King John and disaffected barons, the “Great Charter” placed limits on the divine right of kings. It proved seminal to both the foundation of Parliament and creation of the U.S. Constitution. Magna Carta
55 Within minutes of Montfort’s all-or-nothing charge Henry’sright buckled, turning back to head in a crush for the bridge overthe Ouse in Lewes.The king’s center broke shortly afterthat.Henry himselfsoughtrefuge in the priory, beside the marsh to the left of the village,while the remainder of his men, horses and wagons jammed the narrow bridge in a mad dash to escape. Ironically, it took arriving rebel forcesto straighten out the traffic jam. Montfort also positioned troops to watch the priory and deal with Edward’s cavalry when it returned. Henry’s brother Richard was found hiding in a windmill, later dubbed the Mill of the Hide. Covered with cobwebs and dirt, he was paraded through town in his shame. Meanwhile, Edward finally halted his pursuit of the fleeing Londoners and gathered hisscattered forces. When the prince finally arrived back at the field of battle in the early afternoon, all he foundwas evidence of desolation and defeat, the king and his army gone, the dead andwounded bleeding into the grass. Continuing to search, Edward and his men eventually joined Henry in the priory. Quickly closing ranks around it, Montfort’s waiting men set fire to some of the buildings with flaming arrows and tried unsuccessfully to scale its walls. Regardless, the battle was over. Exact figures asto the number killed andwounded have not survived, if they ever existed, but one chronicler estimated the loss on both sides amounted to 5,000 men, an almost certain exaggeration. Montfort called for a truce, and the parties negotiated the terms of Henry’ssurrender.The king then signed the Mise of Lewes, ofwhich no copy hassurvived. Details are sketchy, but it is known that Henry was confined to London, and Edward remained a hostage of the barons. With that, Simon de Montfort became the unofficial king of England and, according to Costain, “very close to being a dictator.” But only for a year. Escaping captivity in the spring of 1265, Edward fomented a rebellion of barons disaffected with Montfort, much asthe earl himself had organized one against Henry. English armies again faced each other, this time at Evesham, in Worcestershire, that August 4, and this time Montfort lost. Amid the fighting the earl was killed when Roger Mortimer, a marcher lord from Herefordshire, speared Montfort through the throat with a lance. In the wake of that battle Edward assumed the mantle of power, officially as Edward I when Henry died in November 1272. (Clergy later reported the occurrence of miracles at Henry’s tomb, but unlike Louis IX of France, who had supported Henry, the Pope never canonized Henry as a saint of the Church.) As king, Edward overcame his youthful excesses,foughtin crusades, madewar onWales, Scotland and France, and, ironically, is credited with having established the English Parliament as a permanent institution. MH Military History contributor and onetime newspaperman Chuck Lyons is a freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y. For further reading he recommends Illustrated History of England, by G.M. Trevelyan; The Magnificent Century, by Thomas B. Costain; and The Plantagenets, by Dan Jones. Tactical Takeaways Know your limitations. Like his father, John, HenryIII flouted the provisions of the Magna Carta. But Henryriled the barons to victory and his own humiliation. Check your emotions. Reminded of the affront to his mother, Eleanor, Edward blindly charged Londoners from the field at Lewes, leaving father Henryto certain defeat. Not too young to learn. Edward rebounded from his misstep to defeat the barons a year later. As king he proved a fearsome warrior and, ironically, established a permanent Parliament. GRAHAM TURNER, FROM CAM 285, LEWES AND EVESHAM 1264-65 BY RICHARD BROOKS (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING) Though Montfort had wrested control of England, he allowed Edward to escape captivity. On Aug. 4, 1265, the vengeful prince caught up to the earl at Evesham, where Montfort was fatally lanced through the throat.
From the time human beings first learned to master the horse, man and beast have been inextricablylinked, often in war By Randi Samuelson-Brown 56 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024
57 hen all hell has broken loose and a rapid response is required, a familiar cry has echoed down through the millennia,“Send in the cavalry!” Mounted fighting forcessprang into being almost from the moment man learned to harness the power of the horse. With time and the relentless march of technology, the means and equipment have changed, from horses and horse-drawn vehicles to such mechanized cavalry as armored cars and tanks, then to the airin droves of helicopters before returning full circle to mounted special operators. Whatever the time period, armies have adjusted cavalry to terrain demands and their objectives. Such forces originally comprised two categories: light cavalry (lightly armored men on swift, unencumbered horses) and heavy cavalry (with riders and horses alike sheathed in armor). Light cavalry was utilized for raids, skirmishes and other actions requiring agility and speed. Heavy cavalry, or shock cavalry, rode down enemy ranks in direct combat. A form of shock cavalry, chariots morphed into modern-era tanks and helicopters. No matter the classification or equipment used, the cavalry has continually embodied a spirit of dashing courage in the saddle. MH Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s verses, “When can their glory fade? / O the wild charge they made,” immortalized the Oct. 25, 1854, charge of the British Light Brigade at the Crimean War Battle of Balaclava.
A B
CHAAARGE! PREVIOUS SPREAD: INCAMERASTOCK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); A: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE (ALAMY); B: WERNER FORMAN (GETTY); C, D: METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (2); E: JOHNNY SHUMATE, FROM CBT 50, ROMAN SOLDIER VS PARTHIAN WARRIOR: CARRHAE TO NISIBIS, 53 BC-AD 217, BY SI SHEPPARD (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING) A This ancient Egyptian fresco of a pharaoh in combat may represent the 1274 BC Battle of Kadesh, in which Ramses II led the Egyptians against Hittites under Muwatallis II. History records it as history’s largest chariot clash, involving some 5,000 to 6,000 of the horse-drawn battle wagons. Although each side claimed victory, historians since have deemed it a stalemate. B This detail of a stirring mosaic of the 333 BC Battle of Issus depicts a chariot-borne Darius III of the Achaemenid empire charging into combat against Hellenic League forces under Alexander the Great amid the latter’s conquest of Asia. It deftly captures the chaos of Alexander’s Macedonian victory over the Persians. C Dating from 530 BC, the Monteleone bronze Etruscan chariot is among the best preserved of some 300 extant examples. Chariots with spoked wheels were considered light cavalry. Pulled by two to four horses, each such conveyance carried up to three men armed with javelins, bows and slings and adept at hit-and-run tactics. D This magnificent 16th century chamfron served to protect a horse’s face during both field combat and jousting tournaments. Horses wearing chamfrons and armor were classified as heavy cavalry. This specific example belonged to Lithuanian Grand Chancellor Mikolaj “The Black” Radziwill (1515–65). E Perfected by the namesake ancient Iranian steppe people, the Parthian shot (origin of the phrase “parting shot”) is the classic hit-andrun cavalry maneuver, made at a full gallop while the rider twists in the saddle to fire projectiles at pursuers over the horse’s hindquarters. C D E 59
TheSpanish reintroduction ofthe horsetoNorthAmerica had unintended consequences F G H 60 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024
CHAAARGE! F The Mongolian hordes struck terror in the 13th and 14th centuries as they swept down from the steppes. They often attacked at full gallop in tight formation while raining arrows on foes with devastating effect. Unparalleled in speed and agility, the Mongols also favored feigned retreats to lure enemies into traps. G The weight of a medieval mounted knight’s suit of armor averaged 33 to 55 pounds, while the armor barding for his warhorse might weigh an additional 50 pounds up to whatever the animal could bear. H The Spanish reintroduction of the horse to North America in the 15th century eventually spawned some of history’s finest light cavalries among American Indian tribes. The Spaniards’ plate armor may have slowed their progress, but not enough to halt their conquest. I Captured here by artist George Catlin (1796–1872), Comanches were renowned for their horsemanship and combat skills, though demonstrated personal courage was held in higher regard than military objectives. Highest honors were earned by “counting coup”—touching a live enemy and escaping unharmed. J The June 9, 1863, Battle of Brandy Station, Va., was the largest cavalry engagement ever fought on American soil, pitting 11,000 Union and 9,500 Confederate troopers against one another. K Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors famously defeated Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry command at the June 25–26, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. Superior cavalry tactics by its American Indian victors brought about the worst U.S. Army defeat of the Plains Indian wars. I J K 61 F: WAYNE REYNOLDS, FROM WAR 84, MONGOL WARRIOR 1200–1350, BY STEPHEN TURNBULL (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING); G: FLORILEGIUS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); H: COLLIER’S MAGAZINE; I: SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM; J: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; K: GRANGER
L O M N
CHAAARGE! L: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES); M: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND; N: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; O: ULLSTEIN BILD DTL. (GETTY); P: BETTMANN (GETTY); Q: U.S. ARMY L On the evening of Sept. 1, 1939—the first day of World War II—Polish horsemen in the Tuchola Forest charged and dispersed an invading German infantry battalion, enabling their countrymen to withdraw. But when German armored vehicles counterattacked with machine guns, the Poles lost nearly a third of their horsemen. Throughout the war armies still used horses to transport troops and materiel. M Inevitably, armored cars, like these Belgian Minervas, supplanted horses, serving as a mechanized cavalry for carrying troops to the front. N During the 1916–18 Arab Revolt irregular forces mounted on camels and led by British officers, most notably Colonel T.E. Lawrence, staged many successful actions against Ottoman troops. On July 6, 1917, after a 600-mile desert crossing, Arab camelmen took Turkish-held Aqaba, Jordan. O Mechanized cavalry grew exponentially in size and scope by World War II. Here German Panzer IIIs leave their mark while crossing fields near Kursk, Russia, in July 1943. In an offensive tactic known as the Panzerkeil (“tank wedge”), the Germans formed their heavily armored tanks into a wedge to bear the brunt of antitank fire. At Kursk Tiger Is spearheaded the Panzerkeil, while Panzer IIIs and IVs formed the wings. P During the Vietnam War the U.S. cavalry rode Bell UH-1 Iroquois (aka “Huey”) helicopters, which proved lethal gunships and effective means of transport into the thicklyjungled landscape. Q The use of horses by the U.S. 5th Special Forces Group at the outset of the War in Afghanistan brought the history of the cavalry full circle and inspired the popular 2018 film 12 Strong. P Q 63
A LITTLE CLASHWITH BIG CONSEQUENCES
With hisvictory at the 1813 Battle of the Thames, William Henry Harrison broke the British hold on the Northwest Territory and shattered the region’s tribal confederacy ByJames F. Byrne Jr. Striking the first blow at the Oct. 5, 1813, battle were mounted Kentucky volunteers, who smashed through a thin red line of British Regulars in an action lasting 10 minutes. 65
66 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 e had bitterly opposed the British decision to retreat up the Thames River into Canada. Now, on this crisp October morning in 1813, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh watched in horror as a mounted force of Americans armed with tomahawks, knives and long rifles scattered his British allies and crashed into his own force. “Be brave! Be brave!” he reportedly cried out, but to no avail. Shot down by a future vice president of the United States, Tecumseh was at least spared the sight of his own warriors fleeing into a swamp while British soldiers surrendered en masse. In less than an hour the American commander, Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison, had crippled British power in the Great Lakes region, regained possession of the Northwest Territory and destroyed forever the confederacy of tribes Tecumseh had so painstakingly created. At one fell swoop Harrison effectively separated the British from their Indian allies and ended a series of American defeats that had characterized the War of 1812 to that point. PREVIOUS SPREAD: © DON TROIANI, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2023 (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); THIS PAGE: SARIN IMAGES (GRANGER) against Napoléonic France, Britain also imposed a maritime blockade of the Atlantic coast, devastating American trade, and outraged the nascent nation’s pride with the seizure of its merchantships and impressment of its Britishborn sailors to serve in the Royal Navy. On June 18, 1812, the United States, fed up with the cascade of insults and injuries, declared war against its former colonial master. While theBritishsetthe conditionsforwar,theAmericans did their partto drive the Indians oftheNorthwestTerritory into theBritish camp.In 1794 PresidentGeorgeWashington dispatchedMaj.Gen.AnthonyWayne to the territory to quell ThoughtheAmericanRevolutionary War had ended in 1783with a treaty that acknowledged the independence of the former colonies, Britainwasslowto acknowledge the rights the United States demanded as a sovereign nation. In violation of the Treaty of Paris, the British refused to relinquish forts and outposts in the Northwest Territory (roughly encompassing the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota).Worse yet,they fomented oftenbloody attempts by regional tribes to discourage the movement of American settlers into the territory. Amid its interminable wars
67 tribal unrest.AttheAugust 20Battle of FallenTimbers(near present-dayToledo, Ohio)“MadAnthony” and his grandly named Legion oftheUnited States duly crushed a combined force of Shawnee, Ottawa, Miami and assorted othertribal warriors in league with a company of British infantry disguised asIndians. While the victory suspended hostilities in the territory, it also convinced regional tribestheir best chance forsurvival lay in continued alliance with the British. Among those who fought at Fallen Timbers were then Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison, an aide-de-camp to GeneralWayne.In the decadesto come these two youngmenwould becomemajor players and bitter adversariesin the drama engulfing the NorthwestTerritory. Appointed governor of the newly established Indiana Territory in 1801, Harrison energetically (some thought ruthlessly) acquired tribal landsin furtherance ofwestward Americanexpansion.Between1803 and’09Harrisonnegotiated more than a dozen treatieswith Indian leaders, adding more than60millionacresforfuture settlements.WhileHarrisonwas appropriating land from tribalrepresentativeswho may or may not have been the actual landowners,Tecumseh and his brotherTenskwatawa (aka “the Prophet”)were forging a tribal confederation designed to secure remaining Indian lands againstthe encroachment ofAmerican settlers and to lead their people back to the culture, values and traditions of their ancestors. Needlessto say, the strikingly divergent objectives of Harrison and Tecumseh did not lay the groundwork for a collaborative relationship.Theirfrequent clashes overthe years virtually guaranteed there would be no peaceful outcome to the situationinthe IndianaTerritory. Tecumsehwas a brilliant leader and organizer.“If itwere not for the vicinity of the United States, Tecumseh would perhaps be the founder of an empire,” Harrison oncewrote of his Shawnee rival.“No difficulties deter him.” Tecumseh was the military and political leader of the emerging confederacy, while his brother provided the spiritual vision and direction.The siblings established a multitribal village known as Prophetstown nearthe confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers. Itserved asthe locus of the confederacy’s power and influence. In early November 1811 Governor Harrison, intent on “convincing” the Shawnee brothers an immediate peace treatywould be in their best interest, marched on Prophetstown with a force of 1,000 men. Tecumseh was away on a recruiting trip forthe confederacy, but his brother(a better visionary thanwarrior)was present.OnNovember 7, assuring hisfollowersthat enemy bullets could do them no harm, Tenskwatawa launched a preemptive strike against Harrison’s camp. In the subsequent Battle of Tippecanoe the Americansrepelled the attack,scattered the alliedwarriors A and burned Prophetstown to the ground. BOVE: GRANGER; BELOW: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION Thereafter dubbed “Old Tippecanoe,” Harrison became a national hero, while Tecumseh and his weakened confederacy grew ever more entrenched as British allies. Meanwhile, the American people became hardened in their well-founded belief the British were supplying the tribes and inciting them to violence. Within months the United States would be officially at war with Britain. Asfor Harrison and Tecumseh, the two antagonistswould meet for a final time along the Thames River in Upper Canada (present-day southern Ontario) in October 1813. TheoddsofanAmerican victory in the broader war were not aslong as one might assume. Britain wasfully engaged in its existentialstruggle against Napoléon and could not spare reinforcements for the reopened North American theater of war. Over the near term its troops would be on the defensive.Compared toCanada, the United States had an enormous advantage in militaryage manpower (albeit in quantity, not necessarily quality) and a 15-to-1 superiority in overall population. Furthermore, a majority of Canada’s half million citizens were of French or Indian descent with no love lost for their British overlords. What the United States lacked was an effective army. Though expanded from the 3,300 men of Wayne’s legion to 10,000 soldiers(atleast on paper)in 1808,theArmywasled by elderlyRevolutionaryWar veteranslong pasttheir prime, while partisan hacks awarded commissions due to political allegiances.The demoralizing influence of this officer corps on the rank and file prompted Congressman Nathaniel Macon of NorthCarolina to opine,“The state of thatArmy is enough to make any man who has the smallest love of countrywish to getrid of it.”Winfield Scott, among the few competent American officers who served during the war, described his contemporaries as “imbeciles and ignoramuses.”The bulk oftheArmy led by these misfits comprised state militiamen—whowere no bettertrained, equipped or disciplined than they had been during the Revolutionary American Maj. Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s decisive victory at the Aug. 20, 1794, Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Northwest Indian War. Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison fought there. Tecumseh andHarrisonwould becomemajor playersand bitter adversariesin theWarof1812 William Henry Harrison Tecumseh
68 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 War.The British, though significantly outnumbered along theCanadian border,were disciplined professionalsoldiers allied with fearsome, if not always reliable, tribal warriors. The American pursuit of the war was largely characterized by multiple attempts to invade Canada. Virtually all such attempts failed, some spectacularly so. One of the largest and earliest failures occurred in the Northwest Territory a month after war was declared. On July 5, 1812, Michigan Territory Governor William Hull, who’d reluctantly accepted President James Madison’s appointment as a brigadier general, arrived at Fort Detroit with a force of 2,000 U.S. Regulars and militia and orders to capture Fort WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Malden, on the Canadian side of Lake Erie.An elderly and indecisive Revolutionary War veteran, the general soon lost the confidence and loyalty of his officers and men. Hull’s job wasn’t made any easier by the undisciplined militia units that made up most of his force. Several flatly refused to cross the border, which made an invasion of Canada somewhat problematic. Finally managing to get a force across the lake into Canadian territory, Hull moved to invest Fort Malden, some 20 miles downriver from Detroit. Though his men outnumbered those defending the fort, Hull fretted about his supply lines, which were threatened by British control of Lake Erie and the unnerving presence of Tecumseh and his warriors. Looking for any excuse to retreat to Detroit, Hull found one when the British commander, Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock, created a false document implying the immediate presence of more than 5,000 tribal allies and then allowed the document to “fall” intoAmerican hands. Pulling back to Detroit, Hull was soon surrounded by the weaker but more ably led British and allied Indian forces. Expressing concern for the safety of the 700 civilians at the fort, and suffering from what some subordinates considered a breakdown (or at best a complete lack of nerve), Hull surrendered the post and his entire force on AuTheBritishwerealliedwith Tecumseh’sfearsome,ifnot alwaysreliable,tribalwarriors The British looked the other way when allied Indian warriors in the Northwest Territory committed atrocities, such as the massacre of wounded U.S. prisoners after the January 1813 Battle of Frenchtown.
69 gust 16—making Detroit the onlyAmerican city in history to capitulate to a foreign invader.“Damn such a general!” remarked one subordinate, neatly summing up the views of Hull’s command as it marched into captivity. Brushing aside their inauspicious start, the Americans pulled together 10,000 raw recruits, the one resource the United States had in excess. Harrison was placed in command and immediately set out to recapture Detroit. Initially,“OldTippecanoe” achieved resultsnomore impressive than those of his disgraced predecessor. Heavy rains and impassable trails delayed hisinitial march, and on Jan. 22, 1813, a 1,000-man contingent of Harrison’s force sent on a forward reconnaissancewas ambushed by some 600 British Regulars and 800 allied warriors at Frenchtown (presentday Monroe, Mich.) along the River Raisin.Aftersuffering hundreds of casualties, the command surrendered. Their tribal captors subsequently massacred dozens of injured American prisonerswhile the heedless Britishwithdrewto Fort Malden. Harrison spent much of the remainder of 1813 on his heels,successfully turning back excursionsfrom Upper Canada orchestrated by the British commander, Brig. Gen. Henry Procter. Despite the Americans’ apparent inability to conduct successful offensive land operationsin the Northwest Territory, theirfortunes of wartook a major uptick on September 10, when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated British naval forces on Lake Erie, near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, thus eliminating it as a British supply line to Detroit and the rest of the territory. Perry reported his victory to Harrison with one of the most memorable missives in military history: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” Events moved quickly following Perry’s victory. With his main supply route severed, Procter instantly recognized his position at the south end of Lake Erie was untenable. It was then he chose to retreat northward up the Thames to link up with friendly forces in the Canadian interior near Lake Ontario. Procter’s primary Indian ally, Tecumseh, opposed the retreat, viewing it as a betrayal that left his tribal confederacy two equally unpalatable options—remain behind and face alone thewrath of Old Tippecanoe andAmericans eager to avenge the massacre at Frenchtown, orfollowtheBritish and abandon(atleast temporarily)their ancestralhomelands.Dependent on the British forsupplies and othersupport,Tecumseh chose the latter option,with the understanding the combined forcewould halt andmake a standsomewhere alongtheThames. Procter’sretreat up the Thames could charitably be described aslethargic. Burdenedwith excessive supplies, baggage and camp followers, he failed to destroy the numerous bridges along the route and largely neglected rearsecurity or forward reconnaissance. Leaving Detroit on September 26, Procter marched hisforce some 75 miles east to the Lenape settlement of Moraviantown. There he elected to make hisstandwith some 900 dispirited Regulars and 500 disgruntled warriors. TheAmerican vanguard arrived at Detroit two days after Procter’s departure. Exploiting his control of Lake Erie, Harrison was able to transport most of his supplies and much of his infantry along the lakeshore aboard Perry’s Richard Mentor Johnson Henry Procter MAP BY JON BOCK; CLOCKWISE FROM CENTER: ART COLLECTION (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); FORT MALDEN NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, PARKS CANADA; NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION Tenskwatawa 3,500 U.S. FORCES 2,380 MILITIA, 1,000 VOLUNTEER MOUNTED TROOPS, 120 REGULARS 27 KILLED 57 WOUNDED 1,400 BRITISH FORCES 900 BRITISH REGULARS, 500 ALLIED WARRIORS 51 KILLED 25 BRITISH SOLDIERS WOUNDED, 601 CAPTURED Battleof the Thames L AKE MICHIGAN BATTLE OF THE THAMES C A N A D A PUT-IN-BAY FRENCHTOWN TIPPECANOE FORT DEFIANCE FORT DETROIT FORT MALDEN FORT NIAGARA M I L E S 0 100 L AKE ERIE U N I T E D S T A T E S
70 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 TOP: SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM; LEFT: BYGONE COLLECTION (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO) fleet,while the remainder of hisforce pursued Procter.Harrison’s 3,500-man command comprised a detachment of Regularinfantry, five brigadesofKentuckymilitia anda1,000-strong regiment of volunteer cavalry commanded by Colonel Richard M. Johnson, a serving U.S. congressman from Kentucky.These mounted riflemenwould serve as amobile shock force in amannerunprecedentedinwilderness combat. The position from which Procter chose to make his stand, on lightly wooded ground, was not a particularly strong one, given his relatively small force. His left flank was anchored on the Thames and stretched some 300 yards north to a smallswampy area. Procter stationed his Regulars there in a single “thin red line” (predating the tactical deployment, if not the results, of anothersmall group of British Regulars 41 years later at the Battle of Balaclava). The soldiers were spread 2 to 3 yards apart, and therewas no reserve, norwas there any attempt to dig in or otherwise fortify the position. Tecumseh and hiswarriorswere stationed to the right of the British,stretching from the smallswamp to a larger marsh some 200 yards farther inland. Harrison arrived at the head of the American column on the morning of October 5. Afterscouting the British position and noting the thinness ofthe defensive line, he consented to a bold plan of attack proposed by Colonel Johnson— a headlong charge by the mounted Kentuckians designed to break the enemy formation. Johnson placed his brother, Lt. Col. James Johnson, in command of half the horsemen with orders to attack the British position. Colonel Johnson himself would take the remaining horsemen through the swamp bisecting Procter’s forces and flank Tecumseh and his warriors. The infantry would follow and provide support as needed. The mounted volunteers were not cavalry in the traditionalsense.They did not carry swords,though they bristled with their tomahawks, knives and rifles, and they were not trained or organized to attack infantry in defensive positions. But attack they did—with spectacular results. On theAmerican right Lt.Col.Johnson’s horsemen readily burst through the thin enemy line, absorbing the single musket volley most British infantrymen managed to discharge.Aimed fire, not a British strength in that era, proved ineffective, and the Kentuckians were soon in the enemy rear, where they dismounted and began pouring accurate rifle fire into the befuddled Regulars, who surrendered in droves. General Procter ignobly fled the field, leaving his men to their fate. The fight lasted all of 10 minutes. On theAmerican leftColonelJohnson and his command had a slightly rougher go of it, as the intervening swamp proved a formidable obstacle to cavalry. After drawing the Indians’ fire with an advance “forlorn hope,” led by Johnson himself, the remaining Kentucky volunteers attacked on footthrough the swamp and sniped atTecumseh and his warriorsfrom their flank, theAmerican infantry mopping up in theirwake.Though shotfourtimesin the initial horseback charge, Johnson managed to kill an especially valiant warrior bearing down on him.Itisthoughtthatwarriorwas Tecumseh. Regardless, with the chief’s death the warriors left the battlefield and melted away into the large marsh. The British and their tribal allies had suffered some 75 casualties and the surrender of 601 British survivors. American casualties amounted to 84 dead and wounded. Though a minor engagement by the numbers,with his victory Harrison had regained full control of the Northwest Harrison rode hisvictories during the War of 1812 (listed above his portrait in the Whig Partyribbon above) to victoryin the 1840 U.S. presidential race.“Old Tippecanoe” served a month before succumbing to illness at the White House—the first president to die in office. Won & Lost Amid the Sept. 10, 1813, Battle of Lake Erie, with his flagship irreparably damaged, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry transfers his flag. His surprise victory severed British supply lines to Detroit, prompting Procter’s retreat.
71 Territory, while Tecumseh’s tribal confederacy died with him on the banks of the Thames. TheWarof1812wasfarfrom over.TheAmericanswould make additional bids to seize Canada, the British would temporarily occupy and burn Washington, D.C., and with the 1814 defeat and exile ofNapoléon,Britainwould allocate additionalforcestoNorthAmerica.The culminating battle of thewar, at New Orleans,remained 15 monthsin the future. But the victory on theThamesloomed largewhen peace negotiations got under way. When asked about possible territorial concessions to be included in the treaty, Field MarshalArthur Wellesley pointed out that Britain had not won a foot of U.S. soil and was fortunate not to have lost any of its own. Thus, the Duke of Wellington urged the treaty respect the boundaries in place at the outset of the war. Due atleastin partto Procter’s defeat, Britainwasin no position to make territorial demands, and nonewere made. Notsurprising, the outcome of the Battle of theThames had significantrepercussionsforits key commanders. GeneralHenryProcter unsuccessfully soughtto convinceBritish brasshisdefeatwasdue to thepoorperformanceofhistroops despite his inspired leadership. At court-martial a senior board of officersformally reprimanded him for hisselection of a poor defensive position and failure to exercise meaningL ful command during the engagement.By contrast,the battle IBRARY OF CONGRESS served as a political launching pad for many of the mountedKentucky volunteers—producing four Kentucky governors, two Kentucky lieutenant governors,fourU.S.senators and20 congressmen.Their commander, Richard Mentor Johnson, rode his alleged (if unverified) personal conquest of Tecumseh to the vice presidency of the United Statesin 1836. Exploiting the victory to burnish the glory he’d earned at Tippecanoe, Harrisonwas elected ninth president oftheUnited Statesin 1840,though he fell ill and died a month into office.Asfor Tecumseh,thewild charge oftheKentucky volunteers along the Thames had taken his life and destroyed his dream of a tribal confederacy. Yet, to this dayCanadians consider him a folk hero for having combatted theAmerican invasions that defined much of the War of 1812. MH James F. Byrne Jr. is a retired U.S. Army officer and frequent contributor to Military History. For further reading he recommends William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country, by David Curtis Skaggs, and The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, by Donald R. Hickey. Tactical Takeaways Don’t prod the hive. The British fomented violence bytribal allies against settlers in the Northwest Territory and blockaded the Atlantic coast, among other provocations leading to the War of 1812. Controlsupplylines. With his Sept. 10, 1813, victory on Lake Erie U.S. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perrysevered British supplylines to Detroit and the territory. Allies can disappoint. Henry Procter’s retreat and poor performance at the Thames proved fatal for Tecumseh and broke the back of his tribal confederacy. Kentucky volunteers on the American left at the Thames, led by Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, had to negotiate an intervening swamp to flank Tecumseh’s warriors.Johnson himself claimed to have shot the Shawnee chief, as depicted below.
72 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Reviews Tecumseh vs.Harrison When one broaches the subject of westward expansion, many picture Conestoga wagons creaking down the Santa Fe Trail. In Gallop Toward the Sun author Peter Stark reminds readersthatthe expansionofthenascentUnited States firstsubsumed the Northwest Territory (not the Great Plains), and it wasthere Americans of allstripesinitially experienced the tragedies and the triumphs ofwestward migration. The Northwest Territory (roughly encompassing the present-day states of Ohio,Indiana, Illinois,Michigan,Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota) was ceded to the United States by the British at the end of theRevolutionaryWar. Understandably, the people whose ancestors had lived there for centuries believed the land was already spoken for. Regardless, Americans intended to settle this territory, and for 30 years the question of ownership was addressed through treaties, land purchases,wars, massacres, peace conferences, duplicity and chicanery.Dominating the political landscape during much of this period were two men known by theirrespective people asskilled politicians, brutal warriors and consummate leaders— namely ShawneeChief Tecumseh and Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison. Harrison secured millions of acres of the contested territory through conquest, treaties and purchase (often from tribal chiefs with no actual ties to the land). Tecumseh fought the acquisitions with words, tomahawks and the creation of an intertribal confederation to speak with one voice and act in unison. Interactions were frequent between the two Western colossi, asthey parleyed, parried and fought over the decades, pushing irreconcilable agendas, visions and cultures. Stark does an excellent job putting the clashesin context, including theWar of 1812Battle oftheThames, whenHarrison’sforces killedTecumseh (a British ally) and destroyed forever the intertribal confederacyhehadsopainstakingly created(see related feature, P. 64). Stark tends to highlight Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation, by Peter Stark, Random House, New York, 2023, $28.99 At the Nov. 7, 1811, Battle of Tippecanoe U.S. troops led by then Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeated Shawnee Chief Tecumseh’s intertribal confederation and destroyed its capital.
73 Recommended Battleforthe Island Kingdom By Don Hollway From thetime William, Dukeof Normandy,seizedthethrone in1066,Englishroyaltyhas hadalongtraditionof intrigue, treacheryandviolence. As author Don Hollwayshowsin Battlefor theIsland Kingdom, hisprequel tothe Battleof Hastings,previousclaimants tothethrone— Celtic, Saxon and Danish—indulgedintheir ownshareofpoliticsbybloodier means,each withhis(or her)specialpointof interest. Tecumseh’spositive attributes, while continually denigrating Harrison. However, he does provide an interesting, well documented account of an oft overlooked period in the growth of the United States. —James Byrne The Rise & Fall of the Mounted Knight, by Clive Hart, Pen & Sword History, Yorkshire, U.K., and Philadelphia, 2022, $42.95 Arising from the chaos of the early MiddleAges, mounted knights employed their skill as horsemen and prowess with sword and lance to carve out aniche insociety centered on a chivalric identity shaped by thewarrior culture and the values ofthemedieval church. Their decline in prominence was due to a host of factors, including the Protestant Reformation and consequent dissolution of the universal church, the rise of professional infantry, increasing political unity, the growing cost ofwar and the introduction of gunpowder weapons. Their legacy, however, remains indelibly marked on the pages of history. Clive Hart’s The Rise and Fall of the Mounted Knight explores the history of the knight and knighthood from the point of view of a “practitioner of mounted martial arts.” His insights and anecdotes aboutriding and fighting in armor, as well asthose regarding the anatomy, psychology and reactions of the horse, are among the most enjoyable passages. Hart’s narrative relatesthe circumstancesthat both gave rise to knights and led to their downfall.Hissection on their rise is the weaker of the two, perhaps due to the relative paucity of earliersource material.In between he explores the knight’s heyday as master of the medieval battlefield, and he includes an interesting coda delving into the renewal of interest in knightly combat and jousting in the early Victorian era. —Robert C.L. Holmes Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine, by General David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, Harper, New York, 2023, $40 British biographer and military historian Andrew Roberts teams up with David Petraeus, the renowned if controversial retired U.S. Army general and CIA director, to review nearly eight decades of post–WorldWarII military evolution, up to and including the ongoingRussoUkrainian War. They do so in 10 crisplywritten chapters, including two written by the general in first person reflecting his personal experience and insightful observations of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Supporting the narrative are a thorough bibliography, endnotes, 10 excellent maps and two plates of nearly three dozen photographs. Amajor argumentrunning through the book is that to succeed political and military leaders must understand four principles: grasp the strategic situation, communicate it effectively to others, implement a plan for victory, and refine and adapt that plan as needed.The authors contend that George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher and VolodymyrZelenskyy accomplished those objectives, while Lyndon Johnson and Vladimir Putin did not.Another argument is that in recent years profound technological innovation has expanded the possible theaters of war beyond land, sea and air to include outer space and cyberspace, the latterincluding disinformation disseminated globally via social media.The authors stress that in order to succeed,U.S. andBritish military forcesmustmaintaincapacity in all dimensions, especially since hybridwarfare is on the increase, blurring the lines between war and peace with its use of proxies, economics and other indirect means. Despite the employment of such cutting-edge technologies as drones, the authorsnote,theRusso-Ukraine Warisstrangely regressive, its combatantsresorting to 20th century trench warfare and The Viking Siegeof Paris By Si Sheppard Vikings whoraidedupthe Seine in November 885 foundtheÎlede la Citéatoughnut tocrackand settledinfor whatamountedto thelongestsiegeeverendured by thefutureFrenchcapital. Si Sheppard’sdetailedaccount hacksawayat mythsregarding thecommandersand warriors ofbothsidesandrelatesthe far-reachingconsequences.
74 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 tank tactics. They suggest thatRussia’sfailure to achieve a decisive victory is a cautionary tale for the Chinese with regard to their ambitions toward Taiwan. The authors conclude that the future of warfare is almost certainly headed toward robot-onrobot fighting directed by artificial intelligence (AI)— a dystopian vision of sci-fi films wrought true. —William John Shepherd Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe, by Rachel Chrastil, Basic Books, New York, 2023, $35 Thisis not the book forreaders looking for battle procedure or ballistics, norshould it be. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919,thisis history writ large. Rachel Chrastil, professor of history at Xavier University in Cincinnati and a former Fulbright scholar, offers a sweeping portrait of a conflictthat ushered in a new European balance of power and groundbreaking technologies and tactics for waging war. The military operations provide the narrative arc, but only a framework for analysis of wider social, political and cultural changes. The term Franco-Prussian War is a grievous oversimplification, argues Chrastil. To which France is one referring? Napoléon III’s Second French Empire, which ruled when the war began? TheThirdRepublic that arose after the emperor was captured at Sedan?The attackers were predominantly Prussian, but the German empire did not yet exist, and the invaders were a polyglot force.The states of the North German Confederation, which Prussia dominated, were involved, as were their allies in the south German states, all with conflicting aims and interests. The political aspects of thewarwere unusually intrusive. As the author notes,“The possibility of negotiations sharpened internal power struggles for both sides.” On the German side, Helmuth von Moltke,representing the military, and Otto von Bismarck,the political,struggled to controlthe talks astheyhad fought throughout the war. On the French side, suffice to say, the Commune arose in Paris, the elections held days afterwar’s endwere chaotic, and some départements verged on anarchy. Chrastil retains an ear for the telling quote. Of Republican hero Léon Gambetta it wassaid,“His mind is versatile enough to sweep in at one and the same moment the grandest topics and the most minute details.”The same can be said of this volume. —Bob Gordon The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power and Deception on the Eve of World War I, by Douglas Brunt, Atria Books, New York, 2023, $28.99 Author Douglas Brunt sets himselftwogoalsinthisbook: to rescue Rudolf Diesel, a great inventor and admirable idealist, from anonymity and to solve his disappearance on the eve ofWorldWarI.Readersmaynot agreewithBrunt’s theory about the disappearance, but he makes the case Diesel should be respected today for his extraordinary technical gifts and rectitude. Born in Parisin 1858, Diesel was of German ancestry and later acquired German citizenship. He matured into a brilliant engineering student who soughtto solve the riddle of engine inefficiency.“Finding the answer,” Bruntwrites, “motivated his life’s work.” In 1897 Diesel’s new, eponymous enginewas proven successful, and its commercial application reaped him astounding profits. In one short passage Brunt deftly sums upDiesel’sworldchanging engine.“The diesel engine didn’trequire hoursto boilwater,” hewrites.“It operated immediately from a cold start.Nor did itrequire teams of men to stoke…fires, but simply drewliquid fuel autoRecommended The Daciansand GetaeatWar By Andrei Pogacias Romanianstakeprideinthe proportionofancientLatin that infusestheir language, but t’wasnotalwaysthus. First-time Romanianauthor Andrei Pogaciasandartist Catalin Draghici reconstruct thesocietyand militaryof the Thracianpeoples whooccupied what isnow Romaniaand who forsometwocenturiesconstitutedsomeof thetoughest oppositiontoimperial Rome. The Dutch- IndonesianWar, 1945–49 ByMarcLohnstein On Aug. 17, 1945, twodaysafter Japaneseforcessurrendered toendWorldWar II, Indonesian nationalistleaders Sukarnoand Mohammed Hattapronounced independencefor the NetherlandsEast Indies. Dutchhistorian MarcLohnsteindescribes thenearly fiveyearsof fighting thatultimatelyledtoanindependent Indonesianrepublic.
75 matically from a tank.…[It] burned a viscous fuel that had no fumes, was safe to store, and the engine consumed its fuel so efficiently that a shipcouldcircumnavigate the globewithoutstopping to refuel.…His engine became the most disruptive technology in history.” It was clear by the early 20th century that the European powers were lurching toward war with each other. In this Zeitgeist, Dieselsought to modernize the British navy, as he disdained Germany’smilitaristicKaiser Wilhelm II. In 1913 Diesel vanishedwhile (reportedly) on a ferry to Britain andwas (also reportedly) neverseen alive again. Brunt examines several possible explanations for Diesel’s disappearance. Assassination? (The kaiser and John D. Rockefeller, the era’s petroleum king, had reasons to oppose Diesel.) Suicide? Something else? Brunt has his suspicions, but readers are free to ponder the evidence and reach their own conclusions. —Howard Schneider The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789, by Robert Darnton, Norton, New York, 2023, $45 Awell-known Harvard professor of French history, Robert Darnton has crafted a masterly account of the 40 stormy years before the French Revolution. The author emphasizes that Europe’slargest,richest nation was never far from bankruptcy. Tiny, poorer Britain could slug it outwith France throughout the 18th century because it had a national bank and an equitable tax system; everyone paid,so it could handle an enormous debt.France’s aristocracy and the Catholic Church were largely exempt from taxes, which weighed heavily on the poor and an increasingly assertive middle class. Wars featured predominantly during these years. Although expensive, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) turned out well for France, while the 1756–63 Seven Years’ War proved catastrophic as well as expensive. Aiding rebellion by Britain’s American colonies brought deep satisfaction but few material gains and more debt. Although a dimpair, Louis XV and Louis XVIrecognized France had a money problem, and Darnton excels in describing a series of energetic royal officials (Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Jacques Necker), whose reform efforts were often sensible but failed because thenobility andchurch officials refused to give up their exemption. Borrowing solved the problem until it didn’t. Most loans came from the middle class. The poor were poor, but often worked for their superiors, so a default led to unemployment. When a 1787 loan failed to sell, the government was forced to cutinterest payments onearlier loans that Frenchmen had bought as annuities. To no one’ssurprise this produced massive, murderous riots, especially in Paris. Tasked with persecuting royalist critics, the feared Paris police had no skill in crowd control, so rampaging mobsterrified the upper classes.In response the king announced he would summon an ancient national assembly, the Estates General, to fix matters. It didn’t assemble until 1789, the traditional beginning of the French Revolution, but Darntonmakes a convincing argumentfor adate twoyears earlierwhenthe government had clearly lost control. —Mike Oppenheim The Fevered Fight: A Medical History of the American Revolution, 1775–1783, by Martin R. Howard, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 2023, $54.95 In The Fevered Fight historianMartinHoward looks at the health ofsoldiers onboth sides of theAmerican Revolutionary War, weighing casualties that were the result ofharshconditions andrampant disease against those from the actual fighting. For the Americans the biggest threat at the outset of the war was smallpox. GeneralGeorgeWashington, who had suffered from smallpox in Barbados in 1751, was aware of the danger and ordered that all men must be inoculated against the rapid-spreading disease. “Should the disorder infect theArmy in this naturalway and ragewith its usual virulence,” he wrote on Feb. 6, 1777,“we should have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy.” Conditions of living— never mind fighting—for the colonial militiamenwere terrible. On campaign the soldiers had “flying hospitals,” today’s field hospitals, at a regimental level, with a temporary general hospital setupinanearby town.Conditionsin the hospitalswere often more deadly than the camps themselves. Dr. James Tilton, chief medical officerforthe Continental Army, noted that American forces “lost not less than from 10 to 20 of camp diseasesfor one by the weapons ofthe enemy,”while a British doctor estimated fever had killed eight times more men than artillery. Howard’s book provides a much-needed update on health and medical conditionsin the revolution. He is the author of three previous books on late 18th to early 19th century conflicts and is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Pathologists and oftheRoyal Historical Society. —Ellen Hampton
76 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 MAP BY HISTORYNET; OPPOSITE, TOP: LOOK AND LEARN (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); BOTTOM: MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP (GETTY IMAGES) he 66–74 Great Jewish Revolt against Rome has taken its place in legend for the Jewish ambush at Beth Horon in 66—which cost LegioXII Fulminata nearly 6,000 soldiers and an aquila (imperial eagle standard)—the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70, and the final stand at Masada in 74. It was unique, too, for having been chronicled by a historian with access to both sides. A rebel commander during the 47-day siege of Yodfat in 67, Yosef ben Matityahu was subsequently spared by Emperor Vespasian and went on to write The Jewish War under the Latinized name Titus Flavius Josephus. Poring overJosephus’ memoir oftwo millennia ago, one isstruck at howits eventsring a familiar note today. Far from being united by a common cause, the rebelling Jews constituted a house politically and religiously divided against itself, with numerous factions, ranging from conservative to extreme, as willing to fight each other as the Romans. That they resisted as long as they did, sending shock waves across the empire from Judea and Egypt to Britannia and the German marches, was partially thanks to a handful of able Jewish tacticians and partially due to a series of coups d’état in Rome—including four in one year—from which Vespasian emerged as the last emperor standing. The fall of Jerusalem should have spelled an end to the conflict, but Sicarii Zealots had holed upwithin Herod’sfortified palace atop the imposing mesa of Masada. The Sicarii were essentially a splinter group of assassins, as opposed to Jewish authorities asto the Romans, who spent the warraiding the countryside, including the massacre of some 700 Jewish women and children while looting Ein Gedi during Passover 67. By the winter of 73 Essenes and other refugees had raised Masada’s populace to 967 when Legio X Fretensis, comprising more than 8,000 troops and some 7,000 auxiliaries and slaves commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, arrived to complete Rome’s reprisal. After erecting a circumvallation around the mesa to thwart escape, Silva focused on a spur on Masada’s western flank known asWhiteRock,tasking his engineers and laborerswith adding tons ofrock and earth to create a ramp. In the spring of 74 the Romans were able to roll up a massive siege tower fitted with a battering ram to breach the fortress wall. Sicarii leader Eleazar ben Ya’ir quickly had an inner wall of timber erected to absorb the ram, but the Romans cast up torchesto burn away that obstacle. On April 16 the Romans entered to find a charnel house inwhich Eleazar, declaring it preferable to “preserve ourselves in freedom,” had finessed Jewish prohibition of suicide by exhorting the defenders to kill one another. More recent archeologists have found no evidence ofsuch a masssuicide and doubted the defenders would have had time to carry out such a slaughter,since Romans, once they attained an advantage, wasted no time in pressing it and killing everyone in the process.Asitwas, Josephus counted twowomen and five children as the sole survivors. Preserved by its desert environment beside the Dead Sea, Masada remains largely as it was when it fell, a window into another time to fascinate the thousands of annual tourists who scale its heights along either the eastern Snake Path or western Roman Ramp or opt to ascend by cable car. Shorn of nuance overthe centuries, the UNESCO World Heritage Site remains a symbol of defiant courage atop which present-day units of the Israel Defense Forces are sworn into service. Still in evidence,too, are the ramp and remains ofthe eightRoman siege camps,which in their own time represented something else—a reminderto would-be rebelsthat if they rose against the empire, itslegionswould dowhateverit took, for however long it took, to restore Pax Romana at pilum point. MH HallowedGround Masada,Israel By Jon Guttman Itremainsasymbolof defiant courageatopwhich unitsofthe IsraelDefenseForcesareswornin MASADA NATIONAL PARK D E A D S E A ISRAEL JORDAN
Legio X Fretensis ultimately ended the 73–74 siege of Masada by constructing a massive ramp and breaching the walls by means of a siege tower (above). Visitors can access the mesa top via that ramp and other approaches. 77
78 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 LEFT: DEUTSCHES HISTORISCHES MUSEUM, BERLIN; 1: MISTERVLAD (DREAMSTIME.COM); 2: GAERTNER (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); 3: RONENR (GETTY IMAGES); 4: ARCHIVE IMAGES (ALAMY); 5, 9: SEAN PAVONE (ALAMY, 2); 6: SGT. MATTHEW J. BRAGG, U.S. MARINE CORPS; 7: RAFAEL WOLLMANN (GETTY); 8: TSAFREER (GETTY); 10: CHRISTIAN-HERNANDEZ/ISTOCK (GETTY) WarGames Degrees ofSeparation Match each famed commander below to the place where his son, nephew or grandson gained martial notoriety: 1. George Smith Patton 2. Genghis Khan 3. Hamilcar Barca 4. Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia 5. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder 6. Henry IV of England 7. Arthur MacArthur Jr. 8. Philip II of Macedon 9. Wade Hampton I 10. Najm al-Din Ayyub ___ A. Battle of Mohi ___ B. First Battle of the Marne ___ C. Veracruz Expedition ___ D. Battle of the Horns of Hama ___ E. Crossing of the Alps ___ F. Punitive Expedition to Mexico ___ G. Battle of Chaeronea ___ H. First Battle of Manassas ___ I. Siege of Harfleur ___ J. Battle of Mollwitz 4J, 6I, 9 H, 8 G, 1F, 3E, 01 D, 7C, 5B, 2 A:sre ws nA 7J, 4I, 2 H, 8 G, 5F, 01E, 6 D, 1C, 9B, 3 A:sre ws nA Take theHighGround How many of these lofty objectives can you identify? ___ A. Masada (Israel) ___ B. Hacksaw Ridge (Okinawa) ___ C. Budapest (Hungary) ___ D. Mount Suribachi (Iwo Jima) ___ E. Washington Heights (New York) Friedrich WilhelmI ___ F. Lookout Mountain (Tennessee) ___ G. Golan Heights (Israel) ___ H. Queenston Heights (Canada) ___ I. Hamburger Hill (Vietnam) ___ J. Mount Tumbledown (Falklands) 5 2 4 1 3 9 7 8 6 10
PRINT COLLECTOR (GETTY IMAGES) 1. Whose was the first army to make war chariots an essential element of its power? A. Assyria B. Harappa C. China D. Sumer 2. Which element of the 16th century Polish winged hussar was considered top secret? A. The lance B. The wheellock C. The szabla D. The horse’s breeding 3. In 1757 Hungarian hussars led by András Hadik captured and ransomed which Prussian city? A. Berlin B. Magdeburg C. Potsdam D. Danzig 4. What about the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry was unique within the Union Army until May 1863? A. All white horses B. Burnside carbines C. Lances D. Gatling guns 5. Which battle is regarded as history’s last successful cavalry assault? A. Beersheba B. Schoenfeld C. Komárom D. Morong B5, C4, A3, D2, A1:sre ws nA Horsepower With or without wheels in tow, warhorses have served alongside soldiers for millennia. For example: Greek warchariot Visit our website: thelincolnforum.org for more information J O I N T O D AY ! What began as a modest proposal to bring Lincoln enthusiasts together for a small East Coast-based yearly history conference at Gettysburg has blossomed into one of the leading history organizations in the country. Our yearly November symposium is attended by scholars and enthusiasts from all over the nation and abroad. It attracts speakers and panelists who are some of the most revered historians in the Lincoln and Civil War fields. T H E L I N C O L N F O R U M
Captured! Jupiter and Back Again Though popular culture tends to depict the space race as a cooperative effort among nations with a shared interest in science, it started as a competition between Cold War rivals the United States and the Soviet Union, and there remains an undeniable focus on the military applications of satellites in low-Earth orbit (see related story, P. 24). To determine whether humans could survive the trip, both nations sacrificed scores of animals in test flights.Miss Baker, the squirrel monkeystrapped in her “bio-pack couch” at left, was one of the first two animals sent into space bythe United States to return safely. On May 28, 1959, Baker and Able, a female rhesus monkey, endured a 16-minute, 10,000 mph flight aboard a Jupiter rocket, a type developed into a launch platform for medium-range ballistic missiles. And for those brief minutes Misses Baker and Able were the fastest animals...well, off Earth. 80 MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2024 UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES, INC. (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)
UNION SOLDIER JOHN J.WILLIAMS IS KILLED ON THE BANKS OF THE RIO GRANDE DURING THE BATTLE OF PALMITO RANCH. RECOGNIZED AS THE LASTMAN TO DIE IN THE AMERICAN CIVILWAR, HEWAS ONE OF AN ESTIMATED 700,000MEN—ROUGHLY 2% OF THE U.S. POPULATION AT THE TIME— WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING THE CONFLICT. THOSE DEATHS ROUGHLY EQUAL THE COMBINED AMERICAN FATALITIES IN THE REVOLUTIONARYWAR, THEWAR OF 1812, THEMEXICAN-AMERICANWAR, THE SPANISH-AMERICANWAR,WORLDWAR I, WORLDWAR II, AND THE KOREANWAR. TODAYIN HISTORY For more, visit HISTORYNET.COM/TODAY-IN-HISTORY MAY 13,1865
www.Fighting69thWhiskey.com Fighting69thWhiskey @Fight69Whiskey @Fighting69thWhiskey $1.00 from eachbottlegoes tothe Sixty-NinthRegiment Historical Trust, Inc. anot-for-profit 501 (c) (3) Supports Our Military