Battles of English History

Battles are the most generally interesting class of events in history, and not without reason. Until mankind have all been reduced to a single pattern, which would put an end to...

It is probably needless to say that Hastings was not the first battle of English history. The Romans met with desperate resistance in more than one locality before they could co...

The Norman Conquest was, to the English body politic, like one of those powerful drugs which seriously disorder the constitution for the time, but if the patient has strength to...

The Barons' War is the only occasion in English history, except the great civil war of the seventeenth century, in which a national party in arms against the crown won a great v...

In 1290 Margaret of Norway, the infant queen of Scotland, died, and a difficult question arose as to the succession to her. Edward I. of England had made it the chief object of...

A few months after the accession of Edward III., his uncle the king of France died. Edward had a claim in right of his mother, which, if the crown of France had been a bit of la...

For nearly forty years after the death of the Black Prince the English pretensions against France lay dormant. Something like friendly relations existed from time to time betwee...

The Wars of the Roses were in more ways than one the outcome of the great French war. Formally they were an appeal to arms to decide a disputed succession to the crown: substant...

The establishment of Scottish independence, in the teeth of English claims to supremacy, not unnaturally led to a feeling of opposition to England, and of consequent alliance wi...

Civil wars are not all of the same type. Sometimes the division is geographical, as in the great war between the northern and southern states of the American Union; sometimes th...

With the reign of William III. the military history of England entered on a new phase. Her continental wars had hitherto been, with trifling exceptions, connected with the claim...

The peace of Utrecht left England in the very front rank of European powers, bound by treaty obligations to maintain the settlement then made, and taught by many victories to as...

The French Revolution gave the signal for a long series of wars, in which France, thanks to the great military genius of Napoleon, got the better of all the nations of Europe, e...

During the year 1811 the French arms made considerable progress on the east side of Spain: this did not however give them any real additional advantage as against Wellington. Th...

[NOTE.—Controversy has raged over almost every point of the Waterloo campaign. Matters of fact have been disputed, whether or not given things happened, and if they did happen,...

Nearly forty years elapsed after Waterloo before another European war broke out. Peace had been by no means undisturbed; the revolutions of 1848 in particular occasioned serious...

The history of the foundation of the English empire in India is full of paradoxes. The East India Company had no purpose beyond trade: they had been allowed to form settlements...

Three times, after the East India Company had become supreme in India, its dominion was exposed to serious danger of overthrow. The Afghan war, dictated by mistaken policy, and...

'The stories are old friends—Cinderella, Bluebeard, the Three Bears, and so on—in a new dress of simple language which their skilled reviser has given them. They make a delightf...