War in History

War in History
War has been a sensational topic. Warfare concentrates and intensifies some of our strongest emotions; courage and fear, resignation and panic, selfishness and self-sacrifice, greed and generosity, patriotism and xenophobia.

The stimulus of war has incited human beings to prodigies of ingenuity, improvisation, cooperation, vandalism and cruelty.

It is the riskiest field on which to match wits and luck: no peaceful endeavor can equal its penalties for failure, and few can exceed its rewards for success.

It remains the most theatrical of human activities combining tragedy, high drama, melodrama, spectacle, action, farce and even low comedy.

War displays the human condition in extremes.

It is thus not surprising that the first recovered histories, the first written accounts of the exploits of mortals, are military histories.

The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs record the victories of Egypt’s first pharaohs, the Scorpion King and Narmer.

The first secular literature or history recorded in cuneiform recounts the adventures of the Sumerian warrior king Gilgamesh.

The earliest written part of the Books f Moses, the “J-strand”, culminate in the brutal Hebrew conquest of Canaan.

The annals of the Chinese, Greeks, and Roman are concerned with wars and warrior king.

Most Mayan hieroglyphic texts are devoted to the genealogies, biographies and military exploits of Mayan kings.
War in History

The Habsburg Bid For Mastery

The Habsburg Bid For Mastery
France was an early leader in applying the new military technology in Europe, Spain and Portugal led the way it exporting it abroad.

By the mid sixteenth century the Portuguese has established forts and trading stations along the coasts of Africa, India, China and the East Indies and South America and the Spanish had carved out a large empire in the New World.

These outposts, which return great wealth to the Iberian Peninsula, would not have been possible without some vital military innovations.

The Portuguese and Spanish reached the Americas, Asia and Africa by utilizing oceangoing, sail-driven galleons; they never could have made it in the oar-driven galleys of old.

Once they arrived, steel blades, crossbows cannons and arquebuses allowed the Iberians to make short work of native opposition.

Even after half a millennium, the feats of the conquistadors defy belief. Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztec empire with eight hundred men and eighty horses.

Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca Empire with just 180 men and eighty horses. Native allies and the spread of European disease helped a great deal, but it was the Spaniards’ military technology that made the difference – otherwise the Aztec and Inca Empires would have been overthrown long before their native enemies.

The Spanish infantry proved almost as effective on the battlefields of Europe. In 1525 they inflicted a crushing defeat on the French at the Battle of Pavia (near Milan), ensuring that the Habsburg, not the Valois, would dominate Italy.

The head of the House of Habsburg was an Emperor Charles V. He had no conscious design to dominate Europe but his web of inheritances and acquisitions was pushing him in the same directions as those latter-day conquerors.

His domains encompass Spain, Germany Austria, Alsace, France-Comte, Bohemia, Hungary, the Netherlands, much of Italy, and the Americas.

Like his father, King Philip II saw himself as “God’s standard bearer,” defender of Christendom against “infidels” without and “heretics” within.

The battle pitting Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation was only one of many that convulsed Europe during the early modern era.

Religious rivalries melded with dynastic ones to produce a particularly bellicose age.

Between 1480 and 1700 England was involved in 29 wars, France in 34, Spain in 36 and the Holy Roman Empire in 25.

As their names imply – the Eighty Years’ War, the The Thirty Years’ War – many of these struggles were quite protracted.

All this fighting also led to the development and deployment of new tools of wars, especially cannons, muskets and galleons.

By the mid-sixteenth the Habsburg had seized for the French the early advantage in utilizing these innovations, but their lead and with it their empire – would be challenged by increasingly assertive competitors such as England, Holland and Sweden.

The ensuing battle for control of Europe and eventually the entire world would be decided in substantial measure by mastery of the tactics and technology of the Gunpowder Age.
The Habsburg Bid For Mastery

The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD

The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD
Fighting was an obsession with the Celts, whether in bands against enemy forces or in the brawling combats that erupted incessantly between individual warriors. Drunk on strong beer and lust for glory, the Celts did battle with a fierce exhilaration that seasoned Roman soldiers even found alarming. They were careless of life and limb, often going into battle naked but for a torque or neck ring.

The Roman historians Tacitus describing an attack by the legions on Anglesey, wrote: ‘On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women in black attire like the Furies, with hair disheveled, waving brands.’

Celtic men were tall by Mediterranean standards; the skeleton of warrior discovered near Milan, Italy was 6ft 5in in height. Even the women were large and fearsome brawlers. Boudicca, the rebel queen of the Iceni who died in AD60, was describe as huge of frame, harsh voiced and with a great mass of bright red hair falling to her knees. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman author, writes of the Celt being virtually invincible with this wife fighting by his side; ‘stronger than he by far, and with flashing eyes, she…begin to rain blows mingled with kicks like shots discharge by the twisted cords of a catapult.’

Celtic warriors often cut off the heads of their foes and dangled these grim spoils from their belts and saddles, or bore them aloft on spears. Singing in triumph they would carry the heads back to their hill forts and homes, nailing them up as highly revered trophies. In Celtics shrines found at Roquepertuse and Entremont in southern France the skulls of many young men were displayed in specially carved niches.

With such savagery matched by their fighting and riding skills, the Celts presented Rome with a formidable foe. Their weaknesses, though lay in lack of strategy and discipline – and in the weakening effects of their constant feuding.
The Celts: Northern Europe Warrior 500 BC – 100 AD

The French wars of religion

The French wars of religion
No wars are more terrible than civil wars. They tear at the very fabric of society, rending its institutions and destroying the delicate web of relationships that underlie all communal life. The nation is divided communities break into factions; families are destroyed. At every level of organization the glue that binds society together comes unstuck.

For nearly half century civil war tore France apart. Massacres of Catholic congregations matched massacres of Protestants ones. Assassinations of Catholic leaders followed assassinations of Protestants ones. Kings of France died at the hands of their subjects. Leaders of Protestants and Catholic movements died by the order of the king, Aristocratic armies roamed the country wreaking havoc on friend and foe alike. Indeed, the religious causes that brought the wars about were soon forgotten.

Protestantism came late to France. The unyielding hostility of the monarchy had prevented Lutheran reforms from making much headway there. Through a series of concessions made by the papacy in the fifteenth century and codified in the Concordat of Bologna (1516), the French kings had gained the right too make ecclesiastical appointments and thus controlled much of the wealth of the Church.

Lutheranism held little attraction for Francis I (1515-1547) and he rigorously suppressed it, sending John Calvin among others, into exile. The Catholic church directed by the monarchy proved even more resistant to reform than had the Catholic church directed by the papacy. It was not until after Calvin reformed the church in Geneva and began to export his brand of Protestantism that French society began to divide along religious lines.
The French wars of religion

The Balkan War 1912 October

History of War
Before the war of Tripoli came to an end, Bulgaria and Serbia declared war against Ottoman Empire.

Shortly thereafter Greece also declared war. The objective of all power was to drive out the Turks from Europe.

The Balkan Christian slaughtered Muslims ruthlessly. Temporary peace was concluded at London. Bulgaria had occupied of Edirne as a pre-requisite to permanent peace.

This condition was not acceptable to Ottoman Empire when in 1913 January the big powers advise Khalifah to relinquish Edirne in favor of Balkan States.

The Grand Vizier, Kamil Pasya who was an ally of Britain, agreed to accept the advice. The advise was about to be accepted when Anwar Pasya who has just returned from Tripoli campaign entered the Grand Vizier’s palace and shot Nazim Pasya dead.

Kamil Pasya had to resign and Mahmud Shaukat Pasya was appointed Grand Vizier. After the change of the Grand Vizier the temporary peace came to an end and war started.

The Ottoman armies were defeated against the Bulgarians. Greece also made fresh attacks and occupied Samos Island. In 1913 March Bulgaria occupied Edirne.

In April a temporary peace was again concluded between the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.
History of War

War 16th century in Europe

“War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men”, wrote Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), the French Minister who played no small part in spreading the scourge. War was a constant of European society and penetrated to its very core. It dominated all the aspects of life. It enhanced the power of the state, it defined gender roles, it consumed lives and treasure and commodities ravenously.

War affected every, member of the society from combatants to civilians. There were no innocent bystanders. Grain in the fields was destroyed because it was food for soldiers; houses were burned because they provided shelter for soldiers.

Civilians were killed for aiding the enemy or holding out against demand for their treasure and supplies. Able bodied men were taken forcibly to serve as conscripts, leaving women to plant and harvest as best as they could. There was nothing new about war in the middle of 16th century.

The early part of the century had witnessed the dynastic struggle between the Hapsburgs and the House of Valois as well as beginnings of the religious struggle between Catholic and Protestants. But the wars that dominated Europe from 1555 to 1648 brought together the worst of both of these conflicts. War was fought on a larger scale, it was more brutal and more expensive, and it claimed more victims. During this century war extended thorough out the Continent.
War 16th century in Europe