An investigation of the decisive battles of the English Civil War, this work reassesses what actually happened on the battlefield and sheds fresh light on the causes of the eventual defeat of Charles I. It takes each major battle in turn - Edgehill, Newbury I, Cheriton, Marston Moor, Newbury II, Naseby, and Preston.

Operation Overlord was the largest amphibious military operation ever launched, with a vast armada transporting over 150,000 Allied soldiers across the Channel. Just after dawn on 6 June 1944, the Allied troops assaulted the beaches of the Cotentin peninsula against stiff German resistance. Coordinated with the amphibious landings were a number of aerial assaults that carried out crucial missions to take key areas, enable the vital link up between the beaches. Casualties during the invasion were horrendous, but the assaults were successful. This book looks in detail at the plans and build-up to the operation, and discusses the events of D-Day in each of the key areas of the operation.

This key title in the acclaimed Battle Zone Normandy series explores the US attack on Omaha Beach at dawn on D-Day 1944 and its aftermath. At dawn on D-Day the US Army's most experienced, battle-tested infantry formation, 1st Division or 'The Big Red One' launched its attack on Omaha Beach. The assault wave was launched too far out to sea and the men suffered terribly from seasickness. All the amphibious tanks sank except two, depriving the infantry of armoured support against minefields, bunkers and other defences. Moreover, the Allied aircraft tasked with destroying the fortifications had dropped their loads on open country too far inland and the offshore bombardment was hampered by poor visibility. Of the first six landing craft, two sank while the remainder ran aground on a sandbank. The assaulting infantry were compelled to wade in shoulder-high water, many drowning or being shot as they struggled ashore. All cohesion was lost and following waves of infantry simply stumbled into the carnage on the beach, the piles of wreckage restricting movement. In these first harrowing hours of the invasion, Lieutenant-General Omar Bradley considered aborting the Omaha effort altogether. Despite these appalling difficulties, a vulnerable bridgehead some 1.5 km inland had been established by the evening of 6 June 1944.

D-Day, 6 June 1944, saw the largest amphibious landing operation in history. From ports and harbours on the southern coast of England, an armada of troopships and landing craft launched the Allied return to mainland Europe. Stephen Badsey provides a concise account of the Normandy campaign, from the fiercely contested landings, to the struggle to capture Caen, the 'Cobra' offensive and the dramatic pursuit of the Germans to the River Seine. This was the crucial campaign of the Western theatre: after the Battle of Normandy the only question was how soon the war would end, not who would win it.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 when Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III. This was part of his wider political strategy of uniting Prussia with the southern German states, excluding Austria. The war was an overwhelming Prussian victory, and King Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of the new united Germany. The Second Empire collapsed and Napoleon III became an exile in Britain. In the peace settlement with the French Third Republic in 1871 Germany gained the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, areas that were to provide a bone of contention for years to come.

A fascinating new insight into the Falklands Conflict, covering every aspect of its origins and the political and diplomatic response to the Argentinean action as well as illuminating accounts of the military action to retake the islands, at every level of command. In June 2002, exactly twenty years after the cessation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina, many of the key participants came together at a major international conference. This conference, held at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and organized jointly by RMA Sandhurst and her sister institution Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, aimed to re-examine the events of spring 1982 from the perspective that only twenty intervening years can bring. The Conference mixed those who had participated in the events of spring and early summer 1982, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, sailors and airmen, with historians, political scientists and journalists. These accounts and interpretations of the conflict shed new light on one of the most interesting and controversial episodes in recent British history.

The popular perception of the performance of British armour in the Normandy campaign of 1944 is one of failure and frustration. Despite overwhelming superiority in numbers, Montgomery''s repeated efforts to employ his armour in an offensive manner ended in disappointing stalemate. Indeed, just a week after the D-Day landings, the Germans claimed to have halted an entire British armoured division with one Tiger tank. Most famously of all, in July, despite a heavy preparatory bombardment, three British armoured divisions were repulsed by much weaker German forces to the east of Caen, suffering the loss of over 400 tanks in the process. Explanation of these and other humiliating failures has centred predominantly on the shortcomings of the tanks employed by British formations. Essentially, an orthodoxy has emerged that the roots of failure lay in the comparative weakness of Allied equipment and to a lesser extent in training and doctrine. This new study challenges this view by analysing the reality and level of the supposed failure and the causes behind it. By studying the role of the armoured brigades as well as the divisions, a more complete and balanced analysis is offered in which it is clear that while some technologically based difficulties were encountered, British armoured forces achieved a good deal when employed appropriately. Such difficulties as did occur resulted from British operational techniques, methods of command and leadership and the operating environment in which armour was employed. In addition, the tactics and doctrine employed by both British and German armoured forces resulted in heavy casualties when on the offensive. Ultimately, the experience of the crews and the effects of fighting on their morale is studied to provide a complete picture of the campaign. (Taylor & Francis)

A prevalent view among historians is that both horsed cavalry and the cavalry charge became obviously obsolete in the second half of the nineteenth century in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower, and that officers of the cavalry clung to both for reasons of prestige and stupidity. It is this view, commonly held but rarely supported by sustained research, that this book challenges. It shows that the achievements of British and Empire cavalry in the First World War, although controversial, are sufficient to contradict the argument that belief in the cavalry was evidence of military incompetence. It offers a case study of how in reality a practical military doctrine for the cavalry was developed and modified over several decades, influenced by wider defence plans and spending, by the experience of combat, by Army politics, and by the rivalries of senior officers. Debate as to how the cavalry was to adjust its tactics in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower began in the mid nineteenth century, when the increasing size of armies meant a greater need for mobile troops. The cavalry problem was how to deal with a gap in the evolution of warfare between the mass armies of the later nineteenth century and the motorised firepower of the mid twentieth century, an issue that is closely connected with the origins of the deadlock on the Western Front. Tracing this debate, this book shows how, despite serious attempts to ‘learn from history’, both European-style wars and colonial wars produced ambiguous or disputed evidence as to the future of cavalry, and doctrine was largely a matter of what appeared practical at the time. Contents: Preface; Doctrine and the cavalry 1880–1918; The Wolseley era 1880–1899; The Boer War 1899–1902; The Roberts era 1902–1905; The Haldane era 1905–1914; The First World War 1914–1918; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

A detailed analysis of the strategy undertaken by the British Army during WWI. In this collection of essays of incomparable scholarship, Stephen Badsey explores in individual detail how the British Army fought in the First World War, how politics and strategy affected its battles and the decisions of senior commanders such as Douglas Haig, and how these issues were intimately intertwined with the mass media portrayal of the Army to itself and to the British people. Informative, provocative, and often entertaining, based on more than a quarter-century of research, these essays on the British Army in the First World War range through topics from a trench raid to modern television comedy. As a contribution to progressive military history, The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-1918 proves that the way the British Army fought and its portrayal through the media cannot be separated. It is one of a growing number of studies which show that, far from being in opposition to each other, cultural history and the history of battle must be combined for the First World War to be properly understood.

This book combines Campaign 5: ‘Ardennes 1944’, Campaign 24: ‘Arnhem 1944’, Campaign 74: ‘The Rhineland 1945’ and Campaign 75: ‘Lorraine 1944’. In the aftermath of the German collapse in the west in the summer of 1944, Allied armies rampaged across France and Belgium. A German counter-attack was crushed by General Patton in Lorraine, and Allied armies closed on the borders of the Reich. The Allied plan to end the war at a stroke ended in bloody failure at Arnhem, but a German offensive in the Ardennes, Hitler's last roll of the dice on the western front, proved equally futile. With German forces bled white, the Allies hurled themselves across the River Rhine to bring the crumbling edifice of Hitler's 1,000-year Reich crashing in ruin.