The 19th century witnessed seismic shifts in warfare, from the mass mobilisation of the Napoleonic era to the industrial-scale conflict of the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. This category covers battles from Europe, the Americas, and colonial campaigns in Africa and Asia. Studies explore how nationalism, mass conscription, and technological change influenced tactics and battlefield outcomes. We overlay period maps and photographs onto modern terrain, drawing from both Western and non-Western sources to reveal the full complexity of 19th-century military operations.
At the tactical level, Prussia’s victory over Austria at the Battle of Königgrätz can be attributed to: a weapons revolution, a command philosophy revolution, and innovative tactics. Together, they formed a tactical innovation with profound implications for the future of warfare. As recently as 1859, the Austrian shock tactic doctrine had been the dominant tactical system in Europe. .
June 2017. Chlum Village, just outside modern Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. I visited Chlum during my exploration of the Königgrätz battlefield in 2015 and again in 2017. I explored Sadowa, Rozběřice, Chlum, the Svíb Forest, and the southern sector around Nechanice. The modern battlefield is quiet, agricultural, and deceptively open. It takes some effort to reconstruct the scale of what happened here.
October 2024. Waterloo, Belgium. I have been here before, but this visit was far more comprehensive. Standing on the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge, the key feature is the reverse slope. From the French side, you don’t see much of Wellington’s position. The crest blocks your view, and everything behind it disappears. That’s where the bulk of the British infantry was positioned, out of sight and largely protected from artillery.
June 2011. Chieveley, KwaZulu-Natal. I am exploring the battle site at Chieveley, just south of Colenso. This is the site where Winston Churchill, then a correspondent for the Morning Post, was captured by Boer forces following the ambush and derailment of a British armoured train.
On the evening of 30 November 1864, Gen. John Bell Hood hurled his Army of Tennessee against entrenched Union forces at Franklin, Tennessee. Five hours of brutal fighting cost the Confederacy thousands of casualties and some of its finest generals. This battlefield study examines the strategy, terrain, and leadership decisions that made Franklin a decisive prelude to the Battle of Nashville.
Mars-la-Tour was fought for a single operational prize: the road to Verdun. After the frontier defeats of early August 1870, Marshal Bazaine sought to withdraw the French Army of the Rhine from Metz toward Verdun to reestablish contact with the French field armies.
German reconnaissance and aggressive marching collided with this movement near Mars-la-Tour and Vionville, producing a meeting engagement in which a relatively small Prussian force fixed a much larger French army in place.
A bold plan and a day of disaster on the Tugela Heights! At the Battle of Spion Kop, 23-24 January 1900, a bold British night attack seized a key Boer position overlooking the Tugela River. By dawn, the British realised they had halted short of the crest and were exposed to converging Boer fire from… Read More »⚔️🔒Battle of Spion Kop, Natal,
23-24 January 1900
From November 1884 to March 1885, 630 French troops of the Foreign Legion, Marines and Tonkinese Riflemen, held the citadel of Tuyên Quang against a force of 15,000 Chinese and Black Flag Army troops. Their endurance, and Colonel Giovanninelli’s epic relief march, made the siege one of the Foreign Legion’s most legendary battles.
In June 1884, a French column under Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Dugenne, comprised of about 465 French troops and 284 Tonkinese auxiliaries, with a supply column of local ‘coolies’ and baggage mules, was attacked by a much larger Chinese regular force near Bắc Lệ, on the road from Phu-Lang-Thuong to Lang Son. The attack was the catalyst for the Sino-French war of 1884-85 that saw French forces of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps engaged in combat with Chinese forces across northern Vietnam, mainland China, and Formosa (now Taiwan).