debor044

On leap year eve of February 28, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a large Union cavalry raid was launched on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia by the infamous Union cavalry general, Hugh J. Kilpatrick (b.1836-1881). Dahlgren Attacks Confederate Homeguards, March 1, 1864 A force of almost 4000 blue jacketed cavalrymen attacked Richmond in and around the James River in an ultimately costly and failed raid which threatened the very heart of the Confederacy. This attack on Richmond can be termed the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid or Dahlgren’s Raid by military historians, the former in posthumous honor (or infamy) of the young cavalry officer, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren (b.1842-1864) whose 450 Union raiders nearly succeeded in penetrating Richmond. Known to modern historians as the Dahlgren Affair, this failed Union attempt to storm Richmond in order to free Union prisoners of war and to controversially assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his rebel cabin...

After the Russian Revolution but before the communist 'Red' Bolsheviks had yet to secure a total victory during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), Soviet leadership under Lenin, Trotsky, and later Joseph Stalin (b.1878-1953), looked to the Far East to establish a sphere of influence as a buffer to Imperial Japan’s growth in the East and Pacific Ocean following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Japanese Empire spent most of the 1920’s and 1930’s refining and building their military capabilities for their planned economic and cultural domination of Asia which would begin in China and Soviets sensed that the Far East would become a vital diplomatic and military frontier later on.   Hence the early heightening of Soviet political and military presence in Mongolia at the tail end of the Russian Civil War in 1920-1921.  The 'Bloody White Baron of Mongolia': Baron Roman Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg  After crushing most if not all of the White resistance on the Russia...

The influence of the American Civil War 1861-1865, on all three major aspects of tactical warfare in the 19 th century; land, naval, and logistical strategies, is one of the great studies in warfare from the 16 th -19 th centuries. In popular history and memory, the cavalry of both North and South, fighting from Pennsylvania, to farthest reaches of American territory in the West, have become and almost an unmatched icon of American military history from the period 1800-circa 1900. General Philip Sheridan rallying the Union Army at the Battle of Third Winchester (Opequon), a critical battle in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864, which helped Lincoln win re-election Cavalry played an integral role in the Civil War and in many of its battles though their role in pitched battles, on open terrain battlefields was relatively marginalized due to technological breakthroughs in weaponry, the horse soldiers’ role as irregular, raider, pillager, and guerrilla force was one of the most disti...

On this day in 1864 the Union Army under the command of General Ambrose Burnsides, (b.1824-1881) in an attempt to break the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia (June 1864-April 1865), exploded an over 500 foot mine dug under Confederate defense in the weeks before in an attempt to overrun General Robert E. Lee's (b.1807-1870) positions. Battle of the Crater, July 30, 1864 Burnsides, the now iconic namesake of sideburns became infamous for this half-cocked, immensely dangerous and ultimately very costly assault. He became the scapegoat and was truly to blame for the disastrous & pointless attacks that followed the explosion of 320 kegs of black powder in the mine dug weeks before by engineers. The explosion failed to open a significant breach anywhere along the Confederate lines. It succeeded in creating a large and relatively deep crater, a sort of canyon or hole which later cost thousands of Union lives during futile charges and assaults to break t...

The English Civil Wars 1642-1651 , especially the early years of conflict and societal anarchy in 1642-1645, were heavily influenced by a number of forces, from the tyranny of the Personal Rule of King Charles I from 1629-1640, to religious revival and fervor, and the infleunce continental politics and wars of the late 1500's and early 1600's. The earliest years of the English Civil were in many ways marred by the mostly indecisive military campaigns fought throughout England & Scotland, juxtaposed with the often brutal, unethical, immoral, and generally rigid Puritan or Independent religious fervor which had become radical. Parliamentarians many of whom were Independents brazenly denounced King Charles and all Royalists as Ricardian-esque tyrants, men “against the Lord’s cause,” and literally allied with the devil himself. One result of this religious revival or awakening was the frightlfully alarming practice which had been borrowed from the equally devout Scots in th...

Of the great wars that the Roman Republic & its Legions fought, one of the most memorable and culturally importantly in the modern age is the revolt of Spartacus and his gladiators in 73-71 BC. Spartacus and his diverse rebel legion of slaves, prisoners-of-war, peasants, and former gladiators terrorized Southern Italy in a bloody revolt, eventually threatening the security and the pride of Rome itself. Known as the Gladiator War   and also the T hird Servile War   in relation to the two other preceding major slave revolts in Sicily 135-132 BC and in 104-110 BC, the war which Spartacus brought to the doorstep of Rome itself was significant because not only was it fought on the Roman mainland, it threatened the existence (in theory) of the Roman Empire. Indeed one of the most sacred institutions of Roman culture up to this point in history of Rome, the gladiator, threatened to destroy its own creator and benefactor in one armed slave revolt. A 19th centur...