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James Thomas Brudenell (b.1797-1868), 7th earl of Cardigan, known popularly as Lord Cardigan, commander of the 600 or so British cavalrymen who participated in the Charge of the Light Brigade , at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War in 1854, is perhaps singularly one of the most controversial figures of his day and in modern military history circles as well. Amongst the many histories, homages, and works of art devoted to the Crimean War and the Charge of Light Brigade, one of the most famous and endearing must be  Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem of the same year, The Charge of the Light Brigade . Lord Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade Modern interpretations put Lord Cardigan at the center of one of the most misunderstood but oft-cited events in military history. What is known of the Charge of the Light Brigade is that the British commander Lord Raglan (b.1788-1855), who had an lost arm serving with Wellington at Waterloo , ordered Lord Lucan, the cavalry comm...

On the night of June 17th in the year 1462, Prince Vlad Tepes, known to history as Vlad the Impaler or Prince  Dracula (b.1431-1476), carried out a daring night raid on the armed camp of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (b.1432-1481) during the Ottoman-Wallachian Wars 1456-c.1475. A bloody battle ensued when Vlad's cavalry and infantry attacked the Ottomans outside Târgoviște (Tirgoviste) in Wallachia (modern day Romania) which came to be know as the 'Night Attack'. It is believed that Prince Vlad launched the assault in an assassination attempt on Sultan Mehmed following the Turkish invasion of Romania in 1462, in what is mostly modern day Romania and Bulgaria. Prince Vlad III on campaign The real Dracula, known also by his cognomen, Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, was a vovoide (princely ruler ) of Wallachia, a once moderately influential kingdom in the Southern Balkans known archaically still today as a portion of  Transylvania . Prince Vlad III,  Dracula (son of the dra...

Following their defeat in Ethiopia expansionist & imperialist sentiment was very quiet while Italy recovered in the wake of unrest that rocked most of the free world in the late 1890's and 1900's. Italy would play a major role nevertheless in the inter-state conflicts that preceded the Great War in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans, leading inevitably into buildup of nationalist sentiments that stoked the fires of a great conflict in 1914-1915. Captain Piazza’s Blériot XI during the campaign in Libya 1911 The Italian desire for expansion in North Africa, a more natural region geographically speaking to conquer, or acquire diplomatically than Ethiopia would have been, led the Italians to seek war with Turkey ( and the Ottoman Empire) over control of Libya, known then by the regional states of Tripolitania, Fezzan, & Cyrenaica. The Italians used gunboat diplomacy  successfully  where the German Empire had failed in the Moroccan crisis w...