This is it. It all comes down to this moment.  Ever since Alfred the Great had come surging out of the swamps he had been hiding in to defeat the Vikings at Edington, he and his children and grandchildren had been inexorably pushing the Vikings out of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Aethelred was soon to conquer Northumbria which had been held by the Danes for a hundred years, and England was born. But no sooner had the new nation come screaming into the world than a massive...

The King of Wessex had been hunted as a fugitive by marauding Vikings, and he'd been hiding as one in a swamp. Wessex had been overrun and King Alfred had fled, setting up camp amidst the reeds of the Somerset Levels. But despite his survival, it seemed the same could not be said of Wessex. But in one of history's greatest comeback stories, he rebuilt his forces whilst in hiding, conducted a guerrilla campaign from the marshes, and then came surging out to rendezvous with the armies of...

When the Viking warlord, Guthrum, ambushed King Alfred the Great of Wessex while he was celebrating Christmas at Chippenham, Alfred had no choice but to run with his family and a few guards.  Hearing that Guthrum's forces were spreading out all over Wessex, the only safe place for Alfred to go was the marshland of Somerset which he knew as a boy. Alfred was now a fugitive in his own kingdom, hiding out in a swamp with his family and just a few guards. Mercia had fallen four years earlier,...

The Vikings shot onto the international scene when they ransacked, burned, looted and slaughtered their way through the peaceful monastic community on the island of Lindisfarne in 793 AD. But it wasn't an isolated incident.  It began the so-called Viking Age and 300 years of bitter warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Viking for control of the fertile land of England.  For 60 years after Lindisfarne the Vikings contented themselves with raiding and terrorising the coastal communities and...

The Battle of Osowiec in 1915 was darkly horrifying despite the bright summer's morning. The Germans gassed the stubborn Russian defenders of the Osowiec Fortress with a vicious mix of chlorine and bromine, killing every single one. Or so they thought. Because as the Germans advanced they spotted a single figure jerk suddenly upright, skin blistered and torn, eyes peeled back, teeth bared where lips had once been. The dead had risen and now they were coming for their...

Once Vercingetorix was in chains and the Gallic Wars over, you might have thought Caesar would be in for a well-earned rest. But Pompey and the Optimates in the Roman Senate were jealous and wanted Caesar back in Rome so they could prosecute him for any number of crimes - including his conquest of Gaul, which they had never given permission for. But Caesar wasn't about to spend the rest of his life in court, jail or exile, and sought to outmanoeuvre the Senate. The Optimates and Pompey...

​Vercingetorix was a proud, young Gallic chieftain who gave Caesar his first bloody nose of the Gallic Wars and led a rebellion so serious that it nearly cost Caesar everything.   Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on IG and FB @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

This is where Caesar made himself a Roman legend. He fought hundreds of thousands of Gauls, saw off Germanic invasions, and even had a little jaunt over the sea to Britannia.  The Senate had been desperate to prosecute him for crimes during his Consulship, but he had taken a governorship of provinces bordering Gaul which gave him immunity for five years. He then used those years to craft seemingly legitimate reasons to continually intervene in Gallic affairs, crushing tribes and...

It was Alexander the Great who spurred Julius Caesar to new heights. When Caesar saw a statue of him when he was 31, he realised that at his age Alexander had conquered half the world. Caesar was so distraught at his own relative lack of achievements, it's said he wept at Alexander's feet. In just a few years Caesar had become the Chief Priest of Rome, Consul, and one of the members of Rome's first Triumvirate.  Join us on his journey to political power, and meet Pompey, Crassus, and a...

Julius Caesar is one of the world's most famous and successful military genius' of all time. He conquered the fierce and warlike multitudes of Gaul with a few thousands men, and he beat some of the best Roman commanders in a civil war he ignited by crossing the Rubicon. But where did Caesar come from? Where did it all start? This episode covers the extraordinary groundwork of this extraordinary man's rise, from his childhood during the Marius-Sulla Civil War, near-death experience and his...

In the face of the crushing ideologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, hundreds of thousands of civilians and former soldiers banded together in resistance right across Europe and Asia. These created tales that need telling, and while some of them are already famous, I want to bring you some of those that are lesser-known but equally gripping. Much as you’d imagine from WW2, these stories are full of horror and heroism, catastrophe and courage, tragedy and triumph. From daring rescues...

The Middle East of WWI was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, but it was beginning to unravel. Arab nationalism was rising, and Britain told them that they would be allowed to establish a new, independent Arab nation following WWI. So the Arab Revolt broke out. But in secret, Britain also settled on the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France, which divided the area between them instead, leaving nothing for the Arabs. Into this cauldron of conspiracy strode Lawrence of Arabia, an unconventional...

The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD was one of Rome's worst ever defeats. Just a few years either side of the death of Christ, the Romans had been subjugating many of the Germanic tribes just east of the Rhine – some by treaty, some by force. But the Germans resented the encroachment and the will to resist was building. All they needed was an opportunity to fight back. And soon, there was someone willing to give them one by betraying Roman trust. In the year 9 AD, three Roman...

There was once a group of unsung heroes from World War II, a pioneering band of jungle warfare specialists fighting the Japanese behind enemy lines. This elite force was named after the mythical Burmese beast, the Chinthe, a fearsome blend of eagle and lion. To its commander, Orde Wingate, the Chinthe symbolised his vision of the close co-ordination of air and land forces. The Chindits braved searing humidity, deadly diseases, impenetrable jungle and the remorseless Japanese army to disrupt...

On 9/11, 2001, the United States and the world watched in shocked disbelief as al-Qaeda hijacked passenger airliners were flown directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, causing them to collapse into dust, blood and tears. Nearly 3000 people were killed. The Pentagon, a symbol of the United States’ military prestige, was hit too, and a final airliner crashed when its heroic passengers fought back against the hijackers. The experience was searing, enraging, and awakening for...

In the wake of 9/11, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States. It joined the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and soon its special forces were engaged all over the country. In one mission, the largest concentration of SAS firepower since World War II took on crack al-Qaeda terrorists guarding an elevated, fortified opium factory at the base of a mountain.  The Regiment had to draw on all its expertise to face down hardened, heavily-armed fanatics in a rare, direct-action...

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The last words of Nathan Hale, an American patriot sent to spy on New York by George Washington, but captured by the British and hanged. George Washington was hit hard and resolved never to use amateurs to do his spying for him again. Instead, he set up the United States' first professional spy network - the Culper Ring. They saved the critical fort at West Point, uncovered the treachery of Benedict Arnold, saved the newly...

16th century England was a seething hotbed of religious rivalry, a cauldron of conspiracies, treason, rebellion, persecution and war. At stake was the life of Queen Elizabeth I, English Protestantism, and England itself. Into this mix strode Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's ingenious and pioneering spymaster. He was an expert in subterfuge, a creator of international networks of informants, a code-maker and code-breaker, and agent provocateur.  Without him, its possible England would have...

In the midst of the fury and horror of World War 2, a secret war was waged in the towns, cities and countryside of Europe. Spy games respected neither borders nor neutrality, and the agents that played them knew that if caught, they would be first interrogated, probably tortured, and then either shot or hanged. The spies of WWII took on assignments that made hearts hammer and palms grow sweaty, but two of them in particular took them on with such cool-headed swagger that their exploits...

6 months after the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Admiral Yamamoto aimed to lure the American carriers to Midway and destroy them once and for all.  Midway would have been taken, and perhaps even Hawaii. Along with a string of other  islands it would have created a Pacific wall over which the Americans would have to bloodily clamber if they ever wanted to win the war. But the repercussions of a Japanese victory would have had world-wide repercussions too. The outcome of this...

The Battle of Jutland was the shuddering earthquake that released the seismic tension of the Anglo-German naval arms race of the last decade. What was at stake was the blockade and starvation of the vanquished. The German High Seas Fleet aimed to destroy a large enough part of the British Grand Fleet to allow it to break out to the Atlantic where it would effectively blockade the commerce and supplies Britain utterly relied on to survive, let alone fight. If that happened, Britain would be...

If there was one battle the world might have wished had never happened, it might be Tsushima in 1905. This one clash set dominos falling which would see Russia become the Soviet Union, World War I erupt, and the Pacific theatre of World War 2 explode at Pearl Harbour in 1941. In its own right it was a colossal clash of 16 battleships, 32 cruisers, 29 destroyers and multiple other warships. It announced to the globe that Japan was now a world power to be reckoned with, and its effects, already...

This is the battle more than any other which confirmed that Britannia rules the waves, and set in stone the reputation of Admiral Horatio Nelson, even at the moment of his own death. In October 1805, 27 British ships of the line took on 33 of the French and Spanish Empires. Waiting for the outcome was Napoleon, desperate to be rid of the Royal Navy so he could invade Britain and take out the perennial thorn in his side, just out of reach across the waves. The outcome of the battle would play...

As the Ottoman Empire spread inexorably across Arabia, Persia, North Africa and the Levant, it seemed nothing could stop it. It even shook Europe to the core when Ottoman cannon blasted holes through Constantinople's previously impregnable walls, causing the final collapse of the 1000-year Byzantine Empire. Now, in 1571, with Venetian Cyprus on the brink of falling, Pope Pius V calls together a Holy League to try to halt the Ottoman advance into the Mediterranean Sea. Fail, and all...