One of the greatest adventures of the Middle Ages was the crusade led by Prince Edward Longshanks!

Outnumbered and hoping against hope to rescue the Holy Land from the Muslims, he befriended the Mongols and faced off against assassins and Mamluk warriors!

[Thread]🧵 In 1260 the Mamluks won a startling victory over the invading Mongols and the Mamluk general Baibars seized power and began conquering the Christian cities of the Holy Land.

In 1268 he captured Antioch and a crusade was called in response. This was to be the Eighth Crusade led by Louis IX of France who diverted it to Tunis.

Alexander the Great was the mightiest ruler of all time.

No one before him had ever conquered so much and no one since has ever rivalled him in greatness.

This is a chronology of his life.

[Thread]🧵 • 357 BC:

Birth of Alexander

• 338 BC:

Philip II of Macedon defeats Thebes, Athens, and their allies at Chaeronea.

• 337 BC:

Philip is appointed leader in the planned war against Persia.

• 336 BC:

Assassination of Philip. The reign of Alexander III, now called the Great, begins.

• 335 BC:

- Alexander campaigns against the Thracians and Illyrians and wins a battle at Mount Haemus.

- Thebes declares war and is crushed by Alexander at the Battle of Thebes. Alexander also victorious at the siege of Pelium.

Cicero is a famed Roman politician, writer, and orator.

But what about Cicero the general?

This is the tale of Cicero’s Cilician adventure when was hailed as imperator by his troops!

[Thread]🧵 When he was consul in 63 BC, Cicero famously foiled a conspiracy by Lucius Sergius Catilina to seize power in Rome.

When he discovered the plot, he put on armour and made his way to the senate to deliver a series of speeches against Cataline. The conspiracy was thwarted but Cicero remained unpopular with some for having some of the conspirators executed.

Cicero was eventually exiled when his enemies gained power in Rome. During this exile, and thanks to certain legislative requirements, he was made governor of Cilicia in 51 BC. It was not a position he wanted.

Today in 49 BC,

After the Roman Senate threatened to declare him a public enemy, Gaius Julius Caesar changed the history of the world forever…

And crossed the Rubicon!

[Thread]🧵 The Roman Republic had fallen into vicious cycle of corruption, violence, and political instability. In the mid-1st century BC the three most powerful men were Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus.

But Crassus’ death ended this coalition between them, and the short-lived marriage of Caesar’s daughter to Pompey could not stop either man from scheming. Pompey remained in Rome and governed his provinces from a distance while Caesar was conquering Gaul.

Plutarch tells us that ‘Caesar had long ago resolved upon the overthrow of Pompey, as had Pompey, for that matter, upon his. For Crassus, the fear of whom had hitherto kept them in peace, had now been killed in Parthia.’

Today in AD 871,

Alfred the Great and Æthelred the King fought ‘for life, loved ones, and country’ and thrashed the Vikings at…

The Battle of Ashdown!

[Thread]🧵 By 870 the Vikings ‘of hateful memory’ had stormed into England and conquered Northumbria and East-Anglia!

On the 31st of December 870, after invading Wessex, a force of Vikings led from the main host was defeated at the Battle of Englefield by the Ealdorman of Berkshire, Æthelwulf, and his levies.

However, King Æthelred and his brother Alfred, having tried to capitalise on this victory were defeated by the Vikings just a few days later at the battle of Reading.

This weekend has seen the capture of Maduro by American special forces.

It reminds me of the time the emperor Justinian II sent a fleet to capture the Archbishop of Ravenna and attack the city!

[Thread]🧵 In AD 692 the Roman Emperor Justinian convened the Quinisext Council to clarify the rulings of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils.

When Pope Sergius refused to agree to the new provisions and Justinian ordered the exarch of Ravenna to arrest the Pope, just as his grandfather Constans II had done, many in Ravenna rebelled at this and aided the Pope, whose arrest was foiled.

Discontent over his rule meant he was ‘deprived of the glory of his kingdom’ by the people of Constantinople and, according to Agnellus of Ravenna, some people from Ravenna who were in the city and took part!

His face was mutilated and he was exiled to the Crimea.

The year is drawing to a close so I thought I would do a recommendation thread for the accounts I have enjoyed interacting with the most this year!

These are all accounts dedicated to history and art free of political flim flam or AI slop!

[Thread]🧵


.@HeraldOfRome covers the history of the Roman Empire with a focus on politics, identity and the nature of power in the Roman state.

Julius Caesar wrote accounts of the most fearless soldiers under his command.

This is a thread of the men who ‘displayed a courage past defeating when they went upon any danger where Caesar's glory was concerned!’

[Thread]🧵 • Cassius Scaeva •

At the Battle of Dyrrachium where Pompey broke out of the city and attacked Caesar’s forts, one fort in particular came under attack. Caesar wrote that 30,000 arrows had been fired into it. He added that ‘in the fort, not a single soldier escaped without a wound; and in one cohort, four centurions lost their eyes’.

Plutarch wrote that ‘Cassius Scæva, who, in a battle near Dyrrhachium, had one of his eyes shot out with an arrow, his shoulder pierced with one javelin, and his thigh with another; and having received one hundred and thirty darts upon his target, called to the enemy, as though he would surrender himself. But when two of them came up to him, he cut off the shoulder of one with a sword, and by a blow over the face forced the other to retire, and so with the assistance of his friends, who now came up, made his escape.’

Suetonius’ version is that ‘Scaeva, with one eye gone, his thigh and shoulder wounded, and his shield bored through in a hundred and twenty places, continued to guard the gate of a fortress put in his charge’.

In the 8th century the fate of the world hung in the balance when a series of defeats tested the might of the Umayyad Caliphate.

From Spain to China the onslaught of Islamic Jihad was halted and pushed back!

[Thread]🧵 • Jihad •

After the death of Muhammad, his followers invaded the Roman Empire and Persia.

Both empires suffered devastating defeats at the battles of Yarmouk and al-Qadisiyyah, respectively.

The Muslims captured the Levant from the Romans and Iraq from the Persians before effectively destroying the remnants of the Persian army at Nahavand in 642.

Today in AD 627,

The centuries long rivalry between Rome and Persia came to an end with the culmination of one of the most spectacular military campaigns ever fought.

When Heraclius triumphed at Nineveh!

[Thread]🧵 By the start of the 7th century the empire had been struck by plague in 542, 558, 573, 586, and 599 and the emperor Maurice was tirelessly campaigning against the Slavs and Avars in the Balkans, having won respite against the Persians by intervening to aid the Shah Khusrow II when he was ousted.

In AD 602 the Roman field army in the Balkans rebelled and marched on Constantinople, killed Maurice and installed Phocas as emperor.

Khusrow declared war, executed Roman emissaries, and invaded.

This painting is famous the world over, but did you know it depicts the Hospitaller Knight Mathew of Clermont?

When the Muslims poured over the walls of Acre in 1291 he refused to flee and fought until he ‘was covered on all sides and glistening with blood!’

[Thread]🧵 The glory of those mightiest of Christian warriors who stormed Jerusalem in AD 1099 had long since faded and the power of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was shattered long before 1291 when the Muslims gathered outside Acre, the last stronghold of Christendom in the Holy Land.

This is a thread on the arms and armour of the Roman Army from the founding of Rome 753 BC to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1453

Over 2000 year of military innovation, indomitable spirit, and glory!

[Thread]🧵 • The Earliest Times •

The traditional date for the founding of Rome is 753 BC. At this point Rome is centuries away from being thru powerful city we know. Warfare for the next few centuries seems to be small-scale skirmishing between warrior bands. A hint of this is given in Livy when he describes the Fabii gens asking the senate to let them fight the city of Veii by themselves with 306 men.

This is a reconstruction of the earliest Roman warriors based on burial finds. However, it would be a mistake to assume that armour at this time was standard across all Romans.

Pyrrhus of Epirus had invaded Italy and defeated the Romans in battle. Peace was offered and some Romans seemed willing to accept terms.

Then the blind old Appius Claudius Caecus was led into the Senate House with a warning from the past…

[Thread]🧵 Rome had emerged the dominant power on the Italian peninsula after many gruelling years of warfare which saw the Samnites defeated and alliances made with the Greek cities of Southern Italy.

But the good times created by the hard men of the 4th and 3rd centuries were at risk when Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of the mightiest warriors ever, invaded Italy at the behest of the city of Tarentum which bristled at Roman power.

FABIVS MAXIMVS was Rome’s least likely hero in her most uncertain times!

Scorned for his guerrilla warfare strategy until vindicated by the Cannae disaster when the Romans turned to him to save them.

This is the life of Fabius Maximus, the Shield of the Romans!

[Thread]🧵 The Fabii claimed descent from Hercules and it is ironic that their least warlike son was to be their greatest member.

Fabius Maximus was born in around 280 BC, the year Pyrrhus defeated the Romans at Heraclea.

As a youth he was given the moniker Ovicula or ‘the lamb’ for his mild manner, slow speech, and long deliberation before taking decisions. Plutarch wrote that some ‘esteem him insensible and stupid; and few only saw that this tardiness proceeded from stability, and discerned the greatness of his mind, and the lionlikeness of his temper.’

Today in AD 602,

The Roman field army in the Balkans rebelled and marched on Constantinople, led by the usurper Phocas!

The emperor Maurice was forced to watch the decapitation of his five young sons before he was killed.

[Thread]🧵 In the late 6th century, the Roman Empire faced major threats from three directions; the Persians in the east, the Lombards in Italy, and threat of the Avar and Slavic peoples who had recently arrived in the Balkans. To make matters worse, the empire had been struck by outbreaks of plague

The emperor Maurice succeeded Tiberius II in AD 582 and had successfully campaigned against all of these threats, but after 20 years of rule, the impact of regular campaigning was causing problems.

One particular success was the intervention in the Persian civil war in favour of the Shah Khusrow II, which brought close relations afterward.

But the emperor was ever conscious of the financial burden of such prolonged campaigning and in 588 attempted to cut army pay by 25% which provoked a brief mutiny.

When assassins came for the Emperor Galba, all of his guards betrayed him except for one man alone…

𝐒𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐬, ‘the single man among so many thousands that the sun beheld that day act worthily of the Roman Empire’.

[Thread]🧵 Imperial legitimacy was shattered upon the death of the Emperor Nero and the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in AD 68. Once it was seen that one man could revolt and take power, other men wanted to do the same.

The first of these men was Galba, governor of Hispania, who became emperor with the support of other key figures including the legate Otho.

Galba’s reign is dated from the 8th of June, AD 68.

Mighty were the Romans, and mightiest among them was 𝐀𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧, the general who came from obscurity to rescue the empire and restore the world.

[Thread]🧵 • 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐲 •

The stability of the Roman Empire faltered in the third century. Beginning with the fall of the Severan dynasty upon the murder of Emperor Severus Alexander in the aftermath of a defeat of his army by Germanic tribes who had slowly grown in strength over the preceding centuries.

The troops declared Maximinus Thrax as emperor but this led to the Year of the Six Emperors which saw all claimants killed.

In AD 1352,

In the dead of night, an English rogue named John of Doncaster led a band of men to cross the moat and scale the walls of Guînes castle in a daring attempt to seize it.

[Thread]🧵 The castle at Guînes was strong and well fortified and located just six miles south of Calais which had been taken by the English and successfully defended in 1350 from an attempt of the French knight Geoffroi de Charny to sneak a force in.

It was also used to hold English prisoners of war.

In AD 608,

The Persians were thundering into the Roman Empire, conquering all that lay before them.

When the Roman army abandoned Mardin, the defence of the city was taken up by…

The Warrior Monks of Mardin!

[Thread] In 602 the Roman army rebelled against the emperor Maurice chose Phocas, a senior military officer, as their emperor, they marched in Constantinople and killed Maurice and five of his sons.

In 603 the Persian Shah Khusrow, who had been greatly helped by Maurice after being ousted in his youth, declared war. A Roman general named Narses also rebelled against Phocas.

Today in AD 1090,

A deadly riot broke out as part of a plot to turn Rouen over to the forces of King William Rufus.

It ended with the instigator being hurled off the tower of Rouen!

[Thread]🧵 William the Conqueror had three surviving sons; Robert Curthose, William Rufus, and Henry Beauclerc.

The unprecedented nature of his conquest of England meant that he had to decide what to do with his smaller ancestral Dukedom of Normandy and his much larger and richer kingdom of England.

When he died in 1087, he left Normandy to his eldest son Robert Curthose, and England to his second son, William Rufus. To his youngest son Henry Beauclerc, he left a large sum of money.

In 321 BC,

The Romans were utterly humiliated by the Samnites who lured them into a trap and defeated them in a bloodless ‘battle’ at the Caudine Forks.

[𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝]🧵 War between the Romans and Samnites broke out after the Romans began spreading their influence southward and came up against the Samnites.

In 321 when the ‘foremost soldier and commander’ of the Samnites, Gaius Pontius, decided to set a trap on the Roman army advancing toward him.