Military

Lenin’s return to Russia by German agency in April 1917, writes David Woodward, was one of the turning points in 20th-century history.

Between the Congress of Vienna and the Year of Revolutions, Vienna enjoyed a homely, idyllic period of gaiety, security and peace. In 1848, writes Tudor Edwards, the idyll was shattered by bloody revolts throughout the Empire.

Widespread fever followed military sloth, writes Antony Brett-James, and the fiasco on Walcheren brought down the tottering British Government.

Adam Zamoyski describes how the Poles under German occupation were experts in subversion.

During the years that led up to the Anglo-American Treaty of 1842, writes Henry I. Kurtz, both countries played a dangerous game of “brinksmanship” along the Canadian border.

Court-martialled in 1760 for disobeying military orders, Sackville rose to the office of Secretary of State for War, writes David Fraser.

The use of the sword as an effective military weapon has been abandoned since the First World War, but its decline had begun at a very much earlier period. T.H. McGuffie describes how, during the Franco-German struggle of 1870-1871, among some forty thousand cavalry engaged, only six men are believed to have received a mortal sabre-wound.

Ernest A. Gray analyses the Navy’s role on land and sea in the Crimean Campaign.

Trade with the English “tobacco lords”, writes William T. Brigham, brought on a private war which outlasted the American Revolution.

Except for the decades between the First and Second World Wars, the Polish people, since the end of the eighteenth century, have always been subjected to some form of foreign domination. Thrice Poland was partitioned by aggressive neighbouring sovereigns, and her promising renaissance after 1772 came to nothing. L.R. Lewitter queries the factors that have determined Poland's tragic destiny.