The April issue of Military History Monthly, the British military history magazines, is on sale today.
In the latest issue we cover:
Wellington’s Toughest Battle – Assaye, 1803
MHM studies the battle that Wellington considered his finest military achievement, and explains what it tells us about the generalship of the Iron Duke.
Great Powers – Russia: gendarme of Europe
Continuing our analysis of the Great Powers of 1914, MHM Editor Neil Faulkner analyses the motives behind Russia’s entry into the First World War.
Thieves Fall Out – The Second Balkan War, 1913
As part of our ongoing coverage of the build-up to the First World War, Julian Spilsbury looks at the Second Balkan War (29 June-10 August 1913).
Cracking Cassino – Cliffs and torrents
Patrick Mercer delivers an in-depth account of the Italian campaign clash that came to be known as the First Battle of Cassino.
The Navy’s Darkest Day – Medway, 1667
Patrick Boniface recalls the destructive Dutch raid that caught the Royal Navy napping.
Also in this issue: Recommended Read, Film Review, Museum, Battlefield Tours Guide, Back to the Drawing Board, War on Film, War Culture, Thinkers at War, Book Reviews, and much more.
From the editor
Neil Faulkner, Editor
/n
Waterloo may have been ‘a near-run thing’, but Wellington afterwards maintained that Assaye, a battle fought on the plains of India against the Maratha Confederacy in 1803, was his toughest.
India was fast becoming the training ground of the British Army -if not yet of its rank and file, then certainly of its officer corps. Arthur Wellesley was one among many who cut their teeth in the ongoing conquest of India.
The native states were no pushover. The disparity that would characterise Late Victorian military campaigns against opponents like the Zulus and the Dervishes did not yet apply. Wellesley’s sepoys faced tens of thousands of superb light cavalry, thousands of drilled musketeers, and a hundred or so cannon served by expert gunners.
Yet the soon-to-be master of defensive warfare in Europe mounted an aggressive attack against an enemy force vastly superior in size. The clash was long, bloody, and very ‘near run’. Our cover feature this issue is a detailed analysis of Assaye, the battle that ‘forged the Iron Duke’.
Also this month, we continue our series on the Great Powers of 1914 with an article on Tsarist Russia, while Julian Spilsbury tells the story of the Second Balkan War of 1913. Patrick Mercer’s gripping account of the struggle to take Cassino in 1944 continues, and Patrick Boniface transports us back to 1667, when the Dutch sailed down the Medway and inflicted humiliation on the nascent Royal Navy.