Curated playlist
Wars involving France
- War of the Third CoalitionThe War of the Third Coalition was a conflict that remade Europe in the space of a few months in 1805 and into 1806. At its heart was a single breathtaking military campaign that ended with Napoleon standing in Vienna, an Austrian army of…
- Crimean WarThe Crimean War began in October 1853 when Russian troops crossed the River Prut into Ottoman-controlled Moldavia and Wallachia, and it would not end until the Treaty of Paris was signed on the 30th of March 1856. What started as a tsar's…
- Saint-Domingue expeditionThe Saint-Domingue expedition set sail from Brest on the 14th of December 1801, carrying tens of thousands of French soldiers toward a Caribbean island where they expected a swift reassertion of imperial authority. What followed instead…
- War of the Fourth CoalitionThe War of the Fourth Coalition climaxed on the 27th of October 1806, when Napoleon walked into Berlin and stopped at the tomb of Frederick the Great. He told his marshals to show respect, adding, "If he were alive we wouldn't be here…
- First Indochina WarThe First Indochina War began on the 19th of December 1946, when fighting erupted across Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh's government fled the capital for the forested mountains. What followed was nearly eight years of conflict that drew in France,…
- Gulf WarThe Gulf War pitted Iraq against a coalition of 42 countries led by the United States. On the 2nd of August 1990, Iraq invaded its small neighbor Kuwait and occupied the country within two days. Behind that invasion sat a tangle of…
- French invasion of RussiaThe French invasion of Russia began on the 24th of June 1812, the day Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River into Russian territory. Within six months, roughly a million soldiers and civilians were dead. The army that crossed that…
- Korean WarAt 4:40 in the morning on the 25th of June 1950, the Korean People's Army crossed the 38th parallel behind a wall of artillery fire. Within an hour, troops were striking all along that line. Within three hours, individual units had pushed…
- Second French intervention in MexicoOn the 19th of June 1867, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria stood on the Cerro de las Campanas outside Querétaro and faced a firing squad alongside two Mexican generals, Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía. The man who had been Emperor…
- Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was, by Napoleon Bonaparte's own admission, a wound that would not close. He called it the "Spanish ulcer." Between 1808 and 1814, France poured hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the Iberian Peninsula, won battle…
- Taiping RebellionThe Taiping Rebellion may be the deadliest civil war in all of human history. Estimates place the death toll between 20 and 30 million people, roughly 5 to 10 percent of China's total population at the time. Higher estimates reach 100…
- Syrian civil warThe Syrian civil war began in March 2011, when crowds gathered across Syria to demand democratic change from a government that had ruled by fear for decades. What followed was nearly fourteen years of conflict that transformed a country of…
- World War IIWorld War II killed between 60 and 75 million people, making it the deadliest conflict in history. Tanks and aircraft reshaped the battlefield, and aircraft carried out the strategic bombing of cities. Aircraft also delivered the only…
- World War IWorld War I began with two pistol shots fired in a Sarajevo street on the 28th of June 1914. Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, had taken his position after the Archduke's car made a wrong turn. Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian…
- War on terrorOn the morning of the 11th of September 2001, nineteen men hijacked four jet airliners, all of them bound for California. They told passengers a bomb was on board and that lives would be spared once demands were met. No passenger suspected…
- Phoney WarThe Phoney War lasted eight months, from September 1939 to May 1940, and it may be one of the strangest intervals in the history of modern warfare. Two of the world's great powers had declared war on Nazi Germany. Their armies sat fully…