Download or read book Empires of the Sea written by Roger Crowley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.
Download or read book The Great Siege Malta 1565 written by Ernle Bradford and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The indispensable account of the Ottoman Empire’s Siege of Malta from the author of Hannibal and Gibraltar. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was thought to be invincible. Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, had expanded his empire from western Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa. To secure control of the Mediterranean between these territories and launch an offensive into western Europe, Suleiman needed the small but strategically crucial island of Malta. But Suleiman’s attempt to take the island from the Holy Roman Empire’s Knights of St. John would emerge as one of the most famous and brutal military defeats in history. Forty-two years earlier, Suleiman had been victorious against the Knights of St. John when he drove them out of their island fortress at Rhodes. Believing he would repeat this victory, the sultan sent an armada to Malta. When they captured Fort St. Elmo, the Ottoman forces ruthlessly took no prisoners. The Roman grand master La Vallette responded by having his Ottoman captives beheaded. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked, none given. Ernle Bradford’s compelling and thoroughly researched account of the Great Siege of Malta recalls not just an epic battle, but a clash of civilizations unlike anything since the time of Alexander the Great. It is “a superior, readable treatment of an important but little-discussed epic from the Renaissance past . . . An astonishing tale” (Kirkus Reviews).
Download or read book The Siege of Krishnapur written by J.G. Farrell and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Booker Prize. An insightful and thrilling novel about the British Empire in India during the Great Mutiny of 1857, as seen through the eyes of a young, love-struck idealist. India, 1857—the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years. Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion—at once brutal, blundering, and wistful—is soon revealed. The Siege of Krishnapur is a companion to Troubles, about the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, which takes place just before World War II, as the sun begins to set upon the British Empire. Together these three novels offer an unequaled picture of the follies of empire.
Download or read book Clash of Empires The Great Siege written by William Napier and published by Orion. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brutal combat. A test of courage. A battle that will change history. 1565: a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean stands gatekeeper between East and West. It is about to become the scene for one of the most amazing stories of bravery, battle and bloodlust: the siege of Malta. Formed in the Holy Land in the 11th century, a small band of knights had long sought a home. Driven from their lands by Ottoman might, they came to rest in Malta from where they watched the Turks and corsairs raid the Spanish empire. As word came from Constantinople that Malta was in the sights of the Ottoman Empire, all of Europe watched as a force of over 30,000 men besieged the island - itself only peopled by only 500 knights and a few thousand local soldiers. On that small rock an epic struggle will be played out - the story of individual men, warriors and slaves, but also the story of two worlds colliding.
Download or read book Empires of the Sea written by Roger Crowley and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic clash between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar. Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality. Empires of the Sea is a story of extraordinary color and incident, and provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.
Download or read book Tannenberg written by Dennis E. Showalter and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle of Tannenberg (August 27-30, 1914) opened World War I with a decisive German victory over Russia-indeed the Kaiser's only clear-cut victory in a non-attritional battle during four years of war. In this first paperback edition of the classic work, historian Dennis Showalter analyzes this battle's causes, effects, and implications for subsequent German military policy. The author carefully guides the reader through what actually happened on the battlefield, from its grand strategy down to the level of improvised squad actions. Examining the battle in the context of contemporary diplom.
Download or read book The Habsburg Empire Under Siege written by GEORG B. MICHELS and published by . This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the seventeenth century Hungary's diverse population of peasants, townsmen, soldiers, and county nobles rose up against the violent imposition of the Counter-Reformation, the Habsburg military occupation, and exhorbitant war taxes. In The Habsburg Empire under Siege Georg Michels explores the little-known grassroots revolts that threatened the Habsburgs' hold over the Hungarian borderlands. Based on extensive research in Hungarian, Austrian, and Dutch archives, this revisionist study shifts attention away from high politics, diplomacy, and military confrontation to the popular revolts that took place during the two decades before the 1683 siege of Vienna. Michels reveals a complex environment in which Calvinist Hungarians, Lutheran Slovaks, Lutheran Germans, and Orthodox Ukrainians worked to defend their religion against brutal Habsburg Counter-Reformation campaigns. Challenging preconceived notions of European, Middle Eastern, and East European history, this book tells a dramatic story of Reformation and Counter-Reformation violence, covering proxy wars, guerrilla warfare, refugee flight, migration from Hungary into Ottoman territory, and largely unknown Christian-Muslim encounters. Offering a trans-imperial perspective that reassesses the complex relationship between Hungarians, Habsburgs, and Ottomans, The Habsburg Empire under Siege portrays the resistance of ordinary men and women and their hopes for liberation from Habsburg oppression, reclaiming their place in history.
Download or read book Edge of Empire written by Maya Jasanoff and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this imaginative book, Maya Jasanoff uncovers the extraordinary stories of collectors who lived on the frontiers of the British Empire in India and Egypt, tracing their exploits to tell an intimate history of imperialism. Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it. Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—and topical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.
Download or read book The Great Siege of Malta written by Bruce Ware Allen and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1565, a massive fleet of Ottoman ships descended on Malta, a small island centrally located between North Africa and Sicily, home and headquarters of the crusading Knights of St. John and their charismatic Grand Master, Jean de Valette. The Knights had been expelled from Rhodes by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and now stood as the last bastion against a Muslim invasion of Sicily, southern Italy, and beyond. The siege force of Turks, Arabs, and Barbary corsairs from across the Muslim world outnumbered the defenders of Malta many times over, and its arrival began a long hot summer of bloody combat, often hand to hand, embroiling knights and mercenaries, civilians and slaves, in a desperate struggle for this pivotal point in the Mediterranean. Bruce Ware Allen's The Great Siege of Malta describes the siege's geopolitical context, explains its strategies and tactics, and reveals how the all-too-human personalities of both Muslim and Christian leaders shaped the course of events. The siege of Malta was the Ottoman empire's high-water mark in the war between the Christian West and the Muslim East for control of the Mediterranean. Drawing on copious research and new source material, Allen stirringly recreates the two factions' heroism and chivalry, while simultaneously tracing the barbarism, severity, and indifference to suffering of sixteenth-century warfare. The Great Siege of Malta is a fresh, vivid retelling of one of the most famous battles of the early modern world - a battle whose echoes are still felt today.
Download or read book Siege of Empires written by Eleanor T Whitfield and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2024-08-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Siege of Empires: The Fall of Constantinople and the Clash of Civilizations" offers a riveting exploration of one of history's most pivotal moments. In 1453, the fall of Constantinople marked the dramatic end of the Byzantine Empire and heralded a new era of Ottoman dominance. This gripping account delves into the final struggle between Mehmed II, the ambitious Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the last Emperor of Byzantium, revealing the deep historical roots of the ongoing conflict between East and West. Constantinople, a city of immense wealth, power, and religious significance, had long been a symbol of Christian resilience against the forces of Islam. Known as "The Red Apple" to the Ottomans, it had withstood countless sieges over a millennium. Yet, as Mehmed II's vast army encircled the city in April 1453, the walls that had once repelled invaders faced their ultimate test. Through vivid, eyewitness accounts, "Siege of Empires" chronicles the fifty-five-day siege, capturing the intense combat on land, sea, and underground. The narrative brings to life the epic scale of the conflict, from the deployment of the largest cannon ever built to the desperate defense mounted by a small band of Byzantine soldiers. The story is centered on the dramatic clash of two remarkable leaders-Mehmed II, driven by a vision of conquest, and Constantine XI, fighting for the survival of his empire and faith. This book not only recounts the harrowing events of the siege but also examines their lasting impact on global history. It explores how the fall of Constantinople disrupted European trade, spurred the Renaissance, and reshaped the balance of power between East and West. "Siege of Empires" is both a compelling historical narrative and an insightful analysis of how this ancient conflict continues to resonate in today's world, highlighting the enduring legacy of one of history's defining moments.
Download or read book The Enemy at the Gate written by Andrew Wheatcroft and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1683, an Ottoman army that stretched from horizon to horizon set out to seize the "Golden Apple," as Turks referred to Vienna. The ensuing siege pitted battle-hardened Janissaries wielding seventeenth-century grenades against Habsburg armies, widely feared for their savagery. The walls of Vienna bristled with guns as the besieging Ottoman host launched bombs, fired cannons, and showered the populace with arrows during the battle for Christianity's bulwark. Each side was sustained by the hatred of its age-old enemy, certain that victory would be won by the grace of God. The Great Siege of Vienna is the centerpiece for historian Andrew Wheatcroft's richly drawn portrait of the centuries-long rivalry between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires for control of the European continent. A gripping work by a master historian, The Enemy at the Gate offers a timely examination of an epic clash of civilizations.
Download or read book Ancient Siege Warfare written by Paul Bentley Kern and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how siege warfare was able to unleash unrestrained violence. It shows how the methods of siege warfare devalued the skills of traditional warriors, along with the shared values of honor and prowess that limited the violence of traditional field battles.
Download or read book A War of Empires written by Robert Lyman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUSI DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2022 'This is a superb book.' - James Holland In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. But change was coming. New commanders were appointed, significant training together with restructuring took place, and new tactics were developed. A War of Empires by acclaimed historian Robert Lyman expertly records these coordinated efforts and describes how a new volunteer Indian Army, rising from the ashes of defeat, would ferociously fight to turn the tide of war. But victory did not come immediately. It wasn't until March 1944, when the Japanese staged their famed 'March on Delhi', that the years of rebuilding paid off and, after bitter fighting, the Japanese were finally defeated at Kohima and Imphal. This was followed by a series of extraordinary victories culminating in Mandalay in May 1945 and the collapse of all Japanese forces in Burma. Until now, the Indian Army's contribution has been consistently forgotten and ignored by many Western historians but Robert Lyman proves how vital this hard-fought campaign was in securing Allied victory in the east. Detailing the defeat of Japanese militarism, he recounts how the map of the region was ultimately redrawn, guaranteeing the rise of an independent India free from the shackles of empire.
Download or read book Clash of Empires The Great Siege written by William Napier and published by Orion. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brutal combat. A test of courage. A battle that will change history. 1565: a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean stands gatekeeper between East and West. It is about to become the scene for one of the most amazing stories of bravery, battle and bloodlust: the siege of Malta. Formed in the Holy Land in the 11th century, a small band of knights had long sought a home. Driven from their lands by Ottoman might, they came to rest in Malta from where they watched the Turks and corsairs raid the Spanish empire. As word came from Constantinople that Malta was in the sights of the Ottoman Empire, all of Europe watched as a force of over 30,000 men besieged the island - itself only peopled by only 500 knights and a few thousand local soldiers. On that small rock an epic struggle will be played out - the story of individual men, warriors and slaves, but also the story of two worlds colliding.
Download or read book The Great Siege of Malta written by Bruce Ware Allen and published by ForeEdge. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive battle in the clash of empires that has defined Europe for 500 years
Download or read book Empires of the Sea written by Roger Crowley and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most gripping and exciting stories ever told of an epic period of international warfare.
Download or read book Empires of Eve written by Andrew Groen and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
