Great Battles
Season 2
Episodes
1. Bannockburn 1314
Looks at the Scottish struggle for independence from England, which spectacularly climaxed with a battle at Bannockburn against a huge English army.
2. Blenheium 1704
Looks at how the Duke of Marlborough marched his army 500km across Europe and, with his Austrian allies, defeated a seemingly invincible French army.
3. Austerlitz 1805
Explores this masterpiece of military strategy as, in a lightning campaign, Napoleon marched his army into the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
4. Vimy Ridge 1917
Vimy Ridge was an impenetrable fortress and thousands had died trying to attack it but it took four Canadian Divisions just hours to conquer it.
5. Agincourt 1415
A major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years War. The battle occurred late October 1415 near modern day Azincourt in northern France. Henry V's victory had a crippling effect on France and started a new period in the war during which Henry married the French kings daughter and his son was made heir to the throne of France. However his battlefield successes were not capitalized on by his heir Henry VI.
6. Naseby 1645
Battle of Naseby, was a decisive engagement of the English Civil War, fought on 14 June 1645 between the main Royalist army of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. It was fought near the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire. After a disappointing performance by the Parliamentarian army at the Second Battle of Newbury at the tail end of the 1644 campaign season that failed to inflict a decisive defeat on the Royalists, Oliver Cromwell worked to push the Self-denying Ordinance through Parliament, intent on re-forming Parliament's forces into a more effective, centralised force. This political campaign was successful, forming the New Model Army.