Bitesize Battles

The series finale, the final end of the Angevin Empire. It didn't start with a defeat, but a victory. King John's half-brother, William Longspee, sailed down the River Zwyn and found a French invasion armada. The battle that followed led inexorably to another - one of the Middle Ages' greatest battles - the Battle of Bouvines. King John fought to regain the The Angevin Empire that Philip Augustus had so ruthlessly won from him. Ultimately, he failed, and ironically his failure led to one of England's most famous political documents of all time - Magna Carta. Find out how now in this gripping final episode of The Angevins. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, support me on Patreon, visit the website at www.bitesizebattles.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening!

The Lionheart was dead. His brother John was set to inherit the throne. Or was he? Because there was another with a claim - his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. The struggle between the two, and a brutal, sadistic murder, would see the beginning of the end of the Angevin Empire. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, support me on Patreon, visit the website at www.bitesizebattles.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening!

Richard the Lionheart faced the decision of his life - Jerusalem or his Kingdom? Saladin still held the former, his brother John threatened the latter. Delaying any further risked becoming a King in name only, his Kingdom suborned and conquered. With gritted teeth, he left the Third Crusade only ultimately unfulfilled. And worse - he was being hunted by most of the most powerful lords of Europe and there was no safe route home. From the Holy Land to the Holy Roman Empire, and from victory over the French to his final end, this is the second part of Richard the Lionheart's story. His life and death would decide the fate of The Angevin Empire. Subscribe here on your favourite podcast channel, support me on Patreon, visit the website at www.bitesizebattles.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening!

Jerusalem had fallen. All of Europe was aghast. Muslim Saracens of the Ayyubid Dynasty had slaughtered a Christian army at Hattin, and then gone on to take the Holy City itself. Their leader, Saladin, swept all before him. But Richard the Lionheart's crusading fever became inflamed when he heard, and once his father, Henry II, had died, he committed the entire Angevin Empire to Jerusalem's recapture. This is the incredible story of Richard's journey to the Holy Land, the epic recapture of its port-city, Acre, and why - with Jerusalem in sight - Richard had to make a fateful decision that affected the rest of his life. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow @bitesizebattles on Instagram and FB, and support me on Patreon. Thanks for listening.

Henry II's life rose and fell like a rough sea. After winning the English throne at just 21 years old, he put England back together again after the ravages of the civil war known as The Anarchy. He wed the beautiful and famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, and had with her 7 children who survived into adulthood - including Richard the Lionheart and the later King John. And it was he who created the Angevin Empire. But he was also the King who inadvertently ordered the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was the King who suffered no less than three rebellions from his sons, and the man who went to his grave knowing that his favourite, John, had finally joined them. Henry II was a man whose energy and vitality thrust the Angevins into the international limelight, but who ultimately could not control his own family. This is his story, and the beginnings of the famous Richard the Lionheart. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us @bitesizebattles on Instagram and Facebook, and support as on Patreon. Thank you.

The year is 1120 and the mood aboard The White Ship is exultant. The young lords of England and Normandy are celebrating beating the French by drinking and carousing late into the night. Among them, England's heir - William Aetheling. But leaving for a crossing of the English Channel so late and completely half-cut, the party was about to be cut savagely short. The outcome led to one of England's most brutal civil wars and to the rise of the Angevins and an Empire that stretched from Scotland to the borders of Spain. Listen now to the stories of one of England's greatest dynasties, of the likes of Richard the Lionheart and King John, and cataclysmic battles in France, Scotland, Sicily and the Holy Land. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us @bitesizebattles on Instagram and Facebook, and visit www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

This is it. It all comes down to this moment. Ever since Alfred the Great had come surging out of the swamps he had been hiding in to defeat the Vikings at Edington, he and his children and grandchildren had been inexorably pushing the Vikings out of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Aethelred was soon to conquer Northumbria which had been held by the Danes for a hundred years, and England was born. But no sooner had the new nation come screaming into the world than a massive Norse-Irish-Scottish alliance came screaming into Aethelred's new kingdom. It threatened to undo everything that had been achieved. At Brunanburh in 937 AD the future of England would be decided. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us @bitesizebattles on Instagram and Facebook, and visit www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

The King of Wessex had been hunted as a fugitive by marauding Vikings, and he'd been hiding as one in a swamp. Wessex had been overrun and King Alfred had fled, setting up camp amidst the reeds of the Somerset Levels. But despite his survival, it seemed the same could not be said of Wessex. But in one of history's greatest comeback stories, he rebuilt his forces whilst in hiding, conducted a guerrilla campaign from the marshes, and then came surging out to rendezvous with the armies of his still-loyal Earldormen. It resulted in one of England's greatest ever battles, and led confirmed that Wessex, England's last Anglo-Saxon kingdom, would not fall to the Vikings after all. In doing so, Alfred the Great laid the foundations for the future reconquest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the dawn of England. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

When the Viking warlord, Guthrum, ambushed King Alfred the Great of Wessex while he was celebrating Christmas at Chippenham, Alfred had no choice but to run with his family and a few guards. Hearing that Guthrum's forces were spreading out all over Wessex, the only safe place for Alfred to go was the marshland of Somerset which he knew as a boy. Alfred was now a fugitive in his own kingdom, hiding out in a swamp with his family and just a few guards. Mercia had fallen four years earlier, crushed by the Vikings just as Northumbia and East Anglia had been before it. It seemed Wessex was going the same way. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

The Vikings shot onto the international scene when they ransacked, burned, looted and slaughtered their way through the peaceful monastic community on the island of Lindisfarne in 793 AD. But it wasn't an isolated incident. It began the so-called Viking Age and 300 years of bitter warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Viking for control of the fertile land of England. For 60 years after Lindisfarne the Vikings contented themselves with raiding and terrorising the coastal communities and riverways of Anglo-Saxon England, but by 865 their thoughts had turned to invasion. The Sea Wolves were coming to stay. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

The Battle of Osowiec in 1915 was darkly horrifying despite the bright summer's morning. The Germans gassed the stubborn Russian defenders of the Osowiec Fortress with a vicious mix of chlorine and bromine, killing every single one. Or so they thought. Because as the Germans advanced they spotted a single figure jerk suddenly upright, skin blistered and torn, eyes peeled back, teeth bared where lips had once been. The dead had risen and now they were coming for their revenge. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us @bitesizebattles on Instagram and Facebook, and visit www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

Once Vercingetorix was in chains and the Gallic Wars over, you might have thought Caesar would be in for a well-earned rest. But Pompey and the Optimates in the Roman Senate were jealous and wanted Caesar back in Rome so they could prosecute him for any number of crimes - including his conquest of Gaul, which they had never given permission for. But Caesar wasn't about to spend the rest of his life in court, jail or exile, and sought to outmanoeuvre the Senate. The Optimates and Pompey sought to drag Caesar back to Rome. It ended in a tussle which led Caesar to the banks of the Rubicon, and the biggest decision of his life. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit us at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

​Vercingetorix was a proud, young Gallic chieftain who gave Caesar his first bloody nose of the Gallic Wars and led a rebellion so serious that it nearly cost Caesar everything. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on IG and FB @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

This is where Caesar made himself a Roman legend. He fought hundreds of thousands of Gauls, saw off Germanic invasions, and even had a little jaunt over the sea to Britannia. The Senate had been desperate to prosecute him for crimes during his Consulship, but he had taken a governorship of provinces bordering Gaul which gave him immunity for five years. He then used those years to craft seemingly legitimate reasons to continually intervene in Gallic affairs, crushing tribes and intimidating others. In just over three years, Gaul was his. But it was far from easy, and on more than one occasion, Caesar was lucky to get out alive. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

It was Alexander the Great who spurred Julius Caesar to new heights. When Caesar saw a statue of him when he was 31, he realised that at his age Alexander had conquered half the world. Caesar was so distraught at his own relative lack of achievements, it's said he wept at Alexander's feet. In just a few years Caesar had become the Chief Priest of Rome, Consul, and one of the members of Rome's first Triumvirate. Join us on his journey to political power, and meet Pompey, Crassus, and a rebel gladiator named Spartacus who sparked the whole thing off in the first place. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website at www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

Julius Caesar is one of the world's most famous and successful military genius' of all time. He conquered the fierce and warlike multitudes of Gaul with a few thousands men, and he beat some of the best Roman commanders in a civil war he ignited by crossing the Rubicon. But where did Caesar come from? Where did it all start? This episode covers the extraordinary groundwork of this extraordinary man's rise, from his childhood during the Marius-Sulla Civil War, near-death experience and his capture by pirates, to returning to Rome a military hero. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles, and visit our website www.bitesizebattles.com. Thanks for listening.

In the face of the crushing ideologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, hundreds of thousands of civilians and former soldiers banded together in resistance right across Europe and Asia. These created tales that need telling, and while some of them are already famous, I want to bring you some of those that are lesser-known but equally gripping. Much as you’d imagine from WW2, these stories are full of horror and heroism, catastrophe and courage, tragedy and triumph. From daring rescues to audacious assassinations, and everyday people risking death by hiding Jews from Nazi hunters, to young men and women blowing up bridges and laying ambushes. So get ready for an emotional rollercoaster in this, the final episode of the Bitesize Battles Secret Warfare series, the Resistance of WW2. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, visit us @bitesizebattles.com, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening.

The Middle East of WWI was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, but it was beginning to unravel. Arab nationalism was rising, and Britain told them that they would be allowed to establish a new, independent Arab nation following WWI. So the Arab Revolt broke out. But in secret, Britain also settled on the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France, which divided the area between them instead, leaving nothing for the Arabs. Into this cauldron of conspiracy strode Lawrence of Arabia, an unconventional archaeologist, writer, romantic, soldier and intelligence officer of the British Army. He was a lover of all things Arabia, and his effect on the Arab Revolt, and the coming post-war geopolitical battleground was profound. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, visit us at www.bitesizebattles.com, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening.

The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD was one of Rome's worst ever defeats. Just a few years either side of the death of Christ, the Romans had been subjugating many of the Germanic tribes just east of the Rhine – some by treaty, some by force. But the Germans resented the encroachment and the will to resist was building. All they needed was an opportunity to fight back. And soon, there was someone willing to give them one by betraying Roman trust. In the year 9 AD, three Roman legions would be lured to the Teutoberg Forest, and the result would lead to the Emperor Augustus butting his head against a wall screaming. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, visit us at www.bitesizebattles.com, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening.

There was once a group of unsung heroes from World War II, a pioneering band of jungle warfare specialists fighting the Japanese behind enemy lines. This elite force was named after the mythical Burmese beast, the Chinthe, a fearsome blend of eagle and lion. To its commander, Orde Wingate, the Chinthe symbolised his vision of the close co-ordination of air and land forces. The Chindits braved searing humidity, deadly diseases, impenetrable jungle and the remorseless Japanese army to disrupt the enemy behind their lines, destroy vital bridges and railways, and provoke them into rash decisions from which they could be punished. The Chindits were responsible for provoking one of the greatest defeats for the Japanese Empire, and the lessons learned greatly enhanced the Allied cause both during and after World War 2. Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, visit www.bitesizebattles.com, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles. Thanks for listening