Bitesize Battles

Part 1 of our epic episode on Attila the Hun and his titanic showdown with the Western Roman Empire on the Catalaunian Plains in 451.

The fate of both the Hunnic and Roman Empires rested on its outcome.

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Part 2 of our epic episode on Attila the Hun and his titanic showdown with the Western Roman Empire on the Catalaunian Plains in 451.

The fate of both the Hunnic and Roman Empires rested on its outcome.

Come and join the action here at Bitesize Battles.
 
Subscribe to us here on your favourite podcast channel, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bitesizebattles

Now comes the body-blow that would rock the Western Roman Empire on its heels. The Vandals, part of the original Rhine invasion of 406, now surged out of Spain and made a beeline for Roman North Africa.

North Africa was Rome's bread basket and money-maker - any threat to it would create a food and financial crisis from which it would be nearly impossible to recover.

Find out what happened and how the brilliant Roman commander, Flavius Aetius, reacted alongside the powerful Eastern Empire.

 

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This is the season finale, the climactic finish to this epic story of the Fall of the Roman Empire.

While the West was hanging from a thread after the Vandals had taken North Africa, the Eastern Roman Empire wasn't so quick to let it fade away.

The Eastern Emperor, Leo, spend 100,000 pounds of gold putting together an immense armada, and sent it straight to Vandal Africa.

At the Battle of Cape Bon, the Romans and Vandals would face off in a decisive and destructive naval battle in 468.

The outcome would decide the fate of the Roman Empire, and the history of Europe.

 

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The opening episode of the rollercoaster ride of the Scottish Wars of Independence.

On a pitch-dark night, Scotland's King Alexander III urged his horse to ever-greater speeds, galloping across vales and glens in a wind-driven storm.

He was hurrying to see his young and beautiful Queen, Yolande of Dreux. Alexander was 44, she just 22. It was her birthday the next day, and it's likely that Alexander was rushing to help her, let's say, see it in.

But in the lashing rain his horse lost its footing, causing them both to crash down a steep and rocky embankment. He was found the next morning on the sand of the shore. With a broken neck.

Little did he know that his lust for his young Queen was about to throw Scotland into decades of civil strife, and plunge it into a bitter war with England where it would struggle for its very existence.

Find out what happened and where the famous names of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Edward Longshanks fit in.

 

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Longshanks seems in control of Scotland - he has the towns and cities, he has the castles, and he even has the King.

But soon to rise would be a Scottish Knight, William Wallace, for whom living under English domination was unbearable. He and other leaders, like Andrew de Moray, roused the country to rebellion and gathered an army with which he fought the English at Stirling Bridge and Falkirk.

This famous freedom fighter would shatter the image of English invincibility and be a Scottish talisman for centuries to come.

Find out what happened at Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, what fate befell William Wallace, and what it meant for Scottish Independence.

 

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After Longshanks' used the world's largest ever trebuchet, War Wolf, to batter Stirling Castle into submission, he had captured William Wallace and had him brutally executed in London in 1305. Once again, it seemed that Scotland's destiny as an independent Kingdom was doomed.

But inspired by Wallace's stand and appalled by Longshanks' brutality, there rose a new and even greater leader - Robert the Bruce - who would lead Scotland to triumph over England in a victory even more shattering than Stirling Bridge had been.

In 1314, he led a force of just 6,000 men to take on Longhshanks' son, Edward II, and an English army of 20,000 men. They met at a small river, called the Bannock Burn.

 

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William Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge had shattered the English psyche, but Bannockburn was the turning point. Now Scotland had to push a final time to win the independence she had been fighting for, for so long.

But Edward II's England was riven with dissent, and powerful factions were about to rise up and demand firmer action against the Scots.

The die was cast and Scotland's freedom was in the balance. 

 

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Why do we fight? Why go to war? This series looks at 9 of history's biggest motivations and causes for conflict, and a final episode on the psychology of the individual and what drives people to risk life and limb by going to war.

In this first episode we look at the power of Ego, and how time and again it has propelled leaders, and the men and women who follow them, to cause nations and empires to rise and fall.

 

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From farmland to gold mines, and spices to oil, competition over resources has been one of the single greatest sources of human conflict for millennia. And it looks set to continue to be.

We'll explore the motivations behind why resources create conflict and some of the empires, wars and tragedies this competition has created.

 

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