I have been on a roll with youtube documentaries about some facets of war that I have never explored up until now, namely, the Napoleonic campaigns and Alexander the Great.
Sure, everyone knows their names but not many can go into much detail of precisely why people still know their names after centuries have past, and there is a very good reason for this. Their campaigns were just jaw dropping in scale, duration, intensity and geography. Napoleon conquered damn near all of what now is Europe, and well into Russia. His allies of one year were enemies of the next [with the constant of England always being an enemy because the British couldn't stand up to him on land, and he could not match the British on the sea] As in WW1 & 2, the channel pretty much saved their asses from a nasty invasion., and the RN ensured this was so.
Never knew that Russia really invaded France first, never knew he actually made it to Moscow but found it barren and destroyed ,,, And thereupon embarked on his well known and disastrous retreat.
Never knew the details of Waterloo, which was his attempted comeback after months in exile after his 1st defeat - Just so many battles and details over the course of a full decade, very very brutal fighting with upwards of 1,000,000+ dead, and all of that well before the era of modern weaponry.
Alexander, hard to know where to even start, I suppose years can be devoted by historians studying his mind boggling decade long campaign and nearly innumerable battles, which stretched from eastern Europe to the mid east all the way into what is now Afghanistan/Pakistan and then into India, where he was forced by near mutiny by an exhausted army to trek back west only to die barely into his 30's of a mystery illness. Loved and hated, revered and reviled, hailed and cursed as a devil, deity and military genius, the resting place of his bones will never be known.
Crusades also very interesting and sobering, started getting into that but I feel as though I am trying to absorb too much too soon.
I like a good movie but to me, this stuff is far better than any movie could possible be. This outfit is one of the best among many top notch military history sources
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvPXiKxH-eH9xq-80vpgmKQ
