Who was ‘the greatest Roman of them all’? The conventional answer, of course, is Julius Caesar, but in our special this issue we advance the claim of another candidate: Publius Cornelius Scipio, titled Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal, and the general who should perhaps be regarded as the true founder of the Roman Empire.
From an ancient commander to a medieval one: Tim Newark offers a feature on Jan Zizka, ‘the blind warlord’, the military leader of the radical Hussites in the early 15th century and a Czech national hero. With his discussion of the famous Hussite wagon forts, Tim tells part of the story of the fall of feudal chivalry to the new infantry of the Late Medieval period.
Then we have three very different WWII stories:
Andrew Mulholland returns to describe the destruction of the Highland Division in June 1940 and to review the controversy around it. Did Churchill sacrifice the Highlanders?
Patrick Mercer, in his Regiment piece, takes a look on ‘the other side of the hill’, recounting the epic resistance of an elite German mountain regiment on the Gothic Line in September 1944.
Finally, in Sideshow, Brian Letts lifts the lid on the little-known story of Hitler’s plan for a mass breakout of German POWs in alliance with British Fascists at the end of the war.