February 1811. Marshal Victor had besieged the Spanish city of Cádiz for a year. Generals Manuel de Lapeña and Thomas Graham, at the head of Spanish and British troops, disembarked at Algeciras and at Tarifa and led their men towards Chiclana in order to attack the French lines from the rear. On 5 March, the opposing armies ran into each other on ground overlooked by the Bermeja and the Barrosa towers; the latter giving its name to the battle. The French troops commanded by Generals Villatte, Leval and Ruffin fell back before the Allied army. The fighting was fierce and the 8th Regiment of the Line lost its golden wreathed Eagle. Using French, Spanish and British sources and archives, drawing on numerous eyewitness accounts, the author captures the views of both sides of the conflict and provides a new and objective narrative in fascinating detail of this long-forgotten and little-known battle of the Peninsular War.
Taking a populist approach to a serious subject, Myke Cole combines a novelist's flair for drama with an ancient historian's eye for detail to create a unique book that delves into one of the most popular areas of the Ancient World.
From the time of Ancient Sumeria, the heavy infantry phalanx dominated the battlefield. Armed with spears or pikes, standing shoulder to shoulder with shields interlocking, the men of the phalanx presented an impenetrable wall of wood and metal to the enemy. Until, that is, the Roman legion emerged to challenge them as masters of infantry battle.
Covering the period in which the legion and phalanx clashed (280–168 BC), Myke Cole delves into their tactics, arms and equipment, organization and deployment. He draws on original primary sources to examine six battles in which the legion fought the phalanx – Heraclea (280 BC), Asculum (279 BC), Beneventum (275 BC), Cynoscephalae (197 BC), Magnesia (190 BC), and Pydna (168 BC).
Cole shows how and why the Roman legion, with its flexible organization, versatile tactics and iron discipline, came to eclipse the hitherto untouchable Hellenistic phalanx and dominate the ancient battlefield.