79.4 Birth of Turkey 1922

In April 1877, two Russian armies invaded the Ottoman empire. The focus of the war became the siege of Plevna in Bulgaria. The strong resistance there gave the Turks real hope for a final victory, or ...

16 Dec 202222min

In April 1876 news spread across Europe of appalling atrocities being committed in Bulgaria, by Turks against local uprisings. These occurred soon after similar events elsewhere in the Balkans region ...

9 Dec 202215min

In 1875, the Balkans entered a period of turmoil as various nationalities (Serbians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians and Romanians) struggled for independence from the Ottoman Turks. Uprisings quic...

2 Dec 202223min

Philippa has written novels set in several different historical periods, especially the Tudor period. We discussed the period around the Glorious Revolution 1688 when the Prince of Orange invaded Engl...

11 Nov 202218min

For centuries, Europe’s German centre had been politically fragmented and weak. The continent had been dominated by states on the periphery, whose interest was to maintain the power vacuum at the cent...

4 Nov 202227min

Following Prussia's victory at Königgrätz in 1866, the North German Confederation became an instrument for Prussian dominance. All northern German states not directly annexed by Prussia were put in th...

28 Okt 202223min

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was brief, yet its consequences were profound. It was the culminating event in a rivalry that began with the rise of the house of Brandenburg-Prussia, most notably Fred...

30 Sep 202233min

Any list of decisive battles of European history would be incomplete without a battle which occurred on 3 July 1866 near the town of Königgrätz, in the north of the today’s Czech Republic.The victorio...

23 Sep 202220min