Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

In Our Time: History

09/19/19

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54m

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender and why, to his dismay, no-one came. Soon his triumph was revealed as a great defeat; winter was coming, supplies were low; he ordered his Grande Armée of six hundred thousand to retreat and, by the time he crossed back over the border, desertion, disease, capture, Cossacks and cold had reduced that to twenty thousand. Napoleon had shown his weakness; his Prussian allies changed sides and, within eighteen months they, the Russians and Austrians had captured Paris and the Emperor was exiled to Elba.

With

Janet Hartley Professor Emeritus of International History, LSE

Michael Rowe Reader in European History, King’s College London

And

Michael Rapport Reader in Modern European History, University of Glasgow

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Previous Episode

Doggerland

June 27, 2019

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54m

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the people, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea, now called Doggerland after Dogger Bank, inhabited up to c7000BC or roughly 3000 years before the beginnings of Stonehenge. There are traces of this landscape at low tide, such as the tree stumps at Redcar (above); yet more is being learned from diving and seismic surveys which are building a picture of an ideal environment for humans to hunt and gather, with rivers and wooded hills. Rising seas submerged this land as glaciers melted, and the people and animals who lived there moved to higher ground, with the coasts of modern-day Britain on one side and Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France on the other. With Vince Gaffney Anniversary Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford Carol Cotterill Marine Geoscientist at the British Geological Survey And Rachel Bynoe Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton Producer: Simon Tillotson

Next Episode

The Treaty of Limerick

November 7, 2019

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52m

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1691 peace treaty that ended the Williamite War in Ireland, between supporters of the deposed King James II and the forces of William III and his allies. It followed the battles at Aughrim and the Boyne and sieges at Limerick, and led to the disbanding of the Jacobite army in Ireland, with troops free to follow James to France for his Irish Brigade. The Catholic landed gentry were guaranteed rights on condition of swearing loyalty to William and Mary yet, while some Protestants thought the terms too lenient, it was said the victors broke those terms before the ink was dry.

The image above is from British Battles on Land and Sea, Vol. I, by James Grant, 1880, and is meant to show Irish troops leaving Limerick as part of The Flight of the Wild Geese - a term used for soldiers joining continental European armies from C16th-C18th.

With

Jane Ohlmeyer Chair of the Irish Research Council and Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin

Dr Clare Jackson Senior Tutor, Trinity Hall, and Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

and

Thomas O'Connor Professor of History at Maynooth University

Producer: Simon Tillotson