Böcker av Michael Fredholm von Essen

A detailed account of the 'Swedish Deluge' of 1655 - 1660, the devastating wars fought in the reign of Swedish King Charles X Gustavus.

Confrontation of Kings presents, for the first time in English, the largest battle of the war of the Swedish Deluge (1655-1660). During three days of fighting, the Swedish-Brandenburg Alliance faced the combined Polish, Lithuanian, and Tatar armies. It was a clash between Western and Eastern styles of warfare, but it was also a clash between the irreconcilable Polish and Swedish monarchs, John II Casimir and Charles X Gustavus, over hegemony in the Baltic region. This is an in-depth study of the battle based on contemporary sources, including previously unpublished archival materials, many of which were written by soldiers who took part in the struggle. In addition, Confrontation of Kings provides full details on the dissimilar military systems of Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Brandenburg-Prussia, and the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea, with detailed reconstructions of the organisation and strength of the armies that confronted each other at Warsaw. The book will equally appeal to enthusiasts of military history and professional historians. The authors present new research on a war previously seldom described in English, describing the battle from the perspective of both sides. As well as examining the wider picture of the previous campaigns in Poland and the events that led up to the battle itself.

New research on an army that details the military system of Qing China, which fought a variety of enemies ranging from Ming Chinese, Mongols, and Tibetans to Russians and Western Colonial armies.This book describes and analyses the Manchu, or Qing, army in all its aspects. The emphasis lies on the Qing army in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, because this is the time when the Manchu military system developed its own characteristics and reached maturity. Furthermore, having achieved this and in the process conquered one of the largest empires ever gained, the Qing army changed but little before c. 1850, when the Taiping War marked the beginning of the end of the Qing empire, as well as changed the character of the Manchu military system. In its heyday, the Qing army achieved a number of significant victories. First, it conquered Ming China. The Qing consistently achieved victories against numerically superior Ming armies. The Qing military operated as combined arms armies, successfully joining the various strengths of cavalry, infantry, and artillery. The Qing army was for cultural and historical reasons particularly strong in cavalry, as could be expected from a power that had incorporated numerous Mongols into its ranks. On the strategic level, this intimate level of cooperation with steppe nomads and the deep understanding thereby achieved of steppe politics and political systems of nomad states, enabled the Qing state to extend its borders further to the north and west than any previous sedentary ruler of China.In the tropical countries to the south of China, the Qing army experienced both victories and serious losses, especially to disease. In this they showed similarities with the various European armies of the time. The Portuguese colonial troops in southern China proved no obstacle to Qing conquests.Perhaps the clearest indication of the versatility of the Qing military system was its successful containment of the very active Russian expansion then underway. The two treaties of Nerchinsk in 1689 and Kyakhta in 1727 delimited the Manchu-Russian border exactly where the Manchus wanted it to be, and the border selected by the Manchus remained unchallenged until the second half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the border delimited at that time forms the backbone of the national borders of the region to this day.In this book, Michael Fredholm von Essen presents new research on an army and military campaigns previously seldom described in English. He explains the development of the Manchu Conquest and Imperial Qing Armies and details the military system of Qing China, which until 1912 fought a variety of enemies ranging from Ming Chinese, Koreans, Mongols, Tibetans, Gurkhas, Burmese, and Vietnamese to Russians and Western Colonial armies.

This book describes the organization, arms, armor, dress, and daily life of samurai, soldiers, and commoners in Edo-period Japan.

The book describes the two devastating wars fought between Sweden and Denmark-Norway during the reign of Swedish King Charles X Gustavus, presenting new research on two wars previously seldom described in English.

In 1975, Lieutenant Commander Valeriy Sablin led his crew in a mutiny on the Soviet warship Storozhevoy. Facing the loss of a modern warship with armaments, electronics, communication devices, and code books, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered Naval Aviation Colonel Arkhip Savinkov to destroy the Storozhevoy - with a nuclear missile.

After the death of Gustavus Adolphus, his chancellor Axel Oxenstierna assumed overall command and led the Swedish army to victory in the Thirty Years War.

The Scanian War was bloody and inconclusive, yet established the modern border between Denmark and Sweden and formed the foundation for comprehensive Swedish military reforms.