In episode 6 of Historyzine we look at early 18th century sieges, the changing nature of warfare and some of the reasons behind the reticence to commit troops to a fully fledged battle in this War of the Spanish Succession. We will focus particularly on the great French engineer Vauban, his fortresses and his techniques for laying siege to a fortress. There’s a plan of a Vauban type fortress here

If you take a look at this pdf document you will be able to see some really good aerial photographs of Vauban fortresses that give a fine indication of how it works as a piece of defensive technology.

Finally here’s a picture showing the lines of circumvallation and contravallation and the three parallels the besiegers would dig as part of the siege of a fortress town.

We mention in the podcast one of the finest references on the net for the War of the Spanish Succession www.spanishsuccession.nl and also give a shout out to the Genealogy Gems podcast plus a mention for a site simply jammed full of history podcast reviews http://anneisaman.blogspot.com/
Latest news on the Oudenaarde re-enactment for the 300th anniversary of the battle of Oudenaarde is that I have booked my hotel room and the reenactment will be taking place over the weekend 12th and 13th of July.

Our review this time is of a podcast from the History Network and is an audio tour of a walk around Soho in London.

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In this episode we take a look at the podcast series, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.
We pick apart the phrase, ‘sleep tight, mind the bed bugs don’t bite’ and of course we have the next part of our series looking at the War of the Spanish Succession.
This week Eugene performs some fancy footwork in Northern Italy and the rest of the allies try to sort out some sort of compromise which will give them an excuse not to go to war against Louis XIV.

Sources for the War of the Spanish Succession

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In this episode we review the delightful podcast TPN Napoleon, hosted by Cameron Reilly and J. David Markham and offer a shout out to ‘The Binge Thinking History podcast which, in episode 3 of that podcast gives some useful background to the English situation at the end of the 17th century.
The main feature of this week is, of course, our running guide to the War of the Spanish Succession and in this episode we attempt to unravel the many strands that are the various claimants to the Spanish throne and finish upon the opening of hostilities in Northern Italy.

Different claimants come and go but the main power blocs interested in grabbing the Spanish Empire for themselves are the Bourbons of France, headed by Louis XIV and the Austrian Habsburgs led by Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor. The United Provinces and England are looking for a succession that maintains a balance of power in Europe so their own security isn’t threatened. The stage therefore is set for a great deal of politicking and quite likely war. I think it was Clausewitz some time later who gave us the maxim that war is just a continuance of diplomacy and so it is in this case.

We’ll have a closer look at one of the great Imperial generals, Prince Eugene of Savoy and chart his rise to glory and his fighting apprenticeship battling against the Ottoman Turks. We’ll also make passing reference to his second favourite pastime (war being his favourite) of building palaces and stocking them full of art treasures.

Sources for the War of the Spanish Succession

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or, to send a form email visit this page http://historyzine.com/contact/