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Henry V invaded France in 1415 after failed talks in which he claimed the French crown and demanded a ransom, a royal marriage, and wide lands. The siege of Harfleur dragged on and dysentery ravaged his roughly 12,000 men. Instead of sailing home, he marched about 9,000 survivors some 260 miles toward Calais, a deliberate provocation of the Dauphin. The French blocked him on October 25, 1415, in a freshly plowed field between the woods of Tramecourt and Agincourt, then waited three hours for reinforcements under the dukes of Brabant, Anjou, and Brittany. Estimates of the odds range from 12,000 French against 9,000 English to 24,000 against 6,000 if the armed servants known as gros valets are counted.

Henry moved first, advancing to about 300 yards and replanting sharpened stakes in front of his archers, nearly 80 percent of his army. Volleys provoked a disorganized French cavalry charge that churned the clay and trampled its own infantry. French men-at-arms in 50 to 60 pounds of plate, visors down against the arrows, packed so tightly in the funnel that many could not raise their swords, and some, including the Constable of France, drowned in the mud. When the baggage train was raided and the French rearguard seemed to re-form, Henry ordered the prisoners killed. His knights refused over chivalry and ransom money, so archers carried it out until the threat passed.

• Henry stood over his wounded brother Humphrey and took an axe blow that chipped the crown on his helmet.
• Archers who ran out of arrows took up mallets, hatchets, and swords against the exhausted men-at-arms.
• English losses ran from about 100 to a few hundred, against roughly 6,000 French dead.
• The French dead included three dukes, nine counts, the Constable, the Admiral of France, and the master of crossbowmen.
• Seven years later Henry died of dysentery at 35 during another siege in France, leaving a nine-month-old heir, Henry VI.

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By 1187 the Kingdom of Jerusalem was split between King Guy of Lusignan, who had gained the throne through his marriage to Queen Sibylla, and the old guard led by Raymond III of Tripoli, the former regent. Across the border Saladin had joined Egypt and Syria and held his coalition together with truces and the promise of holy war. When Reynald of Châtillon raided a Muslim caravan in breach of a truce, Saladin vowed to kill him with his own hands and gathered about 40,000 men, including some 12,000 light cavalry. He besieged Tiberias, where Raymond's wife Eschiva was trapped. At the Crusader camp at Sephoria, with its springs, Raymond himself advised letting the town fall.

Templar grand master Gerard de Ridefort accused Raymond of cowardice, and on July 3, 1187, Guy marched about 20,000 men, carrying the True Cross, onto the dry plateau. Harassed by horse archers and short of the Sea of Galilee, they camped without water while Saladin's men beat drums, chanted, and lit grass fires. On July 4 the thirst-maddened infantry fled up the Horns of Hattin, leaving the knights exposed; Raymond cut his way out. Saladin's 17-year-old son al-Afdal watched beside his father, who said they had not won until the king's red tent fell. Moments later it did. Saladin spared Guy, saying kings do not kill kings, and executed Reynald himself.

• Saladin's men poured water from goatskins into the sand in sight of the parched Crusaders.
• Quilted gambesons worn under mail turned the July march into a heatstroke trap.
• Guy passed Saladin's cup of iced rose water to Reynald, but Saladin struck it away, since the custom of a drink promised safety.
• Saladin had 200 Templar and Hospitaller knights and the Turcopoles executed, and sold the common foot soldiers into slavery.
• Saladin took 52 towns and fortifications within weeks and Jerusalem by October 1187; Pope Urban III reportedly died of the shock.

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After the Self-Denying Ordinance pushed aristocratic generals like the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Manchester out of command, Parliament built the New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Philip Skippon over the infantry and Oliver Cromwell's temporary cavalry command renewed again and again. After the royalist sack of Leicester in May 1645, Fairfax left the siege of Oxford to hunt the king. On June 14, 1645, near Naseby in Northamptonshire, roughly 14,000 parliamentarians faced about 7,400 royalists under Charles I, who with Lord Digby dismissed the new army. On Cromwell's advice Fairfax pulled back behind the ridge crest, and about 676 dragoons under Colonel John Okey hid in the Sulby Hedges.

Skippon was shot under the ribs but stayed in the field as the royalist foot pushed his center back. Prince Rupert's horse broke Henry Ireton's wing, then galloped some 15 miles toward Northampton and the baggage train. Cromwell routed Sir Marmaduke Langdale, kept half his cavalry in reserve, and wheeled it into the royalist flank while Okey's dragoons hit the other side. The Earl of Carnwath grabbed the king's bridle and turned him from a charge, and the royal lifeguard broke. Parliament captured the king's letters seeking Irish Catholic troops and printed them as The King's Cabinet Opened.

• Langdale's men had to charge uphill over ground broken by bushes and rabbit warrens.
• Ireton was unhorsed, wounded in the leg and face, and briefly taken prisoner.
• The royalist Bluecoats stood like a wall of brass until Fairfax broke them, reportedly taking their standard himself.
• At Marston Trussell, parliamentarian troops killed at least 100 camp women, likely Welsh speakers mistaken for Irish.
• More than 4,500 royalist infantry were captured along with all of the king's artillery.

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Khalid ibn al-Walid was born into the Banu Makhzum, the clan of the Quraysh that bred Mecca's war horses and ran its caravans. In 625 at the Battle of Uhud he commanded the Meccan cavalry on the right, waited while Muslim archers left their hill to loot the Meccan camp, then struck the exposed flank and handed Muhammad his only major military defeat. A few years later he rode to Medina and converted. At Mu'tah, after the senior commanders fell against a larger Byzantine force, he swapped his wings and vanguard overnight so the enemy saw new banners at dawn, and used their hesitation to withdraw. Muhammad named him Saifullah, the Sword of God.

After Muhammad's death in 632, Caliph Abu Bakr sent Khalid against rebel tribes in the Ridda Wars. He won at Buzakha and destroyed Musaylima at Yamama in the walled orchard remembered as the Garden of Death. His execution of Malik ibn Nuwayra and marriage to Malik's widow outraged Umar and divides Sunni and Shia memory to this day. In 633 he took al-Hira in Sasanian Iraq, then crossed the Syrian desert to reach the Byzantine front, took Damascus, and broke the imperial army at Yarmuk in 636. Umar, now caliph, demoted him, then dismissed him around 638. Khalid died at Homs around 642.

• To cross the waterless desert, Khalid had older camels drink heavily, sealed their mouths, and slaughtered them daily for the water in their stomachs.
• At Yamama the defenders dressed women in armor along the walls to suggest a fresh garrison, and Khalid accepted a truce.
• Abu Bakr pardoned Khalid over the Malik ibn Nuwayra affair despite Umar's demand for punishment.
• Umar feared a personality cult around Khalid and objected to his lavish handouts of spoils to tribal nobles.
• Khalid accepted his demotion and served under Abu Ubaidah in northern Syria rather than revolt.

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In August 636, on a dusty plateau ringed by ravines up to 660 feet deep, a Rashidun army of about 36,000 faced Emperor Heraclius's coalition of Romans, Slavs, Franks, Armenians, and Christian Arabs, estimated by modern historians at 40,000 to 80,000. The Muslim supreme commander was Abu Ubaidah, who had just replaced Khalid ibn al-Walid on Caliph Umar's orders, yet he handed Khalid tactical control. Khalid split the army into 36 infantry and four cavalry regiments and formed an elite reserve, the Mobile Guard. Across the Byzantine lines, the Armenian commander Vahan struggled with rival generals, hungry troops, and feuds between Monophysite and Chalcedonian Christians.

For four days Vahan pressed the flanks to push the Muslims toward the ravines. On day two the left wing broke and fled to camp, where women led by Hind came out with tent poles and mocking songs and drove the men back. Khalid galloped his Mobile Guard along a front of about seven and a half miles to plug each breach. On day five Vahan asked for a truce; Khalid refused and sent Dirar with 500 riders by night to seize the only bridge across the ravine. On day six about 8,000 massed cavalry routed the Byzantine horse, the exposed infantry collapsed, and thousands fell from the cliffs. Heraclius left Antioch by ship, bidding Syria farewell.

• Heraclius took the True Cross with him when he fled Antioch for Constantinople.
• Muslim archers used bows about six feet long to blunt Byzantine cavalry charges from range.
• Day four became known as the Day of Lost Eyes after Byzantine horse archers blinded hundreds of veterans.
• Ikrima, a childhood friend of Khalid, led 400 cavalry in a charge in which every man was killed or mortally wounded.
• The battle opened the Levant, and soon Egypt, to Muslim rule.

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Early jousting, from the 11th to 14th centuries, was a group brawl across open fields, fought in ordinary mail and great helms, where the goal was to beat opponents into submission and seize their horses, weapons, and ransom. The word comes from the Latin for to approach or meet. As chivalric romances spread, nobles began reenacting Arthurian ideals and fair fights became the point. Froissart's chronicle of the Earl of Buckingham's 1380 campaign records a French squire, Gauvain Micaille, challenging any English gentleman in love to three courses with the lance, three blows of the axe, and three of the dagger. When the English squire who answered struck him in the thigh, Buckingham was furious at his own man and gave Micaille 100 francs.

Equipment changed to keep valuable fighters alive. A cloth divider became the wooden tilt, lances got blunt three-pronged coronels, and jousting armor reached 50 kilograms, carried by destriers in high-backed saddles. In 1434 Suero de Quiñones held a bridge on the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela, vowing to break 300 lances. Emperor Maximilian I created the heavy Stechen and the faster Rennen, with shields that sprang off on a perfect hit. The 1559 death of Henry II of France from a lance splinter ended the sport in France. It returned with John Waller's 1973 balsa breakaway lance and full-contact competition from Shane Adams's World Championship Jousting Association.

• Jousting armor weighed up to twice as much as battlefield plate, which was about 55 pounds.
• Riders needed long-necked spurs to reach the horse's flanks with their legs locked straight.
• Stechen helmets were bolted to the breastplate because blows aimed to shear the crest off the helm.
• Mark Twain's image of crane-lifted knights came from seeing heavy tournament armor, not war armor.
• Ring tilting, the sport's harmless successor, is the official state sport of Maryland.

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From 1266 Kublai Khan sent six missions demanding that Japan submit, addressing its ruler as the king of a small state. The Kamakura shogunate, run by the Hojo regents, left the envoys waiting in a rundown inn and sent them home without an answer. In late 1274 roughly 15,000 Mongol, Han Chinese, and Jurchen troops sailed from Korea with Korean crews. On Tsushima, deputy governor So Sukekuni rode out with 80 mounted samurai and was wiped out; on Iki the governor sent his daughter to warn the mainland before dying with his family. At Hakata Bay, a samurai's whistling arrow invitation to single combat met laughter, drum-signaled formations, and exploding gunpowder bombs that panicked Japanese horses.

The invaders withdrew to their ships that night, and a storm wrecked much of the fleet; over 13,000 men did not return. Regent Hojo Tokimune then beheaded five envoys in 1275 and five more in 1279, and Japan built a two-meter stone wall along Hakata Bay. In 1281 Kublai sent two fleets, traditionally 140,000 men. The wall stopped the early arrivals, Japanese raiders struck by night in small boats, and the Mongols chained their ships into a floating fortress. On August 15, 1281, a typhoon smashed the chained fleet. Victory bankrupted the shogunate, spurred the katana's hard and soft steel design, and gave Japan the legend of the kamikaze, the divine wind.

• Invaders on Iki pierced captured women's hands and tied them to the sides of their ships as a terror tactic.
• A Mongol commander had been shot in the face, and fear of night ambushes drove the 1274 withdrawal to the ships.
• Kawano Michiari raided with two small boats, lost his uncle to an arrow, and boarded a Mongol ship despite wounds.
• Estimates put the 1281 losses at 60 to 90 percent of the invasion force; captured southern Chinese troops were spared but enslaved.
• With no conquered land to give out as rewards, impoverished samurai turned resentful and some became wokou pirates.

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In 1904, with Russia's Pacific Fleet blockaded at Port Arthur, Tsar Nicholas II sent the Baltic Fleet, renamed the Second Pacific Squadron, on a seven-month, 18,000-mile voyage to the Far East. Its newest battleships drew too much water for the Suez Canal, so they sailed around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, fed by 60 German colliers and 30 to 40 ship-to-ship coaling sessions in heat above 120 degrees below decks. In the North Sea the jittery fleet mistook British trawlers at Dogger Bank for Japanese torpedo boats, opened fire for 20 minutes, killed fishermen, and nearly brought Britain into the war. By the time Admiral Rozhestvensky reached Asian waters, fouled hulls held his fleet to nine knots.

On May 27, 1905, the brightly lit hospital ship Orel gave the fleet away in the fog of the Tsushima Strait, and the scout Shinano Maru radioed its position to Admiral Togo Heihachiro. Togo raised the Z flag aboard the Mikasa, made a dangerous turn under fire, and crossed the Russian T. Japanese high explosive shells loaded with Shimose powder burned the Russian ships from the top down, and night torpedo attacks finished the survivors. The next morning Rear Admiral Nebogatov surrendered, and Togo kept firing until the ships stopped and changed flags. Russia lost all 11 battleships; Japan lost three torpedo boats and 117 men.

• The fleet needed 500,000 tons of coal for the voyage, and coal dust coated food, decks, and lungs.
• The battleship Oslyabya became the first modern armored warship sunk entirely by gunfire.
• The Borodino exploded after a hit to a magazine, and only one man from her crew survived.
• Japan's victory let its ally Britain bring Royal Navy ships home to the North Sea, feeding Germany's dreadnought arms race before World War I.
• A young officer aboard the cruiser Nisshin lost two fingers in the battle; one more would have ended the naval career of Yamamoto Isoroku.

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Under the 1977 additions to the Geneva Conventions, a fighter counts as a mercenary only if he meets all six criteria of Article 47, including private gain, pay well above regular troops, and non-residence in the conflict zone. Miss one and the label, with its legal consequences, falls away. This episode traces how the hired soldier went from the gold standard of ancient warfare to an outlaw and back again. It begins in 401 BC, when the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger bought 10,000 Greek hoplites for his coup, won at Cunaxa, and died, leaving Xenophon to march the stranded contractors north to the Black Sea. Carthage rented Balearic slingers, Byzantine emperors bought loyalty through distance with the Varangian Guard, and Italian city-states signed condotte with captains like Francesco Sforza, who took Milan for himself.

After the Treaty of Brétigny paused the Hundred Years War in 1360, unemployed free companies plundered France, and the horrors of the Thirty Years War pushed states toward standing armies, uniforms, and oaths of allegiance. The Hessians of the American Revolution were rented regiments, auxiliaries in the language of the era, and today's Gurkhas and Foreign Legion escape the label through integration into state command. Decolonization revived the soldier of fortune in Mad Mike Hoare and Bob Denard, then corporations took over: private military companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombian veterans hired for Yemen, Russia's Wagner Group, and now hacking collectives hired for deniable cyber attacks.

• Balearic shepherds trained with slings from childhood could hurl lead projectiles with the force the episode compares to an early handgun.
• Harald Hardrada, the future king of Norway, served as a commander in the Byzantine Varangian Guard.
• Condottieri battles were often performative and low in casualties, since a rival captain might be next season's employer.
• American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, hired by the British South Africa Company, inspired the Boy Scouts and helped romanticize the adventurer archetype.
• Colombia's 1994 Decree 356 let private entities arm security units and turned the country into a recruiting hub for private military companies.

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The word knight comes from the Old English cniht, meaning boy or servant. In Charles Martel's 8th century, elite warriors still rode to battle and fought on foot. Charlemagne's long campaigns needed fast mounted troops, the stirrup let riders brace a couched lance behind the weight of a galloping horse, and loyal horsemen were rewarded with grants of land called benefices. In 864 Charles the Bald's Edict of Pîtres called on every man who could afford a horse to arm against Viking, Magyar and Saracen raids and made fiefs hereditary, turning local mounted warriors into the real government of their regions. Training began at seven as a page, continued from about 14 as a squire, and ended in a ritual bath, an all-night vigil and the dubbing.

Early knights often preyed on the people around them, and the Church answered with the code of chivalry, which reached its height in the Crusades and the military orders. Chivalry protected only other knights, who were ransomed while common soldiers were killed. Tournaments, heraldry and Arthurian romance filled peacetime until Don Quixote mocked the ideal. Swiss pikemen at Nancy in 1477 and firearms ended the knight's military role, and knighthood survived as an honor.

• Kite shields grew long at the bottom to cover a rider's exposed leg, then shrank to the heater shape once leg armor improved.
• Against plate armor, knights used maces, poleaxes and war hammers rather than swords, aiming to dent steel and break bones beneath it.
• Crusaders met the Islamic code of furusiyya, which blended horsemanship and weapons training with ethics and influenced later chivalry.
• The loser of a joust surrendered his horse and armor to the winner, and the pig-faced bascinet was shaped to deflect a lance point.
• In 1149 the Order of the Hatchet gave women who defended Tortosa in Spain full knightly status, tax exemptions included.