Turenne was a major figure in France during the golden age of the Ancien Regime. Napoleon said his “audacity grew with years and experience” as some of his greatest victories were when he was in his mid-60s. He was a great general in an age of greats, a brilliant strategist, and was a supporter of the common soldier in an age of aristocracy.…

Frederick II was the grandson of Barbarossa and of Roger the Great of Sicily. He inherited kingdoms from both lineages, and then lost and regained them both. He wound up ruling a vast territory and at least in some of his lands, began shaping his kingdom in a way that would be a lead-in to post-feudal Europe, even if he didn’t quite get there himse…

Frederick Barbarossa was succeeded by his sons, Henry and Philip. Both were capable rulers who looked to follow in their father’s footsteps and expand imperial power. Henry had significant successes, but neither lived long enough to truly become remarkable emperors. And they were succeeded by the rival Welf clan, although that King, Otto, didn’t la…

Frederick Barbarossa was Holy Roman Emperor in the 12th century. He forced his way into the imperial office, and then forced the office back into relevance after a century or so of decline. He was an incredibly energetic leader, a strong general and politician. He expanded the power of his empire, and is considered one of the greatest of the Holy R…

Yuknoom led the powerful Maya kingdom ruled by Snake Dynasty. He installed vassal kings in neighboring cities and succeeded in dividing the royal line of his main rival, the city of Tikal. He eventually sacked Tikal itself, and continued to grow the power and influence of his city, in what many historians consider the golden age for the Snake Kingd…

Harsha took over a growing kingdom in eastern Punjab, during a time of divided polities after the collapse of the huge Gupta Empire. He expanded his lands east along the Ganges river, absorbing kingdoms along the way, before uniting lands to the west and further south, eventually creating an empire that ruled almost all of Northern India.…

Kanishka led the Kushan Empire at its height, connecting China and India to lands west in the early era of the Silk Road. Kanishka was a strong leader who expanded the empire, stabilized it, and help connect cultures and cultural ideas across Asia.By The Almost Forgotten

Mithridates took charge of a relatively small kingdom that nominally held lands south and east of the Caspian sea. By the end of his reign, he had turned it into a powerful empire that ruled from Syria to India, and had grown to be the major rival to the power to their west, the Roman Empire.By The Almost Forgotten

Bardylis united the tribes of Illyria in the late 5th and early 4th century BC, created a powerful kingdom that held sway over Macedon and threatened the Peloponnese, and may have helped drive the development of the combined warfare that would allow Alexander to conquer the Persian Empire.By The Almost Forgotten

Argishti ruled the ancient kingdom of Urartu, located in today's Armenia and Eastern Turkey. During Argishti's reign in the 8th century BC, Urartu held sway over its powerful neighbor, the Neo-Assyrian EmpireBy The Almost Forgotten

Gaspar Yanga was possibly born as royalty, although no one is sure, but when he died he was certainly considered by many to be a king. Captured in Africa, brought to the Americas, he soon escaped enslavement near Veracruz in today’s Mexico. He soon became the leader of a community of others who escaped, but they were hunted by the Spanish authoriti…

Abbas the Great, the shah of the Safavid empire, was great military leader, reformer, and diplomat. He took a shrinking, disintegrating Persian empire and enabled it to grow its greatest extent, in no small part because of his own personal military campaignsBy The Almost Forgotten

Ram Khamhaeng was the king of Sukhothai, and he ruled on of the first truly Tai-led kingdoms that was able to unite the surrounding states into something bigger. His success helped to unify the people and define the culture of what would persist in Thailand to this day.By The Almost Forgotten

Somerled was a Norse-Gael like born in what is today western Scotland, on the lands bordering the Irish Sea and the North Channel. He became King of the Isles, ruling many of those that the Vikings had taken over of the prior centuries. Despite his Viking heritage, while much of eastern Scotland was Anglo-Normanizing, he helped served as a bridge f…

Tamar the Great built on the legacy of her great grandfather David the Builder. Under her rule, Georgia grew to its largest geographic extent, held off enemies and conquered new lands. Culture flourished under her rule, leading many to consider it the peak of Georgia’s golden age.By The Almost Forgotten

David became king of Georgia after it had been devastated by years of Turkish pillaging. He pushed the invaders out and restored the fortunes of his relatively new kingdom. By the time he died, Georgia neared the apex of its power, ruled most of the southern caucuses, and had entered a Golden Age.By The Almost Forgotten

One of several Viet leaders who helped his land on the road to sovereignty, Dinh Bo Linh united the land of An Nam, a Chinese protectorate that had gained some amount of autonomy, and brought it to full independence as the Kingdom of Nam Viet.By The Almost Forgotten

Goujian was the king of Yue at the end of Ancient China’s Spring and Autumn Period. He was defeated by the state of Wu and taken captive, where he served as a slave and plotted his revenge. Eventually returning to his own kingdom, his dedication to getting his revenge has become something of legends.…

In the 20th century BC, Gungunum made himself king of the Sumerian city of Larsa. He brought Larsa from an inconsequential minor city to the dominant city state in Sumer, allowing him to claim the title of King of Sumer. His was the last dynasty that could be considered Sumerian, before the region shifted to what we now call Babylonia…

Jacob Kettler was the Baltic German Duke of Courland and Semigallia, part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century. Kettler decided the best way to modernize his duchy was to copy the major powers of Western Europe, by making the Duchy of Courland a colonial powerBy The Almost Forgotten

Matthias Corvinus became King of Hungary as it was beginning to deal with the Ottoman threat. He united the fractured kingdom, bringing powerful magnates to heel and creating a strong centralized state. He created a significant power in Southeast Europe that was able to hold of the Ottomans and take lands from the Holy Roman Empire.…

Margaret lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and was the daughter of the King of Denmark. Despite obstacles, and general opposition to ruling queens at the time, she not only became the Queen of Denmark, she also was able to gain the crown of two more Scandinavian kingdoms, uniting them in a personal union that last more than century.…

Alauddin Khalji became the Sultan of Delhi, and greatly expanded the kingdom. He fended off multiple Mongol invasions, and he in turn invaded most of the Indian subcontinent to his south. He turned a relatively small Sultanate into a great power, and ruled over most of India.By The Almost Forgotten

Baibars was the Sultan of Egypt and Syria in the 13th century. Born on the Eurasian Steppe, he was enslaved as a teen, and became a slave soldier. He rose through the ranks to become a general, and eventually the Sultan of Cairo. He helped stop the Mongol advance into the Levant, and effectively ended the Crusades in the Middle East. And he stabili…

The Lombards made their way into Italy in the 6th century, and were the bridge between the rule there of Roman Empires, both Western and Eastern, and the Holy Roman Empire. Liutprand was perhaps their greatest king, pulling together a kingdom from the various disunited Lombard dukedoms and creating a state that was the most powerful one on the peni…

Songsten Gampo was the king of a small state in southern Tibet, which had only just begun to expand beyond its perhaps centuries-old domain. From this, he created a long-lasting Tibetan Empire, which ruled most of the Tibetan Plateau for centuries and, thanks in no small part to Songsten Gampo, became the center of Buddhism for perhaps the whole wo…

Dion was born in Syracuse and became a trusted advisor to the city’s tyrant. But Dion’s relationship with the next tyrant was no so hot, and after falling out, Dion became a reformer. As a student of Plato, he saw an opportunity to implement the philosopher’s ideal Republic, and he seized the moment to try.…

Leukon was the tyrant, then king, of the Cimmerian Bosporus, a territory on the Crimean Peninsula, at the very edge of the Greek world. He took the territory, capitalized on its relationship to the rest of the Greek world to create an important Hellenized kingdom that would last for centuries.By The Almost Forgotten

Shutruk-Nakhunte was the most powerful king of Elam. He took this often times disunited culture, and created an empire out of it. Elam existed for thousands of years, but under Shutruk-Nakhunte they managed to be one of the great powers in the region, a rarity for them despite their long-lived civilization.…

Burgundy is in turmoil after the death of Charles. His daughter Mary is his heir, but France, as well as the Netherlands, aren’t going to allow her to take power easily. Burgundy, though, survives in some way, beyond Mary, through her marriage into the powerful Habsburg family, and leaves a lasting legacy, at least in the Low Countries…

Charles inherited a truly powerful state in Europe upon the death of his father. He was learned and brave, a strong military commander, and looked like he was going to be a leading man in European affairs for generations. But his obsession with his eastern frontier, coupled with a few tactical blunders, made it so that never happened, and ended Bur…

Philip the Good became the new Duke of Burgundy after his father’s murder. He worked to expand Burgundy’s power, and ruled during its height in a way that kept it strong and secure. But he also missed real opportunities to make it something more.By The Almost Forgotten

With Philip the Bold’s death, his strategy of adding more territories to his heir is fulfilled, and John the Fearless inherits what is becoming a Burgundian state. John is even more ambitious than his father, seeking to control France, add to his own territory, and use any means at his disposal to accomplish his goals…

The history of the Duchy of Burgundy continues with the first Valois Duke, Philip the Bold. Philip was a gifted statesman who help grow the duchy into a state that would eventually rival France itself.By The Almost Forgotten

Burgundy is a region in eastern France, which had once been an independent Germanic Kingdom. It became a Duchy of France before entering a Golden Age in the 14th and 15th century and turning into something even biggerBy The Almost Forgotten

Nzinga was queen of an African kingdom in today’s Angola. She fought with, and at times allied with, the various colonial and indigenous powers in the region, lost most of her kingdom, gained another, and was able to resist European occupation and keep her kingdom relatively free for decades.By The Almost Forgotten

Bayinnaung was a prince and leading general of a small Burmese kingdom. He helped lead it to become a large empire, only to watch it dissolve when his king was killed. But he quickly restored it, before expanding it more himself, creating the largest land empire in Southeast Asia.By The Almost Forgotten

Jan Zizka was dead, but the Hussite cause was not. They continued to fight the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. They found a new leader in Prokop the Great, and were able to keep Sigismund at bay, but internal turmoil helped splintered the Hussites, but also helped usher in a real compromise.…

The Hussites, now fighting both the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, find the leader they need to survive against impossible odds in Jan Zizka. Zizka was an incredible commander, who never lost a battle, and helped lay the groundwork for two centuries of a semi-independent Bohemian Church.By The Almost Forgotten

The Hussite Wars started in 1419 with the first defenestration of Prague. Here we discuss the road to the war, including the situation in Bohemia, and the preaching and then killing of Jan Hus.By The Almost Forgotten

Matilda was the Margrave of Tuscany and for a time was the most powerful leader in northern Italy. She acted as an almost independent leader rather than a subject of the Holy Roman Empire, fighting with it over policy and supporting papal authority over imperial in an effort to reform and revitalize the church…

Abd al Rahman, once a legitimate heir to the largest empire in the world, had to hide and flee in exile when his dynasty was overthrown and his family was destroyed. But he wound up in Spain, where he consolidated the fractured Arab conquest and reignited his dynasty.By The Almost Forgotten

Cyaxares was the king of the Medes, who helped destroy the mighty and terrifying Neo-Assyrian Empire, create a massive empire based in the small region of Media, and laid the foundation of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.By The Almost Forgotten

Piye was the King of Kush at a time when Egypt was weakened. He ruled over southern Egypt before trouble to his north brought him into conflict with the Egyptian kinglets in the Lower Nile region up North. He defeated them, and brought the Nubian Kingdom of Kish to it’s greatest heightsBy The Almost Forgotten

Ur-Nammu was the first king of the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur. He helped restore native dominance in Sumer after centuries of foreign rule, instituted reforms and rebuilt the Sumerian infrastructure, and helped usher in the final era of Sumerian rule in Mesopotamia under the Neo-Sumerian Empire.By The Almost Forgotten

Season 5 is coming, and here's a little previewBy The Almost Forgotten

The 30 Years War has helped rekindle the 80 Years War, and the Dutch are again fighting for their nation's survival. But now they do so as a burgeoning major power on the European stage, led by William the Silent's youngest son, the new Prince of Orange, Frederick Henry. The Dutch stave off conquest and are formerly recognized by Spain and the rest…

Maurice continued to lead the Dutch Republic's army to victories, while Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ran the government. They negotiated a 12 Years Truce with Spain, but the outbreak of the 30 Years War brought renewed hostilities in the 80 Years WarBy The Almost Forgotten

Alexander was stuck in the Netherlands with a large army, so he returned to his old gig of attacking and taking Dutch cities. This time the Dutch had an answer, though, in the form of Maurice of Nassau, William the Silent's sonBy The Almost Forgotten

Without William, the Dutch Republic presses on, and they get the Earl of Leicester to help them out against Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma, and Philip's governor in the Netherlands. The Dutch begin to run as a republic. Philip launches the Spanish Armada to take Farnese and his troops from the Low Countries to England.…