History’s great battles, stage by stage
Each battle is drawn on today’s satellite imagery and terrain, with every brigade, regiment or company moving stage by stage through the fight. One battle from every war is free to explore; the full atlas of 22 battles unlocks for Patreon members.
marks battles with an episode on American Marksman — DOPE HISTORY, where Ronnie breaks down the shots that shaped them.
American Revolution
- 1775Bunker Hill
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On 17 June 1775, two months after Lexington and Concord, New England militia fortified Breed's Hill on the Charlestown peninsula overlooking besieged Boston. General Howe's regulars made…
- 1777Saratoga
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In the autumn of 1777, General John Burgoyne's army, advancing south from Canada to cut New England off from the other colonies, was stopped by Horatio Gates's Americans on Bemis Heights…
- 1781Yorktown
Free
In September and October 1781, Washington's Continental Army and Rochambeau's French expeditionary force trapped Lord Cornwallis's British army at Yorktown, Virginia, after the French fleet…
Napoleonic Wars
- 1815Quatre Bras and Ligny
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On 16 June 1815, two days before Waterloo, Napoleon fought two battles at once. At Ligny he attacked Blücher's Prussian army and, after six hours of savage village fighting, broke its…
- 1815Waterloo
Free
On 18 June 1815, Napoleon's Armée du Nord attacked the Duke of Wellington's Anglo-Allied army on the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean, south of Brussels, hoping to destroy it before the Prussians…
Texas Revolution
- 1836The Alamo
Free
From 23 February to 6 March 1836, during the Texas Revolution, General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican army besieged the Alamo, a former Spanish mission in San Antonio de Béxar held…
- 1836San Jacinto
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On 21 April 1836, six weeks after the fall of the Alamo, Sam Houston's army of about 900 Texians and Tejanos surprised General Antonio López de Santa Anna's camp beside Buffalo Bayou and…
American Civil War
- 1861First Bull Run
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On 21 July 1861 Brigadier General Irvin McDowell's Union army, marching from Washington, attacked the Confederate armies of Beauregard and Johnston along Bull Run near Manassas Junction…
- 1862Shiloh
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On 6 April 1862, Albert Sidney Johnston's Confederate army surprised Grant's Army of the Tennessee in its camps near Shiloh Church and Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. The Union…
- 1862Antietam
Free
On 17 September 1862, McClellan's Army of the Potomac attacked Lee's Army of Northern Virginia along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, ending Lee's first invasion of the North. The…
- 1863Chancellorsville
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From 30 April to 6 May 1863, Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac, more than 130,000 strong, tried to turn Robert E. Lee's 60,000-man army out of Fredericksburg by marching around its flank…
- 1863Gettysburg
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From 1 to 3 July 1863, Lee's second invasion of the North met Meade's Army of the Potomac at the crossroads town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. On the first day the Confederates drove two…
- 1863Fort Wagner
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In July 1863 Union forces under General Quincy Gillmore landed on Morris Island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor to get within range of Fort Sumter. Two assaults on Battery Wagner failed…
- 1863Chickamauga
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From 18 to 20 September 1863, Bragg's Army of Tennessee, reinforced by Longstreet's corps from Virginia, attacked Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland in the woods along West Chickamauga…
Plains Wars
- 1866Fetterman Fight
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On 21 December 1866, during Red Cloud's War over the Bozeman Trail, Captain William J. Fetterman led 80 soldiers and two civilians out of Fort Phil Kearny in present-day Wyoming to relieve…
- 1876Little Bighorn
Free
On 25 and 26 June 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's 7th Cavalry attacked a great camp of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory.…
World War I
- 1918Belleau Wood
Free
In June 1918 the US 4th Marine Brigade, part of the Army's 2nd Division, fought for three weeks to drive German troops out of Belleau Wood, a hunting preserve a few miles north-west of…
- 1918Saint-Mihiel
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From 12 to 16 September 1918 the US First Army under General John J. Pershing, with French support, attacked the Saint-Mihiel salient south-east of Verdun — the first offensive planned and…
World War II
- 1944Omaha Beach
Free
On 6 June 1944, the US 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions landed on Omaha, the most heavily defended of the five Allied beaches in Normandy, facing German strongpoints on bluffs that commanded…
- 1945Iwo Jima
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From 19 February to 26 March 1945, three divisions of the V Amphibious Corps fought to take Iwo Jima, an eight-square-mile volcanic island halfway between the Marianas and Japan, whose…
Vietnam War
- 1965Ia Drang
Free
From 14 to 17 November 1965 the US 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fought the first major battle between American and North Vietnamese regular troops, in the Ia Drang valley of the Central…
- 1968Hue
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The Battle of Hue, 31 January – 3 March 1968, was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Tet Offensive. PAVN and Viet Cong forces seized most of the old imperial capital in a surprise…
How placement confidence is scored
Every battle starts from a primary source map and is then checked against independent fixed points — monuments, markers, surviving buildings, archaeology and terrain. Each gets a score out of 100: up to 40 for the source (official surveys and atlases score highest), 30 for how closely the fixed points agree, 20 for the level of detail (brigade or regiment scores highest) and 10 for corroboration. In each war, the battle with the highest score is the free one.