Ancient Warriors

The Assyrians conquered an empire from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea They plundered the great city of Babylon and enslaved the tribes of Israel Even Egyptian pharaohs paid them tribute Their army was the largest strongest and cruelest ever seen

The Celts seemed half man half beast They were as wild as the hills they emerged from In battle no one was more reckless or more fearless They were so frightening that their foes might turn and run before a blow was struck They fought for nothing less than victory and mocked death itself

On an autumn day almost 1000 years ago one of the greatest battles in history began Invaders struck England with armored knights and powerful horses The charge is stopped by a wall of English shields Before the sun sets the knights of France will either win England or be sent to an English grave

At the end of the second century AD a Roman soldier crossed the river Danube and left the civilized world behind him Trained to obey he never questioned orders to march into the unknown In the war to come victory would depend on this unflinching discipline It was the greatest weapon of the greatest army that the world had ever seen

Their revolutionary tactics would change the way war was fought forever They would march further than any soldiers had before them and crush all opposition In one afternoon they would defeat the proudest civilization of their day Led by the greatest general in history they would forge an empire that stretched from Greece to the Indies River

In the 7th century BC the ancient kingdom of Egypt was conquered Cities were burned temples were destroyed and people were cruelly cast aside Humiliated by his defeat the Pharaoh vowed to reclaim his country Out of the ashes rose an army burning with vengeance

They were soldiers unlike any before or since They knew no trade but war In 480 BC at Thermopylae they met an army 50 times their size and stood their ground For them the trumpets never sounded retreat Their name has become a simile for hardship willingly endured and death stoically facedthe Spartans

For five centuries the city that guarded the gateway between Europe and Asia Minor was known as Istanbul Before that it was Constantinople a Christian island in a Muslim sea It withstood every assault by the warriors of Allah but in 1453 the Ottoman emperor besieged the city with a new army of men an army of slaves The swords of Allah And the scourge of Christianity

Without warning they appeared one day in the east an unknown tribe from an unknown land masters of the horse and the bow They struck as swiftly as an arrow robbing burning killing passing over the land like locusts In the 5th century AD they swept across the plains of Europe to the gates of Rome itself The horsemen of the apocalypse The Huns

One thousand years after the crucifixion of Christ the holy city of Jerusalem was sieged by the Seljuk Turks Pope Urban II implored all Christians to unite in a great crusade His call was heeded by noblemen and commoners alike Among them was a new order of knights who pledged their lives to retake the holy landndashwarrior monks fighting for god ultimately betrayed by their own church

A scribe records that in 793 marauders from the north crossed the sea to England and shattered the peace Pagans in search of treasure they surprised the defenseless monastery of Lindisfarne For Christian Europe the darkest hour of the dark ages was about to strike at the hands of the Vikings

In the Scottish highlands hatreds are as old as the hills men die easier than feuds Where clan fights clan only one hatred can unite themmdashtheir hatred of the English Against the odds a band of warriors will help Scotland win its greatest victory and deal England one of its worst defeats

One thousand years after the death of Christ Ireland fights for its life against pagans from the north Outnumbered the Irish put their faith in one man A fanatical warrior destined to become a king and then a legend Before the last battle is over Ireland will know unity and betrayal in the same moment

In ancient India one creature was both a god and a weaponndashthe elephant Riding juggernauts Maurya soldiers forged one of historys largest empires

Twentyseven years after Columbus had discovered America Spanish adventurers stumbled onto a strange new world where boys were born to fight and warriors ate the flesh of their vanquished foesthe world of the Aztecs

In the year 1160 Japans two greatest clans fought a war of annihilation The leader of the Taira clan gathered his soldiers to hunt down his bitter rivals the Minamoto Few of the Minamoto survived not even their chief Minamotos young sons Yoritomo and Yoshitsune escaped They swore to take up the sword and avenge their father They would follow the path of honor or deathmdashthe way of the samurai

In the year 621 China was ruled by chaos Warlord fought warlord No one was safe not even the emperor His estates were seized his subjects murdered and his son taken hostage A peasant found the emperors imperial seal and took it to a monastery nearby The monks resolved to rescue the emperors son Despite their peaceful manner they knew 100 ways to kill a man They were the Shaolin masters of the

Behind its peaceful facade this Hawaii was a battleground Rival armies spanned across the land and no chief ruled supreme One would trydaring to link by force a chain of islands that had never been conquered

Far from the din of battle in feudal Japan the most powerful warlords live in luxury protected by mighty Samurai For the samurai war is regimented and honorable But another type of warrior stalks Japanthe Ninja Cunning courageous and cutthroat

When the American West was still wild the Sioux tribe was its master On the backs of their horses they swept across the plains At the battle of little bighorn Crazy Horse humbled a nation and won the greatest victory in the war for the west

A young tribe is under attack and a young chief faces his greatest test His genius and cruelty turn a band of farmhands into a weapon of conquest In time they will become the fiercest warriors in Africa and take on the mightiest army in the world