Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the Fall of the Roman Republic up to the death of Julius Caesar.----more---- 2000 years ago Rome was a mighty empire. It used to have Kings. However, the people of Rome decided that the Kings were cruel so they got rid them. After that they chose their rulers by elections. They promised to never have a King again. Rome got more powerful. Her mighty armies conquered other countries because they were very disciplined. At first the Roman farmers would also be soldiers and then go back to their crops when the fighting was finished. As there was more and more fighting, further and further away Rome needed to have soldiers who were just soldiers. However, they didn’t know what jobs the soldiers could do when they had finished being a soldier. The generals had a good idea. They decided to give the land that Rome had conquered to the soldiers. This made the soldier fight extra hard. However, it also made the soldiers very loyal to the generals who were going to give them land. Over time the soldiers became more loyal to their generals than to Rome. Many Roman generals got rich and powerful. No one more so than Julius Caesar. He was a brilliant general. He conquered Gaul which was the Roman name for France. However, the senators back home were suspicious of Caesar. They told him to come home alone without his army. Caesar invaded instead. He conquered Rome and became the most powerful Roman. He chased his enemies and defeated them. Then he met an Egyptian Queen called Cleopatra and she became his girlfriend. Back in Rome the senators were worried that Caesar wanted to make himself a King. One day they stabbed him to death in the senate. Even his friend Brutus stabbed him. The people who stabbed him thought they had won. They thought that they had saved Rome from having a King. However, they had forgotten that Caesar had friends, that his army loved him and so did the people of Rome. In two weeks time we will tell the rest of the story and how Rome got its first Emperor. Patrons Club If you liked this episode then do please join our Patron’s club. We have exclusive episodes there. You can join at www.patreon.com/historystorytime
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the siege of Vienna from 1683. This was one of the most important battles and sieges in history. ----more----The mighty Ottoman Empire had conquered the old Eastern Roman Empire and the great city of Constantinople. It ruled a massive area in the middle east, Turkey and the Balkans. In Europe it faced the Holy Roman Empire whose capital was in Vienna. 350 years ago the Ottomans decided to attack Vienna. They assembled a mighty army. Vienna was poorly defended. Its walls were old. They only had a small army in the city. The Holy Roman Emperor fled the city. The Ottomans had huge cannon. They blasted holes in the walls of Vienna. Then the Ottomans attacked. Again and again they attacked the walls. The Viennese defended their city. But they were running out of soldiers. It seemed as if they city would fall. Meanwhile the Holy Roman Emperor had been asking other countries for help. His German allies agreed to help. So too did the King of Poland. But would they be in time? As the Ottoman army gathered for its final assault they heard trumpets in the hills around Vienna. The Germans and Poles had arrived. The Ottomans quickly turned around to face them. At first the Germans charged down the hills. The Ottomans fought them and the battle was in doubt. Then the bugles sounded again. A loud fluttering echoed across the battlefield. Then came the sound of thousands of horses hooves. The Polish Winged Hussars thundered into the Ottoman lines. These were brave Polish soldiers with armour like knights. They had massive feathered wings on their backs. Just then the Viennese soldiers charged out of Vienna. The Ottoman army ran for its life. Vienna and Europe were saved. If you liked this story you might like to join our Patrons’ Club. You can find exclusive episodes there. You can join at www.patreon.com/historystorytime.
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the inspirational life of Harriet Tubman. She was an enslaved person in America who escaped to freedom and then helped others escape too. She later fought to free other enslaved people in America.----more---- Harriet was born in the South of the United States 150 years ago. Her parents were enslaved so she too was enslaved. She was forced to work for a white family and help raise their children. When she made a mistake she was beaten. She was even beaten when the baby she had to look after cried. When she got older she was forced to do hard work in the field. Once a metal block was thrown at her head and it badly hurt her. When Harriet was older she got determined to escape. She managed to escape using a secret route called the underground railroad. At first she was in the north of the United States. However, after a while even that was not safe. So she went to live in British Canada. Although she was safe there she worried about th...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) have been following the news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They decide to tell the story of the History of Ukraine going back over a 1000 years. ----more---- Their story starts with the Vikings. A thousand years ago Viking explorers left Scandinavia. Many of them went West and attacked England and France. Some even found America. Others went East and began exploring the huge rivers in what is now Russia. Eventually they found a town on a hill by a river. They attacked the town and took it for themselves. They called it Kyiv. They founded a mighty empire called the Kyivan Rus. They ruled all the land between what is now Kyiv and Scandinavia. Kiev was a mighty capital city. Moscow was just a small village that they ruled. They got rich from trade with Constantinople and became Christians. Then the Mongols came from the East. They destroyed Kyivan Rus. They burned many cities and towns – Moscow was destroyed and Kyiv conquered. For hundreds of...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the Wars of the Roses. This was the civil war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster that was fought in the time of knights and castles to see who would rule England.----more---- 600 years ago two families had a claim to the throne of England: the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. They were powerful noble families. They each had a banner with a Rose on it. The Lancastrians had a red rose; the Yorkists had a white rose. At first the Lancastrians were more powerful. So their Duke became the King of England. He and his son were at first very successful Kings. They fought wars in France. One king won a great victory at the Battle of Agincourt. Then Joan of Arc came and helped to reconquer France. The English were defeated. By this time the Lancastrian King was called Henry VI. He was not a very good king. He had a strong wife called Marguerite and she would have been a much better ruler than him. Eventually the Duke of York g...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of Genghis Khan.----more---- Genghis Khan was born 800 years ago in Mongolia. Except he was not called Genghis Khan then. His name was Temujin. He was the son of a chief of a small tribe. His father was poisoned and Temujin and his tribe had to flee. Life was hard growing up. Already though, Temujin was proving to be a fierce fighter. When he brother stole some food, Temujin killed him. Then Temujin married a wife from another tribe called Borte. Together the tribes were stronger. However, a different tribe attacked them. They kidnapped Borte. Timojen asked another tribe to help and attacked the tribe who had kidnapped Borte. He killed them and rescued her. Now Timujin was getting powerful. However, people in his tribe disagreed over who should have the important jobs. Timujin thought that people should have the jobs if they would be good at them. Some people thought that only rich nobles should have the best jobs. Those people were le...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the great explorer Captain Cook who was the first European to discover Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.----more---- Before we even start our episode Sophie and Ellie point out that there were already people living there who did not need to be discovered as they had their own cultures, languages and homes. However, we decide to tell the story anyway as Captain Cook was still a great explorer . James Cook was born 300 years ago in Britain. Britain was a powerful country who got rich through trading and from her colonies. James Cook was born into a poor family. When he was 16 he went to become a grocer. The grocer’s was by the sea and James used to look out the sea and wonder what it would be like to be a sailor. After a year and a half he went to sea himself. He became a sailor on a ship which carried coal from Newcastle to London. It was a boring sailing job. However, James Cook spent his time learning all the mathematics that you...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the history of the Christmas Carol. Songs used to be sung by pagans thousands of years ago to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Christmas was at the same time as the Winter Solstice so the Church carried on with the singing but instead made the songs about Christmas. The first Christmas Carol we know of was from 2000 years ago and was called the Angels Hymn. All the early carols were in Latin and over time people stopped speaking Latin – and they stopped singing the Latin carols. Then around 800 years ago a monk called St Francis of Assisi wrote the first nativity play. He had songs in the play to make it more interesting. He also had these songs in people’s own language so they could understand it. Many of the songs became so popular that Minstrels would sing them. Many of the carols from his period have survived. While Shepherds watched their flocks by night is over 500 years old. However, 400 years ago in England the Puritans came to power. Th...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of Blitzkrieg – how the Germans used tanks to conquer much of Europe at the start of World War Two. In World War One Britain invented the tank. America, Russia and Britain used tanks to defeat Germany. However, after the war people in those countries did not want to fight any more wars. They made their armies small. They also decided to defend in the future not to attack. The French built a line of forts for defence. They did not have many tanks and those they did have they used for defence. The Germans though had other plans. After Hitler came to power his built a powerful army for Germany again. This army had many tanks. The German generals invented a new way of fighting. It involved lots of tanks in one place smashing through the enemy lines. They would be helped by planes and paratroopers. They called this type of fighting, Lighting War. In German that is Blitzkrieg. It relied on their tanks – in German they were called Panzers. ...
Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the invention of the Tank.----more---- At the outbreak of World War One, armies had infantry, artillery and cavalry. Many of the general had been in the cavalry themselves. However, once war started everyone realized that cavalry was not going to be very useful in this war. Machine guns fired bullets so fast that the cavalry were shot dead before they could finish their charge. The war soon became trench warfare as soldiers dug trenches to keep safe from the bullets. You couldn’t put a horse in a trench. The area between the trenches was also very dangerous. There were craters, mud, barbed wire and machine guns. Thousands were killed in attacks on enemy trenches. What was needed was a way of crossing the mud, crushing the barbed wire and not getting shot by the machine guns. British engineers came up with the answer. They wanted to build a vehicle which could do all that. However, the person who got most excited by it was the perso...