Bitesize Battles

Fighting for freedom is one of the supremely powerful motivators behind conflict. Whether it’s slaves rising up, as they did under Spartacus in the Roman Republic and Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti, American and French revolutionaries throwing out the established order, or Geronimo in a heroic fight for the liberty of his people, freedom has galvanised and enthused the oppressed.

And we explore what it means today in the face of Chinese treatment of the Uighur people and the fact that the Human Freedom Index still defines 25 African nations as some of the least free in the world.

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Whether it's for living space, resources, religion, culture, power, wealth or simply protecting your home, humans like to fight over land.

From the largest invasion in history, Operation Barbarossa, to the ongoing Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, we explore history's lessons on why land has always been one of major causes of Why We Fight.

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In their power to spark wars, ideologies can be just as powerful as religions. Once the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment began a societal awakening about human existence and our relationship with our rulers, political revolutions swept much of the world - usually violently.

Come with us as we discuss ideology's impact on war and conflict, in national revolutions and international power plays.

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Religious rivalry is behind some of history's most intractable and bitter conflicts. Join us as we explore some of them, and why religion looks set to continue to create hotbed's of conflict for years to come.

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From farmland to gold mines, and spices to oil, competition over resources has been one of the single greatest sources of human conflict for millennia. And it looks set to continue to be.

We'll explore the motivations behind why resources create conflict and some of the empires, wars and tragedies this competition has created.

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Why do we fight? Why go to war? This series looks at 9 of history's biggest motivations and causes for conflict, and a final episode on the psychology of the individual and what drives people to risk life and limb by going to war.

In this first episode we look at the power of Ego, and how time and again it has propelled leaders, and the men and women who follow them, to cause nations and empires to rise and fall.

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William Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge had shattered the English psyche, but Bannockburn was the turning point. Now Scotland had to push a final time to win the independence she had been fighting for, for so long.

But Edward II's England was riven with dissent, and powerful factions were about to rise up and demand firmer action against the Scots.

The die was cast and Scotland's freedom was in the balance. 

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After Longshanks' used the world's largest ever trebuchet, War Wolf, to batter Stirling Castle into submission, he had captured William Wallace and had him brutally executed in London in 1305. Once again, it seemed that Scotland's destiny as an independent Kingdom was doomed.

But inspired by Wallace's stand and appalled by Longshanks' brutality, there rose a new and even greater leader - Robert the Bruce - who would lead Scotland to triumph over England in a victory even more shattering than Stirling Bridge had been.

In 1314, he led a force of just 6,000 men to take on Longhshanks' son, Edward II, and an English army of 20,000 men. They met at a small river, called the Bannock Burn.

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Longshanks seems in control of Scotland - he has the towns and cities, he has the castles, and he even has the King.

But soon to rise would be a Scottish Knight, William Wallace, for whom living under English domination was unbearable. He and other leaders, like Andrew de Moray, roused the country to rebellion and gathered an army with which he fought the English at Stirling Bridge and Falkirk.

This famous freedom fighter would shatter the image of English invincibility and be a Scottish talisman for centuries to come.

Find out what happened at Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, what fate befell William Wallace, and what it meant for Scottish Independence.

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The opening episode of the rollercoaster ride of the Scottish Wars of Independence.

On a pitch-dark night, Scotland's King Alexander III urged his horse to ever-greater speeds, galloping across vales and glens in a wind-driven storm.

He was hurrying to see his young and beautiful Queen, Yolande of Dreux. Alexander was 44, she just 22. It was her birthday the next day, and it's likely that Alexander was rushing to help her, let's say, see it in.

But in the lashing rain his horse lost its footing, causing them both to crash down a steep and rocky embankment. He was found the next morning on the sand of the shore. With a broken neck.

Little did he know that his lust for his young Queen was about to throw Scotland into decades of civil strife, and plunge it into a bitter war with England where it would struggle for its very existence.

Find out what happened and where the famous names of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Edward Longshanks fit in.

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