History in Motion

Prussian Field Artillery on Campaign in France, 1870 You are looking at Prussian field artillerymen at Torcy, France, in September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War.

Prussian artillerymen man a siege battery during the Franco-Prussian War, believed to be at Châtillon outside Paris, 1870–71.

A British sniper emerging from his front-line post near Cambrin, France, 6 February 1918. A soldier of the 6th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, steps out of a sandbagged position in a front-line trench.

Cathcart’s Hill cemetery during the Siege of Sevastopol, photographed by Roger Fenton in April 1855. Small British graves are scattered across the exposed ground, while four soldiers stand beside the low stone wall on the left. Two of them hold telescopes.

Officers and men of the 13th Light Dragoons photographed in the Crimea by Roger Fenton in 1855. Several of the men in this remarkable group had ridden in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava on 25 October 1854.

French infantrymen occupying a front-line trench in the Argonne, January 1915. A French soldier takes aim with his rifle over the parapet of a narrow trench, while two comrades stand immediately behind him.

Two French soldiers pose for the camera beside a sandbagged dugout during the First World War, probably between 1915 and 1918.

The man who was photographed as one of the last surviving veterans of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, 1912. Except he had never fought in the war.

German prisoners of war carry a wounded comrade across the devastated Western Front, c. 1918. A group of captured German soldiers struggles to manoeuvre a stretcher across broken ground, apparently negotiating a trench or shell hole.

The commanders of three Allied armies photographed together during the Crimean War, 6 June 1855.

The REAL British Redcoats of the Zulu War (1879) British soldiers of the 24th Regiment of Foot, photographed during the era of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Armed with Martini-Henry rifles.

A German prisoner of war lights a cigarette for a wounded British soldier during the First World War, c. 1916–1918. The German soldier, wearing a steel helmet and carrying his field equipment, offers a light to a British infantryman whose head and neck are wrapped in bandages.

Japanese Officers at Lunch During the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905

German infantrymen wearing gas masks emerge from a cloud of poison gas in Flanders during the First World War, c. 1916–1918.

An unidentified American infantry drummer photographed during the Mexican-American War, 1846–1848.

National Guardsmen pose on a barricade during the Paris Commune, March 1871. This remarkable photograph shows approximately 57 armed men of the Paris National Guard gathered around a barricade on the Chaussée de Ménilmontant, in eastern Paris.

A Canadian infantryman covered in mud returns from the front lines, c. 1918. A lone Canadian soldier makes his way along a deeply rutted road, his uniform, equipment and boots heavily coated in mud.

Passengers gather outside the White Star Line offices at Queenstown, Ireland, on 11 April 1912, waiting to begin the final stage of their journey aboard RMS Titanic. Today the town is known as Cobh.

French infantrymen wearing gas masks in a trench during the First World War, 1917. A group of French soldiers, or poilus, stand crowded together in a narrow trench, their faces concealed behind protective gas masks.

Men of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, photographed at Pinetown, Natal, in September 1879. Only eight months earlier, B Company had formed the core of the British garrison that defended Rorke’s Drift on 22–23 January.