Today we're showing three pieces of artwork from our February 2026 series books! Let us know in the comments which books you'd like to see featured in our March 2026 Artwork Reveal!

Siege of Kazan 1552: Ivan the Terrible Breaks the Kazan Khanate

By Mark Galeotti

Illustrated by Angel García Pinto

SIEGE OF KAZAN, FEBRUARY 1548

By the time what was left of the Muscovite army reached Kazan in February 1548, their failure was essentially a foregone conclusion, and the resulting week-long siege was just a pro forma engagement to preserve some shred of honour. Here, one of the few Russian guns that made it to Kazan has been emplaced on the far bank of the Bulak River and is engaged in a desultory bombardment of the Khan’s Palace so long as its supplies of gunpowder last. In order to prevent it from being attacked by Kazan cavalry, it is being guarded by a small detachment of spearmen from Yaroslavl, flying its design of a black bear holding a poleaxe. The palace itself is a separate walled compound to the north of the city, containing the actual palace of the khan and the barracks of his personal retinue and the city’s main mosque, cut off from the main body of the city.

Artwork requested by Karl Dietrich. 

French Navy 1939–42: The Marine nationale in World War II

By Hugues Canuel

Illustrated by Adam Tooby

BATTLE OF KO CHANG

The battle of Ko Chang took place when a Vichy Navy flotilla launched a raid against a Thai naval squadron in retaliation for incursions by Thailand’s army into border provinces of French Indochina the previous months. Led by the light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet under the command of Captain Régis Bérenger, modern colonial sloops Dumont d’Urville and Amiral Charner, as well as the older Marne and Tahure (supported by Loire 130 and Potez 452 flying boats and Gourdou 832 light shipborne reconnaissance floatplanes), charged into the Gulf of Thailand and surprised a Thai squadron in the roadstead of the Ko Chang naval base at dawn on 17 January 1941. The Thai ships hastily weighed anchor and sought refuge amidst the numerous islets protecting the base’s seaward approaches. However, the French units blocked their escape routes and engaged the Thai force from multiple directions, routing their opponent in less than two hours. Torpedo boats Chonburi and Songkhla were sunk, sister-ship Trad was heavily damaged but succeeded in escaping, while the coastal defence ship Thonburi was grounded to prevent its sinking after sustaining repeated hits from the Lamotte-Picquet.

Byzantine Soldier vs Seljuk Warrior: Manzikert to Myriokephalon, 1071–1176

By Si Sheppard

Illustrated by Giuseppe Rava

Confrontation at Philomelion

It is late autumn 1116, and on the plains of west-central Anatolia, a city is on the march. That is the impression created by the sight of the Byzantine field army during its withdrawal north from Philomelion, drawn into a gigantic hollow square by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, its four faces bristling with spear tips backed up by missile weapons, the baggage train and civilian refugees secure in its centre.

Creeping along at a snail’s pace, kicking up vast clouds of dust, this formation must run the gauntlet of Seljuk horse archers, swarming in ever-increasing numbers as Alexios continues doggedly pulling back to the frontier. In this sector the imperial shield wall, comprised of infantry who on the face of their shields bear the colours of the Maurokatakalon family, which served Alexios as high-ranking officers, has briefly parted, allowing a Byzantine cavalry detachment to charge out against a knot of Seljuk horse archers who have ventured in too close.

This engagement hangs in the balance, one of an untold number of such small-unit encounters that played out again and again over the course of the march, with Byzantine cavalry seeking to close with the enemy, inflict casualties, and then withdraw back into the square, while the Turks sought to lure them away from the safety of imperial lines by feigning flight only to round on their pursuers once they had been drawn into a larger mass of horse archers and then, isolated, shoot them to pieces.

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