The Treaty of Brétigny would not, as hoped, put an end to the conflict that would come to be called the hundred years war, but it did represent a significant change in the conflict. What is perhaps most interesting, however, is that the treaty did not result from a military victory by one side or the other. Rather, three weeks earlier, the course of European history had been changed by a hail storm.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.