The Christianization of Poland (1889) by the Polish painter Jan Matejko (1838-1893). Above all it's a symbolic painting. People are plowing, cutting timber while others are being baptized and all is illuminated by the divine light from above.
A Roman Bath (1858) by the Russian painter Fyodor Andreyevich Bronnikov (1827-1902). Roman decadence was already an important subject at this time and Bronnikov uses it to stage some beautiful girls. They seem to be posing among each other but in the end it's all for the onlooker.
The Battle of Somo-Sierra in Castille, 30 november 1808 (1810) by the French battle painter Louis-François Lejeune (1775-1848). Lejeune was himself with the Napoleonic troops in Spain, so it's quite possible that the battle happened like he painted it two years later.
History painting dates back to the Renaissance and was long considered to be the "grand genre". Nevertheless it has its peak in the 19th century forged by Neoclassicism and Romanticism. There it became the artistic contribution in the process of the construction of National Identities of the European and American nations.
At the same time history painting under the influence of historism pretended to be "realistic", to show history how it has been. Above all it was this pretension that led to the great failure of History painting AND Realism at the end of the century.
When artists and their public realized that telling history always will be subjective and a painting will always be an illusion Realism and history painting lost their ground to modern painting.