View Full Version : The most epical battle ever in history?
For me is the battle of Thermopylae. Take a look at my signature.
The list I would complie depends on the era in which it was fought. Several battles come to mind that have surived the years and have become symbols or standard folklore over the ages
Battles of importance of Greece - Marathon and Plataea along with the sea battle off the island of Salamis.
The battle of Waterloo
The battle of Gettysburg
Stalingard
NinjaKilla
11-21-2002, 20:19
Borodino springs to mind. The battle swung each way as many times as the Great Redoubt was assaulted. Not to mention the resolve of the soldiers as they mounted repeated frontal offensives. Casualites on both sides and the fact that Napoleon had still failed to achieve a decisive defeat of the Russian army mark this its significance in history.
Mithrandir
11-21-2002, 20:53
Moved to History/monastery
Vlad The Impaler
11-21-2002, 21:44
Calugareni - 1595 august 13
The Great Vizier Sinan Pasa attacked Wallachia; the walachian voivode Michael The Great face 130.000 ottomans with only 16.000 soldiers mostly wallachian ( but also mercenary contingents as cossacks and styirian arquebusiers )
Sinan Pasa the great vizier lost his last teeth when his troops
were in dissaray and Pasha Hassan of Timisoara , Kidhr and Mustafa from Bosnia were killed .
the big green flag of the prophet , the sacred flag of the sultans was capturated ;
the other day the wallachian troops withdraw because of great ottoman superiority and the turks advanced in the heart of the country;
with transylvanian , moldavian and toscan help ( a little core of 75 knights ) the turks were finnaly driven out of Wallachia at 15-20 october same year when ottoman ariereguard was taken prisoner and enslaved at fortress Giurgiu on the left shore of Danube
It's got to be the Trojan War.
Read the Iliad, by Homer (Fitzgerald trans. reccomended).
10 Years the Achaens beseiged Troy before it fell.
Truly one of the most epic battles in History.
Azrael
Kongamato
11-21-2002, 22:23
How about Bouvines? They call it "The Battle That Made France".
Hakonarson
11-21-2002, 23:59
There were any number of battles that "saved civilisation as we know it", but to me epic conjures up images of a long time spent fighting.
So -
Leipzig 1813 - 3 days that destroyed Napoleon
Retreat from Moscow 1812 - not a single battle for sure, but an epic to be sure
Various multi-day retreats by Asiatic armies culminating in the destruction of their enemies, from teh Skythians vs the Persians about 500 BC, the Magyars vs the Italians in 950-ish, and of course teh Mongols vs Russians & Hungarians (seperately) in the 1200's.
And others to....
rasoforos
11-22-2002, 07:46
the siege of troy , although impressive because it lasted 10 years , included amphibious operations, national army etc cannot be concidered as 1 battle ( although you should read the iliad , the battle description is great and the battles between heroes have never been better). to me:
the greatest battle as a world event :
have to be the battles of Alexander the great since they reppeled the persians thus changing european history , they brought elements of greek culture all the way to india thus changing the asian culture and creating new forms of art , literature etc , finally it make greek a world language from gibraltar to india.
the greatest battle as bravery and honour :
the battle of thermopylae when the Spartans faced unbelievable odds , when betrayed and surrounded they did not dispair but spend their last night singing and preparing themselves for the coming death , and finally they kept on fighting up to the last one , not surrendering their weapons to the enemy.
Rosacrux
11-22-2002, 10:14
Most epic battles? Hmm... let me think... those are the most memorable ones:
- Thermopylae (houndreds of thousands of Persian trying to pass through the tiny Greek army). An eternal monument of devotion, bravery and sacrifice.
- The last stand of the Takeda. I think it's the battle portrayed in A. Kurosava's "Kagemusha". Should be one of the most dramatic in human history.
- Manzikert: The turning point for the once allmighty Byzantine empire, smithered by treachery.
- Somme (WWI): The greatest slaughter in the history of mankind, in less than 8 hours more than 150.000 people died. Horror.
- Borodino: One of the greatest battles of the Napoleonic wars, even with Napoleon not being in top form (he made several mistakes) it was also the most dramatic one of the same era.
- Cannae: Hannibal, outnumbered 2:1 and facing the best military system in mankinds history, slaughtered the best of Rome's youth, killing nearly 75.000 men with this incredible manouvre.
ShadeFlanders
11-22-2002, 12:09
The lifting of the siege of Antioch during the first crusade. Imagine thousands of starving crusaders with religious hallucinations sallying, led by a priest carrying "the spear of destiny" (?), out to meet a well-rested, well-equiped foe twice their numbers.
Tachikaze
11-23-2002, 03:58
Isandhlwana (1879)
Where the Zulus kicked those bloody British imperialists' asses. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif
rasoforos
11-23-2002, 04:34
yep i forgot that battle , it was trully a magnificent achievement of courage and strategy over technology, it deserves to be in the hall of fame to my opinion.
fastspawn
11-23-2002, 09:49
kursk?
only the greatest tank battle in the history of the world
midway, salamis, actium, the russo-japanese battle in the sea(dont know the name of that one), spanish armada.
so many epic naval battles left out.
Michiel de Ruyter
11-23-2002, 10:29
Fastspawn,
I guess you mean the battle of the Tsushima Straight. My € 0.02...
Candidate naval Battles: Salamis, Actium, Trafalgar, the 4 Days Battle (2nd (?)Anglo Dutch Naval War), the Raid on Chatham (1666) (sailing into the enemy main naval base, destroy the 3 biggest ships left after capturing the enemy'e flagship, then tow it home).
My most epic naval Battle: 4 Days Battle
Candidate land Battles: Marathon, Siege of Tyre, any of the battles under Hannibal, Catalaunian Fields, Tours, Hastings, Kortrijk (Battle of the Golden Spurs), Agincourt, Leipzig (Battle of the nations), Waterloo, Gettysburg, Shiloh.
My most epic land battle: Cannae
Hakonarson
11-25-2002, 03:03
Ishandwlana (sp??) hardly rates - 20,000 Zulus against 1500 Brits? Or was it 2000 Brits?
Rourkes Drift is another story http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
In fact for victory against heroic odds (in terms of numbers) any of the European colonisers in Africa or Asia probably have dozens of "magnificent" victories - from Pizarro vs the Aztecs (how many men did he destroy the Empire with??) to the Relieft of the Foreign Legation in Pekiong during the Boxer rebellion.
And the Somme was NOT 150,000 dead in 8 hours - the British suffered 60,000 CASUALTIES (dead AND wounded) in the first 24 hours.
If I am not mistaken it was 2000 vs 150 Zulus. Again the same with 20000 vs 1500. Mostly.
PFJ_bejazuz
11-26-2002, 04:41
Battle of Solway Moss:
http://www.royal-stuarts.org/solwaymoss.htm
Wierd affair that I've seen more reasonably written up as a victory over both the English & the Scottish by the Border Reivers who were sick of bloody great armies marching through their back yards burning down houses on their way to war & knicking chickens on their way home.
But 700 lads leathering 18,000. Not a bad days work by any standard.
BatkoMahno
11-27-2002, 00:43
Operation Citadelle -- Kurskaya duga. The biggest tank duell --- the last big german offensive.
It was like Borodino no one won.
But the germans couldn't recover from their losses.
Thank that spy who informed about the Oper Citadel and where it would attack and the delay and delay of attack to get more new tanks for germans.
Hakonarson
11-27-2002, 03:43
Quote[/b] (Ktonos @ Nov. 25 2002,11:18)]If I am not mistaken it was 2000 vs 150 Zulus. Again the same with 20000 vs 1500. Mostly.
What?? 2000 brits vs 150 Zulus??
or do you mean the other way around - 150 Brits vs 2000 Zulus - I'd hope it's just a typing error http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Ishlandwana was 23000 zulus vs 1300 British regulars and 2-300 others in the firing line, plus another 500 non-combatants as far as I can make out - the British line extended for a mile or so, with the riflemen spread out in single lines a yard appart in many places
There were other troops from the column out scouting or doing various things that were not persent at the battle.
Papewaio
11-27-2002, 05:42
If you consider colonial powers with far superior technology and enough epidemic bugs to kill orders of magnitude more great victories of valour (that is what an epic victory is after all) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif ... then I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have to be the greatest victories of all.
100,000+ dead to nil by one single bomber.
-----
I would say the greatest victory (maybe not epic battles) was the Maori Wars in which the Maoris where the only native people to beat a colonial power. And they beat the mightest one at its peak no less. It ended (mostly) with the Treaty of Waitangi.
Ithaskar Fëarindel
11-27-2002, 12:51
Nagasaki should never be considered a "victory".
It was OTT, a warning to other countries:
"Don't mess."
Brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "Collateral Damage".
Plus where does valour fit in when dropping a bomb miles above the heads of civilians?
MonkeyMan
11-27-2002, 13:17
Stalingrad
The Germans lost 110,000 killed during the battle and a further 91,000 were made prisoner. No details of the total Soviet casualties are available, but they were high. Of the Germans captured at Stalingrad, some were put to work rebuilding the city, while the others were marched east and ended up in camps from the Arctic Circle down to the borders with Afghanistan. Many died as a result of a typhus epidemic in spring 1943 and others of exhaustion and lack of food. Eventually only some 5,000 returned to Germany long after the war was over.
Somme
Somme offensive. Since the 1st July, the British has suffered 420,000 casualties. The French lost nearly 200,000 and it is estimated that German casualties were in the region of 500,000
Of course neither of these could be considered 'a' battle lasting 1 day, but the British did take in the region of 60,000 casualties on the 1st day(of course a casualty is an out of action man not necessarily dead).
**********************
Of course one thing in question here is the meaning of the word epic. Do you mean simply on a large scale, at great loss of life, over a long time or do you have something altogether less clear cut, more relying on a romantisised and distant concept.
It's almost strange that one can think of an event a certain number of years ago as 'epic' because it's often between no modern organisations, and its unlikely anyone remembers someone who was there. So perhaps it is ok to think of medieval/napoleonic battle as epic, where it's not ok to feel as such about say a battle in vietnam. The fact is there is no good distinction here, epic can only apply to scale, all battles would be considered absolute human disasters if someone didn't claim to have 'won'.
Quite simply i'm happy for my epic battles to occur on my computer or in films, don't really like the idea of living the dream.
Papewaio
11-27-2002, 13:47
Quote[/b] (Ithaskar Fëarindel @ Nov. 27 2002,05:51)]Nagasaki should never be considered a "victory".
It was OTT, a warning to other countries:
"Don't mess."
Brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "Collateral Damage".
Plus where does valour fit in when dropping a bomb miles above the heads of civilians?
Ithaskar I hope you understood from my post that they are not magnificent battles and as such not victories of valour... just like ambushing a king who is parlaying for the first time with a spanish conquistor, or other conquistors taking over kingdoms that have been decimated or worse left with only the decimal part, some indian nations where completely wiped out by the European bugs years ahead of when the Europeans reached their deceased locations, or wiping out natives armed with spears using machine guns and rifles, or killing all the buffalo, giving blankets with infections etc
Not epic values of valour (for the colonials), in the vast majority of colonial battles just a case of mismatched technology.
Yeap Sorry the other way around. 2000 Zulus vs 150 or less Brits.
candidgamera
11-27-2002, 19:26
Glad someone mentioned Midway.
Coral Sea probably as important - first carrier vs. carrier, Japan turned back from Australia.
Here's another couple new world battles:
Vicksburg: Confederacy cut in half.
Plains of Abraham: France kicked out of North America.
Surprised no one's mentioned Battle of Vienna, 1683 - Ottoman's turned back.
Chalons - Huns stopped.
Bagration - destruction of AG Center - started 3 years to the day from Barbarossa start - Russians demonstrated they'd learned a bunch - Germans lose 20 divisions.
On Nagasaki and Hiroshima - from reading Frank's Downfall realize they get a lot of attention, but were part of a continuum of casualties in 1945 Japan - believe the figure was some 80,000 dead in fire bombings of Tokyo.
Ithaskar Fëarindel
11-27-2002, 19:35
Don't worry Pape http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
It just shocked me seeing the three words "Nagasaki", "Victory" and "Valour" all closely associated http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
That counts for Hiroshima too.
Plus they don't fall under battle really. That would imply both sides had a "fight" - but the Japanese couldn't fight the bombs.
The post does not mention anything about victory Papewaio. Just epic battles. Epic is a greek word ("Epos"), meaning a heroic tale /poem. The first examples are the Iliad and the Odissia of Homer. What is epic about Nagasaki now? I could say it was the most un-epical and atrocious "battle" ever.
I'm not sure of the name but wasn't there a battle during the English Civil War that still has the largest number of participants recorded ?
I always thought that the battle with the most participants where either that of Kannes or Gaugamela.
Tachikaze
11-27-2002, 23:13
Guagemela
Trafalgar
Sekigahara
Other good choices
Conquistadors as heros? Oh my god How can anyone respect them?
I never said anything about odds. Making sure you outnumber your foe is part of good generalship.
Papewaio
11-27-2002, 23:52
Quote[/b] (Ktonos @ Nov. 27 2002,12:57)]The post does not mention anything about victory Papewaio. Just epic battles. Epic is a greek word ("Epos"), meaning a heroic tale /poem. The first examples are the Iliad and the Odissia of Homer. What is epic about Nagasaki now? I could say it was the most un-epical and atrocious "battle" ever.
I said;
If you consider colonial powers with far superior technology and enough epidemic bugs to kill orders of magnitude more great victories of valour (that is what an epic victory is after all) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif ... then I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have to be the greatest victories of all.
Now this is a case of infamous Pape sarcasm.
Notice I said 'if you consider colonial powers with far superior technology/epidemic bugs victories of valour http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif'... now for the non-Australians that is what is called a facetious/sarcastic comment. In other words I do not think there is anything heroic in slaughtering people with superior technology aided primarily by disease in fact they are the antithesis ... given those slaughters held up as victories the logical conclusion to extend the arguement would be be to include the dropping of the atomic bombs. Dropping the atomic bombs is no way heroic, this was to further illustrate the fallacy of the logic by highlighting how wrong it was by taking that idea to its conclusion.
Now I did not feel that I had to defend Nagasaki or Hiroshima as non-epic battles. But I did feel the need to point out that slaughtering indeginous people is not heroic or brave when you are using muskets vs clubs.
Michiel de Ruyter
11-28-2002, 00:42
Ktonos,
there were more people involved at Leipzig (Battle of the Nations) in 1813, 200,000 Frenchmen vs 400,000 Allied (Swedes, Prussians, Austrians, Russians), although it is not a singledays battle.
Cannae was relatively small (up to 70,000 Romans vs 40,000 Carthaginians, who held an advantage in cavalry), though huge at that time...
Gaugamela was huge, but there have been bigger battles...
The battle of Tours. Tragically few accurate records of it remain but apparently the battle lasted anywhere from 2-3 days to a week (2-3 days being the more widely accepted number(s)) and involved hundreds of thousands of men. Throw in a climactic moment when Abderrahman, the Arab leader, was felled in combat and that's one hell of an epic struggle. Without the Frankish (and French) victory over the rampaging Umayyad Caliphate (Arab historians acknowledge widespread atrocities and pillaging caused by Abderrahman's troops) Western Europe would have been overrun by Islam and history would have been vastly different.
Since people have already mentioned Midway and Trafalgar I'll have to mention Jutland. Rare are the occasions when modern navies have clashed on the same scale and on such equal footing as the British and Germans did at Jutland. Two massive fleets of battlewagons slugging it out on the high seas must have been quite a sight. Unfortunately Jutland was not nearly as decisive as Midway but it was much more of a tooth and nail fight. An epic but inconclusive battle.
I wouldn't be to harsh on the Conquistadors. After all, the people they conquered succumbed primarily to smallpox and other diseases carried overseas by Europeans rather than to sword and musket. Besides, as I recall the religion and culture of the Aztecs (and other indigenous peoples of the region) were based around the ritual of human sacrifice I remember reading that several decades prior to the Spanish landings in Central and South America the Aztecs set a personal best by sacrificing roughly 80,000 people in a single year And slavery was already an established institution in the New World so it's not as if Spanish methods were entirely alien to the locals. I'm not defending the Conquistadors but its hard to take sides with people who indiscriminantly sacrifice both enemy and friend alike to their Sun god
Regardless of whether the Japanese could 'fight' the bombs they certainly deserved them. While their crimes against the Western allies were 'minor' (horrendous treatment of POWs via torture, malnutrition and back breaking slave labor) the atrocities they committed against the conquered peoples of East and Southeast Asia were extraordinary in magnitude. To name a few: The rape of Nanking, General Sano's 38th division and their large scale 'indiscretions' after seizing Hong Kong, and lest history not forget the 250,000 Korean women abducted and used a sex slaves (conveniently called "comfort women") by Japanese soldiers. Don't you ever wonder why China and Korea are still demanding an official apology from the Japanese government? I dare anyone who disagrees in my assessment to find an elderly person of Korean, Chinese or even Philippino ancestry and ask them what they think about the Japanese. I'll wager there were many smiling faces in Asia when the word got out that two Japanese cities were all but wiped from the face of the Earth.
MonkeyMan
11-28-2002, 02:26
Evidence would suggest that the largest battle ever in the western hemishpere was Gettysberg.
however i was certainly correct beforehand with stalingrad.
certainly with the original meaning of greek heroism this is so wrong (although if war makes heroes then the biggest should make the most?)
The greatest death toll in a battle has been estimated at 1,109,000 in the Battle of Stalingrad, USSR (now Volgograd, Russia), which started in the summer of 1942 and ended with the German surrender on January 31, 1943. Approximately 650,800 Soviet soldiers were wounded but survived.
Many experts consider Stalingrad to be the crucial turning point of World War II. The battle, which raged fiercely from the summer of 1942 until January 31, 1943, marked the fullest extent of Nazi Germany's incursion into Russia. Stalingrad, because of its commercial and industrial importance, was seen as a major prize.
One obvious reason behind the battle's terrible destructiveness was the importance of Stalingrad. Russian soldiers were ordered never to "take a step backwards". Stalin, the Soviet leader, knew that losing the city that bore his name would be of immense symbolic and military significance.
Hitler, the German leader, was equally determined. He showed a lack of military judgement by not allowing the Nazi armies to retreat even when they were almost completely encircled by the Russians. The Germans were made to remain and face near total annihilation by the ultimately victorious Russians.
candidgamera
11-28-2002, 04:29
Spino:
Have you read Downfall?
Getting through it now.
Key thing is that it makes use of recently declassified stuff on Magic that fills a lot diplomatically.
Not released till now because reveals with Magic U.S. was listening in on lots of Allies' diplomatic traffic.
If not highly recommend. Very sobering, it states that in 1945, for every month the war continued 250,000 more people in Asia would die. The death toll indirectly/directly at the hands of the Japanese Empire it puts in the neighborhood of 17 million.
Frank's book on Guadalcanal, very good.
Naval battles: Quiberon Bay - stymies French naval support of French & Indian Wars.
Nobody has mentioned Leyte Gulf yet, certainly the largest naval battle.
Well I could never concider conflicts like the battle of Stalingrand or El Alamein as ... battles rather than as a series of battles. I believe that what we are trying to define here is the battle (using the classical term).
In Gaugamela, based on the historians of who followed Alexander in his campaign, the Persian army consisted of 1.000.000 men while Greeks of 40.000. That is of course incorrect and modern historians taking under concideration many other factors (like the Persian history reports) officialy say that there were 45.000 Greeks with 15.000 recruits on their side and a 600.000 mixed force for the Persians.
In fact the battle was doomed for Alexander if he (or someone from his companions) wouldnt kill Dariou's III chariot driver. Everyone thought that their king was dead and routed, with the exception of the Persian general who was commanding the heavy cavalry. He destroyed the left greek flank (commanded by Parmenion) and when by the time the rest of the Persians where routing the field he was raiding Alexanders camp, anaible to understand what is going on 3 km behind him.
Tachikaze
11-29-2002, 00:28
I think "epic" can include a few factors, not just size or undergog victories. A battle may be epic for the impact of the outcome. In the case of Guagamela (I prefer the name Arbela), the result was the fall of a long-standing, powerful empire. It was the center of Alexander's planning.
Trafalgar was big and had all the classic elements of Napoleonic naval warfare.
Sekigahara has pretty big. It had everything you could want, teppo volleys, cavalry charges, the loss of great generals, betrayal . . . The result was the Tokugawa Dynasty.
Rosacrux
11-29-2002, 09:34
So... what's the greatest death toll for a single one-day battle?
Somme: I stand corrected, but not much: The losses in the first day were 62.000 Brits, 20.000 French, 35.000 Germans, taking the total number up to 117.000 - but that's losses not dead.
Cannae, maybe? 90.000+ in a single-day single-battle. Gavgamela... Alexander's historians talk about 200.000 dead Persians but, considering the fact that they routed pretty early, I don't think they came even close to that number. Other suggestions?
A.Saturnus
11-29-2002, 12:14
I think on D-Day died about 1,000,000 men, although it can`t be considered as a single battle. The bombardment of Leibzig killed about 200,000 people in one night, but you can`t call it a battle at all.
BTW, the place that has seen the most fightings in history is the slope of the hill whereon the town Megiddo lies (in Hebrew: Armageddon) in Palestine
Michiel de Ruyter
11-29-2002, 14:38
On D-day not even close to 1 million men died... Even today, as far as I know, the single bloodiest day in American military history was the 17th of September 1972 at Antietam. Possibly Gettysburg did have more casualties then D-Day...
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