We’re so used to pop culture providing stories of ragtag bands of brothers with lowest bidder equipment overcoming vast legions with sophisticated weaponry that we can lose sight of just how rare those situations are in real life. Plenty of articles have been devoted to that subject, and way too many give the ending away in the title that the outnumbered army is going to win. Not this time. Only the biggest war buffs won’t be unfamiliar with at least a couple battles featured here, so the suspense will be there once again whether the underdogs pulled it off or whether numbers, weapons, and equipment carried the day.
10. Battle of Leipzig
This battle has been largely overlooked by historical summaries of the Napoleonic Wars even though it was one of the most momentous battles of the era, and in many ways the largest battle on the continent in that century. In 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Le Grand Armee invaded Prussia (modern Germany) to reassert his dominance of the continent despite the disasters of 1812 in Russia and Spain. However, allied armies converged to cut off his supply and communication lines with France, and Napoleon was forced to concentrate his forces at Leipzig. On October 16, when the battle commenced, Napoleon had 198,000 troops and 700 cannons, the largest force he ever commanded in a single battle. However, he was facing the combined armies of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, which totaled nearly 400,000 and 1,500 artillery pieces.
Napoleon’s only hope was his classic “divide and conquer” technique, and on the first day the French used this with counterattacks against the Austrian and Prussian armies, but the approach of other troops divided Napoleon’s attention and he was unable to neutralize either army. From there, it was only a matter of time as the allies ground down Le Grand Armee from all directions, neutralizing all the French cavalry counterattacks with their own mounted troops. On October 18, the French began to retreat across a bridge on the Elster River, and unfortunately the bridge was destroyed well before the last troops had crossed, leaving tens of thousands to either be cut to pieces or drowned. In all, the French suffered 73,000 casualties to the enemy’s 54,000 and lost half their artillery pieces. It was the battle that ruined Napoleon’s ability to wage war, and even before the Battle of Waterloo the French would strategically be so hopelessly outnumbered that Napoleon’s days as Emperor of France would inevitably end with his ouster, rather than death or retirement.
9. Outpost Harry
By 1953, the Korean War had ground down into a permanent stalemate, including at the UN coalition Outpost Harry in the heart of the Koreas, 60 miles to the north of Seoul. On June 10, the 74th Division of the People’s Volunteer Army began a bombardment that launched 88,000 shells on the defenders, then with howitzer support began an attack on K Company, one of five companies that would defend Outpost Harry (four were American, one was Greek). While Outpost Harry, at 1,280 feet, enjoyed a significant advantage of elevation, it also was a drawback in that it made it harder to keep it supplied and also forced the UN forces to only deploy one company at a time.
The battle would rage for eight days, with the defenders forced to risk dropping flaming 55-gallon drums of napalm on the attackers. Despite heavy losses, the Chinese troops displayed considerable courage and many times the defenders had to resort to hand-to-hand combat. Sergeant Ola Mizes alone was credited with killing 65 attackers. On June 18, 1953, the 74th Division ceased attacks, having suffered 4,000 casualties and being designated a no longer functioning unit. The defenders had suffered 200 killed or missing. Arguably, it was all for nothing as a ceasefire that was generally regarded as the end of the Korean War was signed only 15 days later.
8. Battle of Fraustadt
In 1706, a Swedish army of about 9,400 was confronted by a Polish-Russian army of roughly 20,000 in what’s now western Poland. Beyond the numerical superiority, the allied army under Johann Schulenberg had 32 artillery pieces while the Swedish didn’t have any. Nevertheless, the Swedish commander Carl Rehnskiöld decided fortune would favor the bold and positioned his troops to make a pincer attack.
Rehnskiöld was in an unusual position where his distrust of new technology worked to his advantage. While conventional wisdom held that guns and cannons would be the key to victory, in 1706 they had not been fully developed to the extent where they would chew up enemy armies as they did in the 19th Century. Firearms at the time were often so inaccurate that nervous ranks of troops could fire a volley and barely hit anyone. At Fraustadt, the Swedish troops were instructed to aggressively charge the enemy instead of stopping to reload, many not even having an opportunity to fire a shot. This gave the Poles and Russians only time to fire a volley before the enemy were upon them with bayonets, and in many cases pikes. In the end, the battle was ended in a very short time and with the Swedes suffering only about 1,500 to their enemy’s 15,000. And yet, by 1721, the Russian Coalition still won the war, signaling the decline of the Swedish Empire in the Batlic Region and the rise of the Russian Empire.
7. Battle of Dybbol
We don’t need to travel far from the site of the previous entry to visit the scene of this battle between the newly united German Empire and its neighbor to the north, Denmark. In March 1864 the Prussian Army marched into the Jutland peninsula and broke through the Danewerk fortifications that the Danes had been heavily banking on to defend the nation. 40,000 Prussians then marched on the fortresses defending Dyobbol with 11,000 Danish troops. The Danes had the ironclad ship Rolf Krake in support of their fortification, which in that era – when ironclads were new – was legitimately intimidating.
Unfortunately for the Danes, the Prussians also brought state of the art artillery. They spent weeks battering the Danish defenses and even inflicted casualties on the Rolf Krake, and this was only two years after the famous Merrimac and Monitor had endured dozens of artillery rounds with scarcely a dent during the American Civil War. On April 18, the Prussians launched their attack and broke through the Danish trenches in only 13 minutes, and did not take much longer to shatter the counterattack by the enemy reserves. In total the Danish suffered approximately 3,600 casualties to the Prussians’ roughly 1,300.
The Battle of Dybbol is especially noteworthy because it was the first time that the Red Cross was present for a battle to monitor it for war crimes since the famous Geneva Convention from the year before. They were therefore present to witness the victory that won Prussia the war, and signaled the ascension of a German Empire which would cause a lot of trouble for Europe in the next century.
6. Battle of Iquique
Speaking of ironclads, on May 21, 1879, the Peruvian ironclad Huacar faced the Chilean corvette Esmeralda off the coast of Iquique, Peru. While commander Miguel Seminaro’s vessel was a totally modern ship equipped with artillery that fired 300-pound rounds, Captain Arturo Prat’s Esmeralda was one of the oldest ships in the Chilean navy, only pressed into service because Chile needed to blockade the Peruvian-Bolivian alliance.
Almost immediately the Huacar’s crew fired rounds that tore right through the Esmeralda while the corvette’s shells just harmlessly bounced off the iron armor. Prat then essentially held the town of Iquique hostage in a sense by sailing the Esmeralda between the Huacar and the town to dissuade the Peruvians from firing, out of fear they might miss and shell the town. This use of the town as a human shield backfired when artillery crews in Iquique fired on the wood ship. Seminaro started ramming the Esmeralda before firing point blank. The Esmeralda’s crew was boldly unwilling to surrender, so the Huacar had to ram it repeatedly until the ship sank, Captain Prat’s dead body being left on the ironclad during an attempted boarding.
While Esmeralda‘s defeat was hopelessly one-sided, Prat’s courage became highly inspirational for the people of Chile and the date became a national holiday. Furthermore, Chile’s navy was overall larger than the Peru-Bolivian navy and quite capable of getting revenge. On October 9, 1879, the Huacar was shot to pieces by a fleet of six Chilean warships, of which two were ironclads, and then it was captured. But at least Seminaro had one easy victory to put on his record.
5. Battle of Rome
While the time when Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410 and 476 to end the Western Roman Empire is covered in the most general overviews of human history, the Italian Wars of the 16th Century are much less frequently taught. One such example is May 6, 1527, when the Holy Roman Imperial army under Charles III, the Duke of Bourbon, attacked. They numbered 34,000, while Rome had 5,000 defenders. Only 2,000 were professionals; members of the elite Swiss Guard. The defenders at least had the advantage of artillery, as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s troops were underfed, and he abandoned his cannons to reach the city faster.
As if the Imperial Army didn’t have enough advantages, a fog bank rolled in that allowed them to reach the city walls in the face of inaccurate artillery and small arms fire. By sheer luck, one of the shots happened to hit and kill Charles III. Bad luck, that is. Without Charles to offer a moderating force, his hungry, anti-papal troops became unruly mobs of German, Italian, and Spanish troops who showed little mercy to defenders or civilians. Only 42 Swiss Guards survived. Pope Clement VII barely escaped the sack, troops shooting at him as he fled. Rome was so devastated that its population dropped from roughly 55,000 to less than 10,000. They had to content themselves as vengeance with the fact Rome had little food and considerable disease from all the bodies left in the street, which killed many of the invaders. Even today, the Swiss Guard pays tribute to guards who gave their lives for the papacy that day.
4. Siege of Szigetvár
Imagine being one of the defenders under Count Nikola Zrinski of the Hungarian stronghold on August 2, 1566. There are 2,300 Croatians and Hungarians defending Szigetvár. An Ottoman army of 100,000 has begun to arrive under the command of Sultan Suleiman. Additionally, the Ottomans had 300 cannons. About the only thing the defenders have in their favor is a solidly-built wall and moat. Would you feel brave enough to stand up to those odds for even a day?
Over the next month, the Ottomans launched three major attacks in between heavy bombardments. Stuck in place with large numbers as they were, the Ottomans suffered more losses from disease than from combat, most significantly Sultan Suleiman himself. The Sultan’s death was kept secret and the next day the Ottomans stormed the Szigetvár defenses once and for all. Even that cost them greatly since Zrinski had set up explosives to effectively destroy the town and kill many more Ottomans. As a result of the extremely pyrrhic victory, the Ottomans retreated.
Putting the heroic in a more tragic light, Zrinski and his army’s ultimate sacrifice might not have been necessary. While the Ottoman army was vast, more than 80,000 Habsburg troops under Emperor Maxmillian were spread within striking distance of Szigetvar and had a month’s time to lift the siege. It therefore seems unlikely, as some have claimed, that if the Suleiman had survived or the stronghold had fallen a little sooner that the fate of Eastern Europe hung in the balance, when there was such a substantial army ready to face the Ottomans anyway.
3. Battle of Gate Pa
During the Age of Colonization, there were numerous battles where firepower allowed relatively small European armies to best overwhelming numbers of indigenous soldiers with obsolete weapons, from the Battle of Blood River to Rorke’s Drift. So the situation on April 29, 1864, when the British forces under Lieutenant General David Cameron attacked the fort of Gate Pa in New Zealand, was unusual. In addition to possessing heavy artillery, they had 1,700 soldiers to the 250 that the Maori under Rawiri Puhirake had manning their defenses. They had been rebelling against a British land grab. To heighten the disparity, the British had spent days bombarding the defenses and inflicted 15 casualties.
However, to the surprise of many, the attackers found themselves funneled into tight approaches to Gate Pa, which led to the attack stalling and becoming confused. Then the Maori began picking off the officers until a general rout broke out. They left more than 110 attackers killed or wounded while suffering roughly half that many casualties. Despite their victory the defenders slipped away that night under cover of darkness.
The British were desperate for revenge, and defeated the Maori on June 20, 1864 at the follow-up battle of Te Ranga, even though this time the Maori were reinforced to more than 500 troops. While a peace treaty was signed shortly after, it was extremely generous by the standards of the day, including providing food and water for the indigenous people. It seemed that Gate Pa had shaken the confidence of the colonizers more than they were willing to admit.
2. Battle of Vukovar
The Croatian War of Independence was overshadowed in the eyes of the world by the first Gulf War, the Kosovo War, and so on. Yet within it occurred one of the most dramatic conflicts in the past few decades. Vukovar was an Eastern village in newly emergent Croatia that, in 1991, stood in the path of the Yugoslavian People’s Army, a military body composed of Yugoslavians and Serbians determined to put down the independence movement. Vukovar had roughly 2,000 defenders, of which only 300 were national guard members, 300 were police, and the rest were civilian volunteers. Only half the civilians had so much as a hunting rifle. Fortunately for them, they had a decent arsenal of rocket launchers. Against that the invaders had more than 35,000 troops, 400 tanks, and air support. After a prolonged artillery bombardment, the clash began on August 25.
Despite the overwhelming strength of the enemy, the Croatians dragged the battle out for 87 days, despite days where as many as 11,000 explosives were fired into the town. Not only did the Croatians inflict many casualties on the invaders while suffering 1,600 of their own, they also destroyed more than 110 tanks. In strategic terms, the prolonged stand was invaluable for the rest of Croatia in terms of rallying military forces and inspiring the population, while heavily demoralizing the Yugoslavian military. Despite claiming victory, the People’s Army withdrew from Croatia in January 1992, quite a bit like the Ottomans before them.
The damage to the city lingered far beyond the end of the battle. In the immediate aftermath, tens of thousands of non-Serbian civilians were expelled from the village. For those that remained, all necessities from electricity to sanitation were disrupted, and numerous buildings had been leveled, including the hospital. When Croatia regained control, there was harsh treatment in store for Serbian villagers (who had comprised about a third of the population). Even decades later, many buildings in Serbian neighborhoods were left unrepaired.
1. The Zanzibar Coup
On August 25, 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar (an island off the coast of Tanzania in Eastern Africa) died. As Zanzibar was a British colony and the sultan only a figurehead, the British under Basil Cave thought they could choose Hamud ibn Mohammed as the new sultan. Prince Khalid ibn Barghash had other ideas, and on August 26 occupied the royal palace in Stone Town with 1,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilian followers. He also brought in the Zanzibar ship Glasgow, which was a yacht that some cannons had been mounted on, and a four piece battery of artillery. The British assembled 1,000 troops to oust him, but they turned out to be a formality, given the fact there were five British warships within bombarding range of the Prince’s forces. They gave the Zanibar forces a day to surrender, although really they were waiting for official authorization from London. The Prince dismissed it as a bluff.
The next day, the warships revealed definitively that they had not been bluffing. The Glasgow demonstrated why yachts are not conventional warships by sinking quickly, and the palace burned to the ground. 500 casualties were inflicted between the Zanzibar land and fleet, with only a single British sailor being injured. Accounts vary on how long it was before the Prince surrendered, but every version put it well under an hour. Despite his brief yet bloody stand, the Prince himself was smuggled away to German East Africa, where he remained free until 1916 when the British invaded the German colony and captured him. He was sent to Saint Helena. Unlike Napoleon before him, he was allowed to return home and live out the rest of his days until 1927 as possibly the most quickly defeated national leader in world history.
Dustin Koski co-wrote Return of the Living, the strange and hilarious story of the sighting of the first living thing after Earth has only been occupied by ghosts for centuries!