In 1913, French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann studied people playing tug of war. His studies resulted in the observation of the Ringelmann Effect. It posits that the more individuals or groups are involved in an action, the less effort exerted by any individual unit. After all, there’s less blame that will be put on any specific unit in the event of failure, and less credit in success. Not to mention more infighting, confusion, chokepoints, bottlenecks, and so on. As we’ll see, Ringelmann’s Effect can definitely be a valid principle. 

For the purposes of this list, the largest unit covered will be a “brigade.” In the army, a brigade is a collection of regiments (usually around four). A regiment is a group of battalions (often two) and a battalion is a group of companies, and companies are generally around 100 troops. As we’ll also see, sometimes a company is a much larger group of soldiers than what is needed to change the course of a battle, and with it, often history.   

10. The 303rd Squadron

Despite the fact the nation of Poland surrendered less than a month after Germany invaded on September 1, 1939, that was by no means the end of Polish military involvement in the Second World War. In August 1940, the 303rd Squadron was formed out of refugee pilots from the 1st Police Air Force Regiment that gathered in Blackpool, England. Trained on outmoded planes back in Poland, they took to their Hawker Hurricanes with such vigor that they shot to the top of the Royal Air Force ranking for the Battle of Britain and stayed there for essentially the duration of the war, shooting down three times the number of enemy planes for an average RAF squadron while suffering one third the casualties. On September 7, 1940 alone they shot down 14 Luftwaffe planes without suffering a single casualty. 

Plenty of experts both then and in recent years have given the 303rd Squadron credit for being the key to victory. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding said that if it weren’t for their contribution in the Battle of Britain, “I hesitate to say the outcome would be the same.” Carl Cruff of the New England Air Museum said of the 303rd “…they were able to turn the tide of history.” Despite their amazing performance, for decades their contribution was downplayed, largely due to Poland’s presence behind the Iron Curtain increasing tensions with the British government for being unable to keep the promise of returning the Poles to their liberated homeland.     

9. Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry 

By Western standards at least, it’s not ideal for a group of soldiers to have the word “princess” in their regiment’s name, and this was particularly the case in the 1950s. The teasing very likely came to an end after the events of April 24-25, 1951. That was when the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was deployed to Hill 677 to defend the withdrawal of the South Korean army across the Kapyong River Valley, about 10 miles from the 38th Parallel, in response to a massive Chinese offensive. 

To show just what the 700 Canadians were up against, on April 23, the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment clashed with the Chinese and were forced to withdraw after suffering heavy losses. The next day 5,000 Chinese troops began waves of assaults on the Canadians, including under cover of night. Desperate measures were needed to hold the line, such as one wounded private needing to launch one-man counterattacks three times. At another point Lt. Michael Levy resorted to requesting Canadian artillery bombard his own position to halt an attack. Towards the end of the battle the Canadians were completely cut off, saved only by air-dropped supplies. Ultimately, their sacrifice and bravery would buy the United Nations forces time to regroup and stymie the larger Chinese offensive.      

8. 1st Tank Brigade

Let’s talk about, by far, the most recent events on this list. It’s time to turn our attention to Chernihiv, a city in Ukraine roughly 60 miles north of Kiev. When the Russian Invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, this brigade of roughly 150 tanks and 1,200 troops was the only force that stood between the city of 230,000 people and the Russian 41st Combined Arms Group, which included more than 10 battalions. As early as February 25, the 1st Brigade had brought the 41st to a standstill. 

By March 6, the greatly outnumbered brigade was being predicted to surrender as its supply lines were in danger of encirclement. Instead, it not only held out, but suffered much lower casualties than expected and managed the feat of shooting down Russian aircraft. By March 23, having suffered 10,000 casualties, the 41st had fallen back to change strategy, handing the Ukrainians a surprise victory. 

7. The Cavalry Reserve at Poitiers

Now that relatively current events are out of the way, this next entry is going to the other end of the timeline and taking us to the Middle Ages. As far as major battles of the Hundred Years War (1340-1457) go, the 1356 CE Battle of Poitiers is often overshadowed by the Battle of Crécy a decade earlier, and the Battle of Agincourt half a century later. After the end of the 10-year ceasefire in the wake of the milestone victory at Crécy, an English force of 12,000 under the command of Prince Edward “The Black” raided into central France. They were caught by an army of 40,000 French under the command of King John II, and despite an attempted retreat on Prince Edward’s part, on September 19 the battle began. 

While the longbowmen once again had a devastating effect on the French – just as they had at Crécy – this time it was by no means such a lopsided fight. Attacking in three main waves, they threatened to break the English army. Edward sent a force of 160 cavalrymen around the French army, which spread a panic among the French that they were being surrounded. This sneak attack resulted in a rout so bad that King John II was captured, his ransom not paid until 1360.  

6. Zvika Force    

In 1973, Syria invaded Israel near the Golan Heights. One man who was determined to stop them was 21-year-old Zvika Greengold. He had finished hitchhiking to Nafekh Base and was sent to collect wounded from two damaged Centurion tanks. Instead, Goldman and company repaired the tanks and intercepted a Syrian column in Russian T-55s. After knocking six enemy tanks out of commission, Zvika Force switched to the other tank to continue the fight, bluffing masses of Syrian tanks and their own Israeli superiors, and convincing them that there simply had to be more than one tank out there taking on dozens of enemies. 

Eventually Zvika Force joined a group of a dozen other tanks. While fighting more than 100 additional tanks, Zvika Force repeatedly had to defend Nafekh by itself. In the end, it was 30 hours before Zvika and company left their Centurion tank, having bought more than enough time to reinforce the base and stop the invasion. The story was later heavily criticized for being propaganda. To be sure, there was some exaggeration of his exploits. For example, some reports swelled the number of kills Zvika Force inflicted to 60 tanks, which Greengold himself said was nonsense. Still, the heroism of this skeleton tank crew was not to be denied. 

5. Beale’s Rifle Company 

The popular image of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans is basically redcoat soldiers marching to be shot en masse by Americans while inflicting negligible casualties in response, and two weeks after the war was over to boot. But that famously misguided charge was the end result of several engagements that began in December 1814, and earlier in the battle things had been going much more favorably for the British. In the first clash, the British captured five American gunships at Lake Borgne and took the initiative. 

Then on the night of December 23, 1814, the British infantry encountered Beale’s Rifle Company at the Villere Plantation. Although the battle ended in a stalemate and the casualties were about even, British morale was badly shaken and further attacks were delayed, giving plenty of time to reinforce the defenses for when the British launched their famous doomed attack on January 8 the next year. Unusually for a group that so greatly distinguished themselves in a rough fight, Beale’s Rifle Company was composed of merchants and lawyers. Twenty years after the battle, the members were provided land grants.  

4. Rosecrans at Rich Mountain

On July 11, 1861, early in the American Civil War, a Northern army under General George McClellan stood opposite a Southern army under General Robert Garnett at Rich Mountain, Virginia. The Southerners were defending two Appalachian mountain passes and the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, which would be instrumental if the Confederacy wanted to end the break away of northwestern Virginia counties. McClellan sent a brigade of troops under General William Rosencrans to flank the Confederates. Rosecrans did so, then launched an attack as ordered.

As reported by veteran John Beatty in his 1879 memoir The Citizen Soldier, McClellan and his troops could easily hear the battle going on in the enemy’s rear, and the troops were waiting for McClellan to order the attack be pressed home. But McClellan decided to forgo any such attack because he believed Rosencrans was beyond saving. In fact, Rosencrans’s brigade had defeated the southerners and captured half of their army. 

3. 8th Hussar Cavalry

On January 22, 1795, Holland was at war with France as the French Revolutionary Wars were raging. A fleet of fourteen Dutch ships froze in the waters near Hexel Island, roughly 50 miles north of Amsterdam. Well-armed, the vessels were ready for an attack by ships from unfrozen waters or by artillery bombardment.

So, General Jean-Charles Pichergu turned to a more unusual weapon for battling gunboats, and ordered a cavalry charge on the ships. The 8th Hussar Cavalry caught the ships so completely off guard that they surrendered faster than the French had dared hope in one of the more unusual events in military history. 

2. Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon

When the Wehrmacht launched its final Blitzkrieg on December 18, 1944 to begin the Battle of the Bulge, the I&R Platoon of the 394th Infantry Regiment near Lanzerath, Belgium were just 18 men, a group led by a 20-year-old Lieutenant Lyle Bouck. After spotting the approach of the 1st SS Panzer Division, the platoon’s communications with high command were cut by a two hour artillery bombardment, and a group of more than 250 organized paratroopers attacked. Unfortunately for the attackers, the platoon had already received their orders to hold at all costs. 

Over the course of the next day, the platoon inflicted 200 enemy casualties and stalled the advance for most of a day until 50 paratroopers successfully organized a flanking attack at dusk. Amazingly they only suffered one wounded casualty when Bouck was shot in the leg and one death. The Battle of Lanzerath would provide such an invaluable delay that it knocked practically the entire northern German attack off schedule by 18 hours, allowing massively better preparation for defenses and organizing counterattacks. It wouldn’t be until 1981 that the remarkable stand was recognized and the platoon became the most heavily decorated of the US military.     

1. The Lost Battalion

Speaking of battles between Americans and Germans that came down to a huge degree to the actions of one small group, on October 2, 1918, 700 soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 308th Infantry under Major Charles Whittlesley attacked the Germans along the Charlevaux Ravine in the Argonne Forest. While units on either of their flanks stalled, those nine companies reached their objective (by some accounts through a breakthrough, by others because the Germans lured them in through an ordered withdrawal) and then were cut off by the 2nd Landwehr Division. Over the next five days the battalion was subjected to almost relentless sniping, machine-gunning, and attacks.  

Not only did those isolated troops face countless attacks by a vastly superior force alone, the one point where they got support from the rest of the Allied army, it actually helped the German Army. On October 4, the 152nd Field Artillery Brigade began a bombardment of the area in an attempt to relieve the battalion, but due to faulty information their shells overwhelmingly landed on their fellow troops, killing 30 of them.

The Germans were well aware of this, and when the Americans sent pigeons back to command to call for an end to the bombardment, the German snipers gunned them down. The one pigeon that got through arrived with a wound from a German bullet. The end of the bombardment meant the resumption of German assaults, but even out of food and low on ammo they were able to repulse the attacks, and the attempt to destroy the battalion tied down the German troops sufficiently for the rest of the American offensive to break through. Only less than 200 came out of the battle still able-bodied, having done much to bring about the end of the First World War the month after.   

Dustin Koski wrote Return of the Living, a postapocalyptic supernatural comedy.

“We romanticize swords so much. Imagine everyone is swinging tire irons at each other.” 

– John Dolan 

Anyone who tries to conceptualize military engagements from a millenia or two ago is going to have their impression heavily shaped by influences that themselves were heavily influenced by fantasists, such as pulp fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. It’s difficult not to imagine berserker Vikings axing their way through villagers caught off guard, vast Chinese or Japanese ranks struggling amidst forests of arrows, or Spartans plowing their way through, well, anybody. And all of it is done for optimal cinematic effect. People with a need for escapism will want to picture themselves in that situation, usually on the winning side.

While it’s no surprise that real life is very different from re-creations done for show, we often get the very basics wrong. So let’s take a look at what combatants from the distant past actually had to look forward to, and hopefully better appreciate how far removed we are from that reality. Not only was the past more horrifying than fiction wants us to believe, it was also often (and surprisingly) far more mundane. 

10. Barbarian Mercenaries Caused Rome’s Decline

Unless a civilization reaches a degree of influence where it is designated an “empire,” it is invariably regarded as just an unusually large mob of savages. How often have we seen Roman conquerors pitted against dirt-caked crowds under haphazard piles of furs just running at the legions like kids being let out on the last day of school? This an especially handy perception when nationalists wish to claim that the Roman military heavily turning to barbarian soldiers in its last few centuries was the impetus to its downfall.  

A close look at the historical record debunks this. Julius Caesar himself was very candid that the Gauls he faced for eight years demonstrated considerable organization. Their weapons, clothing, and social systems all demonstrated they had very well-organized infrastructure. More to the point, some of the greatest Roman victories, such as the 356 AD victory at Strasbourg, were overwhelmingly due to specialized barbarian cavalry archers at nearly three to one odds. Even Caesar relied heavily on mounted German mercenaries to save his army at Alesia, the battle he won at the longest odds of his career. The evidence indicates that if barbarian mercenaries were the cause of Rome’s fall, they had been key to its rise as well. 

9. Ancient China Was Extremely Militaristic

We assume that because ancient nations were often at war, the only societies that would survive would be those which venerated the military. How were soldiers supposed to be motivated to go put their lives on the line if there weren’t concepts like martial honor to compel them, especially during times when there were limited material rewards to go around?

So it must be with Ancient China, which conquered such a vast and influential empire, right? This is a particularly common perception in the West, which primarily sees Ancient China through war stories such as Mulan, John Woo’s Red Cliff, or The Wall. 

There’s some evidence gathered by historians that indicates anti-militarism was a mainstream view in Ancient China. Confucius, as influential an advisor as China ever produced, was noted for his dismissiveness of soldiers and argued that military conquests undermined a ruler’s legitimacy. There’s an adage from Ancient China: “Good men do not become soldiers.” Much harsher than the relatively recent American saying, “mamas, don’t let your sons grow up to be cowboys.” A significant part of the appeal of Sun Tzu’s Art of War was that it prevented the loss of valuable resources and infrastructure to war by appealing to cunning over honorable warfare. 

8. Greeks Thought Archers Were Cowardly

In the Greek classic The Iliad, the character Diomedes is hit by an arrow and calls archery fit only for cowards. As posited by Peter Gainsford, this fed the misconception that this viewpoint was a mainstream belief among the Greeks, and not the grousing of a specific wounded character. This belief was further supported by the way that the close quarters formation known as the phalanx became so highly venerated for its supposed invincibility. So these days you see depictions of the Greeks, such as in both the graphic novel and film 300, where Spartan King Leonidas says this explicitly.

In reality even the Spartans, the supposed pinnacle of phalanx fighters, regularly used archers as a suppression technique during maneuvers. To be fair, there are no surviving accounts of Spartan archers devastating enemies, like Welsh bowmen or Mongol horse archers are known to have done, but archaeologists have unearthed tributes to archers in ancient Sparta itself. Not that they needed to confirm this point, as Greek mythology and epics such as Homer’s Odyssey are full of tributes to heroic archers. 

7. PTSD Wasn’t Acknowledged Yet

History classes often spread the idea that post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t really understood or recorded until the 20th Century. Even at the beginning of that era with World War I, the prevailing notion is that it was only dismissed as “shell shock.” Since life off the battlefield was so much harsher than modern amenities, it’s assumed people must have been conditioned with sterner stuff than they can muster now. Even Ancient Romans sometimes gave barbarian soldiers credit for being tougher because they believed civilization was softening up their troops. 

Ancient historians might not have used the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” but they recorded the effects nevertheless. Herodotus, famous for documenting the Greco-Persian Wars, named spear-carrier Epizelus as one suffering from psychological problems after the fighting ended. Centuries earlier, PBS reported that Assyrian tablets recorded the psychological harm that soldiers had suffered from their time in the service. While Ancient China does not have any known direct translation for the word, Huangdi’s Canon of Medicine from circa 200 BC very strongly alludes to veterans suffering from suspiciously similar psychological afflictions. The evidence indicates that less technology often does not necessarily produce super-soldiers.  

6. Ancient Ships Rammed Each Other All the Time 

Ancient ships ramming each other all the time seems like it would make sense, since wooden ships would naturally seem vastly more vulnerable to it than metal hulls. It’s very difficult to sink an enemy ship with arrows or any heavy equipment most ancient vessels could bring to bear in battle. Even using fire can result in an attacker’s own ship being set ablaze, an unusually literal example of backfiring. 

But as consistently reported, such as in Raffaele D’Amato’s 2017 book Imperial Roman Ships, it was not something any captain would do if they could avoid it. A successful ramming still risks ruining the structural integrity of anything from the hull to the mast of the attacker. Further, even if a ship one-hit killed its enemy, there was the danger of the ram being caught and the rammer being taken down with the sinking ship. This was why even much ricketier ships were often more successful because of their improved speed and maneuverability, such as Constantine’s navy in the 4th Century AD.  

This was the case in Ancient Asian naval combat as well. Even when the Korean navy began producing pioneer ironclad ships, which were celebrated for being unsinkable, they were hesitant to ram other ships with them because it was too risky. If anything, ramming ships is more common with modern navies, where ships have mass-produced interchangeable components, and the ability to scuttle ships making boarding a vessel for capture much riskier than back in the day.    

5. Roman Uniforms That Were… Uniform

You know what an Imperial Roman soldier looked like. Red tunic, leather armor that ended in a sort of skirt. Makes sense the empire would want a standardized item of clothing to help form a sense of cohesion with its legion. Except according to surviving documents, the Roman Empire very often couldn’t be bothered to make the effort. In fact, payrolls show that they actually docked soldiers’ pay for their uniforms, so the poorer troops weren’t going to try that. There are a number of letters from the period where the soldiers ask their own homes to mail them some clothes, including a particularly celebrated letter where one poor soldier stationed in Britain wrote to home asking them to send him wool socks. 

The idea every Roman dressed the same was overwhelmingly a Hollywood misconception. Those bright red uniforms looked very nice in Technicolor. It’s kind of a silly notion in hindsight: Red was a very expensive dye for the time, reserved for the nobles. Thinking every private dressed like that would be like if modern soldiers were portrayed as all going into battle wearing Louis Vuitton or Gucci uniforms. 

4. Wars Were Won on the Basis of Single Battles

One of the long-held beliefs about the American Revolution was that the Americans won their independence because while they couldn’t defeat His Majesty’s armies in conventional battles, they could turn to guerilla tactics to win the day. While we’ve talked before about how true that is, history lessons often treat the notion of American rebels preferring guerrilla tactics as some sort of innovation. There are practical reasons to think this was the case: Less-developed agricultural technology would have meant that fielding an army was not plausible, as either side would need to send troops back for the harvests or face ruin at home.  

Yet even in ancient times the concept of warfare and attrition were well understood. Emperor Fabius was particularly noted for his skill with them, and so the slang term of being tactically offensive to wear down an enemy, even one conventionally unbeatable in a pitched battle, acquired the nickname “Fabian tactics.” These would allow Rome to defeat Hannibal even as he slaughtered their armies four times on the Italian Peninsula during the Second Punic War. They almost brought Julius Caesar to a stop during the Gallic Wars, with Caesar giving Vercingetorix considerable credit for his skill in their use. According to New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare by Garrett Fagan and Matthew Trundle, even Sparta itself was brought to defeat by attrition warfare, in no small part because its extreme reliance on slave labor made their positions more tenuous if the troops had to be mustered for long. No amount of toughness will help troops that can’t be supplied or can’t seem to make progress.  

3. Very Heavy Swords Were Common 

It makes sense to assume that if a sword is going to be expected to chop away at people wearing armor and wielding shields, you’re going to want something as heavy as a sledgehammer. Not for nothing did warhammers become a popular implement by the time the Medieval era rolled around and soldiers needed to incapacitate those wearing the best deflections available. 

Well, in truth swords have historically been pretty light. As pointed out by Escapist magazine, heavier broadswords were likely only going to weigh about four and a half pounds, meaning that if someone can wield an average laptop without much trouble they’re on their way to being in shape enough to wield a sword. Even the heaviest (or at least the very heaviest swords known to have been used in real combat), the Middle European Zweihander, weighed 8.8 pounds. Considering that an American Civil War musket weighed about 9.75 pounds, that means that soldiers that tried to bayonet or club their enemies were performing a more laborious task than the strongest ancient swordsmen. 

2. The Soldiers Were All Men

Every time there’s a historical drama that features a woman wielding a sword in battle, internet commentators will come out of the woodwork to decry that as unrealistic. The assumption is that women and men are just operating at such inherently different levels of strength. Even fantasy programs such as The Witcher came in for heavy rebukes for these creative decisions. 

The common rejoinder is to point out specific female combatants from ancient times, such as Queen Boudica or Queen Tomyris. But that’s a fundamentally flawed approach, as it implies that such soldiers were the exception that proves the rule. Let’s instead consider the armies where female combatants were a practice barely even worthy of comment: there were Trung Trac and Trung Nhi of Vietnam, who not only led a defense of Vietnam that drove out the Chinese in 40 AD, but who also trained a general staff of 36 other women. Or there were the numerous iron age Celtic burial sites which included chariots and female skeletons buried with them. Still not enough armies where this was a regularly accepted practice? Hopefully the accounts of East Africa, where regiments of female archers from Western Sudan, or similarly large units of female warriors from Ghana who were still being pitted against European armies during the Medieval era will be enough to make the case. No one at TopTenz can decide for you. We’re not your mother. 

1. Long Swords are Ideal

As implied by the opening quote and our third entry, there is no arm through the ages as venerated as the sword. The most famous blade of kings, perhaps only the club is more universal. We’re certainly led to believe that an army armed with longswords would make short work of any row of spearwielders in close combat outside of maybe a phalanx. 

According to History.com‘s analysis of ancient warfare, armies where the soldiers were relying on swords were at a considerable disadvantage. The sword, even a short sword, requires considerable elbow room to be wielded properly. This is partially why the Roman legion strongly preferred short swords known as gladiuses after closing with their enemies, though even that was substantially supported by javelins and slings to create gaps in enemy lines. In conclusion, in ancient war, even the most classy individualistic weapon was no match for unit cohesion. 

Dustin Koski is the author of the fantasy novel A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong, where a character wields a spearspade. He hopes that someday he can spread the misconception that they were real ancient weapons.

“We romanticize swords so much. Imagine everyone is swinging tire irons at each other.” 

– John Dolan

Anyone who tries to conceptualize military engagements from a millenia or two ago is going to have their impression heavily shaped by influences that themselves were heavily influenced by fantasists, such as pulp fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. It’s difficult not to imagine berserker Vikings axing their way through villagers caught off guard, vast Chinese or Japanese ranks struggling amidst forests of arrows, or Spartans plowing their way through, well, anybody. And all of it is done for optimal cinematic effect. People with a need for escapism will want to picture themselves in that situation, usually on the winning side.

While it’s no surprise that real life is very different from re-creations done for show, we often get the very basics wrong. So let’s take a look at what combatants from the distant past actually had to look forward to, and hopefully better appreciate how far removed we are from that reality. Not only was the past more horrifying than fiction wants us to believe, it was also often (and surprisingly) far more mundane.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!