Catastrophe: History’s Most Disastrous Defeats

22. A Plutocrat’s Quest for Glory

Crassus leveraged his riches and power into creating the First Triumvirate, a power sharing agreement by which he, Pompey the Great, and Julius Caesar, divided the Roman Republic amongst themselves. He wanted military glory, though – something his partners had, but he lacked. Unlike Pompey’s and Caesar’s brilliant military records, Crassus’ only military accomplishment had been to crush Spartacus’ slave uprising, which counted for little in Roman eyes. It gnawed at Crassus, so he decided to invade Parthia, a wealthy kingdom comprised of today’s Iraq and Iran, which he assumed would be a pushover. A decade earlier, Pompey had invaded and easily defeated other kingdoms in the east, so hard could Parthia be? So Crassus assembled an army of 50,000, and in 53 BC, marched off to an easy conquest.

21. A Tough and Treacherous March

Crassus trusted a local chieftain to guide him. The guide was in Parthian pay, and led Crassus along an arid route. Hot and thirsty, the Romans finally reached the town of Carrhae in today’s Turkey. There, they encountered a Parthian force of 9000 horse archers and 1000 armored cataphract heavy cavalry. Although they outnumbered the Parthians 5:1, the Romans were demoralized by the rigors of the march and by Crassus’ uninspiring leadership. Mounted Parthian archers shot up the Romans from a distance, retreating whenever the Romans advanced. As Roman casualties mounted, morale plummeted. Crassus, unable to think of a plan, rested his hopes on the Parthians running out of arrows. The Parthians however had a supply train of thousands of camels loaded with arrows. Finally, out of ideas, Crassus ordered his son to take the Roman cavalry and some infantry, and drive off the horse archers. It ended badly.

20. Catastrophe at Carrhae

The Parthians feigned retreat, Crassus’ son rashly pursued, and was slaughtered with all his men. The Parthians rode back to the Roman army, and taunted Crassus with his son’s head mounted on a spear. Shaken, Crassus retreated to Carrhae, abandoning thousands of Roman wounded. The Parthians invited him to negotiate, offering to let his army go in exchange for territorial concessions. Crassus was reluctant to meet the Parthians, but his men threatened to mutiny if he did not. Things did not go well: violence broke out at the meeting, and Crassus and his generals were killed. Mocking his avarice, the Parthians poured molten gold down Crassus’ throat. The surviving Romans fled, but most were hunted down and killed or captured. Out of Crassus’ 50,000 men, only 10,000 made it back to Roman territory.

19. The Road to Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt (1415) was one of the most dramatic engagements of the Hundred Years War. It saw a French army of about 36,000 men, including thousands of armored knights, suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of a smaller English army of 6000 men, comprised of 5000 longbowmen and 1000 knights. England’s King Henry V was marching through Normandy to Calais when his path was blocked by a French army that outnumbered his six to one. It was the start of a catastrophe – but not for the small English army.

18. A Messy Assault

Henry picked a position where his flanks were protected by woods. That limited French options to a frontal attack along a narrow front comprised of recently plowed muddy fields. He placed longbowmen on his flanks, his dismounted knights and more longbowmen in the center, had his men hammer pointed stakes in front of their positions, and waited for the French. The French obliged, and their commander ordered his first wave of mounted knights to charge. However, the muddy fields, the weight of their heavy armor, the rows of sharpened stakes in their path, and the rain of arrows spelled trouble. The charge wallowed to a halt, and a throng of disorganized French milled about in front of the English positions. They were attacked, and within minutes, the entire first wave was killed or captured.

17. A Humiliating French Catastrophe

A second French wave attacked, but was beaten back. In the meantime, Henry received mistaken reports that he was being attacked in the rear. Judging that he lacked the men to guard thousands of prisoners, Henry ordered the captives executed. By the time he learned the reports were mistaken and ordered a halt, about 2000 prisoners had been massacred. The French sent in their third and final wave, but it was also repulsed. Henry then ordered his small contingent of knights to mount up and charge the French, who, thoroughly demoralized by now, were routed. Estimated losses were about 600 English killed versus 10,000 French dead on the field of battle, plus another 2000 executed prisoners.

16. A Series of Missteps on Napoleon’s Route to Catastrophe

In 1812, just before he invaded Russia, Napoleon bestrode Europe and was at the height of his power. By year’s end, he had suffered an epic defeat, and began the downward slide that culminated two years later in his exile to St. Helena. His first misstep was his poor choice of subordinates. Napoleon’s aim was to bring Russia’s Tsar to heel by decisively defeating his army as soon as possible. However, he appointed his unqualified stepson, Prince Eugene, to a major command, and the inexperienced youth allowed the Russians to retreat. Napoleon then plunged into Russia, following the Tsar’s army for hundreds of miles as it retreated, refusing to give battle and scorching the countryside. He had planned to halt at Smolensk, go into winter quarters, and resume the campaign the following year. But once in Smolensk, he decided to continue on to Moscow.

15. Waiting Too Long for Negotiations

Near Moscow, the Russians finally offered battle at Borodino, where Napoleon won a hard fought engagement. However, at the decisive moment, he wavered and held off from his usual tactic of sending in the elite Imperial Guard, kept in reserve, to finish off the reeling enemy. That prevented the victory from becoming decisive, and allowed the battered Russians to live to fight another day. When he reached Moscow, Napoleon assumed that the Russians would sue for peace. So he waited for their peace feelers, even as winter drew near. The Russians strung him along, but no more than he strung himself along with wishful thinking of peace negotiations long after it became obvious that the Russians were not interested. By the time he gave up and marched back to Smolensk, it was too late.

14. “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous“

When Napoleon belatedly turned his back on Moscow, winter was nigh, and his unprepared army was caught by the bitter cold during the retreat. That was exacerbated by his choice of route: he had two options, and picked a route that was struck by severe winter storms, while the one he didn’t take saw little snow that year. Most of his army starved or froze to death, while many were killed by Cossacks who harried the rear and flanks of the retreating columns. Napoleon had marched into Russia with 685,000 men – at the time, the largest army the world had ever seen. He came out with only 35,000 Frenchmen still under his command, with the remainder either dead (over 400,000), deserting, or switching sides. Reflecting upon the debacle, Napoleon commented: “From the sublime to the ridiculous, it is only one step“.

13. French Plans to Avoid a Repetition of World War I

France was traumatized by World War I and the devastation suffered by significant parts of the country that were turned into battlefields. So the French devised a plan to avoid a repetition. The Maginot Line would secure the Franco-German border to the south, while the bulk of the mobile French army was stationed in the north, to advance into Belgium soon as the Germans attacked, to fight as far forward and outside of France as possible. The French fortified the south, and amassed enough mobile forces in the north to keep the Germans from bursting into France via that route. However, they ignored a stretch of wooded terrain in the center, the Ardennes Forrest. They deemed it impassable for tanks, and so kept it lightly defended. The Germans figured the Ardennes was actually passable, so they massed the bulk of their armor there.

12. Catching the French Flat Footed

The Germans attacked and burst through the Ardennes, then raced to the English Channel to sever France’s armies in the north from the rest of the country. The French were caught wrong footed: their mobile forces were advancing into Belgium, and couldn’t be turned around in time to stop the Germans pouring out of the Ardennes. Worse, they lacked adequate reserves to plug the widening gap. Collapse quickly followed, and the same country that two decades earlier had fought the Germans for four bloody years and emerged victorious in WWI, capitulated and signed a humiliating surrender after just 40 days’ fighting in WWII.

11. Catastrophe in the Other Vietnam War

As the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954) wore on, France’s grip on her Southeast Asian colonies was loosened by the increasingly assertive Viet Minh nationalist forces. The French had a massive advantage in firepower, but couldn’t make the lightly armed Viet Minh fight the type of stand-up pitched battle in which superior firepower could prove decisive. At wit’s end, a plan was hatched to entice the guerrillas to mass for a pitched battle with an irresistible lure: French paratroopers airdropped into an isolated base, Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh, unable to resist the opportunity to destroy the isolated French, would flock to the area. The garrison, supplied by air, would resist, and draw in more and more Viet Minh into a battle of attrition in which they would be wrecked by superior French firepower.

10. A Brilliant Plan Goes Awry

The French paratroopers were dropped into Dien Bien Phu, whose main feature was an airstrip in a valley encircled by hills. Things quickly turned sour, as many French assumptions were proven mistaken. The French had assumed the guerrillas lacked anti-aircraft capabilities. Instead, the surrounding hills were soon studded by flak guns that formed a deadly gauntlet through which aircraft had to fly in order to take off from or land on the airstrip. So many planes were shot down that the French were forced to rely on airdrops for supply, many of which missed their targets and landed within enemy lines instead.

9. French Catastrophe at Dien Bien Phu

The French had also assumed the Viet Minh would have no artillery. Their commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, organized tens of thousands of porters into a supply line that hauled disassembled howitzers over rough terrain to the hills overlooking the French. There, they were ingenuously in to render them immune from counter-battery fire, and kept adequately supplied with shells. The besieged French were bombarded nonstop, and began to run low and supplies and munitions. Relentless attacks reduced fortified positions one after another, and the defensive perimeter shrank steadily. Within two months, the French were forced to surrender. After losing 4000 dead and missing, and nearly 7000 wounded, the survivors, numbering nearly 12,000, were herded into Viet Minh captivity.

8. A Purge That Planted the Seeds of Catastrophe

The Soviets suffered horrific losses during the opening months of the German invasion in 1941. The seeds were planted years earlier, during Stalin’s Military Purge, starting in 1937. It threw the Soviet military into turmoil by removing its most experienced commanders: 13 of 15 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 corps commanders, all 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars. As seen below, the Purge also decimated the best middle rank Soviet officers, with catastrophic consequences.

7. A Retreat from Innovation to Backwardness

Until 1937, the Soviet military had been known for its innovation. The intellectual ferment within the Red Army, such as the Theory of Deep Operations, was as creative as what the wehrmacht was doing at the time. The Soviets had their equivalents of Guderians and Mannsteins, brimming with ideas and confident that they would revolutionize warfare. They suffered the most. The Purge fell heaviest on the most creative and free thinking officers, since they stood out and were thus prime suspects of harboring the deviationist tendencies Stalin wanted stamped out. Thus, when Hitler attacked, the Soviet military was poorly officered and poorly led.

6. Ignoring Impending Reality

Stalin also failed to heed warnings of imminent invasion. Those who raised the alarm were punished, as Stalin insisted it was a plot engineered by the British to instigate a war between the USSR and Germany. Soviet commanders were prohibited from taking precautionary measures, lest they provoke the Germans. Indeed, hours after the invasion began, Stalin disbelieved Soviet commanders reporting that they were being overrun, insisting that they were experiencing border incidents, not war. Stalin also fancied himself a talented generalissimo, and meddled too much. Among his poor decisions were orders to counterattack, issued to units that were in no position to do so. Later, he insisted that units stay put in untenable positions and fight to the last man.

5. History’s Deadliest Onslaught

Stalin’s meddling and unreasonable order led to a series of massive encirclements, in which the Germans captured up to 700,000 Soviets per encirclement. By the end of 1941, the Germans had bagged 3.4 million Soviet POWs, most of whom died in captivity. The Soviets suffered over six million military casualties, plus millions of civilians, in the war’s first six months – more than any country has ever suffered in a similar period. It took superhuman effort and sacrifice for them to recover, claw their way back up, and win in the end. Stalin deserves much credit for keeping the USSR in the fight long after any other country would have thrown in the towel. But Stalin deserves even more blame for the catastrope at war’s beginning.

4. Pressure on a Regional Champion to Act

In the months before the Six Day War (June 5^th to 10^th, 1967), tensions between Israel and her Arab neighbors climbed steadily. Raids from Palestinian guerrillas based in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, increased, eliciting massive Israeli reprisals. That put Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in a bind. The Arab world’s most popular politician and a hero of the masses for his defiance of Britain, France, and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis, he was now being criticized for failing to aid those Arab states against Israel. He was also accused of hiding behind a UN peacekeeping force stationed along the Israeli-Egyptian border.

3. Trying to Substitute Heated Words for Deeds

Nasser knew that the Egyptian military was in no shape to fight Israel, but he sought to regain his stature in the Arab world by bluster and bluff. He broadcast increasingly bellicose speeches threatening Israel, and sought to convey his seriousness with demonstrations short of war. However, Nasser got carried away with his own rhetoric, and escalated matters beyond the point of prudence. He massed Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and soon thereafter, requested withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers separating Israeli and Egyptian forces. A few days later, he closed to Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. The following week, Jordan’s king arrived in Egypt to ink a mutual defense pact, followed soon thereafter by a defensive pact with Iraq.

2. Heated Rhetoric That Backfired

What might have been intended as bluff seemed all too real from an Israeli perspective. Moreover, the Israelis, who actually were prepared for war, had long been itching for an excuse to cut Nasser down to size. So on June 5^th, 1967, they launched preemptive air strikes that destroyed 90 percent of Egypt’s air force on the ground, and put paid to Syria’s planes as well. With aerial supremacy secured, the Israelis launched ground attacks that routed the Egyptians and seized Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula within three days, and routed the Jordanians and seized Jerusalem and the West Bank within two.

1.     An Arab Catastrophe

Faced with catastrophe, Egypt and Jordan accepted a UN ceasefire. However, the Syrians unwisely did not, so the Israelis attacked Syria on June 9^th, and captured the Golan Heights within a day. Syria accepted a cease fire the following day. It was a lopsided Arab catastrophe: about 24,000 Arabs killed vs 800 Israelis, with similarly disproportionate rates for wounded and equipment losses. Nasser’s prestige in the Arab world, which he had sought to burnish with warlike rhetoric and demonstrations short of war, took a severe hit from which it never recovered.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Bellamy, Chris – Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (2007)

British Battles – Battle of Agincourt

Chandler, David G. – The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966)

Clark, Alan – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45 (1965)

Fall, Bernard B. – Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1967)

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe II, From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (1994)

Head Stuff – Crassus, the Richest Man in Rome

History Collection – Today in History: Napoleon Bonaparte Dies in Exile (1821)

Jackson, Julian – The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (2003)

Keegan, John – The Face of Battle: Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (1976)

Lieven, Dominic – Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace (2010)

Oren, Michael B. – Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2002)

Plutarch – Parallel Lives: Life of Crassus

Riehn, Richard K. – 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (1990)

Roy, Jules – The Battle of Dienbienphu (1984)

Shirer, William – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1990 Edition)

Warfare History Network – The Sinai Air Strike: June 5, 1967