Lopsided Military Defeats and Humiliating Battlefield Setbacks

23. The Battle That Changed the Tide of WWII in the Pacific

At 10:25 AM, June 4^th, 1942, Japan was mistress of the Pacific. She had the world’s most powerful naval aviation force, had been running roughshod over her enemies while marching from victory to victory, and was in the driver’s seat, dictating the terms of the war in the Pacific Theater. By 10:30 AM, Japan had effectively lost WWII. The Japanese experienced probably the unluckiest five minutes ever experienced by any country in the history of warfare. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan went on a rampage, and won a series of stunning victories. However, Japan’s war strategy was to win a battle of annihilation, like the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War, then negotiate a favorable peace. Pearl Harbor was a success, but no Tsushima. So the Japanese planned an invasion of Midway Island to lure what was left of the US Navy to show up for a climactic showdown.

Assuming that the US Navy had only one or two aircraft carriers in the Pacific, the Japanese launched their operation with four fleet carriers. Unbeknownst to them, American cryptanalysts had cracked Japan’s secret codes and knew of the upcoming attack. The Americans also had more aircraft carriers in the Pacific than expected. One US carrier had been transferred from the Atlantic, and another, the USS Yorktown, which had been damaged in an earlier battle and was expected to take months to fix, was rushed back into service after 48 hours of repairs. Thus, the Japanese sailed out to meet three American carriers, the USS Enterprise, USS Yorktown, and USS Hornet, and an alert enemy waiting in ambush, rather than one or two carriers caught off guard.

The Japanese launched a carrier strike against Midway on the morning of June 4^th, 1942. They inflicted significant damage, but a second strike was necessary. So Japanese aircraft were recovered and readied. While doing that, the Japanese learned that American carriers were nearby. Midway was going nowhere, and the destruction of enemy aircraft carriers was more important. So the admiral in charge of Japan’s carrier strike force, Chuichi Nagumo, gave orders to switch bombs from ones intended for ground targets, to anti-ship bombs and torpedoes. While that was going on, the American carriers launched their own aircraft against the Japanese.

22. When Courage and Good Fortune Combine

The courage, grit, and determination of US airmen secured victory, but they were helped by a series of unexpected lucky breaks that lined up one after the other in favor of the Americans. First of those was a bungled mass launch that helped rather than hurt the US. In June, 1942, the US Navy had not yet mastered the intricacies of massed carrier attacks. The plan had been for all three American carriers to launch a single massive aerial strike, but poor coordination led to delays. As a result, the earliest planes to launch were forced to loiter near the carriers, waiting for the remainder and burning precious fuel needed to reach the Japanese fleet and return. After nearly an hour of that, the different carrier air groups were ordered to proceed towards the enemy fleet on their own without waiting for the others.

Had all gone to plan, the massed American strike force would have been led by the most senior pilot, Commander Stanhope C. Ring of the Hornet. As it transpired, Ring performed poorly that day, and led the Hornet’s planes on a wrong heading that missed the Japanese fleet altogether. Had all three carrier air groups assembled on time, they would all have followed Ring in what came to be known as “the flight to nowhere“. So in the first lucky break, the bungled mass launch resulted in the air groups of the Enterprise and Yorktown heading out in search of the enemy under their own leaders, Lieutenant Commander Wade C. McClusky and Lieutenant Max Leslie, respectively. As seen below, those two proved more effective than Ring, and unlike him, actually managed to find the enemy.

21. Wrong Premise, Right Conclusion

The first American planes to reach the Japanese fleet were Devastator torpedo bombers – slow planes that had to fly low, steady, and straight, to launch their torpedoes. 41 Devastators in three separate waves, one from each American carrier, attacked the Japanese carriers without fighter escort. 35 were shot down, without scoring a hit. After successfully dodging American torpedoes, the Japanese carriers resumed refueling and rearming. While the American torpedo bombers were getting slaughtered, the Enterprise’s SBD Dauntless dive bombers, led by Wade McClusky, reached the designated point where he had been told the enemy fleet would be. There was no Japanese fleet in sight. At that point, McClusky had to guess whether the enemy fleet had steamed faster than expected, and was thus to his south, in the direction of Midway, or was behind schedule, and thus to his north.

Heading south would have been the safer bet. Even if he did not find the Japanese, McClusky and his by-now-dangerously-low-on-fuel pilots would be able to continue on to land safely in Midway. However, McClusky had great intuition and an instinctive sixth sense feel that is often the hallmark of great leaders. He guessed that the Japanese, who had been attacked by planes from Midway earlier that morning, must have been delayed trying to evade the onslaught, and were thus still to his north. He also reasoned that if the Japanese had been to his south, and thus closer to Midway, he would have heard about it because they would have been detected by Midway’s patrol planes.

McClusky was correct in his conclusion, and was spot on re the first premise. He was, however, woefully mistaken about the second assumption. Midway’s patrol planes communicated on a different radio channel that McClusky would not have heard if they had spotted and reported the position of the enemy fleet. Even if their report had made it back to McClusky’s carrier task force, it would not have relayed that information to him because it was operating under strict radio silence lest it give away its position to the enemy.

20. A Lopsided Defeat

As McClusky’s planes neared the point beyond which they would not have enough fuel to return to their carriers, he decided to keep going, and turned north. He was rewarded by spotting a lone Japanese destroyer below. Guessing that it was heading to rejoin its fleet, McClusky used the destroyer’s wake as an arrow. It led him to the Japanese fleet, which was caught at the worst possible time for an attack from dive bombers. The carriers were rearming and refueling, so bombs, torpedoes, and fuel hoses were all over the place. There was also no fighter cover: Japanese fighters had gone down to intercept and destroy the torpedo bombers that had attacked at low level.

They hadn’t regained altitude when the American dive bombers showed up high above and dove down. McClusky’s dive bombers struck and set on fire two Japanese carriers. At almost the exact same that McClusky began his attack, the Yorktown’s dive bombers, which took a different route, arrived over the Japanese fleet and dove after a third carrier. Within five minutes, three of the four Japanese aircraft carriers were burning. The fourth Japanese carrier was sunk later that day. In exchange, Japanese planes severely damaged the American carrier USS Yorktown, which was later sunk by a Japanese submarine. The lopsided defeat turned the tide of WWII in the Pacific, and dealt the Japanese a defeat from which they never fully recovered.

19. The Anglo-Zanzibar War

The Sultanate of Zanzibar in what is now Tanzania consisted of the islands of Zanzibar off the East African coast, and the mainland across the water from them. In 1890, Britain and Germany divided up Zanzibar: the Germans got the mainland, while the British got the islands. Zanzibar’s sultan accepted a British protectorate, whose terms included the requirement that his successors had to be preapproved by the British. When the sultan died in 1893, the British used that provision to install a puppet replacement, Hamad bin Thawani. He ruled for three years, then shortly before noon on August 25^th, 1896, he died suddenly. It was suspected that his 29-year-old nephew Khalid bin Bargash had poisoned him.

Khalid immediately moved into the palace in Zanzibar Town, and without British approval as required by the terms of the protectorate treaty, declared himself sultan. The British preferred a more pliant successor, Hamoud bin Muhammad. So they rushed three cruisers, two gunboats, 150 marines and 900 African soldiers to Zanzibar Town, and gave Khalid an ultimatum to vacate the palace by 9 AM, August 27^th. He refused, gathered a force of about 2800 men, and barricaded himself in the palace. When the ultimatum expired, the British warships opened fire at 9:02 AM.

18. The Lopsided Casualties of History’s Shortest War

The gunfire ceased at 9:40 AM, by which time the palace and the royal harem next door were aflame, and the sultan’s flag had been cut down. A journalist reported that the sultan had “fled at the first shot with all the leading Arabs, who left their slaves and followers to carry on the fighting“. Others stated that he stuck around for a bit longer. However long he stayed, the sultan was not in the palace by the time the British reached it shortly after the bombardment stopped. Khalid, with dozens of followers, fled to the German consulate, where he sought refuge. By that afternoon, the British had installed their favorite, Hamoud bin Muhammad, as sultan in his place.

The war had lasted roughly thirty eight minutes, during which time the British expended about 500 artillery shells, 4100 machinegun rounds, and 1000 rifle bullets. Casualties were lopsided: around 500 Zanzibari men and women were killed or wounded, while British casualties consisted of a single petty officer, who was injured aboard a warship. The British sought Khalid’s extradition, but the Germans granted him asylum and transported him to German East Africa. He fell into British hands during World War I’s East Africa Campaign, and was exiled to the Seychelles and then Saint Helena. He was eventually released, and returned to East Africa, where he died in 1927.

17. Stumbling Into Unintended War

Tensions between Israel and her Arab neighbors climbed steadily in the runup to the Six Day War (June 5^th – 10^th, 1967). 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. He was the Arab world’s most popular politician, a hero of the masses for his defiance of Britain, France, and Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956. However, he was now being criticized for failing to aid fellow Arab states against Israel. Nasser was also accused of hiding behind a UN peacekeeping force stationed on the Israeli-Egyptian border. Nasser knew that the Egyptian military was in no shape to fight Israel, but tried to regain his stature in the Arab world by bluster and bluff. He broadcast increasingly heated speeches threatening Israel, and sought to convey his seriousness with demonstrations short of war.

Nasser got carried away with his own rhetoric, and escalated the demonstrations beyond the point of prudence. He began by massing Egyptian forces in the Sinai. A few days later, he requested the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers separating Israeli and Egyptian forces. A few more days, and he closed to Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. A week later, Jordan’s king arrived in Egypt to ink a mutual defense pact, followed soon thereafter by Iraq. Unfortunately, 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 the Egyptian air force on the ground, and put paid to the Syrian planes as well.

16. Operation Focus

Warplanes are deadly in the air, but on the ground, they are utterly defenseless. That was the lesson of Mivtza Moked, or Operation Focus: preemptive Israeli airstrikes that destroyed Arab air forces on the ground and disabled their airbases at the start of the Six Day War, on June 5^th, 1967. Israel’s lopsided victory in that conflict largely stemmed from the success of Operation Focus, an all-out attack by nearly all of Israel’s 196 warplanes. In radio silence, the Israeli planes flew low below enemy radar, headed out westward over the Mediterranean, then turned south towards Egypt. The Egyptians were surprised by the sudden appearance of Israeli warplanes over 11 airfields at 7:45AM that morning.

That time was chosen because the Egyptians had fallen into the habit of going on high alert at dawn to guard against surprise attack. By 7:45AM, however, the alert was usually over, the airplanes were back at their airfields, and the pilots disembarked to eat breakfast. In addition to surprise, the success of Operation Focus was due to technological innovation. The first wave of attackers concentrated on the Egyptian runways with a new prototype of penetration bombs specifically designed to render runways unusable. Those bombs didn’t just explode when they hit a runway’s surface. Instead, accelerator rockets drove the warheads through the pavement, before they detonated. The result was a crater atop a sinkhole.

15. The Lopsided Losses of the Six Day War

Damage caused by normal bombs striking runways can be repaired by simply filling in the bomb crater and paving it over. However, sinkholes caused by Israel’s prototype bombs necessitated the complete removal of the damaged pavement segment in order to get at and fill in the sinkhole – a more laborious and time consuming process. With the runways destroyed, the airplanes on the ground were stranded, sitting ducks for followup airstrikes. 197 Egyptian airplanes were destroyed in that first wave. Only eight Egyptian airplanes managed to take to the air. After they struck an initial 11 Egyptian airbases in the first few hours of the Six Day War, the Israeli planes returned to base. They quickly refueled and rearmed in under eight minutes, then headed back to strike an additional 14 Egyptian airbases.

They returned to Israel to once again speedily refuel and rearm, and flew out in a third wave. This one was divided between attacks against what was left of the Egyptian air force, and strikes at the Syrian and Jordanian air forces. By noon on June 5^th, the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces were largely destroyed. They sustained lopsided losses of more than 400 airplanes, while nearly 20 Egyptian airbases and airfields were seriously damaged. The damage inflicted on airfields and airbases crippled what was left of the Egyptian Air Force, and prevented it from intervening for the remainder of the conflict. It was one of the most successful preemptive strikes in history, and left the Israeli air force in complete control of the skies for the rest of the war.

14. From Victor to Epic Loser

China’s Han Dynasty reigned from 202 BC to 220 AD, but fell into serious decline in its last decades. Uprisings, such as the Yellow Turban Rebellion, swept the empire, and the imperial armies were powerless to put them down. In a shortsighted decision, the imperial government issued a call for help that was answered by regional strongmen, who raised their own forces to fight the rebels. They crushed the rebellions, but now with private armies under their command, turned into warlords who posed an even greater threat to the Han Dynasty. The new warlords fought amongst themselves, and the imperial government was unable to control the chaos it had unleashed.

The empire fractured into de facto independent fiefdoms ruled by warlords, and the emperors were reduced to figureheads. Eventually, a warlord named Cao Cao came to the fore. He proved himself a ruthlessly capable general and politician. Cao Cao defeated the warlords of northern China, and reunited it in the emperor’s name. Then he turned his attention to southern China. With a massive army that he claimed numbered more than 800,000 men, Cao Cao marched to defeat his main remaining rivals, southern warlords Sun Quan and Liu Pei, and complete China’s reunification. As seen below, it ended in a lopsided defeat, as Cao Cao went from hero to zero.

13. Cao Cao’s Lopsided Losses

Cao Cao exaggerated his army’s size to intimidate his enemies: modern estimates put his forces at around 250,000 men. It was still a massive host that greatly outnumbered his foes, whose combined forces were no more than 50,000 men. With a lopsided superiority of force, Cao Cao arrived at the Yangtze River, southern China’s key waterway. There, he assembled a riverine fleet to assist his operations. The northern warlord and his men were unfamiliar with naval warfare, however. Like his army, Cao Cao’s navy greatly outnumbered the southerners, but unlike his army, it lacked experience. His enemies exploited that at the Battle of Red Bluff, 208 AD, and sent a secret agent to set him up for failure. He persuaded the northern warlord to chain his ships together to increase their stability, and reduce his men’s seasickness.

Next, a southern admiral offered to defect with his ships. Cao Cao believed him, and arrangements were made to welcome the defectors. However, the “defecting” vessels had been converted into fire ships filled with flammable materials. Skeleton crews sailed them close to the northern fleet, set them alight, then escaped in small boats. The wind carried them to Cao Cao’s chained fleet, whose immobilized ships, unable to maneuver and escape, were destroyed in a massive inferno. He was forced into a retreat that soon deteriorated into a lopsided rout, in which most of his gigantic army was destroyed. That lopsided defeat ended attempts to reunify China, which split into three kingdoms. It took centuries before China was finally reunified.

12. The Lopsided Battle of Karansebes

The lopsided Battle of Karansebes (1788) featured blunder after blunder. It ended in a farcical debacle, in which an army killed up to 10,000 of its own ranks, routed itself, and scattered in panicked flight without an enemy in sight. It took place amidst the Austro-Turkish War of 1787-1791, and was fought between an Austrian army of 100,000 men, and itself. Austria ruled a diverse and multiethnic empire, and its army was drawn from various ethnic groups, most of whom could not understand each others’ languages.

On the night of September 21 – 22, 1788, Austrian hussars crossed a river to scout. They spotted no Turks, but did come across some Gypsies who sold them schnapps. Soon, the hussars were uproariously drunk. Back in the camp, the Austrian commander grew worried when the hussars took too long to return. So he sent some infantry across the river to check on them. The infantry found the hussars, who by then were four sheets to the wind, and demanded a share of their schnapps. When the hussars refused to share, a brawl ensued, and soon escalated into an exchange of gunfire. That was bad, but as seen below, things were about to get worse.

11. When Your Army Routs Itself

As the hussars and infantry fought, an infantryman shouted “Turci! Turci!” (“Turks! Turks!”). That caused the drunken hussars to flee in panic. They were accompanied by many infantrymen, unaware that the alarm had been a trick by one of their comrades. In the meantime, across the river, the Austrian camp stirred uneasily at the sounds of distant gunfire and screams. The panicked hussars and infantry, now intermingled in a terrified mob, neared the camp as they shouted “Turci! Turci!” They were challenged by sentries who shouted at them in German to “Halt! Halt!” That was misheard by some non-German speaking soldiers as “Allah! Allah!“

In the confusion, an artillery officer concluded that the camp was under attack, and ordered his cannons to open fire. Many soldiers woke up to the sounds of screams, cannonade, and combat, startled and confused. Some began to fire wildly, and within minutes, the panic and uncontrolled discharge of firearms spread throughout and engulfed the Austrian camp. Soon, in what turned into a lopsided self-inflicted defeated, entire regiments were firing volleys at each other, before the entire army dissolved and scattered in panicked flight. The Turks arrived two days later and captured the Austrian camp, where they found 10,000 dead and wounded.

10. A Bungled British Battle

Good communication and attention to detail are vital to the success of any military plan – something hammered into recruits starting on their first day in the armed forces. Nobody seems to have explained that to the British commanders in charge of the Crimean War’s Battle of Balaclava, October 25^th, 1854. That day, failures in communication, made worse by inattention to detail, led to a catastrophic blunder that became a byword in military screw-ups ever since. The disaster began on the morning of that fateful day, when a Russian attack chased away British-allied Ottoman soldiers from the Causeway Heights (see map, above) and captured some artillery pieces. From his vantage point on high ground, the British commander in chief, Lord Raglan, saw the Russians removing the guns back to their lines.

Raglan ordered a cavalry charge to stop the Russians from taking away the captured artillery pieces. The British cavalry commander, Lord Lucan, was issued an order that read: “Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns“. Raglan wanted the cavalry to attack the Russians he saw moving artillery pieces on the Causeway Heights. Where Lucan was positioned, however, on lower ground in the North Valley, he could not see those guns. The only Russian guns Lucan could see where at the end of the valley, with Russians on high ground to both sides. To attack those guns would obviously result in lopsided losses, and both Lucan and his subordinate Lord Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade, knew it was stupid. However, as seen below, they simply shrugged, and sent their men to their doom.

9. Courageous, but Catastrophic

Lucan wanted to make sure just what “guns” Raglan referred to. So he asked the messenger who had delivered the British commander in chief’s orders. That worthy, a high strung Captain Nolan, made a dramatic gesture with his arm pointing at the guns. It encompassed not just the Causeway Heights, whose guns Raglan wanted recaptured but that were not visible to Lucan, but also the guns at the far end of the North Valley, that Lucan could see. So Lucan ordered Lord Cardigan to lead his Light Brigade to attack the guns at the valley’s end, with the Heavy Brigade to follow in support. Soon after the charge began, Captain Nolan seems to have realized that the cavalry was headed for the wrong guns. He galloped to the head of the Light Brigade, but before he could explain, an artillery shell exploded in front of his horse and killed him.

607 cavalrymen of the Light Brigade continued their charge into what came to be known as the Valley of Death. They were slaughtered as they advanced a mile to the guns. As Alfred Lord Tennyson, Britain’s poet laureate put it in Charge of the Light Brigade: “Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered. Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of hell, Rode the six hundred.” Incredibly, the British cavalrymen actually reached the guns, and fought a brief battle there against incredible odds, before they were forced to withdraw. Losses were lopsided. Of the 607 men who charged, 118 were killed outright, 127 were wounded, and about 60 were taken prisoner. When the Light Brigade regrouped upon its return, only 195 men were left with horses.

8. The Day of the Longbow

The French suffered one of their most lopsided defeats at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) in the Hundred Years War. A French army of about 36,000 men, including thousands of armored knights, was humiliated by 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. Henry picked a position where his flanks were protected by woods.

The English choice of ground limited French options to a frontal attack along a narrow front over recently plowed muddy fields. The English monarch placed longbowmen on his flanks, and his dismounted knights and more longbowmen in the center. He had his men hammer pointed stakes in front of their positions, and awaited a French attack. The French obliged, and their commander ordered his first wave of mounted knights to charge. As seen below, that was an epic blunder, that led to a lopsided French defeat.

7. The Lopsided Losses of the Battle of Agincourt

The terrain and field conditions were against the French knights who charged at Agincourt. The muddy fields, the weight of their heavy armor, the rows of sharpened stakes in their path, and the rain of arrows doomed them. 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. A second French wave attacked, but was beaten back with similarly lopsided losses. As that took place, King Henry received mistaken reports of a French attack on his rear.

Henry judged that he lacked the men to guard thousands of prisoners, and ordered his captives killed. By the time he realized the reports were mistaken and ordered a halt to the executions, about 2000 prisoners had been massacred. In a final blunder, the French sent in their third and last 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. Casualties were lopsided, with about 600 English killed vs 10,000 French dead on the field of battle, plus another 2000 executed prisoners.

6. Prelude to Catastrophe

The Soviets suffered extremely lopsided losses at the start of the German invasion in 1941. The seeds were planted years earlier, in Stalin’s Military Purge, which began in 1937. It removed the Soviet military’s most experienced commanders, and plunged it into chaos. 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 were executed or imprisoned or fired. The purge also decimated the best middle rank officers. Until 1937, the Soviet military had been known for its innovation. Intellectual ferment within the Red Army, such as the Theory of Deep Operations, was as creative as what Germany’s wehrmacht was doing at the time. The Soviets had their equivalents of Guderians and Mannsteins, bright officers who brimmed with new ideas and were confident that they would revolutionize warfare. They suffered the most.

The purge fell heaviest on the most creative officers, who stood out and were thus prime suspects of harboring the deviationist tendencies Stalin wanted stamped out. Thus, when the Nazis attacked, the Soviet military was poorly officered and poorly led. Stalin also failed to heed warnings that the Germans were about to invade. Those who raised the alarm were punished, as Stalin insisted the warnings were part of a plot engineered by the British to instigate a war between the USSR and Germany. Soviet commanders were not even allowed take precautionary measures, lest they provoke the Germans. Indeed, hours after the invasion began, Stalin disbelieved commanders who reported that they were being overrun. He insisted that they were experiencing isolated border incidents, not a full-blown war.

5. The Lopsided Casualties of Operation Barbarossa

To make matters worse for the desperate Soviet forces, Stalin fancied himself a talented generalissimo, and meddled too much. One blunder among many that led to lopsided losses was his order to counterattack, issued to units that were in no position to do so. In another blunder that also led to catastrophically lopsided losses, Stalin demanded that units stay put in untenable positions, and fight to the last man. That led to a series of massive encirclements, in which the Germans would capture up to 700,000 Soviets per encirclement. By the end of 1941, the Germans had captured 3.4 million Soviet POWs, most of whom perished in captivity.

Soviet losses were catastrophic: they suffered over six million military casualties, plus millions of civilians, in the first six months of the war. Such lopsided figures were greater than any country has ever suffered in a similar period. It took superhuman efforts and sacrifice for them to recover, claw their way back up, and win in the end. Stalin deserves much credit because he managed to keep the USSR in the fight, long after any other country would have thrown in the towel. However, Stalin deserves even more credit – or blame – for the catastrophic screwups and lopsided losses at the start of the war.

4. Royal Navy Humiliation

The Dutch launched a surprise attack that caught England’s Royal Navy off guard on June 9^th, 1667. A Dutch fleet brazenly sailed up the Medway River in Kent to attack English warships anchored in dockyards at Gillingham and Chatham. The raid took place in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), and resulted in one of the most lopsided victories in Dutch history – and one of the most lopsided defeats in British naval history. From the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665, things had gone bad for the English. First, they suffered the Great Plague of 1665 – 1666, then the Great Fire of London in 1666. By 1667, King Charles II of England realized that he had screwed up by getting his kingdom into a war it was unprepared for.

Charles was broke, unable to pay his sailors, and desperately wanted peace. However, the Dutch were sore about an earlier loss in the First Anglo-Dutch War, and wanted to even the score. They sought to inflict a humiliating and lopsided defeat on the English, not only as payback, but also to enable them negotiate from a strong position that would allow them to impose punitive peace terms. So a Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, entered the Thames estuary. It captured Sheerness at the mouth of the Medway, then sailed up that river. That was bad for the English. As seen below, things got worse for them soon enough.

3. Lopsided Loss at the Medway

The Dutch overcame a barrier chain stretched across the Medway. They next forced their way past fortresses along the way that were intended to protect the English battleships anchored at Gillingham and Chatham. When the Dutch reached the English ships laid up in their dockyards, they discovered that the financially strapped English had left them virtually unmanned and unarmed. The raiders swiftly burned three capital ships and ten smaller warships. They also captured and towed away two major ships of the line, including HMS Royal Charles, the flagship of the Royal Navy, named after the reigning king.

In a lopsided defeat, England’s Royal Navy lost 13 ships, while the Dutch lost none. The demonstration that the English could not protect their own fleet within their own borders humiliated England. So great was the humiliation that there was speculation about the collapse of the monarchy, which had been restored only seven years earlier after a decade of rule without a king during the English Commonwealth. Chagrined, broke, and with a monarch seated atop a shaky throne, the English hurried to sign a peace treaty favorable to the Dutch, and exited the war.

2. When Napoleon Was Routed by Rabbits

Napoleon Bonaparte was not as murderous as Hitler, but in his day, he was feared and loathed by his foes just as much as contemporaries feared the Fuhrer. As he roamed Europe at the head of his armies, gobbling up countries like popcorn, Napoleon was a scary boogeyman. Indeed, English parents used to scare their children into obedience with “Boney the Bogeyman”. Napoleon, often referred to in newspapers as “Little Boney” in a bid to belittle him and play down his threat, was portrayed as a larger than life figure to England’s young. He was depicted as a giant ogre who would take away naughty children and eat them for breakfast. “If you don’t behave, Boney will come for you” was usually quite effective in getting rambunctious kids to pipe down.

The kids would have been less terrified if they’d known that the scary Boney was once attacked – and forced to retreat – by rabbits. It might not have been as bad as his defeat at Waterloo. However, it was a pretty humiliating and lopsided rout that forced the mighty Emperor of the French to flee from a horde of cute bunnies. It happened in 1807, when Napoleon was at the height of his power and bestrode Europe like a colossus. He had vanquished the Russians and Austrians at the Battle of Austerlitz, and humiliated the Prussians at the twin Battles of Jena-Auerstedt. He capped off his string of victories with the Treaties of Tilsit, which ended the War of the Fourth Coalition against him. Then, as seen below, came the bunnies.

1. Chased by Bunnies

Le Empereur decided to celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit, and what better way to celebrate than by killing small animals? Napoleon ordered his chief of staff, Alexander Berthier, to arrange a rabbit hunt, and invite the top military brass. Berthier prepared an outdoors luncheon, and collected about 3000 rabbits. They were arranged in cages near a grassy field, to be released for the bigwigs to shoot as they fled. Something went wrong, however. When the bunnies were released they did not jump away in terror, but bounded in their thousands towards Napoleon. With thousands of rabbits hopping towards them rather than fleeing for their lives, Napoleon’s party laughed at first. The laughter stopped and concern grew, however, as the onslaught continued. The bunnies swarmed Bonaparte’s legs, and climbed up his jacket. He tried shooing them with his riding crop, while those around him tried chasing them away with sticks.

There were too many of them, however, and Napoleon fled to his carriage. According to historian David Chandler: “with a finer understanding of Napoleonic strategy than most of his generals, the rabbit horde divided into two wings and poured around the flanks of the party and headed for the imperial coach“. Some jumped into the carriage with Le Empereur, who ordered his coachmen to whip the horses into a hasty retreat. Europe’s hegemon had been routed by bunnies. It was Berthier’s fault. Rather than capture wild hares, he had bought tame rabbits from nearby farms, that were accustomed to people. When released from their cages, they did not fear Napoleon’s hunting party as potential predators. Instead, they bounded towards them in the expectation that the Emperor of the French and his companions would feed them their dinner.

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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

Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust – Battle of Medway

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

Cracked – 20 of the Most Hilariously Lopsided Battles in History

Curious Rambler – Boney Napoleon Scares British Children

Daily Sabah, October 21^st, 2021 – Battle of Karansebes: Easiest Victory in Ottoman History

Encyclopedia Britannica – Anglo-Zanzibar War

Encyclopedia Britannica – Battle of Balaklava

Friday Times, April 16^th, 2022 – Dumbest Battle in History: Drunken Disorder and Confusion at Karansebes

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

Hernon, Ian – Britain’s Forgotten Wars: Colonial Campaigns of the 19^th Century (2003)

Historic UK – The Shortest War in History

History Answers – Napoleon’s Battle Against Rabbits

History Collection – Spies Who Paved the Way for Victory in World War II

Jones, James Rees – The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century (1996)

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

Lord, Walter – Incredible Victory (1967)

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

Parshall, Jonathan, and Tully, Anthony – Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (2005)

Perras, Galen Rogers – Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy, 1867-1945 (2003)

Rigby, David – Wade McClusky and the Battle of Midway (2019)

Seaton, Albert – The Russo-German War, 1941-45 (1972)

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

Woodham-Smith, Cecil – The Reason Why: Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade (1954)

World History Encyclopedia – Battle of Red Cliffs