Some of History’s Most Unexpected Plot Twists

13. An Unexpected Onslaught to Preserve America’s Bid for Independence

The American Patriots’ bid for independence was faring poorly as 1776 drew to a close. They had been outgeneraled, outfought, and soundly beaten. Most notably in New York City, where only a near-miraculous escape had saved them from annihilation. Morale was low, so George Washington planned a surprise raid to score a quick victory and restore some confidence. He was helped by the opposing commander’s mistake in not bothering to read a warning alerting him to what the Americans were up to.

Washington sought to cross the Delaware River from Pennsylvania, where he was encamped, for an unexpected onslaught against Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey. On the night of December 25^th – 26^th, cold, hungry, and demoralized Americans got into boats on a freezing night, made even more miserable by driving sleet. Bad weather and icy river conditions prevented two detachments from crossing, so Washington made it to the far bank with only 2400 men – 3000 fewer than planned for.

12. George Washington, Founding Father and Funny Man?

The opening stages of the Patriots’ advance against the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, New Jersey, was captured in Washington Crossing the Delaware. Painted by German -American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze in 1851, it is one of the most iconic images of the American Revolution and of American history. It depicts George Washington and a flotilla of Patriots in boats crossing the Delaware River on the night of December 25 – 26, 1776, for a surprise attack against enemy forces.

The depiction of Washington standing at a boat’s prow, staring determinedly ahead while flanked by other Patriot-laden boats, is captivating. The painting’s portrayal of Washington is true to the essence of what is known of the man, who habitually projected an aura of detached dignity and a wall of formality that separated him from subordinates. It was not true, however, to Washington’s actual conduct during the crossing: it was one of the rare occasions when he let down the formality, and cracked jokes.

11. Unexpected Humor From George Washington at the Start of a Critical Operation Lifted His Soldiers’ Morale

As sleet was driven into and swirled around them on a miserably cold winter night, George Washington’s freezing and famished men clambered into boats. When it was Washington’s turn to get into a boat, he looked his overweight artillery chief, Henry Knox, and said: “Shift your fat ass, Harry! But don’t swamp the damn boat!” It was not exactly comedy gold. However, any levity from the reserved American commander in public was unexpected, and more so on such a serious occasion.

At first, the Patriots within hearing distance of the exchange were stunned. For a few moments, they stood looking at each other in shocked disbelief at what their ears had registered. Then somebody began to chuckle, and before long, contagious laughter rippled throughout the attacking force, as Washington’s comment was spread and repeated. With their spirits lifted, the Patriot fighting men got into their boats and began crossing the frozen Delaware River, ready to fall upon their enemy in Trenton.

10. An Ignored Warning That Gave the Patriots a Desperately-Needed Victory and Morale Boost

Fortunately for George Washington and the men he led on the night of December 25 – 26, 1776, they faced no opposition as they marched nine miles from the Delaware River to Trenton. Early on the morning of the 26^th, the Americans fell upon their foes in an unexpected onslaught that caught the town’s Hessian garrison off guard. In a swift victory, Washington’s men killed, wounded, and captured about a thousand foes, for the loss of only two dead and five wounded.

The Hessian commander, Johann Rall, was mortally wounded. In his pocket was discovered a note from a Loyalist farmer, who had spotted the approaching Americans and sent a warning. Fortunately, Rall had not read the warning, and the note was still unopened when it was recovered. Trenton was a small battle, but one with far-reaching consequences. It inspired the Patriots when they needed a morale boost, saved their army from disintegration by attracting new recruits, and stemmed the tide of desertions by convincing many veterans to stick around.

9. The Brit Who Bluffed a Revolutionary War Hero

In the early days of the War of 1812, British General Isaac Brock marched on Fort Detroit with 1330 men. His force consisted of 330 Redcoats, 400 Canadian militia, and 600 Native Americans, supported by three lights guns, five heavy guns, two mortars, and two warships. Brock’s target was garrisoned by a force nearly twice his own. The Americans had 600 US Army regulars, and nearly 2000 militia, sheltered within the protective walls of a fortress bristling with over 36 cannons. In an unexpected twist, Brock bluffed the Americans into surrendering to his smaller force.

For Detroit was commanded by an American War of Independence veteran and hero, General William Hull. Brock learned from captured messages that American morale was low, that the garrison was short of supplies, and that his enemies feared Brock’s Native American allies. Emboldened by that information, he decided to attack at once. Playing upon American fear of Indians, Brock arranged for a misleading letter to fall into American hands, that greatly exaggerated the number of his native allies from an actual 600 to a fanciful 5000 braves.

8. Tricking an Enemy Into Raising the White Flag

General Isaac Brock tricked the Americans into believing that he had more professional soldiers than he actually did, by dressing up his Canadian militia in castoff British regimental uniforms. Outside Detroit, he had the same soldiers march in a loop over the same stretch within eyesight of the garrison, duck out of sight, then return to march anew as if they were fresh reinforcements. Brock also made his men light five times as many fires at night than was the norm, to further convey an illusion of greater strength.

The American General Hull’s already-low confidence collapsed at the prospect of facing a strong British army accompanied by 5000 Natives. Brock sent a message demanding surrender. He informed Hull that he did not want to massacre the defenders, but he would have little control over his Indian allies once fighting commenced. Hull decided it was futile to resist. Unwilling to sacrifice his men against hopeless odds, and fearing for the women in children inside the Fort, including his own daughter and grandchild, he raised a white flag.

7. The Unexpected Surrender of Fort Detroit Derailed America’s Strategy for the War of 1812

General Hull asked Brock for three days to negotiate the terms of surrender. Brock gave him only three hours before he would attack. Hull caved in, and surrendered his entire command of nearly 2500 men, three dozen cannons, 300 rifles, 2500 muskets, and the only American warship in the Upper Lakes. The British cost was two men wounded. The unexpected surrender of Fort Detroit was a military disaster for the US. It derailed American plans to invade and seize Canada early in the war before the British had time to rush in reinforcements.

It also reinvigorated the Canadians, who had been pessimistic about the prospects of defending Canada from forcible annexation by the US. Simultaneously, it fired up Native Americans in the Northwest Territory to war against American outposts and settlers. An American invasion of Canada was attempted later on, but by then the British and loyal Canadians were better prepared and more confident, and the invasion was beaten back. After General Hull was released from British captivity, he faced an American court-martial that tried, convicted, and sentenced him to be shot to death. However, his life was spared because of his heroism decades earlier, during America’s War of Independence.

Related: Greatest Military Bluffs in History.

6. The Balkans Backwater Terrorists Who Changed the World

Throughout history, few things could have been more unexpected than the world-changing impact of the Serbian Black Hand. They were a small group of fanatics in a Balkans backwater of a country that few at the time knew of, fired up by nationalist grievances that few outside their homeland had ever heard of, let alone cared about. Yet, that unheralded collection of obscure malcontents set in motion a chain of events that ended up changing the world beyond all recognition.

The Serbian Black Hand was an early twentieth-century irredentist secret society, that sought to bring all Serbs together into a single country. They employed terrorist methods in a bid to free Serbs outside Serbia’s borders from Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule and to unify them into a Greater Serbia. Austria-Hungary was the Black Hand’s main target, and the group’s assassins would go on to murder the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. The result was unprecedented mayhem, as the world was plunged into its greatest war until then. By the time the dust had settled, one era had ended, and another – in which we live to this day – had begun.

5. Serbia Was a “Problem” Country Long Before the Breakup of Yugoslavia

The Serbian Black Hand’s founders first came together in 1903. That year, a group of junior officers, led by then-Captain Dragutin Dimitrijevic, later known as Apis, launched a bloody coup that culminated in the murder of the Serbian king and queen. The murder of royals shocked the era’s genteel sensibilities and cemented Serbia’s status as a “problem” country. In 1908, following Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, an act Serbia resented, the 1903 conspirators met with senior Serb officials to found a secret pan-Serbian organization. Its goal was to liberate Serbs living under foreign rule via a campaign of propaganda, sabotage, terrorism, and other clandestine means.

The following year, a furious Austria-Hungary forced Serbia, under threat of war, to abandon those activities. The Serbs did not stay cowed for long, however. In 1911, the Black Hand was established to resume the abandoned anti-Austro-Hungarian clandestine campaign, oversee its activities, and establish and coordinate nationalist revolutionary cells in Bosnia. The organization trained guerrillas, saboteurs, propagandists, and assassins, and sent them into the Hapsburg empire to destabilize it with terrorism and stir up nationalism and resentment among its Serbian subjects.

4. An Early Twentieth Century State Sponsor of Terrorism

In the years leading up to World War I, Serbia was a full-blown state sponsor of terrorism. The Black Hand’s leadership was composed primarily of high-ranking Serbian officials and army officers, including the country’s crown prince. The Serbian government was well informed of the group’s terrorist activities. Apis, who had led the coup that murdered the royal family in 1903, had risen to colonel in charge of Austria’s military intelligence by 1914 and was the Black Hand’s primary mover and shaker.

In 1914, he hatched a plot to send assassins to kill Austria’s successor to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. No single act of terrorism was more momentous than that assassination. It began with a comedy of errors, in which various assassins tried but failed to kill the Archduke. One threw a bomb that didn’t kill its target, then swallowed cyanide that had expired, and tried to drown himself in a river that was only inches deep. The comedy ended with an unexpected twist of fate, and the tragedy began.

3. An Unexpected Twist of Fate Transformed an Assassination Plot From a Bungled Comedy of Errors to a Global Tragedy

The Serbian Black Hand’s attempt to assassinate Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand had devolved into a farce, as would-be assassins bungled in a variety of ways. At least those who had actually tried to assassinate their target bungled. Others grew discouraged and simply walked away. The comedy of errors ended when the royal’s convertible took a wrong turn that brought it within a few feet of Gavrilo Princip, an assassin who had given up and gone to grab a bite. Taking advantage of his unexpected luck, Princip stepped up to the open vehicle and fired two shots that killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife.

The aftermath saw a Rube Goldberg chain of events, that plunged the world into war. Austria declared war on Serbia, which dragged in Russia, Serbia’s protector. That in turn dragged in Germany, Austria’s ally. France, Russia’s ally against Germany, then joined the fray, prompting Germany to invade France via Belgium. That gave Britain a more palatable justification to join as an outraged guarantor of Belgium’s violated sovereignty, in lieu of the realpolitik European balance of power considerations which would have compelled her to fight Germany anyhow.

2. The Man Who Started World War I Lived Until Its Final Year

Gavrilo Princip (1894 – 1918) was a Serb from Bosnia-Herzegovina, then a territory ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a teenager, he was radicalized by Serbian nationalists who called for a country that unified all southern Slavs (“Yugoslavia”). So he joined an organization dedicated to freeing Slavs from Austria-Hungary’s control. Violent activism got him expelled from school in 1912, so he walked 170 miles to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, to become a guerrilla and raid across the border into Austro-Hungarian territory.

He was soon recruited by the Serbian Black Hand. They equipped and trained Princep and other terrorists, then sent them to assassinate Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June, 1914. Princip fired the fatal shots, then swallowed a cyanide pill immediately after. However, it had expired, and he was captured. He was tried and convicted, but was only nineteen years old at the time – twenty-seven days short of the twenty-year-old minimum age under Austro-Hungarian law for the death penalty. So he received the maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. Gavrilo Princip contracted tuberculosis in prison and died on April 28, 1918, three years and ten months after sparking World War I.

1. The End of History’s Most Impactful Terrorist Group

The Serbian Black Hand’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand kicked off a global war in which over 70 million men were mobilized, and 10 million were killed. Four empires vanished, and the global center of power shifted from the Old World to the New. A staid age of aristocracy and traditional forms of government came to an end. It was replaced by a new fervent and fast-paced era of democracies, juxtaposed with radical ideologies and totalitarianism. The Black Hand’s bullets in Sarajevo had irrevocably changed the world.

Serbia paid a high price. It stood off an initial Austrian onslaught, but in 1915 the Germans joined and helped the Austrians overrun Serbia. One-fifth of Serbia’s population perished during the war – the highest casualty percentage suffered by any country in World War I. Serbia’s prime minister finally had enough of the Black Hand, which had grown too powerful and too meddlesome. In 1917, its leaders, including Apis, were arrested and tried on trumped-up charges for conspiracy to murder the Prince Regent. They were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed, and the group was outlawed.

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

All That’s Interesting – Gavrilo Princip: The Serbian Nationalist Who Assassinated Franz Ferdinand

Antietam on the Web – Special Order 191: Perhaps the Greatest ‘What If’ of American Military History

Burns, Patrick – American Working Terriers (2006)

Catton, Bruce – The Civil War, Three Volumes in One (1984)

Cracked – When Washington Called a Ceasefire Over a Dog

Encyclopedia Britannica – Battle of Trenton

History Collection – People Reveal their Personal Accounts with Infamous Secret Societies

Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia – Trenton and Princeton Campaign (Washington’s Crossing)

Glantz, David – Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (1998)

Glantz, David – When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (1995)

Haldeen, Braddy – The Cock of the Walk: Qui-qui-ri-qui! The Legend of Pancho Villa (1955)

History Extra, November 1^st, 2013 – Where the Pulverized Bones of Soldiers and Horses Who Died at the Battle of Waterloo Sold as Soil Fertilizer?

Inc. – What Tootsie Rolls and the Korean War Can Teach Us About Innovation on Veterans Day

Mount Vernon – Soldier, Statesman, Dog Lover: George Washington‘s Pups

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

We Are the Mighty – Marines Were Once Saved by Candy From the Sky

Wikipedia – Siege of Detroit