5. The Battle of Stirling Bridge
If you know only what you saw in the film “Braveheart,” you’re still unfamiliar with what truly happened at Stirling Bridge. The battle took place on September 11, 1297, during the Scottish War for Independence from England. The Scots were led by Andrew Moray and Sir William Wallace, who hated the English so much that he sought out Hugh de Cressingham, the English second-in-command on the field and personally beheaded him, then had him skinned and made into a sword belt. The rest of the Scots chopped Cressingham’s skin up into tanned victory tokens.
But, whereas the film depicts the battle playing out comfortably on a flat, grassy field, the battle really played out on Stirling Bridge, which is still there today, and very narrow. Only about 2 men on horseback, or 4 men on foot can pass in line-abreast formation, and because of this, as most famously demonstrated at Thermopylae in 480 BC, the English numbers meant nothing. They had somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 men, to the Scots’ 2,000 to 2,300.
Given the numbers, the English did not even bother considering what would happen when both armies collided, as they also had about 300 heavy cavalry, and the Scots had only one hundred lightly armored cavalry, no match for English knights. The English also had a large contingent of longbowmen, who were the bane of spearmen. Except for their light cavalry, the Scots only had infantry, but Wallace had come up with an ingenious plan to thwart the English cavalry: the schiltron. It is a circular formation of pikemen, with pikes, or spears, pointing outward. Wallace invented this idea, but it is no different in principle from the Greek phalanx. Horses are very intelligent and will not run into a bristling wall of spearpoints.
So Wallace had his men charge the English as they exited the Scottish end of the bridge, and the Scots threw their spears into position at the last instant as the English cavalry arrived, thus devastating it. Now the hard part. The Scots were still ridiculously outnumbered, so Wallace ordered the infantry to charge the English and hold them on the bridge, where a stalemate would be reached. Meanwhile, he ordered Moray to lead the Scottish cavalry around the left flank of the English, across the River Forth, and slam into their rear, which they succeeded in doing, trapping the majority of the English army on the bridge, where about 7,000 men were slaughtered, or at least 70% of the English North Army.
This battle did more for Scotland than that of Bannockburn, since until Stirling Bridge, the Scots did not believe they could defeat the English in open warfare. The latter’s heavy cavalry was just too tremendous. But with the schiltron, they began holding their own, and this battle gave them the confidence to take ground from the English, without which confidence, they might have fled from the field of Bannockburn.
4. The Battle of Gibraltar
The Spanish Armada that attempted to defeat the British navy was bested by Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake. The Spanish managed to rebuild a fleet of 21 galleons, the largest warships in the world at the time, and intended to use them against the Dutch, who began a revolt in 1568 against Spain, because of Phillip II’s tyrannical hatred of Protestant Holland.
You would think the Spanish naval hegemony of the time would have destroyed any Dutch fleet, but it is not enough to be a great navy. You also have to fight well. On 25 April, 1607, the Dutch fleet of 26 small warships and 4 supply ships surprised the Spanish fleet of 21 warships, anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar, and spearheaded their horizontal line, normally a bad move, as will be explained later, but a good one here, as most of the Spanish cannon were unmanned.
The result was annihilation. All 21 Spanish ships were sunk in 4 hours. Not one Dutch ship was sunk, and the Dutch lost only 100 men, to Spain’s 4,000. Almost half of the latter were executed by Dutch lifeboat crews sent through the swimming Spanish mass of sailors to kill them with swords, spears, and muskets. The Dutch admiral, Van Heemskerk bled to death early in the battle, after a Spanish cannonball took off his left leg at the hip.
This battle enabled the Dutch to bring about a 12 year truce with Spain, who now had very little naval power left, and thus could not reach the Netherlands or England without France’s help, who would not give it. When Spain was powerful enough to break the truce 12 years later, the Dutch still won.
3. The Battle of Leyte Gulf
It remains, and probably will for a very long time to come, the largest naval battle in history, in terms both of tonnage displaced, and area traversed. The United Stated Navy slugged it out with the Imperial Japanese navy around the Phillippine Archipelago from 23 to 26 October 1944. Four battles were fought, the second of which, the Battle of Surigao Strait, remains the last time two surface fleets of battleships engaged in naval gunfire.
The first battle, in the Sibuyan Sea, saw American aircraft divebomb the Japanese Center Fleet, and sink the Musashi, one of two largest battleships in history, the other being er twin sister, Yamato, which survived this sub-battle. The Musashi and Myoko, a heavy cruiser, were sunk, but the huge Center Fleet wasn’t perturbed.
That night, the Southern Japanese Fleet attempted to pass through Surigao Strait and flank Leyte Island from the South, while Kurita closed the pincers from the North through San Bernardino Strait. Unfortunately, he steamed right into the horizontal line of 6 American battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 28 destroyers, and 39 torpedo boats. The American order to open fire was “Pearl Harbor.” Half of the Japanese Southern Fleet was sunk.
The next morning, the final two battles took place, as Admiral Halsey made a severe error in leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded to go North after Ozawa’s decoy fleet. Halsey caught him and dealt a hammer blow off Cape Engano with carrier versus carrier combat. Halsey’s fleet, however, was ordered to defend the Leyte beachhead, where the Marines were fighting for the island.
The Center Fleet, now unopposed, sailed through the strait and south for the beaches, where it would shell the life out of the Marines. But it ran into the small fleet of escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts, supporting the invasion. The ensuing battle off Samar Island was one of the worst David-versus-Goliath mismatches in military history.
The Americans refused to give way, largely inspired (or required) by Lt. Cdr. Ernest E. Evans, of the USS Johnston, a destroyer. For the Johnston to storm the Japanese fleet would be like shooting a BB at a freight train, but that is what Evans ordered. The Johnston lasted for 2 and a half hours of naval bombardment before sinking. Evans was killed and awarded a Medal of Honor. The rest of the American fleet joined in and suffered similar fates, losing 5 ships, but not before sinking 4 much larger ships, and frightening the Japanese fleet into retreating.
Leyte Gulf resulted in one extremely important advantage to the Americans, in that it deprived the Empire of Japan of all of its oil reserves. Without the Phillippines, Japan was doomed much faster. Some of its admirals argued later that they could have held out for another year or two, regardless of the atomic bombings.
2. The Ludendorff Offensive
The 1918 Spring Offensive of WWI, named after the German commander, Erich Ludendorff, was Germany’s final attempt to shatter the miserable stalemate of the previous 4 years, and conquer the Allied army. He was compelled to do this in an effort to gain control of as much as he could before the Americans got into it with all their industrial might.
Fresh off the Russian Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which enabled 50 more German divisions to turn to the Western Front, Ludendorff began his assault on 21 March. It did not end until 18 July, 5 months later. He sent approximately 1,000,000 men into the French, British and American lines, stretched for 43 miles, from Arras to La Fere, France. They were met by a fairly equal number of largely exhausted enemy soldiers. From 1915 to 1917, the Germans dug in and let the Allies punch themselves out.
The Germans pushed through the lines amazingly well, taking more ground than either side had taken since 1914. But the Germans could not hold this ground for long, as the Allies fought defensively, conservatively, and let the Germans punch themselves out, just as their roles were reversed before.
5 months later, the Germans were absolutely exhausted. They had lost 688,341 casualties, to the Allies’ 851,374 (dead, wounded, and missing), marking this as one of the most lethal battles in human history. The Allies, however, were bolstered by the arrival of the Americans, under General John “Blackjack” Pershing, who proved themselves in Belleau Wood, in June. They immediately counterattacked and by the end of August had reclaimed all the land the Germans took.
They then quickly launched the Hundred Days’ Offensive, which destroyed German morale and sent the German armies home. Their empire collapsed and World War I was finished. The Ludendorff Offensive was thus a Pyrrhic Victory for Germany, accomplishing its immediate goals, but destroying itself in the process. Had Ludendorff not ordered the offensive, the war would have lasted years longer.
1. The Battle of Salamis
While King Leonidas and his brave 300 were making their stand against 250,000 Persian soldiers under Xerxes I of Persia, Xerxes had his navy sail around through the Artemisium Strait, near Salamis Island, in an attempt to land soldiers on the southwest coast of Greece and advance on Athens, bypassing Leonidas’s men. The date is not agreed on, but occurred in the first or second week of September, 480 BC, while the Spartans led their Greek allies in the pass of Thermopylae.
The Persian fleet had somewhere between 600 and 800 ships, or as many as 1,200, depending on the history read. The Greeks had about 370. The Greeks were led by Themistocles, who is now regarded as one of the finest naval tacticians in history. Thou severely outnumbered, he had his men board their ships in line and wait for the Persians to sail to them. The Persians did so, and the Greeks backed up, apparently afraid.
What they were doing was precisely the same thing Leonidas was doing in Thermopylae: drawing the Persians into a bottleneck where their numbers would be meaningless, and they could no longer surround or flank the Greeks. The farther the Persian fleet entered the Strait, the narrower it became, until finally the Greeks sallied forth and rammed into them.
The technique of the day, since no one had cannon, was to ram the enemy ship at an angle and grind along its side, snapping off all its oars. This would reduce it to half speed, all the while the archers on deck would rain fire arrows on it. Or a ship could ram the enemy straight on with the bronze-plated prow and punch a hole in its hull.
If the enemy ship did not sink, the ships were grinding side to side and both sent their marines up top to board the other. Unfortunately, the Persian marines were fairly lightly armed and armored, while the Greek ships all carried contingents of fully armed hoplites, trained and outfitted just the same as Leonidas’s Spartans.
Add to this the Persian fleet’s cumbersome size and the result was a decisive Greek victory. The Persians ships got in each other’s way, and the Greek fleet formed a wedge and split the Persian fleet in two, shoving them all back until they ran aground on the Greek coast. They attempted to flee to Phalerum, where a Persian army was waiting, but were ambushed by Aeginetans, a Greek naval contingent of the battle, and more ships were sunk.
When they finally escaped, the Persians had lost about 300 ships, the Greeks only 40. With his fleet ransacked, Xerxes now had no way of transporting his men around Greece and could not hope to succeed with his invasion. The next year he tried again, and faced 40,000 Greeks on the plains of Plataea. Remember how unstoppable 300 Spartans were at Thermopylae? Well there were 10,000 Spartans at Plataea, with plenty of room to do their thing. They slaughtered 10,000 or more Persians. Herodotus claims 250,000 Persians killed there. He also claims that only 159 Greeks were killed, but more likely 5,000 or so were.
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