Favorite Historical Battle?

[historylover]

I still have to insist on Cannae. It didn't have a huge effect on history, since Rome was crushed and yet still won the war, but the brilliance of the tactics and the sheer scale of the carnage are amazing.

Hannibal is advancing on Rome, and has just delivered a crushing blow to Rome in a brilliant ambush at Lake Trasimene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Trasimene. Now Rome is prepared for trickery and puts its massive army on a huge open plain at Cannae. Hannibal has no choice but to fight in the open with an undersized army. Hannibal is fucked, right? Wrong.

So what does one of the most brilliant generals in history do? He places his weakest infantry in the middle and stays with them. He expects them to take a beating but by staying with them he stops them from breaking. The Roman Army attacks the soft middle, but they push too far in, Hannibal organizes a controlled retreat to draw them further in, and eventually Rome becomes completely surrounded. The Roman Army panics and is completely slaughtered.

50,000-70,000 casualties, only about 10,000 survivors, all within a single day. Among the casualties are about half of the military hierarchy and about a third of the Roman Senate (in the good old days members of the ruling class actually fought their wars for themselves instead of forcing the peasants to fight for them).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae

Brings new meaning to Sun Tzu's quote, "Pretend to be weak when you are really strong."

 

[Facetious]

democrats vs. republikans

Not only my favorite but the lengthiest.

A battle of evermore indeed.

 

[anomaly]

The Battle of the Nephites and the Lamenites.

 

[clogselfe]

Little Big Horn

 

[Becks...poamr]

Battle of Anchialos/Anchialus in 917

 

[DukeLaCrosse]

R2D2 vs. salacious crumb

 

[tdomaster]

does the cold war between russia and usa count?

 

[drmet]

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest

 

[PlasmaTwa2]

As a Canadian, Vimy and Passchendaele are both high on my list, but Stalingrad tops my list. If there was any battle that could sum up everything WWII was about, it would be that one.

 

[Dean Wormer]

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest

Upon hearing of the defeat, the emperor Augustus, according to the Roman historian Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, showed signs of near-insanity, banging his head against the walls of his palace and repeatedly shouting Quintili Vare, legiones redde! ('Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!').

 

[jibbijib]

I would like to choose the battle I had with forcin out a humungous poop for 10 minutes straight.


Oh and of course D-Day, specifically Juno Beach. My grandfather was there, so I have a personal attachment to that battle. I was about 5-10 seconds from being non-existant, so I'm very pleased with the result.

 

[tiger1977]

Siege on Ft. Sumter

 

[marquis2]

does the cold war between russia and usa count?

That's a very narrow view of the Cold War!

 

[D-rock]

One thing that always seems to come up with historic battles that feature the Romans is that despite the glorification of their empire and the armies they commanded by movies and other stories, for the most part they really sucked and where quite overrated when it came to strategy and tactics. They either seemed to outnumbered people and used overwhelming force or even when they lost they could form armies faster than the other person and keep sending them at them until they just gave up. Often when they were up against people that really were smart and knew how to exploit them there got beat pretty badly.

 

[Baill Inneraora]

Battle of Watling Street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Watling_Street

 

[LukeEl]

This really long game of Risk I played against the computer it took about 15 mins and I was completely annilhilated. Seriously though my favorite historical battle has to be Gettysburg. I remember our dad taking my brother and I when we were kids and had us walk a majority of the battlefield, even up the Roundtops. And how can I forget it was July and I practically got heat stroke too. I can only imagine what Union and Confederate troops felt like wearing wool uniforms, plus a musket and all that equipment they carried on their backs.

 

[lurkingdirk]

I find the French-Spanish wars of 1565-67 in Florida interesting. Pretty obscure, but fun stuff. By land, by sea, and by bog.

 

[drf]

I wouldn't say favorite but it's without a doubt the facsinating to me. The Battle of the Somme World War I Northern France, 1916. One of the bloodiest if not THE bloodiest battle in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somme_1916

 

[domshooter]

kasserine pass (made the Americans realize who they were fighting, and revamp their tactics)

midway (the turning point of the war in the pacific)

the normandy breakout (the two or so weeks that it took for allied forces to break out of the hedgerow laden normandy coastline, the germans failure to push them back into the sea. their ultimate mistake)

Iwo Jima (just the ultimate definition of the USMC. 23 of the 82 medals of honor awarded to the Marines during WWII were awarded during this battle)

 

[Baill Inneraora]

I find the French-Spanish wars of 1565-67 in Florida interesting. Pretty obscure, but fun stuff. By land, by sea, and by bog.

Not familiar. Any links or more info?