History's Greatest Military Defeats

[sealion]

i guess i can provide something intersting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Antonio_Bragadin The Siege of Famagusta
Famagusta came under siege in September 1570 (the first Turkish invation in Cyprus); the Ottoman forces kept pressure on for months, while their artillery relentelessly pounded the city's bulwarks.

Marcantonio Bragadin led the defence of Famagusta with Lorenzo Tiepolo, Captain of Paphos, and general Astorre Baglioni.

According to Venetian chroniclers (numbers should always be looked at with some skepticism), about 6,000 garrison troops stood against some 100,000 Turks with 1,500 cannons, backed by about 150 ships enforcing a naval blockade to stave off reinforcements and victuals.

The besieged garrison of Famagusta put up a heroic struggle lasting well beyond the most optimistic assumptions, against far superior enemy numbers and without any hope of help from the motherland. Furthermore the Turks were employing new tactics. The entire belt of walls surrounding the town and the exterior plain was filled with earth up to the top of the fortifications. In the meantime a number of tunnels were dug out towards and under the city walls to undermine and breach them.

In July, 1571 the Turks eventually breached the fortifications and their forces broke into the citadel, being repulsed only at a high price. With provender and ammunitions over, on 31 July Bragadin had to agree to a surrender.

Death and legacy
Famagusta's surrender was not unconditional. It was provided for the surviving defenders and the civilians willing to move to Candia. However the Turks did not show the same basic respect towards the unlucky Bragadin.(i have to say here that all the oficers where immediately killed and citizens of Fammagusta where taken as slaves , killed , plus women raped-who ever wants to know the truth can search the path of blood proud generals of Turkish use to leave behind -) After painful humiliations, he was subjected by the Turks to a most excruciating torment: being flayed alive at the docks. Bragadin's quartered body was then distributed as a war trophy among the army whereas his skin, stuffed with straw and sewn, was revested in his military insignia and exhibited riding an ox in a mocking procession amidst the streets of Famagusta. The macabre trophy, together with the severed heads of general Alvise Martinengo, Gianantonio Querini and castellan Andrea Bragadin, was hoisted upon the masthead pennant of the personal galley of the Ottoman commander, Amir al-bahr Mustafa Pasha, to be brought to Constantinople as a gift for Sultan Selim II.

Bragadin's skin was later purloined from the Constantinople arsenal in 1580 at the hands of the young Venetian seaman, Girolamo Polidori, who brought it back to Venice. The skin was preserved first in the church of San Gregorio, then in that of the Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where it still is.

Bragadin's fame rests upon the incredible resistance put on against the vastly superior besieging forces, and the horrible cruelty the winners exerted upon him after taking Famagusta. From a military point of view, the besieged garrison's perseverance required a massive effort by the Ottoman Turks, who were so heavily committed that they were unable to redeploy in time when the Holy League built up the fleet later victorious against the Muslim power at Lepanto. Historians to this day debate just why Venice did not send help to Bragadin from Suda, Crete. It is alleged that among Venetians some thought about putting the limited military assets to better use in the forthcoming clash, already in sight, which would have climaxed in the battle of Lepanto.

What it is not said here is what marcantonio said before die "no one ever to be found again to trust Turkish " this cronicles can be found in Italy written by Italians not by Greeks , so Turks can not blame Greeks about history

[sealion]

the chronicles talks about 80000 dead turkish while siege time (Yes 80000)
this is why , as chronicles says , Lala mustafa reacted like this against Marcantonio Bragadin

[Big K]

1500 cannons?.... :) isnt that a bit "exagerrated"?

did you ever seen the Ottoman cannons of that era?

i think 1500 cannons is a bit too much...

[Andrey Egorov]

I think the greatest military defeat could be Kiev Cauldron - greatest encirclement in history
163,600 dead or wounded
452,700 captured
2,642 guns & mortars and 64 tanks lost
four Soviet field armies (5th, 37th, 26th, & 21st) consisting of 43 divisions ceased to exist
It is still called "Kiev disaster" in Russia
Lost my grand-grand-father there

[Big K]

I think the greatest military defeat could be Kiev Cauldron - greatest encirclement in history
163,600 dead or wounded
452,700 captured
2,642 guns & mortars and 64 tanks lost
four Soviet field armies (5th, 37th, 26th, & 21st) consisting of 43 divisions ceased to exist
It is still called "Kiev disaster" in Russia
Lost my grand-grand-father there

as far as i know there are some battles ended with records at the captured soldier numbers?

[Andrey Egorov]

as far as i know there are some battles ended with records at the captured soldier numbers?

I guess I lost your point. What battles are you talking about?

[zraver]

as far as i know there are some battles ended with records at the captured soldier numbers?

Yes, but those types of defeats usually end the war. Kiev was near the beginning and the defeat can be argued as the rotten door Hitler talked about flying to pieces as it was kicked in. I am not sure of any other group in history other than perhaps Rome that could take that kind of loss, bounce back and win. By the time of the winter counter attack outside Moscow the USSR lost 2% of its prewar population just in battle losses and just in just 6 months. That doesn't include the population that never evacuated or the industry that got trapped.

[ANZAC]

Think I'd go along with the Soviet defeats in Barbarossa.
Probably no country has ever suffered the devastation that the Red Army and the USSR as a whole suffered in those first six months, and end up winning.

Irrecoverable losses [killed or missing in action, died of wounds or disease, POW's, non combat losses......3,137,673.

Sick and wounded.....1,336,147.

Total 4,473,810.

Virtually the standing Red Army at the start of the war, plus how many civilians killed, who knows?

[Johnny W]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but I think the British loss at Yorktown has a place in this thread. One reason is the way they lost. Losing a major naval battle to the French was a very rare occurence for the British Navy. In fact, its really the only loss of consequence that I can think of. And two, it destroyed any hope of hanging onto the American colonies.

[Yusuf]

Dont know if it has been mentioned, Battle of Longewal in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, where 120 men of the IA held of an entire tank regiment which resulted in Pakistan losing about 50 tanks which is the largest loss of tanks in a single battle since WWII.

[blackjar]

My vote goes for the Israeli Arab war of 1948.

The Israelis did not have a cohesive or well armed military as they do today. Yet they defeated the combined might of the Arab states who surrounded them at that time. The Arab states had standing armies and air forces which were certainly much better equipped than the israelis.

When browsing wikipedia - I also found a note on the shortest war in history - about 38 minutes fought between Britain and the Kingdom of Zanzibar towards the end of the 19th century. Zanzibar had 500 casualities and the brits had one injured.

[Skywatcher]

There's also the battle of the Paracel Islands. Any one of the AVRN warships easily outmassed all the PLAN gunboats combined, but the AVRN withdrew in a panic, scuttling one ship will the PLAN only beached two of theirs. I was never able to understand how the PLAN managed to pull that one off.

[Triple C]

The Kiev Cauldron was a huge disaster for the Russians. But so was the German defeat in Belarus and Ukraine during Operation Bagration.

[FluffyThoughts]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but I think the British loss at Yorktown has a place in this thread. One reason is the way they lost. Losing a major naval battle to the French was a very rare occurence for the British Navy. In fact, its really the only loss of consequence that I can think of. And two, it destroyed any hope of hanging onto the American colonies.

Alternatively it could be described as a disaster for the US. Had Britain won:

• Canada may have not been split from the US colonies,

• Slavery would have been ended a lot earlier, and without the need of a second secessionist movement,

• The Spanish possessions could have been filched following Napoleon's betrayal of his Spanish allies,

• You could have picked-up the Louisiana Purchase as war-bootie instead of paying for it,

• Civil-rights would have been a less contentious issue, as it would have been subsumed by the class-based social reforms started in the late nineteenth century, and

• You would have universal health-care by now (and we in the UK may not be burdened by the socialist bureaucracy that puts the interests of the provider before the consumer).

Then again I am English, so I may be biased/bruised...!

[tankie]

How embarrassing for us brits

The Battle of Singapore was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II when the Empire of Japan invaded the Allied stronghold of Singapore. Singapore was the major British military base in South East Asia and nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East". The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 December 1941 to 15 February 1942.

It resulted in the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, and the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. About 80,000 British, Australian and Indian troops became prisoners of war, joining 50,000 taken by the Japanese in the Malayan campaign. Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the ignominious fall of Singapore to the Japanese the "worst disaster" and "largest capitulation" in British history.