The National Army Museum announces its top 20 battles and
asks the public to vote for the best.
Sad to see such a
weak list – I would have thought that Britain had more to show for 500 years of
empire than Goose Green. Are there really so few battles where Britain
showed courage, intelligence and superior skill over the enemy ? Unfortunately, the British Army and its museums still believe the political propaganda
of the wars they fought, and refuse to learn that it is hard work, skill,
courage and economic and numeric superiority that are required to win
battles.
Of course, we are all happy to win, but if we outnumber the
enemy 3-1, hold air/naval superiority, have machine guns or rapid-firing
rifles, helicopters, then it hardly counts as a great battle.
And why did the NAM include Lexington
(which we lost) in the list, or the Somme (which cost 1
million casualties “because the French asked us to do something”), or Balaklava, which
achieved absolutely nothing, Gallipoli
likewise.
The first 3 on the list are classic British
empire-creating battles, fought against similarly-armed enemies around the
world – the definition of the empire, even if destroying your own
citizens isn’t quite the right kind of thing for a list of this kind. The three generals were strategic as well as
tactical masters and these are their defining battles. But for the rest . . .
Quebec, the
only reason this was a stunning victory is that Montcalm had
outfought Wolfe all summer with
half the troops – it’s still disputed as to what happened and why, most
commentators now accept that Wolfe was committing suicide, and accidently won a
great victory and perhaps that’s OK. The
result was the conquest of Canada, something the US has tried to do for 200
years and failed.
Salamanca
was just one of many victories that Wellington won, always
choosing the easiest way to win, which with infantry, especially heavy
infantry, is defensive. Torres Vedras would be a far
greater victory, and maybe the greatest inter-army victory of all time – very Sun Tzu or even Bruce Lee (the art of
fighting without fighting). Waterloo was
just a repeat of all the other battles fought during the
latter half of the Napoleonic
wars, with nothing new to learn on any side.
But Torres Vedras showed how even the tiny Portuguese Army could
defeat a full French army
in the field.
I didn’t know about Aliwal, but it looks
like the battle was lost by the Sikhs with
poor management and choosing the wrong place to fight. And it’s hardly a politically-correct war.
What’s really frightening is that in the last 150 years it
is difficult to find an army-sized battle where Britain wins well. It seems that once we were the most powerful
nation in the world, we just relied on brute strength (at the cost to the
taxpayer) to win.
The Falklands
war – involving similar numbers to the Aliwal battle, or Torres Vedras – is
perhaps a return to successful battles fought by similar enemies with a clear result. For all the mistakes (and there were many,
both strategic and tactical), we made fewer than the Argentinians, but the
overall level of aggression, surprise/speed of movement, and willingness to
sacrifice was much higher on the British side.
And Goose Green is
the ultimate “Hollywood” sacrifice.
If it is British history, then maybe we cannot look at English
victories, like Crecy, Poitiers or Verneuil, during the
hundred years war, all better for many reasons than the oft-cited Agincourt, which ended with the King
losing his baggage, the prisoners of war summarily executed, and the English
soldiers dying of disease and starvation in Calais
so the King didn’t have to pay them (and no, there were no Welsh soldiers, Mr Shakespeare,
that idea was only put out after the Tewders came to power; and
the Scots
were, of course, on the French side).
And how about some naval battles, like Trafalgar or the Nile, or even the Armada, though again it
finished with most of the English sailors dying before they could get to land. For heroic deeds, we can look at the Revenge
with Sir Richard Grenville,
surely one of the greatest battles of all time (although he died), or of Broke
of the Shannon and the capture of the Chesapeake (who didn’t), both are as
ethically correct as you can get in war.
The great siege of Gibraltar
was again a great feat of British arms; maybe here and the Falklands (why Goose Green ?)
the National Army Museum favours battles that were won by the British Army, not
the Royal
Marines; if so, why include Waterloo,
fought with a majority of Dutch (who
ran away) and German soldiers ?
The destruction of the Italian army in north Africa by O’Connor (Operation Compass),
and Wavell’s other
conquests in East Africa and the Middle East were brilliant operations in the
Second World War that are far superior in every way to Montgomery’s pointless
bloodbath at el Alamein or equally pointless and bloody failure to pass Caen (Monty’s brilliant plan
for D-Day killed more French civilians than his plan for el Alamein managed to
kill Germans; and we often forget that Crusader, a year earlier
had had the same effect as Alamein - Rommel retreated to better ground, where
he continued to defeat the British & US army tactically for 6 months; for
Crusader, Germans and British were fairly matched, yet British casualties were
half the German and the Auk
forced Rommel to retreat; at Alamein Monty had twice the strength of Rommel yet the casualties and
the result were similar).
So, here is my list of the 12 greatest British battles. I did not include many famous battles – the sinking
of the Bismarck
and the Graf
Spee, the first battle of the Falklands, the sinking of the French fleet at
Mers-el-Kebir,
the battle of the Nile or Copenhagen, pirate and privateer battles like the
rape of Portobello, or the singeing of the king of Spain’s beard at Cadiz, the
siege of Chitral. They neither fit today’s requirements for ethical acceptance,
nor did they achieve any significant changes in the status quo ante bellum. The Royal Navy was expected to defeat the
German surface fleet, and that it struggled so much in both wars was due to its
inherent inertia – but it was inevitable that it would win. Likewise Drake’s performance or England’s
generally against a country with a vastly inferior naval force.
1 - Naseby – OK, you can’t go wrong with the NMA, even if
they did take over the country and create a military dictatorship.
2 - Stamford Bridge
– Harold Hardrada
was one of the toughest soldiers in the world, having fought his way around
world from the age of 17. Harold of Wessex
marched his army 200 miles in 4 days (still an impressive achievement in the 20th century, and far more than Monty ever managed) and destroyed the invaders in one
morning – otherwise we’d all be speaking Norwegian now.
3 - Operation Compass – showed the boys at Dunkirk what
British professional soldiers could do if they were properly led.
4 - The siege of Gibraltar
– one of the greatest sieges of all history, all countries.
5 - The Falklands – just look at the mess in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and you’ll realise what a great battle really means – the ONLY war
Britain has fought since the 1925 bombardment of Waziristan which achieved its
objective – well, OK, there was the private war by the SAS in Oman to keep some
old Etonian in power.
6 - The capture of the Chesapeake – training, discipline,
honour, good letter-writing, skill, tight trousers – it’s all there.
7 - The last fight of the Revenge – the battle of Flores –
the little Revenge takes on the might of Spain and takes 15 ships to the bottom
– with a little help from the wind.
8 - The last battle of Keren – like the Anabasis, the
British army had to develop its tactics in light of its experiences throughout
2 months of the hardest fighting the Italians ever put up against anyone since
the fall of Rome. Outnumbered, British Indian and Scottish soldiers outfought,
outengineered and outgunned the Italian and native army twice its size, in geographic
conditions that had kept Europe out of Ethiopia for over a century.
9 – The battle of
Taranto - a year before Pearl Harbor, the Royal
Navy showed the world what a bunch of Stringbags
could do, taking out the major units of the Italian Navy without loss. With the battle of Matapan a few months
later, the Italian navy was out of action for a year, but showed its spirit
with the midget submarine campaign and
mining which put it back on the offensive again in 1942 for a brief
period. Although the British had the
advantage of Ultra and radar, its intelligent use, good planning and brilliant execution
produced two classic great battles.
10 – the Tactical Air Forces in the battle for France 1944 –
still never rewarded for the most successful units in Britain’s armed forces,
the Mosquitoes,
Typhoons, Hurricanes etc that prevented any co-ordinated German offensive
throughout the 12 months of battle in France and later in Germany itself were
perhaps the only really effective weapon system that Britain ever brought to
bear on the German war machine. If the
results were more dramatic in the American zone because of better tactics by Patton
and Devers, the results in any useful measure far outshone any army unit’s
effectiveness.
11 – Battle of Britain – yes, the air force gets in again –
although Britain had many advantages, popular mythology has overtaken the real
story of how a very few fought the Luftwaffe to a standstill – Douglas Baader
didn’t fight in the Battle of Britain, nor did many other aces, and they ganged
up on Dowding to kick him out of office.
12 – Verneuil – a crushing
defeat of the French and Scottish armies, the only time the English army really
profited from a military victory, instead of running back to England, the Duke
of Bedford solidified his grip on northern France for the next 6 years.
