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To de-stress myself just a little, forget everyday problems...
What is in your opinion the most brutal battle ever fought? I am not asking neccesarily to be the one with most fatalities. Could be any era: paleolithic, ancient, medieval, 18th century, 19th century, modern, ...
I am now reading about russo-turkish war 1877-78. I was shocked about Shipka pass, animalistic as it could get. Just look at this realistic painting:
Russian soldiers ran out of ammunition, then, they throw stones to turkish soldiers and these fall 3820 ft.
I think that it would have been better to have asked "What were some of histories more brutal battles?" than to ask for "most brutal." I wouldn't know how to rank them, nor would I wish to argue with someone that this particular carnage was worse than that particular carnage. In war, it is all bad.
I'm not familiar with every battle ever fought. From among those I am familiar with, I say the especially brutal battles of the American Civil War were Spotsylvania and Franklin. In both those battle the same thing happened. After charging the breastworks and being beaten back, rather than retreating the attackers huddled up on one side of the defensive works and for hours, fought wildly with an enemy just a few feet away. Guys went insane in this atmosphere and some leaped up on the breastworks, firing rifles and being handed another loaded one until shot down. The Battle of the Crater was another where things went beyond normal horrors.
In the Pacific War, the fight for Saipan in the Marianas was sure ugly, with the Japanese requiring extermination because they would not surrender...and climaxed by the thousands of civilian suicides once the battle was lost.
Stalingrad of course was unimaginably horrible, as was the siege of Leningrad.
If this is not the most brutal............it has to be in the top 3.............. Battle of Cannae
Just try to imagine............70,000 soldiers hacked to death with spears,swords,axes and Clubs.........Face to face.........
Repped for truth. Cannae his was my first answer.
I don't remember if it was Cynocephale, Magnesia, or Pydna (I think the first), but the Greeks raised their pikes as a symbol of surrender, and the Romans, allegedly having no idea what it meant, butchered them to the man.
The Battle Somme in WWI.
Stalingrad in WWII.
During the siege of Malta, the Ottomans took the captured knights of St. John, crucified them, and floated the bodies across the water. The Knights responded by severing the heads of their POWs and shooting them out of cannons into the Ottoman camp.
La Noche Triste--the Aztecs broke the necks of the Spaniards as the traditional punishment of thieves.
Don't remember the name of the battle, but at the conclusion of the River War, the British intentionally used tactics to deform the Muslims, since they were fearless of death, but believed they would not go to heaven if deformed. The British used dum dum bullets to disintegrate the Mahdists, Maxim guns, and cordite to blow them apart, even when they wanted to surrender. They desecrated the tomb of the Mahdi, and, as legend had it, Kitchner used his skull as an ink well or something like that.
During the Jewish War, as described by Flavius Josephus, millions of Jews might have been killed in various cities. This is when "Judea" became "Phillistenia," or "Palestine." Josephus describes people eating dung out of middens and even their own children from starvation madness during the siege of Jerusalem.
Last edited by cachibatches; 03-09-2017 at 04:13 AM..
Russian soldiers ran out of ammunition, then, they throw stones to turkish soldiers and these fall 3820 ft.
Painting of war are very rarely realistic, particularly from that time where the focus was on honor, glory, and heroism.
There was a battle in the Civil War where rocks where used also, but I don't see them as any more brutal than bullets or cannon.
"Most brutal/animalistic"...hard to guage, how does one define that? Number of casualties? Hand to hand combat (no longer common since the advent of gunpowder)? "No quarter given" engagements? Environmental conditions?
If this is not the most brutal............it has to be in the top 3.............. Battle of Cannae
Just try to imagine............70,000 soldiers hacked to death with spears,swords,axes and Clubs.........Face to face.........
At least those are weapons designed to kill.
The most brutal battle would probably be one in the gunpowder era where both sides ran out of ammunition but not everyone had bayonets.
If you define battle as the core military action and the immediate aftermath then the Rape of Nanking in the 30's ranks high. Chinese soldiers and civilians were subject to appalling brutality. Captured Chinese soldiers and civilians were mass murdered sometimes in so called beheading contests.
The sheer brutality meted out to captured soldiers and civilians was one of the most despicable acts in military history anywhere anytime. Something like 400,000 people died in the capture of Nanking a figure nearly as high as all US military deaths in WW2.
And how in the world a painting is "realistic"? Was artist there during the battle, calmly standing on the side, asking soldiers to freeze for few hours?
Stalingrad would be my vote for most brutal wartime battle in history.
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