The Russian Baltic Fleet was a disaster before it even left port. During the Russo-Japanese War, after the main Pacific fleet had been crippled early on, Russia scraped together a massive force of obsolete ships and untrained peasant sailors and ordered them to sail halfway around the world to recover the situation. They barely made it out of the harbor before a destroyer rammed into a battleship. Then, convinced they were under attack by Japanese torpedo boats, they opened fire on innocent British fishing trawlers.
In the chaos, they damaged two of their own ships and killed two of their own men. The British were not amused. They revoked Russia’s access to the Suez Canal, forcing the fleet to take the long way around Africa. Engines wore down, fuel ran out, and morale sank.
The men were exhausted, but they also had to cope with failing refrigeration and brutal tropical heat. By May 1905, the weary fleet finally reached East Asian waters, hoping to link up with the remaining Russian forces. Instead, they ran straight into the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had been waiting for them, fully prepared. At the Battle of Tsushima, the Russians were obliterated.
Twenty-one ships were sunk, seven more were captured. Of the forty-five ships that began the journey, only three ever made it to Vladivostok. More than five thousand Russian sailors died. The Japanese lost just over a hundred.
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On paper, the French army at Agincourt in 1415 should have crushed the English. King Henry V’s force of nine thousand men was tired, sick, and starving after a long march and a grinding siege. They were headed for the safety of Calais, and a French force of roughly thirty thousand, the cream of the French nobility in full armor, blocked their path. It should have been a simple victory.
But heavy rain the night before had turned the narrow field, squeezed between two woods and recently plowed earth, into a thick, sticky mud bog. Impatient for glory, the French nobles launched a chaotic cavalry charge instead of waiting or maneuvering. English longbowmen, safe behind sharpened stakes, poured arrows into them. Panicked horses turned and trampled their own advancing infantry.
It only got worse. The French men-at-arms, weighed down by sixty pounds of plate armor, were forced to slog through the deep mud. They were exhausted before they even reached the English lines, and packed in so tightly they could barely lift their weapons. English archers and swordsmen cut them down where they stood.
By the end of the day, between six and ten thousand Frenchmen lay dead, including three dukes, nine counts, and thousands of knights. France lost a generation of military leadership. The English lost a few hundred men. —
On October 25th, 1854, during the Crimean War, the British commander Lord Raglan watched from his high position as the Russians dragged away captured Turkish artillery from the Causeway Heights.
He issued a vague order to his cavalry: “Advance rapidly and prevent the enemy from carrying away the guns. ”
The written order was handed to Captain Louis Nolan, who delivered it to Lord Lucan, commander of the Light Cavalry. But Nolan didn’t specify which guns. He just swept his arm toward the mass of Russian artillery at the far end of the valley.
The order was completely misunderstood. Instead of attacking the lightly defended guns on the heights to their right, the Light Brigade was sent charging straight down a long, narrow valley into the main, well-prepared Russian artillery battery and army waiting at the end. Around 11:00 a. m.
, roughly 670 British light cavalrymen galloped directly into a deadly crossfire from three sides. They took devastating losses but somehow reached the Russian guns and slashed at the gunners. Without infantry or heavy cavalry support, they were forced to retreat through the same hailstorm of fire. In just twenty minutes, over 110 men were killed and 160 wounded.
Hundreds of horses were lost. They achieved nothing of strategic value. —
On June 25th, 1876, in eastern Montana Territory, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer led the 7th Cavalry Regiment straight into their own demise. His force of about six hundred men was supposed to round up Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who had left their reservations.
Ignoring orders to wait for reinforcements and skipping proper scouting, Custer split his regiment into three battalions and launched a reckless attack on a massive Native American village along the Little Bighorn River. It was home to roughly seven thousand people, including up to two thousand battle-hardened warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Around 3:00 p. m.
, Custer took 210 men in a direct charge toward the village. They were quickly swamped from all sides, surrounded, and wiped out on a ridge that became known as Last Stand Hill. The other two battalions barely survived with heavy losses. —
In August 1914, as German troops stormed into neutral Belgium, the Garde Civique, a volunteer militia 46,000 men strong, was mobilized to help defend the country.
On paper, they were meant to guard bridges, secure supply lines, escort prisoners, and keep public order. In reality, they were a complete mess. The first reserve received rifle training ten times a year. The second had no weapons training at all, just a uniform.
The third had nothing. Beer, however, was always plentiful. Sunday morning training was mostly an excuse to skip church, drink heavily, and watch others shoot. When the Germans actually invaded, most of the Garde simply deserted.
The ones who stayed caused more headaches for the Belgians than for the enemy. The Germans refused to recognize them as legitimate soldiers, labeling them unlawful irregulars and threatening execution if captured. They proved so useless that on October 13th, 1914, King Albert I simply told them all to go home. —
In April 1836, during the Texas Revolt, General Antonio López de Santa Anna was riding high after Mexican victories at the Alamo and Goliad.
He was aggressively pursuing a smaller Texian force until the two armies camped less than a mile apart at San Jacinto. Santa Anna had around 1,500 men, including exhausted reinforcements who had marched over 24 hours without proper rest or food. The Texians numbered roughly 800. Despite his officers’ protests, Santa Anna set up camp in an open, vulnerable spot.
Instead of pressing the attack or keeping strong security, he let his tired soldiers relax. By early afternoon, much of the camp was eating, bathing, and taking a siesta. Sentries were barely posted, if at all. Scouts?
Not needed. At around 4:30 p. m. , while many Mexicans were napping, Sam Houston ordered a surprise attack.
Sheltered by tall grass and a slight hill, the Texans advanced quietly until they were close. Then the Twin Sisters cannons opened fire and the Texans charged, screaming, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! ”
The Mexicans were completely surprised.
The battle was over in just eighteen minutes. The Mexican lines collapsed, and panicked soldiers ran toward the marshes, where many were shot or captured. 650 Mexicans were killed and 300 captured. The Texans lost nine men.
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In the 18th century, Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I created an elite regiment chosen for one thing: height. Recruits had to be at least 6’2″, with some towering over seven feet. The king was so obsessed that he recruited and even kidnapped tall men from across Europe to fill the ranks. He forced his giant soldiers to marry equally tall women, hoping they’d breed even taller children.
These troops were staggeringly expensive to feed and maintain, but the king rarely used them in combat because he considered them too precious. He treated them like personal toys. Even when sick in bed, he’d order the entire regiment to march past him for entertainment, led by their mascot bear. When they finally saw action in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, they performed poorly.
Their massive size made them slow, clumsy, and easy targets. After Prussia’s crushing defeat by Napoleon at Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, the surviving giants surrendered and were disbanded. —
On the night of September 21st, 1788, during the Austro-Turkish War, an Austrian army of nearly 100,000 men was camped near the town of Karansebes, waiting for the Ottoman army. Some cavalry units scouted ahead and bought alcohol from local people.
When infantry units wanted a share, a fight broke out. Arguments escalated into gunfire. In the chaos, some Romanian soldiers who were part of the Austrian army shouted “Turks! ” In the darkness, rumors of an Ottoman sneak attack spread panic.
The cavalry fled back to the camp, where they were mistaken for an enemy charge. When officers tried to restore order by shouting “Halt! ” the non-German-speaking soldiers misheard it as “Allah! ” and believed Ottoman troops were already in the camp.
Within minutes, the entire Austrian army was firing on each other. Artillery units blasted their own infantry. Men trampled each other while trying to flee. Even Emperor Joseph II fell off his horse into a river while trying to stop the madness.
By morning, the Austrians had suffered around 10,000 casualties, dead, wounded, or deserted, all without a single Ottoman soldier present. The real Turkish army arrived two days later to find an abandoned camp. —
On June 18th, 1815, during the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Cumberland’s Hussars were ordered to charge French cavalry and help their pressured comrades. Instead, scared by the artillery fire, they turned around and fled the battlefield.
Many galloped all the way to Brussels, spreading panic by falsely claiming that Wellington had been defeated and Napoleon was coming. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hayek, had already admitted he had no confidence in his men. He was court-martialed and dismissed. The regiment was disbanded in disgrace.
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The Waffen SS Dirlewanger Brigade was formed in 1940 by Oskar Dirlewanger, a sadistic alcoholic with a long criminal record. The unit was deliberately recruited from the worst people imaginable: convicted criminals, poachers, sexual offenders, and psychopaths pulled straight from prisons and concentration camps. Instead of becoming a feared fighting force, the brigade became legendary for its complete lack of discipline. They were far more interested in committing atrocities than fighting.
Soldiers from one of their regiments even lynched their own commanding officer. The regular SS and Wehrmacht despised them, considering them a waste of food and ammo. In actual combat, they were pathetic. Against poorly armed Polish civilians during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, they needed massive artillery support and still took two months to win while suffering heavy losses.
When pitted against Soviet troops with tanks and rifles, the brigade repeatedly collapsed and evaporated. By the end of the war, they had burned through multiple times their original manpower. —
In World War II, Benito Mussolini transformed his Blackshirts, the party’s paramilitary militia, into formal combat divisions. He hyped them as fanatical elite warriors who would fight with unbreakable spirit.
In reality, they were a disaster. Poorly trained, badly equipped, and led by political officers rather than competent commanders, the Blackshirts collapsed almost immediately when confronted with real combat in North Africa and Greece. Mass surrenders were common. Instead of the feared iron legions Mussolini promised, they became known for their lack of discipline and poor fighting ability.
Regular Italian army soldiers looked down on them, and even the Germans considered them unreliable and useless in battle. By the middle of the war, most Blackshirt divisions had been shattered or disbanded, with thousands of men captured or killed after offering almost no resistance. —
At the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, the Achaemenid Persian army under King Darius III suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in ancient history. Darius had assembled a massive force, possibly over 100,000 men, against Alexander the Great’s much smaller Macedonian army of around 47,000.
To prepare, Darius even had the battlefield leveled to create perfect flat ground for his most feared weapon: the scythe chariots. These chariots were designed to charge into enemy lines with blades attached to the wheels, mowing down infantry like a meat grinder, in theory. Instead, they became a complete fiasco. When the chariots charged, the disciplined Macedonian phalanx simply opened gaps and let them pass harmlessly through.
Macedonian light troops then shot down the horses and drivers. Panicked horses veered off course, slicing through their own Persian troops instead. Many chariots became stuck after a single horse was killed, turning them into useless obstacles. With the chariot attack failing spectacularly, the battle collapsed.
Darius III, who had already fled once against Alexander at Issus, panicked again and abandoned the field. His army quickly lost cohesion and was routed. —
In the early 1930s, during the Chaco War against Paraguay, the Bolivian army had every advantage. A much larger force, better funding, superior weapons, modern tanks, and an air force.
Yet, they failed spectacularly in the first two years of the war. The army was largely composed of conscripted indigenous men from the cold highlands who weren’t motivated to fight, didn’t speak the same language as their European-descended commanders, and weren’t accustomed to the low-lying, humid, disease-ridden Chaco region. Many simply died of thirst and exposure. Led by German General Hans Kundt, the Bolivians relied on outdated World War I style human wave attacks.
They repeatedly launched frontal assaults across harsh, waterless desert terrain against Paraguayan forces that used smart, mobile defense tactics. Logistics were catastrophic. Soldiers constantly ran out of everything, and entire units surrendered simply because they ran out of drinking water. Even their modern equipment was wasted.
Tanks were lost or captured because crews didn’t know how to use them properly, and the air force had almost no impact. Bolivia suffered catastrophic defeats and eventually lost the war. —
During the First Opium War, the Qing Dynasty’s coastal and frontier forces exposed just how unprepared the empire was for modern industrial warfare. On paper, China commanded vast manpower and resources.
In reality, its military system was outdated and fragmented. Many units were poorly trained, equipped with obsolete weapons, and organized under a rigid command structure that struggled to respond to fast-moving threats. Widespread opium addiction had crippled the army. Many soldiers were too high to fight effectively.
Officers routinely falsified payrolls, pocketing money for thousands of ghost soldiers who didn’t exist. Many units were little more than untrained militia. The Qing leadership completely misjudged the threat, treating the British as minor barbarian pirates rather than a modern industrial military. Their outdated defenses were scattered uselessly across a 15,000 km coastline, making coordinated resistance almost impossible.
When the British attacked, the Qing forces repeatedly collapsed. They failed to bring their numerical advantage to bear and were routinely outmaneuvered and outgunned. The frustration and inability to combat the British led to numerous high-ranking Qing officers taking their own lives rather than facing defeat.
