10 Desperate Last Stands That Ended in Victory

Thermopylae. The Alamo. Little Big Horn. All heroic last stands where the defenders were all wiped out. Yet these are the actions that we remember and celebrate in stories, legends, and movies. We find something compelling in such tales of courage in the face of inevitable defeat.

But romanticism, when we come down to reality, does not win wars. From General George S. Patton comes a more pragmatic view: “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” Old Blood and Guts would have approved of the following battles, where the inferior side refused to roll over and die, making their enemies pay dearly instead.

Related: Top 10 Poorly Planned Battles

10 Diu, 1538

In the 16th century, Portuguese power in India interfered with the Ottoman Empire’s maritime trade on the Red Sea and adjacent areas. In 1537, the Sultan of Gujarat, Bahadur Shah, drowned under suspicious circumstances while negotiating Portuguese withdrawal from Diu, a city on an island in the Arabian Sea. The Ottomans immediately seized the event as a pretext to launch war on the Portuguese.

Allying themselves with Gujarat, the Ottoman fleet arrived in 1538, landing 6,000 troops to join the Gujarat force of 16,000 to besiege Diu. Inside the city, the Portuguese garrison of 600 under Antonio de Silveira knew the odds were against them. The Turkish commander, the eunuch Suleiman Pasha, whom Silveira contemptuously called a “castrated dog,” demanded their surrender if they didn’t want to be skinned alive.

Silveira replied that he “has a pair of balls stronger than the balls of your cannons and that all the Portuguese here have balls and do not fear those who don’t have them.” Suleiman, confident that the Portuguese could not “defend the pig-sty with so few pigs,” began his offensive. For four months, the garrison repulsed repeated attacks.

The protracted siege began to wear out the Gujarat nobles, who now refused to send any more supplies to an army that had so far accomplished nothing. They had no idea that inside Diu, the defenders were near collapse. Casualties were piling up so that even women offered to fight. Gunpowder was adequate—but not musket balls. One story told of a soldier who pulled out his tooth to use as a bullet. Another carried a barrel of gunpowder and a lighted torch in a suicide charge and blew himself up, taking 40 Turks with him.

On October 31, Suleiman launched a final assault. A Portuguese sortie gave the impression that there were still numerous defenders. The governor of India, Nuno da Cunha, had meanwhile sent a small fleet to arrive by night. Each ship burned four torches and fired salvos of artillery as they approached. In the darkness, the Ottomans thought that the entire Portuguese army had come to reinforce Diu. They lost no time in lifting the siege and retreating.

It was a close call. Silveira had only 40 men left. Diu was saved by the skin of their teeth.^[1]

9 Hodow, 1694

Though failing to take Vienna in 1683, the Ottomans persisted in offensive operations in Poland and Lithuania in the following decades. On June 11, 1694, the Poles were dispatched to the vicinity of the village of Hodow to deter the raids of what they thought was a single division of Tatars (600 men). On arriving, the 400 Poles saw the entire 40,000-strong Tatar army spread before them.

But among the Poles were 100 of the dreaded winged hussars, whose long lances and eagles’ wings sprouting from their backs made them a terrifying sight. They charged the Tatars and forced them back, but not for long. The Poles retreated for shelter among the buildings of Hodow. They barricaded themselves with everything they could find—doors, shutters, tables, carts, fences, and barrels were piled high.

The barricades forced the Tatar cavalry to attack on foot. When ammunition ran out, the Poles used arrowheads as improvised bullets. After several hours of battle, the Tatars demanded surrender. The Polish commander replied, “Come and get us if you can!” The Tatars, who had already lost between 2,000 and 4,000 men against a few dozen Polish casualties, realized the futility of their situation and retreated. The Tatars gave up on any more raiding expeditions.

The battle of Hodow has since been celebrated as Poland’s Thermopylae. With one difference: the Poles survived.^[2]

8 Mount Tabor, 1799

In early 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte’s drive north to Syria was blocked by the heavily fortified port city of Acre. The French besieged the city, but by April, they were already severely weakened by lack of ammunition and ravaged by disease. Sensing the opportunity, Abdullah Pasha of Damascus gathered a sizeable Ottoman army to march on the French rear. Napoleon sent General Jean Andoche Junot with around 500 men to keep tabs on Abdullah, then dispatched Gen. Jean Baptiste Kleber the next day to reinforce Junot at Mt. Tabor.

Kleber, with 3,000 men, ran into the Turkish army of 25,000 on April 16. Kleber recognized that the only hope of survival until Napoleon arrived with additional forces was to form his men into two squares within the ruins of a village to resist the cavalry onslaught. For six hours, the French battled thirst, low ammunition, and Ottoman charges, their point-blank fire piling heaps of dead around their squares. Just when they were on the verge of succumbing, Napoleon arrived with 3,000 men.

With the numbers still lopsided, Napoleon turned to his tactical skill. He maneuvered to take the Turks from the flanks and their rear. The Turks found themselves squeezed by an equilateral triangle formed by Napoleon’s and Kleber’s troops. Their cavalry was simply massacred by infantry with bayonets, a rare feat. Abdullah quit the field with 6,000 dead. Incredibly, only two Frenchmen died, and 60 were wounded.^[3]

7 Shipka Pass, 1877

In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the Ottoman army under another Suleiman Pasha was on its way through the Stara Planina Mountains to relieve the besieged force of Osman Pasha at Pleven in northeast Bulgaria. They found their route barred by a small force of Russians and Bulgarians at Shipka Pass.

General N.G. Stoletov had to defend 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the mountain with only 7,500 men against Suleiman’s 27,000, not counting the 10,000 in reserve. The armies collided on August 21, 1877 (New Style), and on that day alone, the Russians beat back eleven attacks.

On the second day, the Turks were converging from the south, southeast, and west, with the western prong reaching the trenches the next day as the defenders were running low on powder. The Russians and Bulgarians hurled everything they could lay hands on at the Turks—rocks, pieces of wood, even dead bodies. The wounded continued to fight.

In the afternoon, Suleiman finally committed his reserves for an all-out attack on the center. Just as it looked like the defenders would be overwhelmed, the first reinforcements from Gen. Radetzky arrived and helped push back the Turks. The Ottomans continued to persist for three more days, but having already lost nearly 7,000 men, Suleiman ordered a retreat. The Russo-Bulgarians, at the cost of 3,500 men, had held Shipka Pass.^[4]

6 Rorke’s Drift, 1879

The British campaign to subjugate the Zulus in January 1879 received an initial shock as 20,000 Zulu warriors decimated the British camp at Isandlwana, inflicting 1,700 casualties. The British learned the hard way that the Zulus, though armed only with spears, shields, and a few guns, were not to be trifled with. They were courageous, quick at maneuvering, and skillfully wielded their spears and shields in close combat. Now, they were on their way to pounce on the British garrison of 150 men at Rorke’s Drift.

Warned by survivors of Isandlwana, the garrison knew it couldn’t outrun the Zulus in open country, especially with patients in the field hospital it couldn’t leave behind. Lt. Gonville Bromhead’s 2nd Warwickshire Regiment had no choice but to make a stand. Barricades of maize bags, biscuit boxes, and crates of tinned meat were set up. Loopholes for firing were bored through building walls.

At 4:30 p.m. on January 22, 4,000 Zulu warriors swarmed Rorke’s Drift. Point-blank shooting mowed down the first warriors to reach the barricades. For the next 12 hours, the relentless attacks continued, with the Zulus targeting the hospital, killing some patients and burning the building. The attackers were forced back by bayonets, but as night fell, it was the British who were being pressed back to the center of the station. Here, they staged a final defense, which finally beat back the Zulus.

The Zulus sustained 400 killed; the British lost 17, but almost all defenders were wounded.^[5]

5 Marne, 1914

In early September 1914, the German plan to overrun France in six weeks seemed to be working splendidly. The Schlieffen Plan envisioned the right wing of an army of millions sweeping southward like a scythe through Belgium and northern France, raking in the French armies as it swung southeast to crush the defenders against the anvil of the German left wing. It was to be a colossal version of Cannae, the battle of annihilation when Hannibal destroyed the Romans with a classic double envelopment.

Paris watched in anxious dread as the torrent of German divisions of the First Army under Gen. Alexander von Kluck surged inexorably closer. Germans dropped leaflets urging surrender, and the populace began to flee. The French needed a miracle, and they got one. Von Kluck, concerned that the French were slipping away, went after the reeling French Fifth Army on the Marne River instead of continuing to Paris. He prematurely made his turn east of the city, exposing his right flank to the French and opening a gap between him and the Second Army.

Seizing his chance, Commander-in-chief Gen. Joseph Joffre decided to halt the French retreat and make a stand on the Marne. “Every effort must be concentrated on attacking and throwing the enemy back.” French elan, the spirit of the offensive, took over despite the army’s weakened state. “Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking,” said Gen. Ferdinand Foch, epitomizing the sudden resolve of the beaten and exhausted army.

From September 6 to 12, the French, against all odds, succeeded in rolling back the German tide. The British, also in a headlong retreat, turned around to fight. At one point, the French even had to rush 3,000 reinforcements to the front in Paris taxicabs.

The Miracle of the Marne saved Paris. The war of movement would soon be over, and the static war of attrition that followed as both sides dug in would continue for four more years and wipe out a generation of young men.^[6]

4 Ypres Salient, 1915

Little did the volunteers of the First Canadian Division in the Western Front know that a never-before-experienced horror awaited them in their first major engagement of World War I. The men—farmers, lumberjacks, lawyers, factory workers, business owners, teachers, and doctors—were assigned to the Ypres Salient, a dangerous bulge in the front surrounded on three sides by the Germans. However, the Allies could not let the important railway junctions of Ypres fall. The salient defending the Belgian city must be held at all costs.

On April 22, 1915, the Canadians and the Algerians, on their left, watched as a mysterious yellow-green cloud drifted with the wind toward their trenches. The Algerians began to clutch at their throats, choking and fleeing in panic, leaving the Canadian left flank unguarded. The Germans had just released 160 tons of deadly chlorine gas, a chemical that fills the lungs with foam and mucus and turns bodily fluids into corrosive hydrochloric acid.

The Germans now moved in to take the vacated trenches, and the Canadians and British desperately fought to prevent the encirclement of the 1st Division. On the 24th, the Canadians took the brunt of a second gas attack. Without gas masks, the men buried their heads in the crevices of their trenches.

Realizing they were dealing with chlorine, medical officers instructed the men to soak cloths or handkerchiefs in urine and hold them over their noses and mouths. But the combination of gas and artillery attacks was too much, forcing the retreat of several battalions. The 15th Battalion suffered the worst—647 casualties out of 980 men.

Yet the Canadians stubbornly held on for four days and denied the Germans their anticipated victory until reinforcements arrived. The Second Battle of Ypres cost Canada 6,500 men killed, wounded, or captured.^[7]

3 Osowiec, 1915

Osowiec Fortress in northeast Poland stood in the way of the German advance on the Eastern Front in late 1915. Its trenches and battlements could make them pay dearly in any attack. The Russians were confident the fort would hold despite being manned by only 900 defenders. They didn’t anticipate the Germans uncorking their diabolical secret weapon: chlorine gas.

The Germans marched on Osowiec in August with 7,000 men. At 4 a.m. on the 6th, the wind pushed the ominous yellowish-green cloud toward the fort, turning the grass black as it crept over the ground. The Russians lacked gas masks, and masses of soldiers fell into agonizing contortions, their body fluids turning into hydrochloric acid. They were literally burned inside out.

Confident that the garrison was wiped out, the Germans put on their gas masks and approached the fort. What happened next was like a scene from a zombie movie. From the trenches further back, men with chemically burned faces, spitting out bits of their lungs and oozing out blood, emerged croaking and coughing but with weapons drawn. The Germans halted in sheer terror at these living dead. The fort’s artillery and machine guns opened up.

The Germans stumbled over each other in a panicked rush to get away. The Russian reserves came up to reinforce the survivors with a bayonet charge. By 11 a.m., the Germans had withdrawn, defeated by the Attack of the Dead Men.^[8]

2 Bastogne, 1944

The six months following D-day 1944 saw the Allies advance with such speed that they had outrun their supplies. Now thinly strung out in the Ardennes Forest, their only hope of continuing their advance was to keep the key Belgian port of Antwerp open for supplies.

The Germans knew this, too, and devised a plan to gamble everything on an attack through the Ardennes, drive a wedge between the American forces, and capture Antwerp. They had blitzkrieged through the forest in 1940 and could do it again. On December 16, they caught the Americans by surprise with a two-hour artillery bombardment and the charge of 200,000 troops. On the 18th, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division found itself trapped in Bastogne with little food, ammunition, and winter gear. Reinforcements would take a week to arrive. They were outnumbered five to one.

German Gen. von Luttwitz presented Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe with the ultimatum: surrender or be annihilated. McAuliffe’s reply had since become a classic in badassery: “To the German Commander. NUTS! The American Commander.” Asked what it meant, the Americans told the German courier they were telling them to go to hell.

McAuliffe drew his men in a tight circle around their artillery. This allowed them to quickly communicate with each other and adjust their tactics whenever the Germans made a threat. The Germans were frustrated by their inability to find weaknesses in this flexible setup. Many times, the panzers seemed to be on the verge of breaking through, but they would be pushed back by artillery fire. But after a week of fighting, the Americans were almost out of shells. They were now hanging by a thread.

On the 23rd, the wintry skies finally cleared, allowing planes to airdrop supplies to the 101st. On the 26th, reinforcements from Gen. George Patton arrived. The siege was lifted, and the Battered Bastards of Bastogne had earned their place in legend.^[9]

1 Kapyong, 1951

In December 1950, the invading North Korean forces had been pushed out of the South and back up the peninsula. The war seemed to be winding down, and the newly arrived Canadians of the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Regiment were expecting nothing more than quiet garrison duty.

Unexpectedly, in the spring of 1951, the Chinese entered the war in support of North Korea. As thousands of Chinese poured over the border, the U.N. forces rushed to stem the tide. The Canadians were attached to the British 27th Infantry Brigade and were soon in combat across Korea’s rugged terrain. In mid-April, they were sent to protect the South Korean withdrawal through the Kapyong River valley. The Canadians and Australians were manning hilltop positions when 5,000 Chinese attacked.

The Australians were forced to withdraw with 155 casualties on the 24th, and the Chinese next turned on the Canadians, who prepared to meet the onslaught of 5,000 Chinese by digging in on Hill 677. The battalion of 700 men fought all night to halt the enemy. They were surrounded and, at times, nearly overrun by the waves of attackers. Lt. Col. Jim Stone knew the hill was crucial to the UN position and forbade his troops to withdraw. But the Communists were already infiltrating. In desperation, the Canadians called an artillery strike on their own position. While they hunkered down, the shells blew the enemy away.

Despite being nearly out of food and ammo, the Canadian position held until they were finally relieved by the US 1st Cavalry Division. With a relatively light number of 10 killed and 23 wounded, the Canadians again proved their combat and organizational skills.^[10]