Fiercest Battle in History

perseus said:
Yes I agree the definition of fierce is very subjective. Perhaps the following criteria could be considered: intensity rather than protracted, hand to hand combat, proportion killed or maimed, proportion killed or maimed in relation to the population of the country.

If defined in these terms, how about the battle of Cannae where the Roman infantry was surrounded. In all, perhaps more than 75,000 Romans of the original force of 87,000 were dead or captured. I believe that the slaughter on a single day was not surpassed until the Somme.
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I agree many of the battles we have listed as fierce were without a doubt bloody but they were spread out over a protracted period (Stalingrad, Somme, Verdun even Gettysberg was over a 3 day period) I think the battle we are looking for is probably an ancient one so at this point I will stick with Canae.
 
You're all looking at the ferocity of a battle based on the numbers and the motivations. How about measuring it by how intense it would be for the individual footsoldier, without taking scale into account? I bet you'd come up with a lot more from Viet Nam using this method.
 
If you look at fierce being how the front line soldier saw the battle then there is no difference from one battle to the next. Each and every soldier on the front line has seen and smelt death and that has not changed throughout the eons of our existence.
 
Bulldog

Not long ago a study discovered that large proportion of soldiers lack the courage to kill and so deliberately shoot to miss. How they deduced this I am not sure, and I am rather skeptical of the conclusions. However, even if partially true we are faced with the possibility of two sides deliberately shooting over each others heads in a sort of pact. There is no doubt that in Christmas 1914 British and Germans downed their weapons to play football and invite each other into their trenches to swap gifts.

Contrast this with the Russians in WW2 who placed any 'cowards' on a suicide trench at the front to take the sting out of the charge, and shot them if they came running back? I also doubt if the Germans and Russians allowed medics out into no mans land to tend to the wounded. At Culloden the British deliberately bayoneted the wounded Jacobite's after the battle. So we are left with battles in which if you are wounded there is little hope of survival, this sounds a lot tougher than the former examples.
 
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I would think it would have to be an ancient battle with hand to hand fighting to make this list, I can't think of any more fierce or scarier than being right in the face of the man trying to kill you, heck a lot of ancient battles turned into squims from rugby matches with both sides simply pushing on each other as hard as possible will one sides flank was turned and rolled up on themselves. Compared to that being even so much as thirty feet from your opponent with the option to stick your head down seems much better to me. Of course when I say "much" I mean relatively speaking because either way I am sure it was hell and intense.
 
While I don't have a good example, I think the scariest type of combat would be facing snipers in unknown locations. There is nothing you can really do to fight back but stay low and hope you don't enter their field of fire.
 
That might be scary but is it "fierce"? I think this thread would have been far shorter if the original poster had provided the criteria for considering ferocity.
 
perseus said:
Bulldog

Not long ago a study discovered that large proportion of soldiers lack the courage to kill and so deliberately shoot to miss. How they deduced this I am not sure, and I am rather skeptical of the conclusions. However, even if partially true we are faced with the possibility of two sides deliberately shooting over each others heads in a sort of pact. There is no doubt that in Christmas 1914 British and Germans downed their weapons to play football and invite each other into their trenches to swap gifts.

Contrast this with the Russians in WW2 who placed any 'cowards' on a suicide trench at the front to take the sting out of the charge, and shot them if they came running back? I also doubt if the Germans and Russians allowed medics out into no mans land to tend to the wounded. At Culloden the British deliberately bayoneted the wounded Jacobite's after the battle. So we are left with battles in which if you are wounded there is little hope of survival, this sounds a lot tougher than the former examples.
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Good point...with a few exceptions. I have always wondered about the "shoot-not-to-kill-philosophy". Mind you, most of the battlefield deaths caused by 20th Century wars were due to artillery...or tactical bombing.

It might be stranger still. If we count strategic bombing, and rub out any differences between "guy-with-a-gun" and "just-a-person", then strategic bombing really takes its toll.
 
I suppose I'd some others.

•The Battle of Towton (29 Mar 1461)
•The Battle of Crecy (1346)
•The Battle of Trafalgar
•The Battle of Balaclava (it may not have the high casualties of some battles but the collision of 2 great groups of Cavalry would have been ferocious)
 
I would assume that some of the fierciest battles were unrecorded, at least in a historical sense. I don't believe that the death toll dictates the fierceness of a battle. Two men fighting for their beliefs is going to be a very fierce thing. I can only imagine what it would had been like to stumble upon your enemy in the middle of the forest being less then 20 meters away. That would be fierce...
 
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I would say Thermopylae for Ancient but if were talking general I would say Battle of the Bulge particularly the defence of Bastogene.:biggun:
 
The Duke of Wellington always answered this question with one muttered word :- ASSAYE. He was reluctantly referring to the battle of Assaye in India, as a young commander. He would never discuss it further. He won the day but with big losses.
 
I think that many of the Battles fought in the Pacific during the last war must be treated as some of the fiercest. When you take into account casualty figure for both sides and the small number of Japanese prisoner taken. It is not that American would not have taken them prisoner the main problem was there were none to be taken.
 
Of course, there was that time in Egypt when Sgt Rogers stole my slice of Swiss Roll from the dinner table when i looked the other way. That was fierce.

(Apologies Guys - it won't happen again, couldn't resist. I've put my helmet on and I'm hiding behind the sofa.)
 
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