Outnumbered - Please help

You are probably thinking of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. I'm no history authority but that factoid has stayed with me for more than 60 years.

Is it possibly the The Battle of Agincourt as mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry V?

In the play, it was your 300 dead on one side (as requested) but only 10,000 on the other (not a million).

Oct 25, 1415, but as history, the best we can say is
"the English lost a few hundred men while the French lost several thousand".

A significant thing about the battle was that the French thought
the English would be an easy defeat, so every nobleman and his uncle
wanted in on the easy "glory". But instead, France lost a huge number
(a third? a half?) of their nobility! It was only 10,000 but the richest
and most powerful 10,000 ... so it really hurt.





Where the heck is Setanta? He'll know for sure... beer time, dude! C'mon hey...
rock-n-roll! Pleeeeez tell us a stoooory? (He writes way gooder than I could).

It could be a reference to the battle of Roncesvalles where the rearguard of Charlemagne's army was slaughtered. Key words are Roland, Roncesvalles, there's an old classic French poem The Song of Roland.

Agincourt was interesting. The French were essentially defeated by the topography of the land and not by the English archers. Also interesting in that Henry ordered all prisoners to be slaughtered after the battle

Bottom line here, a lot more information is needed to identify a particular battle than what you have given. What century? What continent? What war was the battle a part of? What make this battle important to you, or to anyone else? What were the names of any of the participants, etc. Long odds on the field of battle is not uncommon. Sometimes the underdogs win, but more usually they lose. Imagine how many battles have been fought in over three thousand years of warfare. Give us some clues to work with.

Well thats the thing, I didnt have any information but you guys gave me a lot of information that I can use to start my research. I apprciate the help.

HAHA..I guess 10,000 is a lot different then 1,000,000 huh?

I would agree that this probably refers to Thermopylae (480 BC). When Xerxes attempted to invade Greece (he succeeded in invading, but the Persians could not hold what they had conquered), it was alleged that there were a million people in his train, which would have included all of his personal retinue and all of the camp followers. Although likely an exaggeration, it cannot entirely be discounted, as entire tribes and nations were required to pick up and move on the instructions of an autocrat in ancient times--an example most people might be familiar with is "the Babylonian captivity" of the Jews, who were moved in a body to perform public works projects. Persian armies were typically huge, and about three quarters of the troops completely unreliable.

Xerxes would have demanded that all of his subject peoples provide levies for his army, and it is quite likely that tens of thousands responded. These troops were completely unreliable, and would melt away at first contact with well-disciplined troops, such as the Greek hoplites (means heavy infantry). In his Anabasis, Xenophon describes the battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE), during which the Greek mercenaries were able to scatter the entire Persian force, because they were almost entirely levies, who had no personal stake in the outcome, and no notion of discipline. When Xerxes decided to crush the Greeks, he called upon all of his levies. His army very likely numbered in the hundreds of thousands, when one considers that, especially among the levies, it was common for wives and even children to accompany their husband/father on a march. Add in the ordinary camp followers--sutlers, prostitutes, battlefield looters, etc.--and hundreds of thousands becomes not implausible. During the Thirty Years War, an historical period for which we have much better records, the great Czech soldier, Wallenstein, invaded northern Germany with an army of 40,000 effectives (an effective being a soldier who can be relied upon to take his place in the line of battle), but which contemporary authorities rightfully estimated at nearer one hundred thousand, when all the wives, children and camp followers are added in.

After the battle of Marathon ten years before this incident, the other Greeks (i.e., the troops from other city states than Athens, which had defeated the Persian invasion without outside aid) went to "look on the Medes." (Nota Bene: Persians and Medes are the descendants of Aryan tribesmen who invaded the Iranian highlands about three to four thousand years ago--in their military hierarchy of the fifth century BCE, the Medes were the second string--the Persian "Immortals" being the varsity.) The accounts describe what were in comparison to the Greeks, lightly armed men, carrying lightweight stabbing spears (such as were used by the ancient Germans in Roman times, and by the Zulu more recently), and wicker-work shields. Most of the Persian (or Medean) line at Marathon had melted away under the pressure of Athenian cavalry, and the central core of the Medes, those with the spears and wicker-work shields, were quickly broken up by the Greek hoplites.

At Thermopylae, there was a contingent of three hundred Lacedaemonians (usually incorrectly referred to as Spartans--it is by no means certain that they were all from the city of Sparta) under the command of one of their Kings, Leonidas. The Spartan government (an oligarchic slave-state, accorded a fawning, and disgusting, respect by Plato in his Republic) was ruled by magistrates and law-givers known as Ephors. For military purposes, there were two "kings"--just as the Romans were later to do with their two Consuls (this was coincidental only), one would go out to campaign against an enemy, and the other would remain behind to defend the homeland, Laconia.

Leonidas and his "Spartans" were not alone, however, there were from 1200 to 1500 other Greek levies present. But it makes a better story, and makes the Lacedaemonians look tougher if it is only the heroic three hundred. Leonidas was said to have been undone because a "traitorous" Thessalian shepherd lead the Persians by a goat path to a point in the rear of the Greek position, and they were then overwhelmed. Thermopylae was at a pass in the mountains. Xerxes would either have been obliged to march along a narrow stretch of coast, where Greek naval forces could have ambushed his supply train--and his supplies were already running dangerously low; or he could have marched inland, but once again, with his supplies running low, he probably could not have reached settled areas before the food ran out--he was forced to seek battle at Thermopylae.

The figure of one million comes from Herodatus. He is constantly sneered at by modern historians because of "tall tales" in his History, which is specifically concerned with the Persian attempt to subjugate the Greeks. However, this is historiographical nitpicking, and disingenuous. Herodatus simply relates what other people have told him, without offering his own opinion as to the veracity thereof--which ought to be an historigraphical commandment carved in stone, and not a source of derision. He left it to the reader to decide whether or not they believed what he reported. The figure of one million, used among people who were comfortable counting in the thousands, is likely just a way of saying: "more than we can count."

YES! :-D Heavens to Xerxes!




(Only, except for one thing ... exageration should have two g's in it. That's all, so far.)

But now I'm gonna be Googling for hours ... history ... damn!
Aren't there some kind of books I could read instead?

I've corrected the misspelling of exaggeration, as well as another one which i noticed. I believe i am now entitled to refer to you as a "spelling Nazi." I reread my posts several times, and habitually edit them for errors which i see, so i really take no notice of the criticism.

Books you could read? Herodatus' History tells the whole story of this period in Greek history. Have a salt cellar at hand while you read it. My personal feeling is that since Mommsen died, there hasn't been a single historian of ancient times worthy of blacking his boots. When it comes to ancient history, i much prefer the original sources.

For those who don't understand the entire "Sparta" thing: The lower Greek penninsula, the Peloponnesus, was invaded at some time between the end of the Mycenaen period, and roughly contemporarily to the rise of the Achaen civilization, by a tribal group of speakers of Italo-Greek who called themselves Lacedaemonians. The name is thought, but not known, to refer to a legendary ancient chieftan, Lacedaemon. Other explanations abound, so if anyone intends to correct me on this, i'll simply say: "You think your way, and i'll think mine." I don't have a dog in the fight, anyway.

Thereafter, the region they inhabited was known to the other Greeks as Laconia. The habitual taciturn nature of the Lacedaemonians resulted in the word laconic entering our language to mean someone who speaks little (not a crime of which i have ever been impeached). The principle village of their region, accorded the unwarranted dignity of city, was Sparta.