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shunwick -> RE: English Generals (1/4/2007 4:34:38 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: morvwilson
quote:
ORIGINAL: IandMe
I am a bit puzzled by the continental scale comment.
Name three wars the British lost on a "continental" scale?
Now name three they won.
I can think of several of the latter and as for the American revolution they lost in one theater but won in the expanded theaters of war after several powers joined in on the American side.
Also using that war as an example the US won because she managed to gain allies among the powers of Europe while Britian pretty much had to go it alone.
As for the original question,
I always thought Harold was under-rated.Sure he lost England to the Normans.He had just crushed one invasion,marched back across the country to confront another,and had nearly beaten that one if it had not been for the lack of discipline in the Fyrd rushing out of their positions.
Maybe we could substitute "mostly land war" for continental scale, if you prefer. Also, I think that for the purposes of fair comparison the armies should be at least close tech. wise. (for instance, I would not use the GB/Zulu war as an example) As for wars that England lost, my first premise was that England was in the war on thier own.
The American Revolution fits that bill. (But you are right, the American colonies would never have succeeded without French help. This assistance was not given out of the kindness of the french heart, they simply wanted to hurt England.)
I suppose Harald's loss to the Norman's also fits the mold of a mostly land war in which England was alone and lost but this was before they had developed a navy.
As for victories on land, alone against a technological equal, Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers. But those could hardly be considered recent. Something in the last three to four hundred years, thats a little harder for me to come up with. GB won in both world wars, the Crimea and the Napoleonic wars and, of course, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough had victories. But in all of these cases England was not alone in the land part of the war.
Yes, the whole "war on a continental scale" thing depends so much on the exact definition and I suspect there would be as many definitions as people trying to provide one. The point of my original post was that Britiain alone (without any allies at all) have never fought a "war on a continental scale" so saying that thev'e never won one ...
Incidently, Barbarossa was merely an example. I never meant that it was the entire list.
As for modern (post 1945) British victories on land - Falklands War and Dhofar to name but two.
Even in the Falklands War the British had allies to help with the logisitcs. You know it may be hard to find any war where one side didn't have some kind of support from an ally. Dhofar was an interesting campaign (if little known) as was the Malayan Emergency, the Mau Mau uprising, Muscat and Oman 58-59, Brunei and Borneo 62-66.
All these were small scale conflicts but no less important for that. Most of the stuff that the British Army has been involved in since 1945 has been either in conjunction with allies or retreat from empire. The latter was usually marked by some form of conflict not so much against the British but rival factions vying to fill the void with the British Army in the middle. Interesting that at the height of the problems in Sierra Leone there was a significant faction wishing that the British would reestablish colonial rule in that unhappy country. A terribly non-PC idea. The very thought ...
Best wishes,
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