Art, obsession, and identity
According to military strategists, the best course of action during battle is often to withdraw to fight another day. Indeed, claiming a victory is sometimes to know when to retreat. A retreat is a tactical strategy and does not equate to surrendering. However, not all retreats are successful. History has recorded some truly disastrous military withdrawals, when fighting on the back foot, often in harsh conditions, has all but decimated an army. However, when undertaken correctly, a retreat can allow forces to regroup and come back stronger.
Click on and march through this gallery of famous military retreats.
The Ten Thousand were a force of mercenary units, mainly Greeks, who went to war in Persia. They were hired by Cyrus the Younger, who planned to battle it out with his brother Artaxerxes II and seize the throne.
The mercenaries marched for months across Anatolia and clashed with their enemy at the Battle of Cunaxa, during which Cyrus the Younger was slain. Staring defeat in the eye but refusing to surrender, the surviving mercenaries retreated back to Greece.
The siege of Harfleur took place from August 18 to September 22, 1415, at Harfleur in Normandy, France. The English, led by King Henry V, triumphed, but their numbers were decimated. An outbreak of dysentery further weakened the ranks.
Opting for a tactical retreat, Henry made his way toward the English-held port city of Calais, all the time pursued by the vengeful French. On October 25, 1415, they were forced to fight the numerically superior enemy at a place called Agincourt. The ensuing Battle of Agincourt resulted in one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War.
The Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, progressed to the point where the Continental Army, commanded by George Washington, was in danger of being defeated by numerically superior British forces.
Washington was forced to make a tactical decision, instructing his troops to retreat to Manhattan. In all, 9,000 combatants were evacuated, with no further loss of life.
Napoleon's disastrous decision to invade Russia in 1812 ended with the ignoble retreat of the Grande Armée from Moscow after finding the city empty of the Russian military and civilian population.
Harsh winter conditions, hunger, prowling wolves, and Cossack sharpshooters all took their toll on Napoleon's men. In all, of the more than 500,000 soldiers who went into Russia, fewer than 100,000 ever made it out.
Russia's response to the invasion by the Grande Armée had been to employ a series of tactical retreats, drawing the French into a slow, drawn-out campaign.
The Russians also operated a scorched-earth policy, denying their enemies anything of use, including areas of Moscow which they themselves torched.
Following General Robert E. Lee's failure to defeat the Union Army at the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place between July 1–3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he reluctantly ordered a retreat to Virginia.
Lee's infantry faced dreadful weather, treacherous roads, and enemy cavalry raids. Overcome with shame and remorse, Lee submitted his resignation as commander of the Confederate Army. Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, refused to accept it.
An armed conflict in 1877 between several bands of the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans and their allies and the US Army erupted after the indigenous peoples were moved off their ancestral lands.
Outnumbered and outgunned, around 700 members of the tribe made an epic 1,400-mile (2,253-km) retreat through three states, battling the pursuing US Army as they went. After a 15-week chase, the Nez Perce were eventually run down near the Canadian border.
In August and September 1914, the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army withdrew to the Marne River, southeast of Paris, after being defeated by the armies of the German Empire at the Battle of Charleroi and the Battle of Mons.
The Great Retreat, as it was later referred to, allowed Allied forces to regroup and prepare for the First Battle of the Marne, which ended in victory for Franco-British forces.
In November 1915, the decision was made to evacuate Allied troops from Gallipoli, Turkey, after heavy losses were sustained during an ill-planned land-based invasion.
Over five nights in December, 36,000 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) combatants were withdrawn to waiting transport ships. British and French troops followed them in January 1916.
The Long March was a 6,000-mile (10,000-km) historic trek undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China in 1934–35.
Led by Mao Zedong, the march was effectively a retreat from Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War. While not a military success, the Long March served as inspiration for many to join the Communist Party.
An evacuation rather than a retreat, the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk in May and June of 1940 saw about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops saved from advancing German forces.
The rescue, known as Operation Dynamo, remains the biggest evacuation in military history.
A fatal breakdown in communications led to a chaotic withdrawal of British and Dominion troops from Crete after the German airborne attack on the Greek island in 1941.
With the Germans snapping at their heels, 18,600 men of the 32,000 Allied troops on Crete were evacuated over May 28–June 1. Pictured is HMS Kipling as it arrived in Alexandria Harbor, Egypt, carrying evacuees following the retreat from Crete.
After German officials contravened the non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, doing so by invading the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Stalin relocated Russian factories far to the east behind the Ural Mountains and well out of range of the German war machine.
This remarkable evacuation of industrial machinery guaranteed round-the-clock output of armaments and munitions manufacture. And like they did nearly 130 years earlier, the Russians adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying everything as they retreated from the Wehrmacht, again denying their enemies anything of use—but also depriving their own citizens of food and shelter.
On November 27, 1950, Chinese forces launched a surprise attack on United Nations and US troops stationed at the Chosin Reservoir in eastern North Korea during the Korean War.
Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, the Americans and their allies were forced to retreat south down the Korean Peninsula in extreme cold over rigged terrain, suffering heavy casualties along the way.
On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell to North Vietnam. The capture of the city was preceded by Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of almost all American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, almost two million Vietnamese fled the country by boat and risked their lives in order to seek freedom from the Vietnamese Communist regime.
On the morning of February 26, 1991, more than 1,500 Iraqi vehicles began their retreat out of Kuwait in the wake of Saddam Hussein's illegal and unprovoked invasion of the country.
Coalition forces monitoring their progress attacked the fleeing Iraqis. Pictured: demolished vehicles line Highway 80, also known as the "Highway of Death," the route Saddam's defeated forces took as they retreated from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.
Sources: (History Collection) (EyeWitness to History) (English Heritage) (The Army Historical Foundation)
History's famous military retreats
Sometimes, claiming a victory is to know when to withdraw
LIFESTYLE Society
According to military strategists, the best course of action during battle is often to withdraw to fight another day. Indeed, claiming a victory is sometimes to know when to retreat. A retreat is a tactical strategy and does not equate to surrendering. However, not all retreats are successful. History has recorded some truly disastrous military withdrawals, when fighting on the back foot, often in harsh conditions, has all but decimated an army. However, when undertaken correctly, a retreat can allow forces to regroup and come back stronger.
Click on and march through this gallery of famous military retreats.