A to Z of Battles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Austerlitz

Napoleon tricked the much larger Russian and Austrian army into believing his army was smaller than it was. He deliberately retreated, sucking the enemy into a trap, before counter-attacking and splitting their force. Many of the 27,000 Russian and Austrian casualties drowned when a frozen lake gave way under the weight of men, horses and guns.

Answer: Bannockburn

The Scots defeated the English forces by deploying a cunning defensive position, covered by marshes and strengthened by pitfalls. The English heavy cavalry was trapped and slaughtered, while the hapless Edward II only just managed to escape.

Answer: Crécy

Edward III's force of 10,000 men was chased across northern France before he made a stand at Crécy in Normandy. Before he'd even prepared for battle, the vanguard of headstrong French knights attacked, apparently without any kind of plan. They were decimated by the English archers, as were the the next 15 attacks until the French were forced to retire from the field.

Answer: Dien Bien Phu

General Vo Nyeung Giap of the Vietnamese forces waited until the monsoon season before attacking the French garrison in the Dien Bien Phu Valley. He launched his attack by disabling the airfield and Fort Gabrielle through a massive artillery bombardment that lasted 48 hours.

The French forces were besieged for a further 53 days, denied air support and trapped by the boggy conditions, before surrendering.

Answer: Ephesus

A combined Athenian and Ionian expeditionary force under Aristogoras had burned down the city of Sardis. In retribution, the Emperor Darius I sent a Persian force under Artaphrenes to give chase. They overtook the Greeks below the walls of Ephesus and overwhelmed them.

Answer: Fort Sumter

General Pierre Beauregard, commander of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, ordered the Union garrison at Fort Sumter to surrender. When the garrison commander refused, the Confederates bombarded the fort for a few hours until he changed his mind.

There were no casualties on either side during the battle, but two Union gunners were killed when their cannon exploded during a salute to the evacuation.

Answer: Granicus

Alexander routed a slightly larger force of Persians and Greek mercenaries under Memnon of Rhodes. Leading from the front line, he dispersed the Persian light cavalry with a head-on attack by his own heavy cavalry, and then brought up his phalanx of heavy infantry to decimate the exposed Greek mercenaries.

Answer: Hastings

William's small force of 7,000 men continually attacked the Anglo-Saxon positions on a hill which commanded the battlefield. The deadlock was broken when William's cavalry feigned a retreat, encouraging the Anglo-Saxons to break ranks and chase them down the hill. William's swift counter-attack decimated the Anglo-Saxons and Harold was killed.

Answer: Isandhlwana

A force of 1,774 under Lord Chelmsford was overwhelmed by 20,000 Zulus. Chelmsford's force consisted of about 700 British soldiers, the rest being native auxiliaries and local European militia. Over 1,400 were killed. The British defeat was partly due to a combination of complacency and incompetence. Poor defensive positions were ineffective against the extremely mobile Zulu forces, while the reserves of ammunition were rendered inaccessible, due to anti-theft precautions.

Answer: True

Napoleon employed his much larger force to good effect by pushing the Prussians onto open ground. Although the outcome was in the balance, due to the impetuosity of Marshal Ney's unauthorised attack on the well-defended Prussian centre, Napoleon managed to bolster Ney effectively before the Prussians were completely overwhelmed by the arrival of even more French reinforcements.

Although the French lost 5,000 men, the Prussians lost 25,000. (Some historians claim that after the death of Frederick the Great in 1786 Prussia failed to keep its military training and equipment up-to-date).

Answer: Kursk

The Germans launched Operation Citadel, in an attempt to straighten their lines and remove the bulge in it created by Russian reversals of earlier losses. The Russians had prepared defences in great depth, however, and although the Germans made good progress initially, the sheer power of the Russian counter-attack overwhelmed them. Kursk was a turning point in the war; from that point on, the Germans were on the retreat in Russia.

Answer: Lepanto

A combined Spanish and Venetian fleet of 250 vessels, under Don John of Austria, met the 270 Turkish vessels under Piale Pasha. Although the left flank of the Turkish force, under the Dey of Algiers, was more successful, the centre and right were decimated. Piale was killed, along with some 30,000 of his sailors. With their navy shattered, the Turks were prevented from continuing their westward expansion.

Answer: Marathon

Commanded by Miltiades, a combined Athenian/Palatean force overwhelmed both flanks of the invading Persian army, causing a complete rout. The Persians retreated to their ships and left Greek territory. The marathon race has its origins here, when Pheidippides ran 26 miles from the scene of the battle to Athens, to relay news of the victory. He died of exhaustion afterwards.

Answer: New Orleans

For nearly a month, Andrew Jackson's small defensive force thwarted the attempts by a British expeditionary force under Lord Pakenham to take New Orleans and wrest control of the Lower Mississippi. In the final assault on Jackson's breastworks, Pakenham sent his troops across open ground in the face of withering fire by the defending Americans.

These tactics incurred more than 1,600 casualties for the British, against just over 50 Americans. Pakenham was killed, too. By the time the British withdrew to Mobile, they learned that the Treaty of Ghent had concluded the war.

Answer: Omdurman

Kitchener's force was met by a force more than twice its size in his attempt to capture Omdurman from the Khalifa. The Egyptian brigade, under General Macdonald, was isolated and outflanked, but thanks to the steadfastness of its soldiers, who had to switch flanks during the battle, it managed to hold on, inflicting huge casualties on the Khalifa's forces.

The British-Egyptian force lost 500 men, against the Khalifa's 15,000. (It was among the first battles in which the Maxim machine-gun caused immense slaughter).

Answer: Port Arthur

Eight Russian warships were damaged - many beyond repair - by this surprise attack while they lay at anchor in Port Arthur. Not one Japanese warship was damaged. The Japanese achieved this by swift attacks by torpedo boats, which disabled three ships at the mouth of the harbour, before inflicting an artillery barrage to which the Russians could barely respond.

Answer: Quebec

Wolfe's force was too small and underpowered to successfully invest Quebec, which was heavily defended by General Montcalm. His first attack on the defences was defeated. Wolfe solved the problem by ascending the Plains of Abraham, a plateau overlooking Quebec City, where he defeated the French forces who were now forced to fight on open ground outside the city's defences.

Answer: Rorke's Drift

After the convincing Zulu victory at Isandhlwana, Prince Dabulamazi Ka'Mpanda disobeyed King Cetewayo's orders, and sought glory by attacking the British station at Rorke's Drift. The British defenders consisted of a single company of infantry, led by Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead. Over the next 15 hours or so, the small British force held out, forcing the Zulus to retire. Possibly in reaction to the humiliation of Isandhlwana, the men of Rorke's Drift were celebrated, and 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded, the most in any single action.

Answer: Stoke

Lambert Simnel had impersonated the Earl of Warwick (the main Yorkist claimant to the throne), claimed he had escaped from the Tower of London, and was crowned King Edward VI in Dublin by enthusiastic Yorkist followers. A Yorkist army of some 9,000 was met and defeated by Henry VII's army at East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. Simnel was captured and made a kitchen servant of the king.

Answer: Thermopylae

Facing an overwhelming force of 100,000 Persians under Xerxes, the small Greek force sensibly decided to withdraw, rather than engage the enemy further. 300 Spartans, led by Leonidas, fought a heroic rearguard action, blocking the pass at Thermopylae to allow time for the 5,000 Greek hoplites to escape. All the Spartans were killed in what ranks as one of the most heroic actions of self-sacrifice in military history.

Answer: Ulundi

The British force of 5,000 men was led by Lord Chelmsford. It met a force of 20,000 Zulus and routed them with superior and disciplined firepower. The Zulus lost 1,500 warriors, against British losses of only 15.

Answer: Verdun

Although inconclusive, the German seige of the ring of French forts around Verdun was the longest battle of the First World War. French casualties during the battle were 550,000, while on the German side losses were 437,000. No tactical or strategic gain was achieved by either side, but each was seriously weakened by this most attritional of conflicts. Verdun was a direct cause of a large-scale mutiny in the French army.

Answer: Waterloo

The battle that finally ended Napoleon's hold on power was at a stalemate, with the Allies buckling from repeated French attacks. It was the stand of 1,500 British guardsmen, who decimated and routed the advance of Napoleon's Imperial Guard with withering musket fire, that provided the turning point. Panic and retreat swept through the French troops when they saw the Imperial Guard in flight.

The timely arrival of Field Marshal Blücher's Prussian cavalry swung the battle firmly in the Allies' favour.

The Allies lost 22,000 casualties, against the French 32,000 (plus 7,000 taken prisoner).

Answer: Yorktown

In his siege of the British-held Yorktown, Washington was assisted in his victory by the French fleet which blocked Cornwallis' attempts to escape or be reinforced from the sea. He also had some 6,000 French troops at his disposal. After three weeks, the beseiged Cornwallis gave up all hope of reinforcements and negotiated terms of surrender.

Answer: Zama

As good a tactician as Hannibal was, he struggled to overcome the weakened state of his forces with its dependence on raw new recruits. Scipio's men were well-trained and battle-hardened veterans, led by a better general than Hannibal had encountered before. Less than a year after Zama, the Carthaginians surrendered, leaving Rome unchallenged as the supreme power in the Mediterranean.