5 First Hand Accounts of the Worst Military Disasters in History

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Extracts taken from:
Paterculus' Roman History, translated by F.W. Shipley.
James Brundage, "The Crusades: A Documentary History", (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962)
"Captain Cuellar´s Narrative of the Spanish Armada" translated by Robert Crawford 1897
"The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier" by Jakob Walter
Account of Second Lieutenant David Rodger Fyffe in "Gallipoli: The Dardanelles Disaster in Soldiers' Words and Photographs" by Richard van Emden and Stephen Chambers:

Editing by David Kelly and Luiz Murphy
Image Editing by Manuel Rubio - check out his amazing channel: @ArtandContext
Music from Epidemic Sound and Artlist
Thumbnail Art by Ettore Mazza
Art by Bilal Erlangga

00:00 9 AD Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
05:09 1187 Battle of Hattin
11:12 1588 The Spanish Armada
17:54 1812 Napoleon´s Invasion of Russia
25:31 1915 Landing at Gallipoli

[VoicesofthePast]

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[redeye]

Hearing the soldier at Gallipoli compare himself and his comrades to the Romans and Crusaders of old, after hearing the tales from those two already, felt like a grim foreshadowing.

[kaarlimakela]

"Mistakes were made." is one of my favorite historical phrases of all time. Perfect for all occasions.

[redeye]

That Napoleonic soldier had frostbite at the very end, didn't he? The way he described it, it sounded like his whole nose, ears, and hands were afflicted. I really hope he didn't suffer for long, I'm horrified to imagine having to live with the aftermath.

[AYVYN]

Varus, a General who trusted the civility of Barbarians more than the discipline of his Soldiers.

[chrishamilton]

Varus - the lesson every nation needs to learn. Don’t send bureaucrats to handle your wars.

[SamGray]

Every military disaster is also a triumph for the other side. In a sense, nearly every battle is a disaster for half those involved.

[aaron]

Great doco. Just a point of order; you had a statue of Gaius Julius Caesar pop up when he mentioned "Caesar" discussing the account of the Teutoburg Forest. It was of course Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, aka Octavian, Gaius' grand nephew, being referred to in the account. Old mate Julius had been dead for 49 years at the time of the battle.

[Alex-cwrz]

My Great Grandfather was in the Lancashire Fusiliers and landed on W beach, where 6 Victoria Cross's were won before breakfast. They were able to take the top of the hill, There were 533 casualties more than half the Regiment my Great Grandfather luckily not one of them. Unfortunately it was only a few days later when he was hit by shrapnel from an Artillery shell, k illing his best friend, he was injured a further 3 times at Gallipoli including losing a finger. He went on to fight at the Somme and at Passchendaele where he won the military medal for taking out a German machine gun nest. After the war he broke the medal in two, as the war had deeply effected him. We still have the broken medal today.

[Tsukuyomi]

The guy in the Spanish armada that filled his clothes with metal in the middle of the ocean was not too bright.

[heyitsbookie]

Ok but tell me the the Country Native Horse, sitting, and sliding down frozen hills with both luggage and a mounted rider isn’t the coolest little thing. Lovely creature.

[The_Honcho]

Fantastic work as usual, these memoirs bring history to life. All the things forgotten to time; comrades’ personality, their small talk, and thoughts are revived through these stories. The closest a human could possibly come to actually going back in time

[samsheridan]

“Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!”
-Augustus Caesar

[usefulusinguser]

22:00 is such an interesting thing to learn about domestic Russian military horses. The visual I got in my head was so comical despite the rest of the horrid situation being described.

[nickthomas]

Well done. There is an error at 3:20 however. “Caesar” is referring to Augustus Caesar (Octavian). It is he who Suetonius attributes the famous words: “Varus, give me back my legions!"

The bust shown in the video is of Julius Caesar, however, who of course was long dead.

[mixkid]

The Gallipoli Landing will never fail to infuriate me. Especially when I learned of the arse-backward motivation for it. Thinking there was a "backdoor" to Germany. What a waste of life.

[Becca.]

Thank you for mentioning the tragedy that was Gallipoli. That mission makes me cry as an Australian

[oLevLovesLove]

Amazing how few people who entrusted their lives to wooden ships in the past knew how to swim.

[gglen]

Spanish Armada: I am from Scotland, the west coast, my ancestors hail from Arran. We did a gene swab a few years back and, lo and behold, Spanish blood. This possibly confirms the old family tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard settling down on the island a sireing a few children with local women.

[UNUSUALUSERNAME]

The recount of Gallipoli sounds so romantic, until the nightmare begins. Sad to think that once they landed, almost 2/3 of those men would be dead from dysentery, not a very romantic way to go. It's actually the only accurate comparison to the battles of old, disease would generally take the largest majority of every fighting force over time. Just another example of the hubris of men that don't actually do any of the fighting, those in charge show little regard for your life. People's lives are considered incidental, compared to the personal glory of those at the top! That aspect of history never changes.