1241- Liegnitz:
It started with a son's desire to fuffill his dead father's wishes for the family of an older, deceased brother. Temujin, Chingghis Qa Quan, had directed that the family of his eldest son, Jochi, who pre-deceased him, should receive an Ulus, or appendage, to the west of the then Mongol Empire, "as far as Mongol ponies had trod". In the aftermath of the Khwaresm war, Mongol tumans under the command of Jebe Noyon and Subodei Bahadur, had ridden as far as the Crimean peninsula in a reconnaissance that lasted two years. When Chingghis' successor, Uggedai Qa Khan, was chosen at the Kuriltai of 1234-1235, one of the first orders of business was to execute his father's wish.
Nominally under the command of Batu Quan, son of Jochi, a large Mongol Army, including personal troops of most of the Mongol princes Guyk, Kadaan, Mongke, and others, headed west. The actual commander was Subodei. Having crossed some 15 degrees of latitude on the approach march, the first to fall were the Volga Bulgars and the Cumans or Kipchaks. That winter [1236-1237], The Mongols attacked the principalities of Ryazan, Suzdal, and others in central/northern Russia. Moscow was burned. Novgorod escaped because of the Spring thaw, but its prince, Alexander Nevsky, made obeisance to Batu.
The Mongols then drifted south onto the steppe, and rested their horses for two years, before riding for Kiev. They sacked and destroyed Kiev in December, 1240. Russia disappeared under the Mongol yoke for the next 200 years.
Faced with military power to their west, Subodei ordered a three pronged attack on a front of several hundred miles. Guyuk was tasked with razing Transylvania, Baidar [Batu's brother] and Kadaan were sent northeast to attack Poland, Silesia, and Bohemia, with 20,000 men. Both operations were feints and flank protection for the main thrust - Hungary. Subodei and Batu led two columns over the Carpathians onto the Hungarian Plain east of Pest. There they awaited the return of the flanking units.
Kadaan and Baidar first fought a Polish Army under Boleslas the Chaste. After annihilating it, and sacking Cracow, they rode west. To their front was the fortress of Liegnitz, commanded by Henry the Pious, and staffed with Templars, local nobles, Livonian Knights, and a peasant levy. To their left front was the army of good King Wenceslas of Bohemia and Moravia, coming up fast to join Henry. Outnumbered by over two to one, by Henry alone, the Mongols offered him battle before Wenceslas could join him.
As the Europeans advanced, with their heavy cavalry followed by their infantry, the Mongols feigned a retreat, behind clouds of arrows from their light cavalry. As the distance between the knights and infantry opened, the Mongols created a smoke screen by firing grass on the flanks. The infantry now lost sight of the cavalry, and basically halted.
As the knights advanced, the Mongol archers began to attack them not only by riding across their front, but by riding down both flanks. The Mongol bows and arrows had little problem penetrating the Europeans' chain mail. At the point where the Allied charge lost its momentum, the Mongol heavy cavalry countercharged and broke the knights' formation. Men were pulled from their horses by lances with hooks. Horses were killed , and crushed their riders.
The first the infantry knew of this was when the Mongol cavalry rode through the smokescreen. An arrow storm and heavy cavalry charge finished them. The Mongols cut the right ear off every corpse to do a body count. When they rode from the field they had 40,000 ears. Henry's body was only recognizable because he had six toes.
Wenceslas took up a defensive position in the Glatz defile when he heard the results of Liegnitz. Rather then attack the position, the Mongols rode around him and began razing Bohemia. When Wenceslas countermarched back, the Mongols again rode around him, and fell on the now defenseless Moravia. Not tarrying long, the tumans then rode down into Hungary to rejoin the main Army. But they had accomplished their mission. Their would be no interference with Subodei's plans for Hungary from the north.
1865: Lee surrenders at Appomattox:
For a year, the Army of Northern Virginia had held the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond at the Petersburg line. That changed at the end of March-beginning of April. A Confederate attack on Fort Stedman [Lee's las offensive action of the war] failed. A.P. Hill, commander of the IIId Corps was killed. Then at Five Forks, Phil Sheridan, after initially being stopped by George Pickett, broke the Confederate flank [Pickett was absent from the battlefield at the time. He was at a shad bake with Tom Rosser and Rooney Lee]. Lee cashiered Pickett, but the damage was done. After notifying Jefferson Davis that Richmond was no longer safe, Lee decamped to the west with two purposes: re-supply his army, and link up with the army of Joseph Johnston, facing William Tecumsche Sherman.
Grant turned loose Sheridan, his cavalry and infantry to harry Lee and cut him off. The pressure led Lee's army to inadvertently take divergent routes. At Sailor's Creek, Custer's cavalry division tore into one column, and Lee lost about a third of his army. One of the captives taken was Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell. Custer then rode west.
Custer captured a train near Appomattox that had Lee's ration. Along with the rest of Sheridan's cavalry, he got in front of Lee's army. An attack to break through the cavalry scree was thwarted by the arrival of a Union infantry corps. Lee was now cut off.
Correspondence over the preceding days, coupled with the inability to break the Union encirclement, led Lee to ask for terms on April 8th. On April 9th, he met Grant at Wilbur Maclean's house to sign a surrender. The terms were generous. The southerners would agree not to fight until paroled. Officers were to keep their side arms. All southern troops who owned their own horse or mules would be allowed to keep them. All ordnance was to be surrendered. The Army of the Potomac supplied some 30,000 rations to Lee's men.
Neither Grant, nor Lee was at the surrender. The South was represented by Lt. Gen. John B. Gordon, the Union by three generals, including Joshua Chamberlain.
The war fizzled along for several more months. Johnston surrendered next. Then the Trans- Mississippi. The final surrender was of Confederate General Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian.
1940:Germany invades Norway:
By April 8th, 1940, almost the entire German Navy was at sea. At the same time British and French troops were loading aboard ships. Both forces had the same target, Norway [the Germans also had their sights set on Denmark]. The question is why.
For Germany, Norway was the conveyor belt by which Swedish iron ore reached the Reich. And the Reich needed Swedish iron. For tanks. For guns. For battleships. For aircraft. For small arms. That conveyor belt started at Narvik, an ice free port in northern Norway. A railroad from Sweden delivered the ore to German ships in Narvik, which then steamed down the coast of Norwy, and from there across the Skaggerak and Kattegat to Germany.
Churchill was aware of this conveyor belt, and was determined to stop it. As First Sea Lord he proposed mining Norwegian waters. That was denied, Norway being a neutral country. Then, it appeared salvation for his plans appeared from an unlikely source, the Winter War. Britain and France seriously considered sending troops, through Narvik, to go to Finland to help the Finns fight the Russians. Lunacy, but serious lunacy. That fell through with Finland's surrender.
But then everything changed with the ALTMARCK. ALTMARCK was a freighter that had acted as a supply ship for the Panzerschiffe ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE during the latter's career as a commerce raider. But ALTMARCK was much more. She housed numerous prisoners taken from GRAF SPEE's victims. And in early 1940, she was riding at anchor in Norwegian territorial waters. The Royal Navy destroyer, H.M.S. COSSACK put the matter to right by sending a boarding party onto ALTMARCK, killing at least one German, and freeing the prisoners. The Norwegian response was ineffectual, to say the least.
Hitler was outraged. But he was also concerned. With the iron ore. At the same time Grand Admiral Raeder was egging Hitler on to consider an attack. Raeder saw Norway as a way to circumvent the British from bottling his navy up by blockading the North Sea, by providing bases. Hitler was also assured by Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian Fascist, that Norway would welcome Nazi Germany. Hitler summoned an Army general, Nickolas von Falkenhorst, and ordered him to come up with a plan. Using a tourist map, he did.
The Germans would land at roughly the same time at five Norwegian ports: Narvik, Tromsoe, Bergen, Oslo, and Christianland. At the same time, German paratroopers would seize airfields near Oslo and in southern Norway. An independent group would, via land and sea, seize Denmark. The Luftwaffe would provide air cover and bomber sorties. It was the first major combine arms operation in modern times.
The invasion had some failures [the heavy cruiser BLUECHER was sunk near Oslo], but was remarkably successful. All five German landings succeeded. The airfields were operational for the Germans almost immediately. German infantry and some armor, began to spread north from southern Norway, and the various beachheads sought to tie I with each other.
The most trouble the Germans had was, interestingly enough, at Narvik. the Royal Navy sank the German naval contingent [destroyers], and drove the Germans out of the town, and into the hills. But they held out.
As for the Allies, their ground forces got off on the wrong foot. Ski troops with no skis, or no bindings. No major port [except Narvik] to land at. Almost no air cover. No meaningful artillery weapons. No tanks. And while it took a while, the Germans eventually cleared them out. To add insult to injury, during the withdrawal, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, H.M.S. GLORIOUS, was set upon by the battlecruisers SCHARNHORST and GNIESENAU and sunk. But by then Britain and France were fully engaged with a surging Wehrmacht in France.
For Germany, Norway proved to be a mixed bag. She lost 50% of all her destroyers, three cruisers, and tied down large numbers of German troops to garrison the country. The loss of the ships guaranteed SEA LION would never happen. She did guarantee her ore supply [until Sweden saw which way the wind was blowing late in the war]. Raeder got his anchorages, but the U-boat pens I France proved much more useful.
For Britain, Norway was a mixed blessing. She was humiliated by an upstart Navy [and it wouldn't be the last time]. But the debacle forced Chamberlain's resignation and Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister. That alone may well have saved Great Britain. Britain was able to handle Norway with commando raids, and air raids. TIRPITZ was sunk in Norway with "Tall Boy" bombs by the R.A.F.
So there you have it. Three for April 9th.
