25 Wild ‘Don’t Pick a Fight You Can’t Win’ Moments from History

‘The French and Indian War in which both the French and the Indians lost’
25 Wild ‘Don’t Pick a Fight You Can’t Win’ Moments from History

Despite a couple of highly inadvisable invasions in recent history, going to war is generally a carefully considered thing. The best outcome isn’t great, and the worst can end empires. It’s for those reasons that you don’t often see smaller players flipping their middle finger to the world, because they know that they’ll probably lose the fight.

Still, whether through pride, naivete or sheer stubbornness, there have been times when someone’s started an inadvisable fight and received exactly the expected results. Unfortunately for them, no history book is going to include, “if they’d pulled it off, they would have been legends, though, right?” 

Below, thanks to historians on Reddit, are some of those less-than-intelligent conflicts…

CarbonSpectre . 7y ago The Paraguayan War of 1864-70. Paraguay vs. Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Paraguay lost almost 70% of its adult male population, according to some estimates.
sd51223 7y ago Edited 7y ago The Anglo-Zanzibar war of 1896. Which lasted 38 minutes. The small island of Zanzibar was a British colony at the time. The Sultan died, and the British had a hand-picked successor. But before this successor could arrive, the previous Sultan's cousin declared himself in charge instead and barricaded himself in the palace. Britain sent 5 ships and a thousand men. The would-be Sultan had only his palace guard, his slaves, and whatever civilians he could gather. With one volley, the British forces completely disabled Zanzibar's only artillery batteries. They then marched for the burning
Dahhhkness . 7y ago The shah of the Khwarezm empire humiliating and killing Genghis Khan's diplomatic envoys. A few years later, there was no Khwarezm empire anymore.
E_G_Never . 7y ago The invasion of the Italian peninsula by Pyrrhus of Epirus. Не technically won his war with the Romans, but suffered such heavy casualties that the term pyrrhic victory was coined.
crepuscular caveman 7y ago The Battle of Hattin when the crusaders marched an army across the desert without any water to go fight Saladin, by the time the two armies met the crusaders were already dying of thirst.
Vlaed e 7y ago Edited 7y ago The Franco-Prussian War (Also known as Franco-German war) It can be argued that the Germans provoked the attack but France attacked and six months later the Northern German Confederation won. This then led to German unification and the crowning of the Kaiser. As the ultimate insult, they crowned William I in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, France.
Warburton_Warrior . 7y ago All the European powers a the time who declared war on Napoleon's France, it took 6 coalition wars just to get rid of him (7 if you include Waterloo). Не pretty much was wiping the floor with every empire, he even dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in the process which had existed for 1000 years.
ROBANN_88 7y ago roughly 500-600 BC Croesus, king of Lydia (part of what is todays Turkey), credited with using the first state issued and standardised gold coins for general circulation. he was also rich as fuck. according to Herodotus, he asked some oracle whether it would be a good idea to attack Persia, and they answered something along the lines of, if you attack, you will be adding to a great empire or a great empire will be destroyed i've heard both versions. thinking this meant victory, he attacked. well, as it turned out, the Empire that was added to,
 7y ago Custer's Last Stand (The Battle of the Little Bighorn). The Battle of the Little Bighorn was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The US 7th Cavalry, including the Custer Battalion (a force of 700 men led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer) suffered a major defeat. Five of the 7th Cavalry's 12 companies were annihilated and Custer was killed, as were two of his brothers, a nephew and a brother-in-law.
Sandals_with_socks . 7y ago Anyone who fought Mike Tyson in his prime.
blueeyesredlipstick 7y ago Oscar Wilde taking the Marquess of Queensbury to court for calling him gay. I should state: the laws in the UK were immoral and terrible, the punishment Wilde got was excessively cruel, and the entire situation was horrible and an example of how absolutely terrible the Victorian Era was for gay men. But, he should not have tried to sue Queensbury just because his boyfriend told him to, because 1) he wasn't in any legal trouble at that point, 2) the libel case against Queensbury dredged up all of the evidence that Wilde was, in fact, gay,
Idoc_daneeka . 7y ago Germany declaring war on the USA while already busy failing to defeat the USSR.
 . 7y ago The don't get involved in a land war on Asia line from Princess Bride is pretty good advice. Afghanistan didn't become known as the graveyard of empires for nothing. Also Russia. Especially in the winter.
bmsbluemountainstate . 7y ago The Great Emu War
Portarossa 7y ago Edited 7y ago The Falklands. For anyone unfamiliar, the Falkland Islands are a small archipelago about 300 miles away from Argentina, in the South Atlantic. There's not a lot going on there, but the people on those islands generally consider themselves British. (For real: in March 2013, the Falkland Islands held a referendum on its political status in which 99.8 percent of voters favoured remaining a British overseas territory.) That didn't stop Argentina invading in 1982, as they thought the islands -- as they call them, Las Malvinas - rightly belonged to them. It didn't go so well. (Then again, the
ergonomic_nips $ 7y ago Pearl Harbor
xVigilantAtWar 7y ago I'm surprised no one has mentioned the first Gulf War. The US military went in and destroyed the Iraqi military in days. Bush Senior was smart enough to destroy the Iraqi military and then jet the fuck out. Unlike his offspring that entered us into a hell hole of ideological warfare.
FlyingTeaput . 7y ago No one talking about Évariste Galois? A supreme mathematical genius that got involved into a duel in his 20's. Spent the whole night before the duel trying to calculate ways to win the duel and nothing worked.
xmagusxx 7y ago The French and Indian War in which both the French and the Indians lost.
SAINGS-Nolls 7y ago The Winter War between the USSR and Finland. The USSR thinks it can roll into Finland like it did in the Baltic states, and instead gets bogged down fighting a well prepared Finland. Ends in a treaty with minor territorial adjustments. Huge embarrassment for the USSR.
UnconstrictedEmu . 7y ago The Battle of Agincourt. Heavily armored French knights sounds like a great way to win medieval battles...until you go up against English longbows capable of punching holes in said armor like a wet sheet of paper.
But Id say Cuba's first two wars for independence from Spain. Cuba has honestly never really been great as far a military goes. Its always been only as strong as it allies in combat. So the first two times when it declared war on Spain, it went pretty terribly. Cubans werent well armed, their medical supplies were low, their hospital were extremely unhygienic, their miliitary leaders often lacked training, experience, or really any form of military education. And the soldiers even less so. They relied heavily on guerrilla warfare and their jungle environment, which spoiler alert the Spanish were more
llewkeller 7y ago The Vietnam War. Let me count the ways: The French had given up before the USA entered the fight. The North was always unified politically and governmentally, while the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and torn by various factions. The leadership turned over a number of times when the USA first started to escalate our involvement in the mid 1960s. The USA thought we could win by superior firepower - by bombing them back to the stone age. (General Curtis LeMay)
Insectshelf3 7y ago 40 - Z Egypt, and by extension its allies, during the six day war TL:DR, Egypt moves forces towards Israel. Israel goes ballistic and in 6 days completely decimated Egypt's Air Force and beats the shit out of 3 of it's allies before eventually calming down.
FatchRacall . 7y ago The war of 1812 anyone? USA decides to invade Canada and Canada responds by burning Washington DC to the ground.

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