π On This Day in Military History
3 events across history
The most powerful frontier general in the empire, An Lushan β commander of three great northern military regions β declared that he was marching to remove the corrupt chief minister Yang Guozhong, and led an army of some 150,000 hardened frontier troops south toward the imperial heartland. The peaceful, prosperous interior had no armies to stop them.
The revolt caught the Tang court utterly by surprise after decades of peace and prosperity. The empire's best troops were on the frontiers under An Lushan's own command, leaving the rich but undefended core of China open to his veterans and beginning the catastrophe.
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Hideyoshi was dead and the Japanese were evacuating. Yi and the Ming admiral Chen Lin refused to let them leave unpunished and ambushed the withdrawal fleet in the Noryang strait at night. Some 200 of 500 Japanese ships were destroyed. At dawn, in the pursuit, Yi Sun-sin was hit by an arquebus ball. He told his nephew to beat the drum and not announce his death until the fighting was over, and died.
The last battle of the war, fought over an enemy who was already leaving, and it killed the man who had won it. Yi Sun-sin fought at least twenty-three engagements and never lost one, against a navy that outnumbered him at every turn, for a government that had imprisoned and tortured him. He is Korea's national hero without qualification, and the Japanese admirals who fought him said so too β TΕgΕ, who destroyed the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905, reportedly refused comparison with him.
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Germany's last major offensive in the West. Through fog and overcast that grounded Allied air power, three German armies attacked through the Ardennes, creating a 'bulge' in Allied lines and nearly splitting them. American forces were encircled at Bastogne; General McAuliffe's reply to German demands for surrender was a single word: 'NUTS!' When the weather cleared, Allied air power destroyed the German spearheads.
Germany's last throw of the dice in the West. The offensive consumed Germany's last armored reserves and accelerated the final collapse. The war was over in Europe by May 1945. American casualties of 75,000 made it the costliest US battle in Europe.
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