📅 On This Day in Military History
3 events across history
Yuan Chonghuan, a brilliant Ming general, organized the defense of the fortress of Ningyuan using recently acquired European-designed cannon (hongyi pao — 'red-haired barbarian cannon' from the Portuguese). When Nurhaci's Manchu host attacked in January 1626, the cannon tore devastating holes in the charging bannermen. Nurhaci, who had never suffered a significant defeat in his forty-year career, was forced to withdraw. He died eight months later, possibly from wounds sustained during the siege.
Ningyuan was the first clear Ming victory over the Manchus and demonstrated that European artillery technology could neutralize the Manchu cavalry advantage. Yuan Chonghuan became a national hero, and the Portuguese cannon became central to Ming defensive strategy. However, the victory was squandered when court politics led to Yuan's arrest and execution in 1630.
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The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War globally. France ceded all of Canada and all territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. France gave Louisiana (the vast territory west of the Mississippi) to Spain. Britain returned Cuba and the Philippines to Spain, and Martinique and Guadeloupe to France. In one treaty, the entire balance of power in North America was redrawn.
The most consequential diplomatic settlement in North American history before the Constitution. Britain now controlled virtually all of eastern North America — but the massive debt from the war led directly to the taxes that caused the American Revolution. France's loss of Canada eliminated the threat that had made the colonies dependent on British military protection.
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Six days after the outbreak, MacArthur's division attacked north from Manila toward Caloocan, the railway terminus that anchored Antonio Luna's line. Naval guns and field artillery pounded the town before the infantry assault carried it. Luna's counterattack plan — a coordinated torching of American-held Manila from within — flickered out days later when his sandatahan infiltrators failed to coordinate.
Caloocan gave the Americans the Manila-Dagupan railway's southern end, the strategic spine of the entire Luzon campaign. Reports of American soldiers burning the town and shooting prisoners also produced some of the war's first atrocity controversies in the U.S. press.
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