July 30 in Military History — On This Day

Battle of Anegawa

The Azai and Asakura clans, allied against Nobunaga's expansion, met the combined Oda-Tokugawa army in the shallow Ane River. The fighting was close and bloody in the water itself, and for a time the Oda centre was in real danger of breaking; Tokugawa Ieyasu's flanking troops turned the battle. Both allied clans withdrew battered but intact.

The first time the Oda-Tokugawa alliance was tested in a genuinely difficult pitched battle rather than a surprise or a siege, and it held — the partnership between Nobunaga and Ieyasu, formalised years earlier, would outlast Nobunaga himself and eventually deliver Ieyasu the whole country. The Azai and Asakura were not destroyed here, which is why Nobunaga spent the next three years grinding them down instead.

Full battle details →

⚔️📍 Marne River, France1918

Second Battle of the Marne — Germany's Last Offensive Fails

Germany's last major offensive of WWI collapsed as French forces, forewarned by captured German soldiers, had pulled back from the front lines before the bombardment. French and American counterattacks then struck the exposed German flanks.

The Second Marne marked the end of German offensive power in WWI; the Allies then launched the Hundred Days Offensive that broke Germany's army and ended the war.

Outcome

Allied victory; Germany's last offensive power exhausted

Casualties

168,000