March 20 in Military History — On This Day

⚔️📍 Paris, France1815

Napoleon Returns to Paris — The Hundred Days Begin

Napoleon entered Paris in triumph after escaping from Elba, with troops sent to arrest him joining his march instead. King Louis XVIII fled the city without a shot being fired. Napoleon had marched from the south with just 1,000 men and gathered an army along the way.

The Hundred Days shocked Europe and forced the Allied powers to mobilize against Napoleon one final time, culminating in his defeat at Waterloo and permanent exile.

Outcome

Napoleon reclaims French throne; Waterloo campaign begins

Battle of Onitsha

The Battle of Onitsha, a major commercial city on the Niger River, was one of the war's most bitterly contested engagements. Nigeria launched multiple amphibious and land assaults across the Niger River. Biafran forces repelled early Nigerian crossings with significant losses, but eventually Onitsha fell after several months of attritional fighting. The city, once the commercial heart of Igboland, was devastated.

The battle demonstrated the limits of Biafran tactical ingenuity against Nigeria's superior numbers and firepower. The destruction of Onitsha's market — one of West Africa's largest — and the displacement of its population symbolized the war's economic devastation of the Igbo heartland.

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Battle of Umm Qasr

The first battle of the Iraq War, fought for the port city of Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf coast — Iraq's only deep-water port. US Marines and British Royal Marines secured the port over five days of unexpectedly fierce resistance from Iraqi regular forces and Fedayeen Saddam paramilitaries. The battle was supposed to take hours; it took nearly a week, setting the first warning about Iraqi resistance. Coalition forces also cleared the harbor of mines to allow humanitarian aid ships to dock.

Umm Qasr was a harbinger: Iraqi regular forces fought harder than Pentagon planners anticipated, and the Fedayeen Saddam — irregular paramilitary forces loyal to Saddam personally — proved more determined than the regular army. The resistance validated those who had warned that the occupation would be more difficult than the invasion. The port's capture was essential for humanitarian aid delivery but its security required British forces for months, diverting resources from the main campaign.

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Fall of Baghdad

Operation Iraqi Freedom opens with 'Shock and Awe' — a night-time cruise missile and precision bombing campaign against Baghdad. Three US Army divisions and the 1st Marine Division drive north from Kuwait simultaneously. The 3rd Infantry Division reaches Baghdad's outskirts in 21 days. On April 5, 'Thunder Run' — a tank column charges straight through the city center — and the Republican Guard collapses. On April 9, a US military vehicle pulls down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square before a watching world.

The speed of Baghdad's fall seemed to validate Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's 'transformation' theory — that a smaller, faster military could defeat conventional armies cheaply. The iconic statue pull-down provided a powerful visual of liberation — though the watching crowd was small and the toppling partly staged. What the cameras didn't show was the looting of Baghdad's museums, hospitals, and ministries that began immediately, while US forces watched under orders not to intervene — Rumsfeld's dismissal: 'Stuff happens.'

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