📅 On This Day in Military History

May 10

6 events across history

Battle of Loudoun Hill

Returned from hiding, Bruce chose his ground at Loudoun Hill with care, digging ditches to funnel the English cavalry into a narrow front where his spearmen could hold them. Pembroke's horsemen were repulsed with loss — Bruce's first real victory over the English in the field.

Loudoun Hill turned the tide of Bruce's fortunes; weeks later the aged Edward I died marching north, and under the feeble Edward II the English grip on Scotland steadily loosened.

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⚔️📍 Lake Champlain, New York1775

Fort Ticonderoga Captured — Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys

Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys surprised the sleeping British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga at dawn, demanding surrender 'in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.' The fort fell without a shot; its cannons would be dragged to Boston to force a British evacuation.

Ticonderoga's capture provided the Continental Army with badly needed artillery and was the first offensive American action of the Revolutionary War.

Outcome

American victory; 78 cannons captured for siege of Boston

The Indian Rebellion of 18571857

The Meerut Mutiny

On May 10, 1857, Indian sepoys of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry and two infantry regiments at Meerut killed their British officers, freed 85 imprisoned troopers, and marched through the night to Delhi to restore the Mughal Emperor. The immediate trigger was the greased Enfield cartridges whose loading required biting paper sealed with beef-and-pork fat — ritually polluting to both Hindu and Muslim soldiers.

The Meerut Mutiny lit the match that ignited northern India. Within weeks, sepoy regiments across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh rose in revolt. The march to Delhi gave the rebellion its symbolic center — Bahadur Shah Zafar, however reluctant, became the figurehead of the uprising.

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The Franco-Prussian War1871

Treaty of Frankfurt

The Treaty of Frankfurt, signed on May 10, 1871, formally ended the Franco-Prussian War on terms that Bismarck had deliberately made severe enough to cripple France for a generation. France ceded Alsace (except Belfort) and the northeastern portion of Lorraine — approximately 1.6 million people and the iron-ore deposits of the Lorraine basin — to the new German Empire. France agreed to pay a war indemnity of five billion francs — an unprecedented sum — within three years, with German troops occupying northeastern France as guarantee. Bismarck's advisers had argued against taking Alsace-Lorraine on the grounds that it would make France a permanent enemy; Moltke and the generals insisted. Bismarck, uncharacteristically, yielded to military pressure.

The Treaty of Frankfurt was one of the most consequential peace settlements of the nineteenth century — and one of the most counter-productive. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was, as Bismarck's adviser Augustin Simson predicted, 'a new Alsace-Lorraine question for every generation.' French revanchism — the determination to recover the lost provinces — became the central organizing principle of French foreign policy for forty-four years, making a Franco-German reconciliation impossible and a general European war essentially inevitable once the alliance systems hardened. When the First World War ended in 1918, France's first demand was the return of Alsace-Lorraine. The 1871 peace had created the 1914 war.

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✈️World War II1940

Fall of France

Germany bypassed France's Maginot Line by driving armored columns through the 'impassable' Ardennes Forest, cutting Allied forces in two. 338,000 Allied troops were evacuated from Dunkirk in a desperate naval operation using everything from destroyers to fishing boats. France signed an armistice on June 22nd; Paris fell without a fight. In six weeks Germany had done what it couldn't do in four years of WWI.

The most stunning military campaign of WWII. France's collapse left Britain alone against Nazi-dominated Europe. Churchill became Prime Minister; his refusal to consider peace terms was Britain's defining decision of the war. The miracle of Dunkirk saved the nucleus of the British army.

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🌿The Vietnam War1969

Battle of Hamburger Hill (Dong Ap Bia)

US and South Vietnamese forces launched 11 frontal assaults over ten days to capture a heavily fortified NVA hilltop position in the A Shau Valley. 'Hamburger Hill' earned its nickname from soldiers who felt they were being fed into a meat grinder. The hill was taken on May 20th — and abandoned nine days later as having no strategic value.

The battle that turned soldiers against the war. Men in the field began to question why they were dying for a hill that would be abandoned. The phrase 'what are we fighting for?' took on new meaning. Congressional criticism intensified; Hamburger Hill accelerated the shift to Vietnamization — turning the fighting over to South Vietnamese forces.

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