Last stand
A last stand is a
Tactical significance
A "last stand" is a last resort tactic, and is chosen because the defending force realizes or believes the benefits of fighting outweigh the benefits of retreat or surrender. This usually arises from strategic or moral considerations, such as staying and fighting to buy time for wounded soldiers or civilians to get to a safe place, leading defenders to conclude that their sacrifice is essential to the greater success of their campaign or cause, as happened at the end of the Battle of Saragarhi.[2][3] The situation can arise in several ways. One situation is that retreat by the defending force would lead to immediate defeat, usually due to the surrounding geography or shortage of supplies or support, as happened to the Royalist infantry on Wadborough Hill after the Battle of Naseby.[4][5]
Some military thinkers have cautioned against putting an opposing force into a last stand situation, recognising that trapped men will fight harder. Sun Tzu wrote: "To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape". Similarly, they have sometimes suggested deliberately putting their own forces in such a situation, for example by burning boats or bridges that could tempt them to retreat.[6]
The historian Bryan Perrett suggests that although the majority of last stands throughout history have seen the defending force overwhelmed, on rare occasions the outnumbered defenders succeed in their desperate endeavours and live to fight another day, and he lists the Battle of Agincourt and the Battle of Rorke's Drift as such engagements.[7]
Fear of execution
Troops may fight a last stand if they believe that they will be executed if they surrender.
In
During the
Another example of a famous last stand was during the
Fear of mistreatment
People may fight to the death due to the belief that if they surrender they will be tortured or enslaved. At the Siege of Numantia, the inhabitants refused to surrender to the Romans because they were unwilling to become slaves. Japanese soldiers in World War II were told by their superiors that they would be tortured if captured.
Protecting leader
In some cases, troops will make a last stand to protect their ruler or leader or commander. In the
When
At the 1795
The Battle of Pavan Khind involved a rearguard last stand. It took place on July 13, 1660 at a mountain pass in the vicinity of fort Vishalgad, near the city of Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India between the Maratha warrior Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Siddi Masud of Adil Shahi dynasty. 300 Marathas in a rearguard action, held off an attacking force of 10,000 Bijapuris, allowing their king Shivaji to escape to a nearby fort. Ultimately the battle ended with the destruction of the rearguard Maratha forces, and a tactical victory for the Adil Shahi Sultanate, but failed to achieve its strategic objective of capturing the Maratha king Shivaji.
The
Defending tactically crucial point
During the
An analogous battle, with reversed roles, would be fought 150 years later, during the invasion of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great: Persians, led by Ariobarzanes of Persis, tried desperately to stop the Macedon offensive towards the capital city Persepolis, blocking the Persian Gates pass.[16]
A similar action to Thermopylae occurred in April 1951 at the Battle of Kapyong when strategic Hill 677 was held by the 700 men of the Canadian 2 PPCLI against two attacking Chinese PVA divisions, encircled and outnumbered by more than 10 to 1 in the immediate battle area, and by about 30 to 1 on the larger battlefield. The PPCLI were exhausted of ammunition and supplies, but the commander Lt. Col. James Riley Stone ordered "no retreat, no surrender", and called in artillery fire on his own positions when they were overrun. The PVA divisions eventually withdrew with about 5,000 dead and a large number wounded.
Buying time
Sometimes, rather than face annihilation at the hands of a pursuing victorious army, a rearguard will be tasked by the commander of the defeated army with hindering the advance of the victorious army. Even if the rearguard is destroyed in a last stand, its sacrifice may buy their commander time to disengage without losing the majority of his army as happened during the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778), Battle of Tirad Pass (1899), the Battle of Badgam (1947) which proved to be critical to preventing the fall of Srinagar to tribal lashkars.[17]
Perceived duty
A last stand may also be the last pitched battle of a war where the position of the defending force is hopeless but the defending force considers it their duty not to surrender until forced to do so, as happened to the last Royalist field army of the First English Civil War at the Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold in 1646.[18]
At the Battle of Saragarhi in 1897, the British Indian contingent consisting of 21 Sikh soldiers of the 36th Sikhs, when faced with insurmountable opposition of 10,000 Afghans, decided to make a last stand in accordance with their traditional and religious belief that duty is above all convictions. All 21 Sikhs were killed, together with approximately 600 Afghans.[19]
During the Battle of Okinawa the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato sailed from the Japanese home islands to join the fight, in which she would have been hopelessly outgunned. As a last ditch effort she would have beached herself on the shore, her crew joining the troops on the island and using her as a stationary gun battery. Yamato was sunk on her approach with the loss of some 3,055 crew of her complement of 3,332 after coming under attack from a large strike force of carrier borne aircraft. Given the tactical situation, one battleship accompanied by several smaller vessels with no air support against a fleet of aircraft carriers, the outcome was predictable to military leaders, and ultimately one born out of shame at being questioned by the Emperor over their lack of contribution to the ongoing defensive war effort when the Japanese Army was slowly being annihilated and while air crews were performing suicidal kamikaze missions.[20]
At the end of a siege
Before the 20th century, "no quarter was given" if a besieged garrison had refused any offered terms of surrender prior to the attackers breaching the defences, so a last stand was part of the end of many sieges, such as the Battle of the Alamo.[21]
However, since the 1907
Historical significance
Last stands loom large in history due to the pull on popular imagination. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick argues:
Long before Custer died at the Little Bighorn, the myth of the Last Stand already had a strong pull on human emotions, and on the way we like to remember history. The variations are endless — from the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae to Davy Crockett at the Alamo—but they all tell the story of a brave and intractable hero leading his tiny band against a numberless foe. Even though the odds are overwhelming, the hero and his followers fight on nobly to the end and are slaughtered to a man. In defeat the hero of the Last Stand achieves the greatest of victories, since he will be remembered for all time.[23]
During
See also
References
- ^ "last stand - Definition of last stand in English by Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford Dictionaries - English. Archived from the original on April 4, 2018.
- ^ Rollin, Charles (1804). The ancient history of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Grecians. Vol. 3 (10 ed.). Printed for W. J. & J. Richardson. p. 34.
- ISBN 978-0313359675
- ^ David Plant 1645: The Storming of Leicester and the Battle of Naseby Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, www.british-civil-wars.co.uk Archived 2017-06-29 at the Wayback Machine , Retrieved 2009-05-24
- ^ Sun, Tzu. The Art of War, Chapter XI 23-25. Archived from the original on 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2019-05-09.
- ^ Bryan Perrett. Last Stand!: Famous Battles Against the Odds. p. 9
- ^ "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
- ^ "January 1943: The First Armed Resistance in the Ghetto - Holocaust Survivors Describe the Last Months in the Warsaw Ghetto – Voices from the Inferno - Yad Vashem". www.yadvashem.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2017-05-13.
- ^ "Fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto - Holocaust Survivors Describe the Last Months in the Warsaw Ghetto – Voices from the Inferno - Yad Vashem". www.yadvashem.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2017-05-13.
- ^ "10 Heroic Last Stands from Military History - Listverse". listverse.com. 28 August 2009. Archived from the original on 27 October 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
- ISBN 978-1-4422-3601-1. Archivedfrom the original on 2023-08-17. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
- ISBN 978-0-691-09982-8.
- ]
- ISBN 978-1-59233-471-1.
- ^ Robinson, Cyril Edward (1929). A History of Greece. Methuen & Company Limited. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
- ISBN 0-86131-692-4. Archivedfrom the original on 17 August 2023. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
- ^ Sidney Low, et al., The dictionary of English history, Cassell and company, 1928. "At the battle of Naseby Astley commanded the infantry, and in 1646 he made a last stand at Stow-on-the-Wold against the Parliament."
- ^ Pandey, Geeta (5 December 2011). "India polo match honours Sikhs' 1897 Saragarhi battle". British Broadcasting Corporation. bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
- ^ "Combined Fleet – tabular history of Yamato". Parshall, Jon; Bob Hackett, Sander Kingsepp, & Allyn Nevitt. 2009. Archived from the original on 29 November 2010. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
- ISBN 1-59197-278-7.
- IV Hague Convention. The Laws and Customs of War on Land October 18, 1907.Article 23 Archived 2011-07-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Philbrick, Nathaniel. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. New York: Viking Books, 2010, p. xvii.
- ^ Ammer, Christine. The Fact on File Dictionary of Cliches. Checkmark Books, 2001. p. 16