The most terrible battle?

Originally posted by Galahadlrrp --A wee quibble. Borodino wasn't the bloodiest battle of the 19th Century. That "honor" belongs to The Battle of Nations/Leipzig, in 1813. Casualty estimates range from around 90000 to nearly 120000. --Though its total numbers aren't way up there along with the likes of Verdun and Cannae, The Battle of Cold Harbor on 3 June 1864 was pretty nasty. The Union forces lost about 7500 men and the Confederates lost about 1500--in about a quarter of an hour. That doesn't seem too bad if you're accustomed to what machine guns and rapid fire field guns can do.....but they were using muzzleloaders.

battle of Leipzig was not a single battle but is a generic name for a number of individual battles fought in the vicinity of Leipzig. none of the individual battles was bloodier than Borodino.

battle of Kursk is not the name of the battle, that's just an edutainement name for an Operation and counter-operation, operations are not battles and vice versa.

Ashoka the great's war against the Kalinga. 110 000 dead, 150 000 prisoners. Such a terrible battle that Ashoka becomes buddhist despite winning.

--Quibble, quibble, quibble.
--The Soviet counteroffensive is not quite the same thing as the Soviet defensive, since it was composed of two operations, with one unleashed before the German ops had stopped, and the other being withheld until after they had stopped. In either case, the sum of the fighting is still known as Kursk, despite being composed of several smaller actions, each of which was composed of again smaller actions, and several different code names for various parts, given by the two sides.
--As for what the Germans named the offensive, I know they called it Zitadel. The Allies called their invasion of France Overlord--and each of its parts had a different name.....but it's still called the Normandy Invasion. Same as the "official" name for the Battle of the Bulge is the Ardennes Counteroffensive, as named by the winners; the losers called it Watch on the Rhine.
--In all cases, the great majority of people--including those writing serious history and writing at staff and war colleges--for example: http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz2/glantz2.asp--call the battles Kursk, Normandy and the Bulge. I know; I taught at the US Army War College.

what about the tutenburger wold 25,000 romans and there fams killed and tortured over 3 days, only a handful escaped

Verdun was pretty intense as well if this hasn't been mentioned, I think in one day the British lost 60,000 men.

I'm sorry it must have been the Somme sry ty for correcting.

I have to agree. It does seem to me that it depends on definition. Slaughter of defenseless civilian population would seem to me to rank high and execution of defeated survivors. That would make my definition different than one that had a higher death count among combatants. 

Originally posted by brunodam Originally posted by Scaevola Originally posted by CatalᮝHow about being a Roman, encircled at Cannae?   I was thinking Cannae too. What a slaughter.   Yes, Cannae. But the problem is what we mean for terrible? Are we talking of number of casualties or of percentage of deaths or intensity of fighting or massacre of survivors or whatelse? Cannae was a slaughter, but the same can be said of Verdun and Stalingrad and Iwo Jima and Attila's Camp Catalaunici and the battle of Manzikerth (between Turks and Bizantine) and the battle of Adrianopolis (between Gots and Romans) and so on......... I believe it is not possible to give a precise answer. For example, in the battle of Otranto the Turks killed all the city's population (even the few women and children who had survived the siege and surrendered) and suffered heavy casualties, but the siege of Leningrad was bigger in number of deaths (and was terrible even because of the many cases of cannibalism).   Brunodam [/QUOTE