“In the fog of war and confusion of battle, strange things happen all too often.”

By Douglas Brown

The Battle of Sheriffmuir on November 13, 1715, occasioned a great deal of sport among Scottish songwriters in the 18th century.

In this clash between Jacobite rebels and Hanoverian redcoats, there was much dispute as to who had actually won. Robert Burns wrote a ballad about the battle as two shepherds who have watched it argue over which side broke and ran. The song “Up and Waur Them All, Willie” ends with the line, “We both did fight and both were beat and both did run away.”

So, what then happened? Due to the nature of their deployments, both the Jacobite right wing and the Hanoverian right wing defeated the other side’s left, leaving it unclear who had won the battle. This outcome, however, was far from unique in the annals of history. In the fog of war and confusion of battle, strange things happen all too often. Here are seven battles in which both sides gave way, in some cases simultaneously.

1. Cunaxa —The beginning of the March of the Ten Thousand

By the turn of the 4th century BC, both Greeks and Persians were exploiting each other’s dissensions. Thus, in 401 BC, three years after Sparta had conquered Athens with Persia’s help, Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger recruited 10,000 Greek mercenaries to aid in his rebellion against his elder brother, Artaxerxes II. The decisive showdown occurred at Cunaxa, near Babylon.

In a replay of victories from the Persian Wars decades earlier, the heavily-armed Greek hoplites on the right easily punched through the lightly armed Persians on the left. Artaxerxes, however, used his superior numbers to wrap around Cyrus’s left. Cyrus counterattacked with his personal bodyguard, but was killed in the charge. His Persian troops thereupon broke and ran. 

The abandoned Greek mercenaries then had to conduct a thousand-mile march to the Black Sea through all kinds of harassment. Along the way, they learned the value of light infantry and cavalry, lessons that would prove invaluable to Alexander the Great in his invasion of Persia 70 years later.

2. Breitenfeld — Turning point of the Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War was the climax of Europe’s wars of religion, a drawn-out, bloody, and devastating conflict between Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire and its Protestant states. As the Imperialists were gaining the upper hand, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden intervened with his forces, which arguably represented the first professional army Europe had seen since Rome. Gustavus innovated by combining the firepower of musketry and field artillery with the shock action of pikes and cavalry charges. Against him, the veteran Imperialist forces of Count von Tilly used more conservative tactics. The infantry fought in deeper formations emphasizing defense, and the cavalry attacked with a slow approach emphasizing pistol-fire. Gustavus was also an iconoclast in that he, unlike medieval commanders, deliberately sought battles. He got one with von Tilly at Breitenfeld on September 17, 1631.

After the Swedes won the opening artillery duel, Tilly’s wings attacked on both flanks. The dashing General Count von Pappenheim attacked the Swedish right under Gustavus, without success. However, Tilly’s right prevailed over the Swedes’ unenthusiastic Saxon allies on Gustavus’s left, routing more than a third of Gustavus’s army at a stroke. As the Imperialists shouted, “Victoria!” and wheeled inward, General Gustav Horn refused the left flank of the Swedes, first holding his ground with 4,000 men against 20,000 Imperial infantry and 2,000 cavalry, then counterattacking. As the seesaw battle raged, Gustavus saw off Pappenheim, then led a cavalry charge at Tilly’s unguarded artillery and turned it on Tilly’s right. The ensuing overthrow of Tilly’s force was complete. The war was not yet halfway over, but the tide was beginning to turn in favor of the Protestants, who would end up preserving their religious liberties.

3. Naseby — Climax of the English Civil War

England, having escaped the Thirty Years War, still suffered a semi-religious war of its own as King Charles I fought with Parliament for which branch of government would have supremacy. After three cataclysmic years of indecisive fighting, Parliament reorganized its forces with the New Model Army, a more professional, better-disciplined, and better-supplied body, which, incidentally, was the first to wear the trademark red coats. Parliament directed this force against the Royalist capital at Oxford, leading to the Battle of Naseby on June 14, 1645.

Finding the king in a strong position, Roundhead General Oliver Cromwell advised the New Model Army to fall back and let the Cavaliers attack. As the Cavaliers deployed, Cromwell then sent a regiment of dragoons to gall the enemy horse on the Royalists’ right flank. When forced to advance, however, the Royalist right pushed back the Parliamentarian cavalry on the left. The Cavaliers pursued straight ahead, rather than wheeling in on the Parliamentary infantry. The Royalist infantry likewise did well, pressing deep into the Parliamentary center. On the Parliamentarian right, though, Cromwell routed the Royalist force and then proceeded to roll up the Royalist infantry in the flank. The Royalists fought stubbornly, but they suffered a reverse their cause could not recover from. Charles lost the war and, eventually, his head.

4. Sheriffmuir — “And we ran and they ran”

The Act of Union in 1707 between England and Scotland eventually brought unprecedented prosperity to the latter country with access to English markets and colonies. In the first few years, though, these effects had yet to be realized. When one of the prime movers of the Union, John Erskine, Earl of Mar, found himself out in the political cold upon the accession of the Hanoverian George I to the throne, he raised the standard of rebellion in the name of the exiled James Stuart on September 6, 1715. Scotland was divided over the issue of the Union and Stuart succession, but enough forces rallied to Mar that he had 5,800 Highland and Lowland infantry and 800 cavalry to face the Scottish General John Campbell, Duke of Argyle, and his 2,200 redcoated government infantry and 960 dragoons. Both sides were seeking a battle before winter when they ran into each other at Sheriffmuir on November 13, 1715.

Both sides botched their deployment from the start. When the Jacobite cavalry intended for the left wing wound up in the center of their line, the infantry on the left were flanked and driven off by Argyle’s horse and foot on the right. Meanwhile, on the other side of the hill, in a seemingly separate battle, Mar’s right caught Argyle’s left in the act of forming line from column and swept it away with a Highland charge. Argyle, informed of the disaster, reformed his right and faced the Jacobites, who demurred to assail his strong position. Mar and the Jacobites quit the field under cover of darkness, giving Argyle a strategic victory, even if he had suffered heavier losses. The rebellion petered out over the following months as Mar’s army deserted en masse, and leaders fled into exile or sought the king’s peace.

5. Aspern-Essling — Napoleon’s first defeat

After Britain, Austria was Napoleon’s longest-standing, if not particularly successful, foe. As Archduke Charles worked to reform the Austrian army, French reverses at the beginning of the Peninsular War in Portugal and Spain encouraged the Austrians to reenter the fight in early 1809. The campaign began well for Napoleon, who maneuvered the Austrians out of Bavaria and seized Vienna. Assuming incorrectly that the Austrians would be as easily defeated as always, however, he allowed himself to be caught in a near-deathtrap as he crossed the Danube towards a waiting Charles.

On the first day, May 21, 1809, the outnumbered French troops took up positions anchored on the village of Aspern in the west and Essling in the east. As cavalry charges swirled back-and-forth in the center, a savage battle raged in Aspern and then in Essling. The Austrians and French traded Aspern between them with waves of bloody, house-to-house assaults. The next morning, as the fighting reopened in the villages at 4 a.m., Napoleon, with more of his troops across the river, secured both villages and attacked the Austrian center. As the French threatened to divide and conquer, Charles appeared, seized a standard, and rallied his troops, who began to push the French back. The literally hand-to-hand fight at Aspern ended with the bloodied Austrians holding that village, while the French Imperial Guard itself retook and held the village of Essling. Napoleon for the first time had to admit defeat, after the two armies between them had suffered 45,000 casualties. The Austrians failed to follow up the success and would be defeated decisively in early July at Wagram after an equally hard-fought battle.

6. New Orleans — The myth of the “Hunters of Kentucky”

The Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, had an inestimable impact on world history, totally out of proportion to the numbers involved. It didn’t decide the War of 1812, but the resounding victory over the fabled British redcoats gave the young United States a morale boost that led it on the path to superpower status. The heroes of the battle, other than “Old Hickory,” Andrew Jackson himself, were the Kentucky militiamen immortalized in the popular song, “The Hunters of Kentucky.” Ironically, as Jackson himself admitted in his own correspondence, these mythmakers very nearly lost the battle for him. 

The British under Sir Edward Pakenham faced a daunting prospect that morning. Jackson’s men sat ensconced behind a powerful earthwork ranged with cannon, anchored on one flank with a wooded swamp and on the other with the Mississippi River, and fronted with a wet ditch. Across the Mississippi waited more cannon looking to enfilade any attacking column. If this was not enough, the British assault fell apart just as it began. The troops who were to supply fascines and ladders to cross the moat and scale the earthwork failed to do so, and the attack stalled right in front of Jackson’s cannon.

Even so, some intrepid redcoats and riflemen used their bayonets to carve steps in the American earthwork. Lieutenant Lavack climbed to the top and later asserted that he found only two American officers remaining of the Kentucky militia, the rest having fled. To his rage, he turned to find his own men were in retreat too. American historians dismiss this account out of hand, despite, as Dr. Carson Ritchie observes, Lavack being independently corroborated by Colonel Dickson of the Royal Artillery. Dickson’s journal reports hearing the American musketry cease and thinking the earthworks seized at one brief point in the battle.

One place the Kentucky militia certainly did run was on the opposite bank of the Mississippi. Pakenham had sent a force to seize the batteries there and enfilade Jackson’s men as the main assault went forward. This force suffered delays and did not attack until after the main battle had ended. Had it gone ahead punctually, it could have changed the outcome of the fight since the Kentucky militia fled and abandoned the guns. (British accounts contradict the unanimous American assertion that the American artillerists had spiked their guns before withdrawing.)

7. Waterloo — The attack of the Imperial Guard

Napoleon’s attempt to reclaim his imperial throne in the spring of 1815 led to the climax of Britain’s “Second Hundred Years War” with France at Waterloo on June 18. For the first and only time, France’s greatest general, Napoleon, faced off against Britain’s greatest, the Duke of Wellington. The battle was chaotic and bloody, producing about as many casualties in one day with infantry firing smoothbore muskets as the Battle of Gettysburg produced in three days with troops shooting rifles.

At 7:30 p.m., after eight hours of fighting, Napoleon made a desperate final cast of the dice. All afternoon, the Anglo-Allied line had withstood his head-on assaults and massed artillery bombardment. His field commander, Marshal Michel Ney, had squandered the French cavalry in disastrous charges at Wellington’s center, and by now Marshal Gephard von Blücher’s Prussian army was severely threatening Napoleon’s right and rear. Desperate to defeat Wellington and then turn on the Prussians, Napoleon launched eight battalions of his legendary Imperial Guard at the British center.

Legend records Wellington’s famous line as, “Now, Maitland, now’s your time—up, Guards, and at them!” upon which the British Guards routed the Imperial Guard battalions facing them. Meanwhile, on the left of the British Guards, General Halkett’s Brigade was receiving two other battalions of French Guards. This Brigade had been badly cut-up two days earlier at the Battle of Quatre Bras, and now the French artillery accompanying the Guards was blasting them at point-blank range. Nevertheless, after the Imperial Guards had fired a volley, Halkett’s men returned fire and charged with bayonets. The French Guards took to their heels. When Halkett’s men, still galled by artillery fire, attempted to fall back to regroup, the brigade dissolved into confusion and ran themselves. Had Ney not wasted the cavalry earlier, Napoleon might have unleashed it into the gap in the British line. However, all along the front, the Imperial Guard was retreating, taking with them French morale, and Napoleon’s army broke apart under Wellington’s and Blücher’s victorious onslaught. 

Battles are messy, confusing affairs, where it can be difficult to know which side is winning. Whether hidden from each other by the clouds of smoke from black gunpowder or cut off by terrain, two different parts of the same army can have extremely different experiences. One wing may achieve complete victory while the other is routed. While some very lively, enjoyable songs commemorate the chaos at Sheriffmuir, it is far from the only battle to have played out thusly.

Douglas Brown is a Texas-based writer who specializes in military history and historical fiction. His novel The Honorable Spy was released by Cheetah Publishing in July of 2022. Buy it on Amazon HERE. Follow him on Twitter @DougBrownAuthor or Instagram at douglasbrownauthor, or like his Facebook page, “Douglas Brown – Author.”

 

Sources 

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Cooke, John Henry. Narrative of Events in the South of France and of the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815. London: T. & W. Boone, 1835.

Dickson, Alexander. “Journal of Operations in Louisiana, 1814 and 1815.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 3 & 4. July-October, 1961.

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Reid, Stuart. Sheriffmuir, 1715: The Jacobite War in Scotland. Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2014.

Reilly, Robin. The British at the Gates: The New Orleans Campaign in The War of 1812. New York: G. P. Putnams’s Sons, 1974.

Ritchie, Carson I. A. “The Louisiana Campaign.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 44, no. 1 & 2. January-April, 1961.

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Weigley, Russell F. The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.