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Incredible Stories of History's Most Surprising Battlefield Upsets
Fair Winds Press
May 2010
On Sale: May 2, 2010
304 pages
ISBN: 1592334059
EAN: 9781592334056
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
Outnumbered but not Outmatched.
How did Hannibal’s 55,000 Carthaginians turn the tables on
an 80,000-strong force of the ancient world’s most
efficient military machine, the Roman army? What allowed
6,000 Englishmen to overcome 30,000 French at Agincourt in
1415? Which errors in judgment doomed a Russian army twice
as large as its opposing German force at the Battle of
Tannenberg during World War I?
Author Cormac O’Brien’s powerful and vivid recreations of
history’s most surprising military victories illuminate the
cunning strategies, secret weapons, fateful decisions, and
changes of fortune that turned the tide of battle in the
most extraordinary and unanticipated ways: the risky Greek
ruse that trapped the Persian Fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE;
the snowstorm that helped a Swedish force destroy a Russian
army four times its size at the Battle of Narva in 1700;
the newly introduced firearm that enabled 150 British
soldiers to hold off an attacking horde of 4,000 Zulus at
Rorke’s Drift, Africa, in 1879.
Even a commander as fearless, self-assured, and battle-
hardened as Alexander the Great, leading 40,000 Macedonian
troops, must have quailed at the sight that met him as he
neared the village of Issus, Asia Minor, in 333 BCE: an
unexpectedly and unimaginably vast Persian force of some
100,000 men, spanning the Mediterranean coastal plain as
far as the eye could see. For warfare had already
demonstrated, and has confirmed ever since, that numerical
superiority consistently carries the day. And yet, every
once in a while, such lopsided engagements have had an
unexpected outcome, and proved to be a crucible in which
great leaders, and history, are forged.
Outnumbered chronicles fourteen momentous occasions on
which a smaller, ostensibly weaker force prevailed in an
epochal confrontation. Thus, Alexander, undaunted, devised
a brilliant and daring plan that disoriented and destroyed
the Persian force and, consequently, its empire. Likewise,
during the U.S. Civil War, Confederate General Robert E.
Lee, despite being outpositioned and outnumbered more than
two to one by Union forces at Chancellorsville, Virginia,
hatched an audacious and surprise strategy that caught his
enemy completely unawares. Other equally unexpected, era-
defining victories are shown to have derived from the
devastating deployment of unusual weaponry, sheer good
fortune, or even the gullibility of an enemy, as when
Yamashita Tomoyuki, commander of 35,000 ill-supplied
Japanese troops, convinced the 85,000-strong British
Commonwealth army to surrender Singapore in 1942.
Together these accounts constitute an enthralling survey
that captures the excitement and terrors of battle, while
highlighting the unpredictable nature of warfare and the
courage and ingenuity of inspired, and inspiring, military
leaders. A thrilling tour of the battlefields of history,
replete with dramatic encounters, sudden twists of fate,
and intriguing character studies, Outnumbered demonstrates
that, even when the odds seem insurmountable, the path to
glory can still be found.
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