This week in military history 4/11 - 4/18

I really wanted to write about military history today, I really liked the idea of a list with the battles and clashes that happened over a certain period of time. I'm not going to name every battle that happened "this week", just the largest or those that interest me.



Here you'll find this weeks battles:

April 11th

1512: The Battle of Ravenna, fought by forces of the Holy League(Spain and the Papal States) and France, was a major battle during the Italian Wars. Although the French drove the Spanish-Papal army from the field(no the French didn't surrender for once ;-)), their victory failed to help them secure northern Italy, and they would be forced to withdraw form the region entirely by August 1512.

1544: The Battle of Ceresole was a clash between the French army and the combined forces Spain and the Holy Roman Empire during the Italian Wars. Despite having inflicted heavy casualties on the Imperial troops, the French subsequently failed to exploit their victory by taking Milan.

April 12th

1796: The Battle of Montenotte was fought during the French Revolutionary Wars, between the French forces under General Napoleon Bonaparte and the Austrian corps led by count Eugène-Guillaume Argenteau. The French won the battle. This action was part of the Montenotte Campaign.

April 14th

1574: The Battle of Mookerheyde was a battle fought during the Eighty Years War near the villige of Mook. De Dutch rebel troops almost took the field, but the well-trained Spanish infantry pushed them back. In the end, the Dutch suffered a disasterly defeat, losing at least 4,000 men.

April 16th

1809: The Battle of Sacile, Austrian victory against a smaller Franco-Italian force.

April 17th

1988: The Second Battle of al-Faw was a battle of the Iran–Iraq War. After their defeat at the First Battle of al-Faw two years earlier, the newly restructured Iraqi Army conducted a major operation to clear the Iranians out of the peninsula. The Iranian army defending the area didn't stood a chance, only 15,000 men against a much larger(100,000 men strong) Iraqi army.

April 18th

1942: The Doolittle Raid was the first air raid by the US to target the Japanese homeland. The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle. The purpose of this raid was to prove that Japan wasn't invulnerable to air attacks. All the 16 planes were lost during this raid. Approximately 250,000 Chinese civilians were massacred by the Japanese Army in eastern China in retaliation for helping the attacking American aviators escape capture.


 



Source: Wikipedia