Re: Tech Levels and Quality was Re: DS3 design (long)

On Sunday 26 September 2004 05:41, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> G'day guys,
>
> A question for those more learned in military history than I. What
> battles can you name where a technologically inferior force has beaten
a
> force equipped with technologically superior equpipment? I don't know
> much about modern history but I have the impression (may be
erroneously)
> that the Vietnamese vs the French for one

I'd guess the US had even better equipment than the French, and were
also beaten.

Two that I've heard of recently:

Jacobites v Red Coats in 1746, at Prestonpans. Jacobites mostly
had swords, Red Coats had muskets, but the latter were seriously
out manouevered (this was recently on an episode of 
'Battlefield Britain').

Then there's the battle at Verneuil in 1424, one of the many
between the French and English. The French had several thousand
Milanese mercenary knights in *really* heavy armour, which was
totally impervious to English longbows. After the first charge,
the English lines were devastated. Unfortunately, the Milanese
decided to then loot the English baggage, the English regrouped
and attacked the main French forces. By the time the mercenaries
realised what was happening and returned to the field, it was
all over and the English had won.

In this case, the main forces were probably reasonably balanced,
it was the Milanese which had much better equipment.

-- 
Be seeing you,				   http://www.glendale.org.uk/
Sam.					jabber: samuel.penn@jabber.org