Pigs versus elephants
For the first time, Europeans met war elephants during the campaign of Alexander the Great to the East. At first, the animals instilled fear in the Greeks and Romans, who were not used to such large animals. On the battlefield, elephants trampled enemy infantry, frightened enemy horses, some even threw spears with their trunk - in a word, they did not deny themselves anything.
In 275 BC. The Romans, tired of the fact that the famous general Pyrrhus and his elephants beat them in every battle, decided to make a "pig move". Elephants can't stand the squeal of pigs, and the Romans set pigs on fire and released them towards the enemy army (fortunately for the Romans, the animal welfare society had not yet been invented). The elephants, frightened by the screeching of the burning pigs, began to flee in terror and trampled on many of their own warriors. Pyrrhus stepped back, muttering curses at the unwise fauna.
With the same deafening success, the inhabitants of the Greek Megara used the screeching pigs on fire against the fighting elephants of the little-known Macedonian king Antigonus Gonat.
Typhoon vs Navy
Now the phrase "Mongolian Navy" sounds about the same as "Austro-Hungarian spaceship." But 800 years ago, when the chicks of Genghis Khanov's nest in their campaigns reached the vicinity of Venice and landed on the Indonesian islands, the Mongols also had a powerful fleet.
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In 1274, the Mongols set out to conquer Japan - it seemed that it was her turn to become another ulus of the Mongol Empire. The conquerors landed in the south of Japan, defeating the brave, but small samurai, frightening them with unprecedented powder bombs and demonstrating brutal cruelty towards the civilian population.
Tired but contented, the Mongols, fearing night attacks, returned to their ships, expecting to continue the carnage and destruction the next day. But at night a typhoon swooped down, sank and smashed most of the ships on the rocks and sent half of the invaders to Tengri's palaces. The heavily damaged remnants of the Mongolian fleet returned with difficulty. The grateful Japanese gave the typhoon-deliverer the name "kamikaze" - "divine wind".
Hardly had the Japanese celebrated their well-deserved victory when the Mongols reappeared, in even greater numbers. They were not used to suffering offensive defeats from any storms and hurricanes, and in 1281 they assembled an armada, which turned out to be the largest in the history of mankind until the landing in Normandy in 1944.
It seemed that this time the Japanese definitely had no chance. But, obviously, the typhoon liked what the Japanese called it, and, having flown in on time, it blew this armada off as well. Only a few would-be conquerors returned back, cursing the bad weather and the inhospitableness of the Japanese.
Cavalry vs. Navy
Winter in 1794 for the Dutch sailors, as well as for the Russian public utilities, came suddenly. And it turned out to be so cold that the sea was covered with ice for miles. The Dutch fleet was frozen into this ice.
The French, who were wintering nearby, in Amsterdam, found out about this. Having just occupied Holland, they decided not to deny themselves the pleasure of taking the frozen Dutch fleet for dessert. A regiment of dashing hussars was dispatched for the operation.
It was decided to take the Dutch sailors by surprise, and the French took the necessary measures so that the horses' hooves would not wake anyone. Having crept closer, the horsemen went on the attack and took the ships on board. Unfortunately for the Dutch, their ships were frozen into the ice with a strong heel, the artillery aimed above the French cavalry and could not protect the fleet.
Although, perhaps, the Dutch sailors were so cold that they were not averse to surrendering to at least someone who had a fireplace, mulled wine and a warm blanket.
Battleship against itself
Brazil, like any decent Latin American country, was shaken by military coups, uprisings and civil wars in the 19th century. The ardent Brazilians were very inventive in inventing various combinations: either the republicans would oppose the monarchists, or the militarists would rebel against the republicans, or else they all began to suppress the peasants.
In 1893, the Brazilians decided to try something new, and the fleet opposed the army (and the Brazilian fleet at that time occupied the first place in the western hemisphere, overtaking even the United States). The ancient battleship "Zhavari" was especially trying to fire at the land army: it fired so hard towards the coast that its old body was dispersed from the shocks when its own guns were fired.
At the same time, the gunmen of the battleship were so carried away that the last salvo was made literally a minute before the ship went to the bottom. Thus, "Zhavari" became the only ship that perished from its own fire.
Bees vs soldiers
During the First World War, the British and French quickly captured all the German colonies in Africa, except for one - present-day Tanzania. The British believed that here, too, the upcoming campaign would be a pleasure trip: "a gang of half-naked blacks, led by ignorant Huns," would not be able to offer serious resistance, and at the first bayonet attack, they would drop their weapons.
At first, everything really went according to this plan: against the 8,000-strong British corps, which consisted mainly of Indians, the Germans could put up only a few dozen white volunteers and less than a thousand askari (black soldiers). The Indians landed in the town of Tanga and began to confidently push the enemy towards the jungle. It seemed that victory was close, but then one of the Indian regiments, fighting in the jungle, stumbled upon bee hives. African bees are larger and meaner than their European counterparts, and when bullets began to hit the hives, the bees came out to protect their homes, and at the same time the possessions of the German Kaiser. Panic-stricken Indians began to flee. The enraged bees chased them on their heels, mercilessly stinging.
Under the German-bee onslaught, the panicked soldiers of the neighboring regiments ran after the bitten regiment. Here's how it described the beating of a British soldier: "The crowd niggas shoot us in the back, a bee stung us in the ass - so that's crap was the situation."
The Germans got rich trophies, thanks to which the natives finally received modern weapons. And the British, after such a humiliating defeat, began to tell everyone that the bees were trained and, in general, this is a new superweapon of the insidious Kaiser.
Author: Andrey Dubrovsky
