Era V · 1815 to 1914
The industrial age
Between Waterloo and 1914 war entered the age of railways and rifles, from the November Uprising in Poland and the Crimean War to the American Civil War. The century closed with colonial wars in Africa and Asia and with Japan's naval victory at Tsushima in 1905.
76 battles · 16 commanders
Image: Battle of Gettysburg, chromolithograph by L. Prang & Co. after Thure de Thulstrup, 1887, Library of Congress. Public domain.
Where the battles were fought
Every battle of the era with a story in the Field Dispatch. Tap a dot to read it.
Europe in close-up
Eastern North America in close-up
Not on the map: Siege of Sevastopol, Battle of Kinburn.
Basemap: Natural Earth, public domain. Modern coastlines.
The battles in order
- 1818Battle of Maipú
Two weeks after Cancha Rayada, San Martín's united army routs Osorio's royalists near Santiago and secures Chile's independence.
- 1825Third siege of Missolonghi
A year-long Ottoman and Egyptian siege ends in a desperate night breakout that shocked Europe.
- 1831Battle of Olszynka Grochowska
On 25 February 1831 the Polish army fought the much larger Russian army of Field Marshal Diebitsch at Olszynka Grochowska, near Warsaw.
- 1831Battle of Ostrołęka
The November Uprising army against Diebitsch's Russians for the town and bridges, and how Bem's horse battery saved the retreat.
- 1831Battle of Paneriai
Antoni Giełgud's Polish and Lithuanian insurgents attack the Russians on the hills outside Vilnius and are thrown back.
- 1831Battle of Stoczek
How General Dwernicki's uhlans routed Geismar's Russian mounted rifles in the first Polish victory of the November Uprising.
- 1832Battle of Konya
Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian army routs the Ottoman army in Anatolia and takes the grand vizier prisoner.
- 1836Battle of San Jacinto
How Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna's camp, won in about 18 minutes and captured him. The battle that won Texas independence.
- 1836Battle of the Alamo
In 1836 Santa Anna stormed the Alamo after a 13-day siege, killing its Texian defenders; Remember the Alamo became the cry of Texan independence.
- 1838Battle of Blood River
How Pretorius's wagon laager beat Dingane's Zulu army, the disputed numbers, and why the date still matters.
- 1839Battle of Yungay
Bulnes's Chilean and Peruvian army stormed the Pan de Azúcar hill and broke Santa Cruz, ending the Peru-Bolivian Confederation.
- 1845Battle of Mudki
How Gough's tired army attacked Lal Singh's Sikhs at dusk, why two generals died in the dark, and what it decided.
- 1845Battle of Vuelta de Obligado
How Argentina chained the Paraná River against an Anglo-French squadron, lost the battle and won the peace.
- 1847Battle of Chapultepec
How Winfield Scott's army stormed the castle guarding Mexico City, and the story of the Niños Héroes who defended it.
- 1849Battle of Chillianwala
On 13 January 1849 at Chillianwala in the Punjab, Gough's East India Company army attacked the Sikh Khalsa through dense scrub. Both sides claimed victory.
- 1849Battle of Gujrat
How Gough's artillery silenced the Sikh guns, broke Sher Singh's army and ended the Second Anglo-Sikh War.
- 1853Battle of Sinop
Nakhimov's Russian squadron destroys an Ottoman squadron in harbor with shell fire, and Britain moves toward war.
- 1854Battle of Balaclava
On 25 October 1854 near the Crimean port of Balaclava came three legends: the Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade and the doomed Light Brigade.
- 1854Battle of the Alma
On 20 September 1854 the British and French beat the Russians on the heights above the Alma, the first major battle of the Crimean War.
- 1854Siege of Sevastopol
The Allied guns open on the Russian naval base, Kornilov falls, and the Crimean War turns into an eleven-month siege.
- 1855Battle of Eupatoria
How a Russian attack on the Ottoman-held Crimean port broke down under the guns of the town and the Allied ships in the bay.
- 1855Battle of Kinburn
Three French armored floating batteries pounded a Russian fort into surrender, the first test of iron armor in battle.
- 1861Battle of Belmont
Grant's raid on a Confederate camp across the Mississippi from Columbus, Kentucky, and the near disaster on the way out.
- 1861Battle of Fort Sumter
In April 1861 Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, a nearly bloodless bombardment that ignited the American Civil War.
- 1861Battle of Greenbrier River
Joseph Reynolds's Federals shell Camp Bartow in the mountains of western Virginia for hours, then pull back.
- 1861Battle of Rich Mountain
Rosecrans's flank march turns a Confederate pass in western Virginia and makes George McClellan a national hero.
- 1861First Battle of Bull Run
On 21 July 1861 Confederate forces routed the Union at Bull Run, the first major land battle of the Civil War and the end of hopes for a quick war.
- 1862Battle of Antietam
On 17 September 1862 Union and Confederate armies clashed at Antietam Creek, the bloodiest day in American history, a Union win that led to emancipation.
- 1862Battle of Fort Donelson
How Grant besieged the fort, its generals fled, and Buckner surrendered over 12,000 men. The siege and why it mattered.
- 1862Battle of Fredericksburg
On 13 December 1862 Union troops were cut down charging the heights above Fredericksburg, one of the most one-sided Union defeats of the Civil War.
- 1862Battle of Perryville
Kentucky's largest battle. How a tactical draw ended the Confederate invasion of Kentucky and kept the state in the Union.
- 1862Battle of Shiloh
In April 1862 Grant's Union army survived a surprise Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War to that point.
- 1862First Battle of Kernstown
Jackson attacks what he thinks is a weak rear guard near Winchester and is beaten, but the fright he gives Washington pays off.
- 1862Seven Days Battles
Robert E. Lee drives McClellan's army from the gates of Richmond in the bloodiest week of the war so far.
- 1863Battle of Chancellorsville
In 1863 Robert E. Lee beat a Union army twice his size at Chancellorsville, his greatest victory, but lost Stonewall Jackson to friendly fire.
- 1863Battle of Chickamauga
On 19-20 September 1863 the Confederates won the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War's Western Theater.
- 1863Battle of Droop Mountain
Averell's Federals storm a ridge held by Echols's Confederates and end organized Southern resistance in West Virginia.
- 1863Battle of Gettysburg
How three days in a Pennsylvania town broke Lee's invasion of the North and turned the American Civil War.
- 1863Gettysburg Address
On 19 November 1863 Abraham Lincoln spoke 272 words at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg. How the speech came about and why it outlived the day.
- 1863Second Battle of Fort Wagner
How the 54th Massachusetts led the assault, Col. Robert Gould Shaw was killed and Sgt. William Carney saved the flag.
- 1863Second Battle of Fredericksburg
Sedgwick's Sixth Corps storms the stone wall that stopped Burnside in 1862, then is checked at Salem Church on the road west.
- 1863Siege of Vicksburg
Grant's Union army besieged and captured Vicksburg on 4 July 1863, giving the North control of the Mississippi and splitting the Confederacy.
- 1864Battle of Cold Harbor
The fight for the crossroads, the dawn assault of 3 June, the real casualty figures and Grant's regret.
- 1864Battle of Iłża
Rębajło's insurgents ambush a Russian column in deep frost and fight into the town, a rare late win of the uprising.
- 1864Battle of Jasmund
Prussian corvettes sortie from Swinemünde to test the Danish blockade off Rügen, trade broadsides with the Danes and run.
- 1864Battle of Mobile Bay
How Farragut took his fleet through a minefield past Fort Morgan, beat the CSS Tennessee and closed the port. The full story.
- 1864Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
From 8 to 21 May 1864 Grant and Lee fought at Spotsylvania Court House, including the savage hand-to-hand combat at the Bloody Angle of the Mule Shoe.
- 1864Battle of Spring Hill
How Hood nearly cut off Schofield's army, and how 27,000 Union soldiers marched past his camps in the dark.
- 1864Battle of the Wilderness
From 5 to 7 May 1864 Grant and Lee met for the first time in the tangled Wilderness, a savage, inconclusive battle after which Grant pressed on.
- 1864-1865Siege of Petersburg
Grant against Lee, the railroads, the Crater, Five Forks and the fall of Richmond.
- 1865Battle of Appomattox Court House
The retreat from Petersburg, the last morning, Lee's surrender to Grant in the McLean House, the terms, and Chamberlain's salute.
- 1865Battle of the Riachuelo
Admiral Barroso's Brazilian squadron beats Paraguay's river flotilla on the Paraná and ends López's drive south.
- 1866Battle of Custoza
Archduke Albrecht's Austrians surprise La Marmora's far larger Italian army in the hills by Lake Garda and drive it back.
- 1867Battle of Mentana
How papal troops and a French brigade with the new chassepot rifle stopped Garibaldi's volunteers short of Rome.
- 1870Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande
How one Prussian corps held off two French corps trying to break through to besieged Paris until help arrived at dusk.
- 1870Battle of Coulmiers
How the new Army of the Loire drove the Bavarians from Orléans, and why the victory could not save Paris.
- 1870Battle of Spicheren
Prussian divisions storm the Spicheren heights above Saarbrücken and force Frossard's corps to retreat towards Metz.
- 1870Siege of Paris
German armies encircle the French capital, Gambetta escapes by balloon, and hunger and shelling force the city to yield.
- 1876Battle of the Little Bighorn
On 25 June 1876 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors destroyed Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, the most famous Native American victory.
- 1879Battle of Angamos
Chilean ironclads trap the Peruvian monitor Huáscar off Punta Angamos; Admiral Miguel Grau dies and the ship is taken.
- 1879Battle of Hlobane
Wood's mounted raid on the abaQulusi stronghold is caught by the main Zulu army and driven down Devil's Pass with heavy loss.
- 1879Battle of Isandlwana
At Isandlwana in 1879 a Zulu army of some 20,000 overran a British camp and killed around 1,300 men, a stunning defeat for the British Empire.
- 1880Battle of Arica
Chilean infantry storm the Morro de Arica, and Colonel Bolognesi dies keeping his vow to fight to the last cartridge.
- 1890Wounded Knee Massacre
How US soldiers killed about 150 to 300 Lakota, many of them women and children, in the massacre that ended the Indian Wars.
- 1896Battle of Adwa
At Adwa in 1896 Menelik II's Ethiopian army destroyed an invading Italian force, a rare African victory over a European power that kept Ethiopia free.
- 1897Battle of Saragarhi
On 12 September 1897 twenty-one Sikh soldiers held a frontier post to the last man against thousands of Pashtun tribesmen.
- 1898Battle of Omdurman
Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army destroys the Khalifa's Mahdist army outside Omdurman and ends the Mahdist state.
- 1898Battle of San Juan Hill
On 1 July 1898 US forces, including Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders and the Buffalo Soldiers, stormed the San Juan Heights in the Spanish-American War.
- 1899Battle of Tirad Pass
General Gregorio del Pilar and about 60 Filipinos hold a mountain trail against US troops so Aguinaldo can escape.
- 1900Battle of Spion Kop
How a British night climb in the mist ended in a day of slaughter on a hilltop and a retreat neither side expected.
- 1904Battle of Chemulpo Bay
Trapped in a neutral Korean port, the Russian cruiser Varyag and gunboat Korietz sailed out to fight a Japanese squadron.
- 1904Battle of Liaoyang
Oyama's three armies attack the larger Russian army in Manchuria, and Kuropatkin retreats to Mukden.
- 1904Battle of the Yellow Sea
Togo's fleet catches the Russian squadron breaking out of Port Arthur, kills its admiral and drives it back.
- 1905Battle of Mukden
How Oyama's five armies turned Kuropatkin's flank in Manchuria in the last great land battle of the Russo-Japanese War.
- 1905Battle of Tsushima
Admiral Togo crossed the T and sank or captured almost the entire Russian Baltic Fleet.
- 1911Siege of Sidney Street
Two Latvian revolutionaries outgun London police, the Scots Guards arrive, Churchill watches and the house burns.
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