Has England ever lost a Big Battle ?

Talen

Yep, the hundred years war. We certainly lost that one when Joan of Arc, at only 17 years old, rallied the French and pushed the Brits back.

Mr Sceptic

I think we came second at Hastings in 1066.

EDIT: Hi Talen, I think we English had the last laugh with Joan of Arc, didn't we?

big_burner

There was this one thing called the Revolutionary War that I vaguely remember.

James M

Dunkirk was pretty big, as was the Battle of the Somme, in which we almost lost an entire generation of men

Brian H

Uh. Yeah..... How about the American Revolution?

Tracker

Well . For a start Dunkirk was NOT a battle.But the mass evacuation of the British Army. The war of American Independence was won for the Yanks by the French, who we were fighting all over the globe. Hastings was lost because Harold had to march his battle weary troops from a battle against the Vikings at Stamford bridge(which he won)to the other end of the country-Hastings.We have won most battles and wars. Which is more than you can say for the Americans, who have never won a war on their own. They lost in Vietnam because we would not get involved.We won at Jutland. After that the Germans dare not put to sea again.We won in 1812, The white house was burnt to the ground and in any case Canada was seen as more important . Which the Yanks coveted.

quarterback

1776 and 1812 come to mind.

ladywoodboy

I presume you mean what you ask, A battle as oppposed to a war, then one or two qualify, for example the battle of Hastings and the Somme, but we probably have won more than we lost

conranger1

First Battle of the Somme in WW1.

Battle of France in 1939 via Dunkirk.

telboy everton forever

there was dunkirk we lost the battle but won the war

Chris

Since American independance never (militarily) a war; depends on your definition of big battles although we'ld still have been counted as loosing several of them. We've obviously won more than we've lost, except in the 'war on terror' in which the allies and enemy could be considered at best equal.

And if you mean throughout history then I doubt anyone has a comprahensive list, you don't become the biggest empire in the world without losing a few battles, although obviously winning more.

Vampire 13R

Rome Conquered England
the Vikings conquered England
the Normans conquered England
In thier first invasion of Afghanistan the English lost all but ONE of the 16,000 English who occupied Kabul.
There are plenty more
Gallipoli, the Somme, Dunkirk, Dieppe

keny

Will these silly bloomin Yanks ever catch on that they didn`t win us in the battle of independece because they didn`t exsist How many times do they need to be told we were fighting between ourselves

Piltdown Man

It looks as if we are losing the battle against Islamic imperialism, but this battle is a different type of battle.

Open your eyes

Well you could say that the American peasants handed them their asss a while back.

spazman

i would say that revolutionary war was a huge defeat. i mean at the time they had the best naval fleet the world had ever seen and they also had well trained troops. we had no ships to fight and our troops were poorly trained and yet we won. and winning that lead us to were we are today. i consider that pretty big.

celtic_saltire

Yes the "BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN"

Jade | My Brain is My Shepherd

Wow. What cave have you been hiding in? An elementary school student knows more history than you

Stephen

Ahh yeah, that is why we have what is called "Independence day". It is the day that we declared Independence from the rule of England later on after we defeated them.

203

The Roman invasion of Britain/England in 43AD was a significant loss that shaped our history.

On the bright side we did manage to repel Ceasar around a hundred years earlier.

1922! ireland win independance from great britain

El Cid

We lost many big battles during WWI and WWII, but won the wars. The battles to defend Hong Kong, Burma, Malaya, Singapore saw us suffer humiliating defeats. We lost the battle of the Atlantic when over a million tons of British shipping were destroyed by U-boats, with only 6 lost on the other side. I don't think we came of best at the Battle of the Somme. At the Battle of Le Chateau we lost over 8,000 men and beat a retreat. And so on.

JimHist

If by 'England' you mean the UK, then yes, of course we've lost big battles, and a fair few of them at that! In terms of wars, we've overtly 'lost' fewer, because UK policy has been,. wherever possible, to fight wars in alliance with a combination of other nations. Historically, the UK was primarily a sea-power, with a relatively small population prior to the 19th Century. British foreign and defence policy usually sought to confront direct threats to British interests by forming coalitions of friendly - or at least like-minded - powers, whose military power on land would supplement British maritime and economic strengths. One of the few times this didn;t work was during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), when the UK was faced after 1778 by a loose coalition consisting of the American Colonies, supported by France, Spain and Holland. The UK lost that war mainly because, after 1778, the Franco-Spanish naval threat to the UK's West Indian Colonies was deemed a more urgent threat than the rebellion of the American Colonies. The rebellion of those Colonies was an established political fact by 1776, and after 1778, it seemed more sensible for the UK's limited available military and naval forces to be used defending the revenue-producing islands of the West Indies. Ultimately, the British Armies in North America weren't reinforced to the point where they could effectively deal with the American colonists, so Britian lost those Colonies. However, the naval battle of the Saints in 1780 successfully preserved Britain's West Indian colonies against Franco-Spanish attack.

That was the only war we've completely 'lost', and even then, it was only lost in the sense of ceding independence to the American colonies. In the wider Imperial perspective, the more passive and commercially-valuable territories had been defended against an outside threat.

Aside from that, the UK hasn't really 'lost' (in the military sense) any conflicts since then, although we were diplomatically on the wrong side in the 1864 Schleswig-Holstein dispute. Knowledge that the diplomatic view throughout Europe was opposed to the British view, prevented the British Government becoming militarily involved in the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Although the UK emerged from both World Wars on the winning side (ie, as a member of the victorious Allied coalition), they were both pyrrhic victories, particularly in the economic sense. In 1914, the UK was the world's largest creditor nation. In 1919, it was the world's largest debtor nation. In 1939, the UK still preserved the appearance (although not the reality) of a global, imperial power. By 1945, the UK was bankrupt and beginning to contemplate the retreat from Empire.

You could say that the series of defeats sustained in South East Asia between December 1941 and May 1942 (the loss of Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei, Borneo and Burma) demonstrated decisively that the white races were NOT the invincible masters they had appeared to be, and paved the way for the demands for independence from the UK's colonies in South East Asia and elsewhere. If you regard the retreat from an Imperial position as a 'defeat' in the longer term (which I don't), then you could regard the Second World War as one in which the UK was ultimately a 'loser'.

There was also the Suez debacle of 1956, in which the UK and France achieved their military objectives in Egypt, only to find that world opinion was against them, and they were forced to withdraw.

As to a list of battles the UK has lost, this could be endless, but a list starting from 1700 would include the following major engagements: Almanza 1707, Fontenoy 1745, Lauffeldt 1747, Hastenbeck, 1758, Trenton 1777, Saratoga 1777, Yorktown 1781, Retreat from Kabul 1841-42, Chillianwallah 1848, Isandlhwana 1879, Maiwand 1880, Majuba Hill 1881, Khartoum 1885, Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso, Laing's Nek and Elandslaagte 1899, Spion Kop 1900, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos, 1915, the Gallipoli campaign 1915-16, Ctesiphon 1915, the siege and fall of Kut-el-Amara, 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme 1st July 1916, the second phase of the Battle of Cambrai, 1917, the second battle of the Somme, March-April 1918, the Norwegian campaign, 1940, the France and Flanders campaign, 1940, Greece and Crete, 1941, the South-East Asia campaign of 1941-42, the Gazala battle, 1942, the assault on Cos and Leros, 1943, Arnhem 1944, and Suez 1956. Not an exhaustive list, but probably enough to be getting on with!

A list of the battles/campaigns the UK has won would be far longer.

lightsofmarfa

Battle of Saratoga 1777

nosdda

The American war of Independance, The Battle of Hastings, Bodecia against the Romans, The retreat from Dunkirk ETc.

David R

England/ United Kingdom please specify

Beastie

Hmm, Scottish history, Bannockburn. Well humped there. Falkirk, well humped there. Prestonpans, Dunbar, etc, etc...

Numerous posters saying they got humped in the Revolutionary War, better known in the UK as the American War of Independence, need to grasp one VERY important point.
That war was against Britain. Britain and England are NOT the same. England is part of Britain, as are Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Not, for all you ignorant Yanks, remotely all of Britain is England.
How would you like being told that all of America was just part of Canada? You wouldn't, and don't you dare tell me it's different. It simply isn't.
And for the questioner, if you don't know the difference, it's clearly down to your education. It was somewhat lacking.

American Soldier!!!!

No England is perfect in all that it does. They have never lost at anything. Um except the U>S>A

PilotGal

HMMMMM; Yes, quite a few come to mind, Hastings, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Yorktown, Jutland, Dunkirk, The Somme, Dunkirk, Kassarene...

edit: Oh, should I mention you have handed over your nation to the Islamics, not even firing a shot to stop the invasion. ?

The Scourge of God

Yes, they (the Saxons) lost to the Normans at Hastings.

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