The Biggest Battle Ever Fought - Ancient World

[hellheaven1987]

Well, Changping actually fought for several months, probably even more than a year. The battle ground also not just one, but had several fronts. Overall, Changping is more close to what we are familiar about military campaign today.

[Emperor Of Seleucid]

people were nominating seige of carthage and that was over 3 years and it seemed like a military campaign but it was just because the troops were so numerous

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Well, Changping actually fought for several months, probably even more than a year. The battle ground also not just one, but had several fronts. Overall, Changping is more close to what we are familiar about military campaign today.

Changping was so long because most of the battle was guys staring at each other and then a battle with some long skirmishing before. After the battle it became a siege of a hill top and then tonnes of Qin troops charging up a hill.

[Emperor Of Seleucid]

Changping was so long because most of the battle was guys staring at each other and then a battle with some long skirmishing before. After the battle it became a siege of a hill top and then tonnes of Qin troops charging up a hill.

the Qin also did a double pincer

[Domen123]

Historian of ancient warfare, Philip Sabin, claims that first lines of fighting armies (this refers to infantry vs infantry combats) "repel each other" or "push back each other", because "the basic goal of every soldier is to survive".

[Domen123]

When it comes to size of forces & mobilizational capabilities at the time of the battle of Philippi:

"In order to provide constant inflow of new forces, people responsible for recrutation (conquistores) were drawning lists of citizens of male gender (iuniores) capable of military service. In practice it meant, that everyone between 17 and 46 years old was being registered, even though there were exceptions and there were some soldiers either younger or older. An enlisted soldier was being recruited for service lasting 16 years.

Peter Brunt estimated, that by the end of year 43 B.C. the triumvirs had under their direct command 32 legions, while the republicans had 21. Taking into consideration, that only about 10 of these legions consisted of foreigners, and adding units stationed in Sardinia and in Hispania, as well as heterogeneous army of the rebellious Sextus Pompeius, we can assume, that in here discussed period between 216 and 270 thousands inhabitants of Italy and between 48 and 60 thousands of foreign people from Roman provinces under were remaining under arms.

From calculations of Walter Scheidel it results, that the proportion of legionaries under arms to all iuniores by the end of 43 B.C. was around 1 : 2,51. Such a high level had been achieved before only once, during the dark years of wars against Hannibal. While if we include all citizens in these calculations, we will see, that during height of the civil war for inheritance after the Republic the proportion of citizens to legionaries was like 1 : 11,6, which means that every twelfth adult Roman was a soldier."

I guess this 1 : 11,6 proportion includes also women?

[Magnar]

It seems all battle mentioned here fail to mention any engagements involving arguably the most wealthy ancient area, India.

None of the battle mentioned so far come even close to the size of the largest battle in Indian history the Battle of Kurukshetra, which lasted 18 days and involved between 4-7 million soldiers, depending on your source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War

Estimates of world GDP show that India in the ancient world was by far the wealthiest even compared to Rome at their peak. It would follow that a significant engagement involving the entire area of Indian influence, such as Kurukshetra would easily have the largest armies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._GDP_%28PPP%29

[LucaP1000]

The chinese battles mentioned on the thread sound like made up bull***t to me.-Battle of Fei River: 80,000 troops defeat 870,000.- Battle of Lake Poyang: 200,000 men defeat 650,000 men and 100 vessels.- Battle of Red Cliffs: 80,000 defeat anything from 220,000 to 800,000.Notice they all have a side bigger at least 150,000 men than the other, and that side somehow gets completely crushed.The battle of Changping (500,000 defeated by 650,240) is the only one that sounded convincing to me

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

It seems all battle mentioned here fail to mention any engagements involving arguably the most wealthy ancient area, India.

None of the battle mentioned so far come even close to the size of the largest battle in Indian history the Battle of Kurukshetra, which lasted 18 days and involved between 4-7 million soldiers, depending on your source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War

They somehow managed to scrap together more men than the Germans did for Barbarossa, and then to kill all of those men, by hand, in 18 days. Seems legit. Ok, sarcasm mode off, do you actually not realize that what you just posted is mythical? Like, one side has a ing god listed as their strategist for 's sake! I sincerely hope you're just playing dumb here.


About Chinese numbers: IIRC, the Chinese would lump entire strategic operations together and call them battles. So what might actually be termed an entire campaign today would still fit their definition of battle. Hence battles lasting for months, over huge swathes of land, and involving hundreds of thousands of men.

Biggest ancient battle? Probably the battles of Philippi, if you mean a pitched battle rather than a whole campaign. Then again, they kind of had a positional/trench warfare thing going on for 20 days between field engagements, so there's that.

[HuangCaesar]

Chinese battles yes are campaigns. Its like saying Caesar's Gallic camapign the "Battle of Gaul" 120,000 Romans+Allies vs 300,000 Gauls.

However even 800,000 men total campaign is unbelievable, even for the advanced Chinese logistics. Even Napoleonic armies had trouple fielding that many men. For example the Waterloo campaign had a 1 million Coalition army by it was very hard to coordinate so only 100,000 at Waterloo.

Another good example is the Adrianople campaign of Valens. The Goths had about probaly tens of thousands of Gothic civilians traveling across the Danube. Valens field army(usually 100,000 strong) was in Persia. Valens had to hastely go to the Balklands and field 3 armies, the army of Thrace, the armies I and II each with 20,000 totally 60,000. If he waited for Gratian it would be probaly 80,000 total army. But he was really impatient and needed garrisons. He scouted ahead and found the Goths had only 10,000 infantry(10,000 or 5,000 cavalry were hiding) Valens set out with only 15,000 Romans to fight at the actual battle of Adrianople.

Largest Battles?(no order)
-Battle of Mobei(western sector)-150,000 Han vs 80,000 Xiongnu horsemen.
-Battle of Red cliffs-50,000 of Sun Chiang vs 200,000 Cao Cao army(spead out)
-Battle of Tigronecerta-40,000 Romans vs 100,000 Armenians.
-Battle of Issus, Gaugemela-50,000 Macedonian/Greeks vs 80,000+ Persians.
-Battle of Cannae-50,000 Punic troops vs 80,000 Romans/Italians
-Battle of Alesia-60,000 Romans vs 100,000+Gauls.
-Battle of Phillipi-100,000+ Romans vs 100,000+Romans
-Battle of Emessa-180,000 Romans(60,000 engaged) vs 70,000 Paulmayrenes.
-Battle of Milvian Bridge-100,000 Romans vs 80,000 Romans.
-Battle of Adrianople(the one in 324) 120,000 Romans vs 160,000 Romans.(probally spread out)

[Cyclops]

It seems all battle mentioned here fail to mention any engagements involving arguably the most wealthy ancient area, India.

None of the battle mentioned so far come even close to the size of the largest battle in Indian history the Battle of Kurukshetra, which lasted 18 days and involved between 4-7 million soldiers, depending on your source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War

Estimates of world GDP show that India in the ancient world was by far the wealthiest even compared to Rome at their peak. It would follow that a significant engagement involving the entire area of Indian influence, such as Kurukshetra would easily have the largest armies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._GDP_%28PPP%29

Don't forget the early use of nukes described in the Mahabharata.

[LucaP1000]

Talking about less known battles, there's the Battle of Piacenza (Austrian Succession War) in 1746. 105,000 French and Spanish were defeated by 114,000 Austrians

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I guess this was when battles in Europe were really starting to grow in size. Before it was usually 30,000 on each side and then later on it grew to some 50,000 on each side. But the 100,000 number I think was first seen in the War of the Spanish Succession.

[hellheaven1987]

I guess this was when battles in Europe were really starting to grow in size. Before it was usually 30,000 on each side and then later on it grew to some 50,000 on each side. But the 100,000 number I think was first seen in the War of the Spanish Succession.

[Town Watch]

Biggest battle ever thusfar, was battle of Moscow 1941-42.

That's in terms of numbers of soldiers. Bulk of the Wehrmacht still in fighting condition, and Russian reinforcements from Siberia arrive to bolster numbers of new recruits in Moscow region.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I thought that it was the Battle of Kursk in 1943

[O'Hea]

Kursk lasted about 2 months and included about 3 million combatants, Moscow lasted 4 months and included about 2.25 million (numbers from wikipedia, but since these things are well-documented I think the numbers are reliable).

EDIT: For those who find reports of several million combatants for pre-modern countries believable, consider that in 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union combined had a quarter of a billion people between them and despite the total mobilization of industrialized countries for war, the largest battles between them included only a couple million combatants. For most of pre-modern history China and India had lower populations than that and had much lower capabilities when it came to arming, training, supplying, transporting and commanding troops. For most of history countries seem to have kept a very low percentage of their populations under arms (like, 1-3%) and even fewer were actually combatants, so you can do that math.

[hellheaven1987]

Battle of Verdun already included 2.25 millions (and several WWI battles also went beyond 1 million participants). I do wonder how many participants in 1st Battle of Ypres though, as the Wiki gives a impression that 10 millions men were trying to beat each other on Ypres that day.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Two German armies vs one Belgian army, one army-sized French force and the BEF, also an army size force. So that's 500-700 thousand troops up front, not considering possible replacements and reinforcements.

[hellheaven1987]

Two German armies vs one Belgian army, one army-sized French force and the BEF, also an army size force. So that's 500-700 thousand troops up front, not considering possible replacements and reinforcements.

The composition of army was not fixed during WWI and it was not uncommon for one German army had twice more men than another German army.