5 Victories Where The Underdog Triumphed Against The Odds

the idea of the underdog who defies all odds and prevails in the face of defeat is a story that captures imaginations the world over while the outnumbered and outgunned side is usually beaten there are several examples throughout history where a smaller force somehow snatches victory from the jaws of defeat through a combination of strategy cunning and sheer determination here are five times the underdog triumphed against the odds that show that no matter how bleak things may seem defeat is never a certainty number five the great siege of mortar being surrounded isolated outnumbered six to one and facing a well supplied elite army of soldiers belonging to the world's only superpower might sound like a hopeless situation but it's exactly the situation that a ragtag band of just a few hundred Crusader Knights found themselves in during the summer of 1565 as the base on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta was besieged by an ultimate invasion force containing forty thousand men who were intent on erasing this last enclaves of Crusader Knights from the face of the earth while lesser men might have given in to despair and fear the handful of Knights refused to surrender and went on to put up a defense of the island that would become legendary for the level of bravery and barbarism involved as both sides fought without mercy and the fate of Europe hung in the balance the order of knights of the hospital of st. John had been founded some 450 years earlier during the Crusades and were originally tasked with caring for pilgrims to the Holy Lands who had fallen ill yet the order quickly expanded and grew into a sizeable band of formidable warrior Knights the men recruited from across Europe to defend Christendom and assist in the Crusades yet times had changed and the world was now a very different place with the modern idea of nation states now transforming the European map the Knights were seen as relics from a bygone era the idea of a multinational force of religious zealots viewed as an outdated medieval concept with the Crusades long over the Knights lack to their original purpose and seemed destined to fade into extinction however after relocating to the island of Rhodes they found a new purpose in the turmoil created as a result of rising tensions between the Christian European powers and the Islamic Ottoman Empire as the two sides clashed to decide who would control the Mediterranean Sea from the basin roads the Knights played an active role in harassing Ottoman shipping and quickly proved themselves to be a major thorn in the Sultan's side yet it wasn't long before such activities provoked a reaction and in 1522 the ottomans besieged rhodes and expelled the knights from the island however in an act of mercy the sultan allowed the knights to leave with their lives and the weapons rather than destroying them while he had the chance a decision which would come back to haunt him just a few years later the Knights now found themselves homeless however in 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor granted the orders Grand Master control over the island of Malta the Knights quickly turned Malta into a formidable naval base the islands position in the middle of the Mediterranean making it a highly strategic gateway between East and West from their new home the Knights once again resumed naval operations against the Ottomans and their pirate allies who had for centuries plagued European coastlines with their raids however once again the band of knights would find themselves occupying land that the Sultan wished to add to his vast empire as the Ottoman Empire set its sights upon the island of Malta the Ottoman hammer fell against the island on the 18th of May 1565 and after bringing in their massive guns ashore the ottomans began bombarding the 500 knights who were now supported by a couple of thousand troops drawn from the islands population the first target was fort st. elmo a formidable structure which guard at the entrance of the Grand Harbor and needed to be neutralized to secure a landing point for the rest of the Ottoman fleet three dozen guns bombarded the outpost over four weeks during which thousands of cannonballs reduced to the thick stone walls to rubble slowly whittling down the 500 men inside who despite suffering horrific losses refused to even contemplate surrender this sideshow overseed was dragging on for far too long the stubborn resistance of the garrison inside wasting the precious summer weeks and costing the Osmonds badly needed supplies and Men when the fort finally fell even the wounded Knights man the walls with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on prepare to meet death but not before taking a few Ottoman soldiers with them all 1500 defenders were killed as the ruins of the fort was overwhelmed however the cost for this minor victory had been crippling with the ottomans losing 8,000 of their best troops and suffering a serious blow to morale furious at the defiance of the dead knights the ottoman commander had their corpses decapitated and the headless bodies placed on mock crucifixes which were floated across the harbor to the night's headquarters at fort since Angelo no doubt in an effort to strike fear into the hearts of the few hundred men stationed there yet the night's Grand Master was not so easily intimidated responding by beheading all of the Ottoman prisoners he had taken so far loading their severed heads into his cannons and firing them back at the Turkish camp as the Ottoman set their sights on the final bastion of the Knights at Fort San Angelo it was clear that no mercy would be shown on either side in the days that followed both sides displayed incredible heroism and cruelty in the hand-to-hand combat that ensued as the Ottomans launched ten attacks on the formidable walls of the fort using their 65 siege guns to fire an estimated 130,000 cannonballs in what may have been the largest bombardments in history so far yet time and time again they were thrown back with at one point the 70 year old Grand Master of the Knights emerging to lead his men from the front at breaches in the wall forcing back the attacking Ottomans with great swings of his sword his very presence inspiring the few Knights left alive to ever greater feats of bravery as summer drew to an end the once confident Ottoman army was now gripped by a sense of impending failure having lost as many as 30,000 men in the drawn-out sieges on the island and when an 8,000 strong Christian relief force landed on the island on September the 7th what little morale had remained instantly dissolved resulting in a general Ottoman retreat as the soldiers ran for the oops against all the odds these relics of a long-dead age had sacrificed their lives repelling a full-on assault from the superpower of the age the handful of wounded survivors who had somehow made it through the siege becoming heroes across Europe The Last Stand an incredible demonstration of what a handful of dedicated men can achieve when fear of defeat is erased from the mind number four the Winter War while technically a defeat in which land was lost to the enemy the very fact that the nation of Finland survived such a mismatched contest at all seems like nothing short of a miracle and the shining example of how the human desire to defend the home can trump even the most imbalanced of odds as a million man strong Soviet invasion force desperately fought to subdue the Finns over the cold winter of 1939 the overconfident invaders taught a deadly lesson in how strategy terrain and motivation can overcome sheer numbers as over 150,000 Soviet soldiers perished in the snow in just three short months Finland had been a part of the Russian Empire for most of the 19th century how before with the chaos unleashed by the rise of the Bolsheviks the Finns saw an opportunity to regain their independence while the Soviets were still weakened from civil war and broke away from the Russian Empire in December 1917 yet despite Lenin recognizing the newly independent Finland Soviet leaders still saw the breakaway territory as firmly within the sphere of influence with some no doubt harboring desires to fully recover the lost land at some points in the future this desire became the official foreign policy of the Soviet Union with the rise of Stalin a man who was determined to restore the borders of the old Russian Empire by diplomacy or direct force recapturing the vast amount of land lost during the chaos of the revolution and civil war just two decades earlier when the land was lost the fledgling Soviet Union was too weak to hold on to it but now times had changed and Stalin commanded a vast war machine which he intended to put to use the non-aggression pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union provided the perfect opportunity for Stalin to begin expanding his European borders the pact including a secret protocol which divided Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe the separate Soviet and German spheres of influence the Baltic states were forced to accept treaties allowing the Soviets to stationed troops on their soil and it was along before similar demands were made of the Finns Stalin claimed vast tracts of Finnish land on the border with the Soviet Union under the guise that doing so would protect the crucial city of Leningrad which was only 20 miles from the border and therefore seen as vulnerable however the land which was claimed contained much of Finland's border defenses ceding this territory to the Soviet Union would leave Finland vulnerable and the rest of the country wide open to innovation with distrust of the Russians running high it's no surprise that such demands were refused however the country had a population of just four million people and could not even come close to matching the military capabilities of the Soviets who had three times as many soldiers 30 times as many aircrafts and a hundred times as many tanks with a large economic base to supply such a formidable war machine a suspicious border incident where a Soviet guard post was supposedly shelled by the Finnish army provided the justification needed for war however it's widely suspected that the incident was a false flag carried out by the Soviet secret police nevertheless Soviet forces invaded on the 30th of November 1939 as half a million men crossed the border to seize the territory they had earlier laid claim to however many historians believe that the real intention was to conquer all of Finland and install a puppets communist government with such an overwhelming force Stalin was confident that the Red Army would make short work of the Finns with some commanders boasting that the war would be over in just two weeks however the Finns were about to throw her humiliating spanner in the works while on paper the Red Army looked to be impressive with its huge advantage in men materials and weapons the reality was far less straightforward Stalin's vicious purges throughout the 1930s had left the Red Army's leadership decimated with over half of its officer corps eliminated in many cases the positions made vacant filled by less experienced and often incompetent individuals who were selected primarily for their loyalty rather than their ability in addition to this all military decisions made by unit commander on the front lines had to first be approved by a political commissar who would evaluate strategies based upon political criteria a system of dual command which would wreak havoc during the battles to come yet the Soviets didn't have to only deal with internal issues Finland itself was a massive untamed wilderness with few roads or tracks to speak of forcing the troops to move through hazardous terrain that was often nothing more than dense forests and treacherous swamp a situation made worse by the bitter winter of 1939 to 1940 which saw temperatures fall as low as minus 45 countless thousands died in the ice before even firing a shot the poorly trained troops wading through the snow on foot while the Finnish enemies made effective use of skis to remain mobile rapidly moving to wherever they were needed most where they could concentrate their smaller numbers more effectively many red army units lacked basic supplies such as suitable winter tents and snow camouflage and were thus reduced to sleeping with whatever cover they could forage resulting in casualty rates as high as 10% caused by frostbite before even crossing the Finnish border when battle did commence their regular khaki uniforms made them easy targets for the Finns who were wearing snow camouflage which rendered them almost invisible to the Soviets resulting in waves of Red Army soldiers being cut down before the enemy was even sighted the Soviet advantage in technology was also blunted by a clever use of simple but ingenious homemade weapons the Finns effectively using logs and crowbars to jam the wheels of Soviet tanks while the famous Molotov cocktail was mass-produced and used to deadly effect as the Finnish soldiers waged a guerrilla war in the snow Laden forests fighting for the homes morale amongst the Finns was far higher than the Soviets who were forced to fight or be shot by their own side even running was no longer an option as the inhospitable terrain would mean a quick death for any man caught out in the open alone yet despite making the humiliated Soviet army bleed for every mile of land the Russian juggernaut could not be held off forever and after adopting new tactics and reinforcing with hundreds of thousands more men a renewed offensive eventually broke through the finish lines as winter drew to a close it became clear that the Finnish forces had no hope of holding out any longer and by March a peace treaty was signed in which eleven percent of Finland was ceded to the Soviet Union yet despite losing territory the rest of the country had survived an attack which was expected to have eclipsed them in a matter of days making it through the war with their independence intact and exposing the many weaknesses of the Soviet Red Army weaknesses which may have encouraged the Germans to attack the USSR a year later number three the Battle of Red Cliffs one of the largest naval battles in history would see a 400 year old dynasty come crashing down as a massively outnumbered alliance of just 50,000 men took on an attacking force at least five times their number to decide the future course of China the shockwave of the battle assuring in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history that would see decades of warfare and bloodshed as China was torn apart by three competing states the third century had already been a time of great turmoil for China with the ruling Han Emperor reduced to little more than a figurehead as regional warlords constantly fought each other to expand their personal domains yet one of these warlords was rapidly growing far stronger than the others a man named Sal Sal had managed to unify all of northern China under his personal rule however his ambitions did not end there and he now intended to unite the whole of China with himself as its supreme ruler amassing a huge army numbering perhaps a quarter of a million men he turned his sights south intending to gain control of the strategically important Yangtze River the capture of which was necessary if he was to have any hope of defeating the southern warlords and realizing his dream of a united China the campaign in the south started successfully with Sal Sal winning several engagements against his enemies and taught us to warlords remained however realizing that they would be overwhelmed if they tried to fight him independently the remaining southern leaders decided to band together and form a final alliance to oppose South sales advance with just 50,000 men their southern Alliance prepared to stand against an invading army that outnumbered them at least five to one the battle opened with a minor skirmish the sauce house house army unable to press the amiracle advantage as the men were exhausted from the long forced march south and weakened by unfamiliar tropical diseases which their enemies were largely immune to seeing the poor performance of his men sow sow retreated north of the river intending to cross the river by ship after his men had time to rest yet his army mainly consisted of cavalry and infantry the generals and soldiers having little experience of life aboard a ship while salchow had a huge fleet of thousands of ships his soldiers found the transition from land to sea difficult and many of them were soon wracked by seasickness as the massive ships rocked back and forth on the choppy waves with battle the last thing on their minds as the men struggled to acclimatize to life aboard a ship Sal Sal made his next error ordering his ships to be chained together in an attempt to make them more stable and thus prevent his soldiers from getting seasick when the southern warlord saw sau sau ships tied together they saw an opportunity to smash the northern invaders in one conic action one of their general sent Sal Sal a letter in which he pretended to offer his surrender and switch sides bringing his fleet of ships containing thousands of soldiers with him Sal Sal accepted the fake surrender however instead of being loaded with fresh troops the southern generals fleet was instead stacked with kindling and oil as the renegade ships approached Sal's densely packed fleet the crews set them ablaze before fleeing in small boats allowing the wind to carry the burning fire ships head-on into Sal's fleet which was now unable to maneuver out of their way due to the chains binding them together the prized fleet was turned into a bonfire as the flames spread at lightning speed hungrily devouring every ship they touched burning to death or drowning thousands of desperate men who now had no escape route those few who are untouched by the flames and had time to sever the chains binding their ships fled in terror however there would be no escape on this day as the southern armies ruthlessly pursued the invaders as they desperately attempted to make their way through trails which had been turned into little more than muddy bogs by days of heavy rain in the ensuing massacre thousands perished either drowning in the muddy fields trampled the stampeding crowd or cut to pieces by the blades of the pursuing southern soldiers South sales prized army if a quarter of a million men had been utterly crushed the man himself running for his life back to his home base in the north of China where he would remain contained never again to be in a position to threaten his rifle Warlord's tactical errors and the assumption that sheer numbers could overwhelm his enemies had cost him his only chance to establish a new dynasty and ruled the entirety of China an error that would bring about the dawn of a dark and bloody era in Chinese history as the land was divided into three competing kingdoms who struggle for dominance would do millions to oblivion number two the battle of myeongnyang a man who'd received no formal naval training and had just recently been imprisoned and tortured by his own people was given command of the shattered remnants of the Korean navy which had now been reduced to just 13 ships following a disastrous battle conducted by the previous Admiral this tiny fleet of ships the final obstacle preventing total Japanese domination of Korea in October 15 97 a fleet of 333 Japanese ships was dispatched to remove this final thorn from the side however in the battle that followed admiral yi sun-shin would ascend to the status of legend becoming arguably the greatest naval commander in history after defeating the japanese navy despite being outnumbered by an incredible ten to one having just emerged from a period of civil war during which the warring clans of japan were unified into one nation the new Japanese ruler had no intentions of settling into peace and in 1592 he ordered an invasion of Korea which he intended to use as a forward base for further conquests in China 158 thousand troops landed on the Korean Peninsula the well-trained and battle-hardened Japanese army quickly advancing north as they took several Korean cities and castles however the arrival of Chinese reinforcements slowed down their advance and with raids on their supply fleets conducted by the Korean navy under add more Yi the arrival of crucial military supplies such as food weapons and reinforcements ground to a halt forcing the Japanese to withdraw south a stalemate quickly ensued as the Chinese and Korean forces were unable to expel the Japanese from the castles and forts that they held in the south while the Japanese were unable to advance any further north due to admiral yi string of victories at sea the Japanese commanders knew that while admiral yi proud the open waters no japanese ship would be safe and that if the invasion was to succeed the Troublesome admiral had to somehow be eliminated a plot was hatched to exploit the many internal divisions which existed inside the Korean ruling dynasty a Japanese double agent was dispatched to earn the trust of a high-ranking Korean General and after gaining the man's confidence the spy informed the general of an imminent attack to be carried out by the Japanese Navy the spy urged the general to send Admiral Yi with his fleet to ambush the Japanese however after receiving orders to do so at Murry refused the location of the phony attack was littered with dangerous rock formations which would have destroyed any ship which attempted to sail there however his refusal to follow orders were seized upon by his political enemies at court who had him stripped of his rank arrested and subjected to tortures that almost saw him killed his life was only spared thanks to intervention by his supporters who convinced the king to spare his life due to his impeccable past service record the Admiral was released back into the Navy and demoted to a lower rank however instead of wallowing in bitterness he simply bide at his time perhaps confident that his services would be required again soon the admiral who replaced ye proved to be a disastrous choice and squandered most of the korean fleet in an avoidable battle after being caught unaware by a far larger japanese force the shocked King immediately pardoned and reinstated he to the rank of Admiral however for the once mighty Korean Navy now consisted for mere 13 warships a force far too small to pose any serious threat to the Japanese who now believed that they had free and unfettered access to the sea which they could use to supply their army and restart the stalled invasion of Korea and China yet Admiral his reputation persisted and after a Korean scouting ship was sighted near their base the Japanese Navy decided to pursue the scout in the hopes that he might lead them back to ye and the remains of the Korean Navy where this minor threat could be destroyed once and for all yet admiral yi was no fool the Scout ship was bait intended to lure the Japanese into his masterful trap bait which had arrogantly been taken he was waiting at a narrow strait known as the roaring Channel because of the powerful tidal forces at work forces which he had studied extensively and intended to use to his advantage aware that the tides change the direction every three hours he realized that he could use their power to aid him in the coming battle if timed perfectly the narrow strait neutralized the massive Japanese numerical advantage by forcing them to attack in smaller groups while the powerful tides prevented effective maneuvering he anchored his warships at the northern end of the Strait and advanced against the tidal current with just his lone flagship towards the 333 Japanese ships at the other end of the strait fully aware that the crew of his 12 other ships were terrified and keen to flee from the overwhelming force of the Japanese seeing their Admiral fighting alone yet still holding out against the onslaught of the Japanese vanguard and the treacherous waters the rest of his fleet rushed forward to join him in the fight it was then the ease master plan unfolded as the tidal currents switched direction and began propelling the Korean ships forward while pushing back against the Japanese advance causing their tightly packed formations to collide with each other as ships spilled the crews of men into the open waters where they quickly drowned in the whirlpools and swirling chaos Yi seize the initiative and ordered his ships to begin ramming the disorganized Japanese fleet which was now so tightly pressed together that hitting them with cannon shot was like shooting fish in a barrel in the ensuing slaughter 30 Japanese warships were sunk with the loss of 8,000 men while admiral yi lost us two of his crew and zero ships the Japanese Navy was forced to retreat in shame the shock of such an improbable defeat crushing them morale while rallying the beleaguered Korean and Chinese armies now joined by the Chinese Navy admiral yi he continued to wage war against the invaders before eventually succumbing to death after being hit by a bullet in battle as the Japanese were on the verge of being finally pushed out of Korea his name now legendary as a man who remained undefeated despite constantly being outnumbered in the over twenty three separate battles he fought during his prestigious career number one the Battle of Agincourt once on Crispin's day of 1415 something akin to a medieval massacre occurred just 25 miles south of Calais in northern France as a small force of perhaps less than 9,000 exhausted and disease ridden English solders faced an onslaught of as many as 36,000 heavily armored French Knights intent on their destruction as night fell on the eve of battle the English invaders made their peace with God sure that the next day's combat would see their lives put to a bloody end however a series of factors would conspire together and result in an English victory that would echo through the ages as a near-perfect example of the hopelessly outmatched underdog achieving victory against all the odds just two months earlier a confident king henry v of england had invaded france with an army of 12,000 men hoping to take advantage of internal divisions within france to press his own claim to the French throne however his invasion got off to a bad start becoming bogged down at the siege of Harfleur which took far longer to capture than expected with the now weakened and disease-ridden english army not leaving the captured port until October the eighth precious time had been lost at the siege and winter was fast approaching yet Henry was unwilling to simply retire back to England having spent a fortune in gold for the capture of just one town and instead decided to march his remaining 9,000 men through the territory of Normandy to the English port of Calais on the northern French coast in something of a show of force for he knew very well that if he didn't press his claim his claim would be forgotten yet his route back to the safety of Calais and a boat home was blocked off by the French who had not been sitting idly by and had raised an impressive army of 20,000 men to his path with the French army growing in size with each day that passed as more men flocked to their banners and with the English army growing weaker as disease exhaustion and hunger took their toll King Henry came to the stark realization that delaying battle any further would only make the already immense task that lay ahead of him even harder and so on the 25th he ordered his army to advance on the French position knowing full well that his chances of victory were slim at best the night before battle was a solemn affair in the English camp as the men prayed and made their confessions before God resigned to the violent death that was certain to await them the next day while in the French camp soldiers spent the night in drunken celebration taunting the English arrayed against them across the field certain that the next morning would bring them a glorious and complete victory even going so far as to prepare a specially painted card which they intended to use as a vehicle in which to parade the humiliated English King after he was captured however King Henry had made it clear to his men that he had no intention of being taken alive as the Sun rose on the 25th of October the English did whatever they could to eke out some advantage and improved their chances of survival deploying on open ground between two words which would help protect their flanks from the dangerous French cavalry and placing their archers on either side of the infantry the deadly longbowman protected by sharpened wooden stakes which had been driven into the ground in front of them to fend off enemy cavalry charges however this color the use of the terrain was unlikely to change the seemingly inevitable outcome of the battle outnumbered as much as six to one the English braced themselves for an attack yet no attack was forthcoming the French contend to sit back and wait as thousands more reinforcements were on their way King Henry's hand was forced and he ordered his men to march forward to within longbow range of the enemy what they reestablished their defenses and began firing off hails of arrows on the French lines hoping to bait the French into charging before their reinforcements arrived which would make an already bleak situation even more hopeless enraged by the arrow fire from longbow men who they considered to be nothing more than inferior commoners the highborn French Knights disregarded their orders to hold back and instead charge forward against the English came to slaughter the peasant longbowmen and capture the English Nobles who could be ransomed after the battle for a hefty price yet the large horses provided easy targets for the massed ranks of English long bows as dense waves of arrows were fired into the charging French Knights impaling hundreds at a time thanks to the armor-piercing Botkin arrowheads or simply knocking the armored Nobles to the muddy ground there now injured and panicking horses unleashing chaos as they galloped out of control through the lines of French infantry who were advancing behind the cavalry crushing hundreds of their own side beneath the hooves unable to get to the hated longbowman due to the surrounding woodland and forest of razor-sharp stakes in the ground the cavalry charge was smashed by the unending torrent of arrows the attack instead cluttering the narrow battlefield with the bodies of horses and dead Knights as well as churning up the already treacherous muddy ground which was now resembling a waterlogged swamp thanks to the hooves of the horses combined with the immense amount of rain which had fallen in the days leading up to the battle the French men-at-arms now faced the prospect of advancing on foot across a 300-yard long killing ground while under a bombardment of arrows that so the modern mind is difficult to imagine the well-trained archers able to fire 12 arrows a minute arrows which could wound at 400 yards and penetrate even the thickest Armour at 100 yards with perhaps 5,000 English archers present on the battlefield is reasonable to suggest that as many as 1,000 arrows per second rained down upon the French soldiers the men forced to endure a storm of hundreds of thousands of arrows before they even reached the English lines as hundreds were slaughtered with each passing minute the Knights push forward through the thick mud stepping over the arrow pricked bodies of their comrades the efforts of wading through the nightmarish terrain while wearing armor the weighed as much as 60 pounds rapidly sapping their strength so much so that by the time they reached the English lines many of the French soldiers were all but completely exhausted becoming easy prey for the fresh and eager English foot soldiers who simply had to knock the encumbered men to the ground the French Knights struggling to ever rise again once they had fallen into the mud in a horrific twist of fate the expensive armor that they had worn for protection would for many prove their undoing the men sinking into the mud under the weight of the heavy plate armor where hundreds drowned in the mixture of dirty water mud and blood that now flooded into the tight confines of the steel helmets the great press of men was made worse as more waves of nice rushed in from behind pushing those on the front lines straight onto the waiting Lance's of the English the soldiers becoming so closely packed together that they were unable to swing their swords to attack such a sea of men meant that the longbowman on the flanks no longer needed to even aim as they fired the last of their arrows into the French at point-blank range before dropping their bows and switching to fearsome hatchets daggers and hammers the men rushing in to wreak slaughter amongst the enemy unlike the popular perception of archers in modern culture as being slender and agile these were muscular powerful men who would have no problem caving in an armored skull with a blow from the hammers men who had worked for years to build up the immense strength necessary to draw a full-sized longbow the battlefield became a charnel-house as the remaining French desperately fought to stay alive on top of a mountain of the dead and dying while the English gleefully finished off as many of the enemy as they could stabbing smashing and in many cases simply pulling up the victims helmet visor to thrust a dagger through the trapped man's eye the English army were on the brink of an unimaginable victory however the slaughter was not over a French attack on the English rear made King Henry believe that the great number of French person is here taken might attempt to break out and rejoin the fight and so he ordered his men to immediately put them to death despite this act being against the code of chivalry which demanded the captured Nobles be ransomed off for a battle over the course of just three hours as many as 10,000 French soldiers were killed with the English suffering perhaps just a few hundred losses in a single day the French governing elite had been cut to pieces and King Henry had won one of the greatest military victories in history yet he would not live long enough to see his claim to the French throne fulfilled dying just two years later from dysentery he had despite this the Battle of Agincourt remains as proof that seemingly insurmountable odds can be overcome with the right strategy and the desire to never give in so those are my choices for five times the underdog won against the odds let me know which other examples you know of in the comments below and I'll see you again soon

Channel: Unknown5

Views: 1,428,052

Rating: 4.75143 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, history, Underdog, Against The Odds, victory, victories, documentaries, medieval history, malta, finland, red cliffs, Myeongnyang, Yi Sun-Sin, Agincourt, top 5, top 10, top 15, top 20, unknown5, education, educational, list videos, facts, against the odds, podcasts

Id: uK3BeR3bzlM

Length: 33min 4sec (1984 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2017