Lake Constance refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (Obersee), Lower Lake Constance (Untersee), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Lake Rhine (Seerhein). These waterbodies lie within the Lake Constance Basin, which is part of the Alpine Foreland and through which the Rhine flows.
The 1777 Siege of Fort Ticonderoga occurred between the 2nd and 6 July 1777 at Fort Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain in the state of New York. Lieutenant General John Burgoyne's 8,000-man army occupied high ground above the fort, and nearly surrounded the defenses. These movements precipitated the occupying Continental Army, an under-strength force of 3,000 under the command of General Arthur St. Clair, to withdraw from Ticonderoga and the surrounding defenses. Some gunfire was exchanged, and there were some casualties, but there was no formal siege and no pitched battle. Burgoyne's army occupied Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, the extensive fortifications on the Vermont side of the lake, without opposition on 6 July. Advance units pursued the retreating Americans.
The Swabian War of 1499 was the last major armed conflict between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg. What had begun as a local conflict over the control of the Val Müstair and the Umbrail Pass in the Grisons soon got out of hand when both parties called upon their allies for help; the Habsburgs demanding the support of the Swabian League, and the Federation of the Three Leagues of the Grisons turning to the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft. Hostilities quickly spread from the Grisons through the Rhine valley to Lake Constance and even to the Sundgau in southern Alsace, the westernmost part of Habsburg Further Austria.
The Battle of Călugăreni was a battle in the history of early modern Romania. It took place on 23 August [O.S. 13 August] 1595 between the Wallachian army led by Michael the Brave and the Ottoman army led by Koca Sinan Pasha. It was part of the Long Turkish War, fought between Christian and Ottoman forces at the end of the 16th – beginning of the 17th centuries.
The Battle of Dornach was fought on 22 July 1499 between the troops of Emperor Maximilian I and the Old Swiss Confederacy, close to the Swiss village of Dornach. The battle ended in a decisive defeat for Maximilian, and concluded the Swabian War between the Swiss and the Swabian League.
The Battle of Grandson, which took place on 2 March 1476, was part of the Burgundian Wars, and resulted in a major defeat for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at the hands of the Swiss.
The Alexandria expedition of 1807, also known as the Fraser expedition, was an operation by the Royal Navy and the British Army during the Anglo-Turkish War of the Napoleonic Wars to capture Alexandria in Egypt with the purpose of securing a base of operations against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a part of a larger strategy against the Ottoman-French alliance of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III.
The First Battle of Sacket's Harbor was a battle fought on July 19, 1812, between the United States and the British Empire; it was the first engagement of the war between these forces. It resulted in American forces repelling the attack on the village and its important shipbuilding yard, where 12 warships were built for this war.
The Battle of Hard was the first large-scale battle in the Swabian War, waged between the Imperials under the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and the Swiss Confederates. The battle was fought on 20 February 1499, a cold and foggy day, between 10,000 Imperial troops, mostly from the Swabian Circles, and a smaller number of Swiss troops, often called Reisläufer.
The Battle of Bruderholz took place on 22 March 1499 in the Swabian War between Swabian troops and forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Swabians had raided several Swiss villages and were on their way back when they met troops from Lucerne, Solothurn, and Bern, who also came back from a raid in the Alsace. Anticipating the likely route of the Swabian troops, the Swiss soldiers concealed themselves in the woods at Bruderholz hill, near Basel. When the three times more numerous Swabians passed the woods, the Swiss attacked. The Swabian infantry quickly broke and fled the battlefield. The cavalry fought a delaying action allowing the infantry to escape before retreating also. Some of the fleeing soldiers ran approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) to the Rhine river before swimming across to continue their retreat. Others fled to Basel but were refused entry. The Confederation lost only a single soldier while the Swabians lost about 80 men.
Triboltingen is a small village in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland, situated on the south shore of the Untersee part of Lake Constance. Since 1975, it is politically part of Ermatingen.
The Battle of Calven took place on May 22, 1499 at the exit of the Val Müstair in the Grisons to the Vinschgau in County of Tyrol between the forces of King Maximilian I of the House of Habsburg and those of the free federation of the Three Leagues of the Grisons. It was the decisive battle in the southern Grisons of the Swabian War; after the defeat of the Habsburg troops, the king had to abandon his attempts to control the Engadin and the Val Müstair. The focus of operations in the Swabian War subsequently shifted again to the northern border of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
The Battle of Frastanz between an army of the Old Swiss Confederacy and the troops of King Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire took place on 20 April 1499. In one of the many raids of the Swabian War, an expedition of Habsburg troops had plundered some villages in the Swiss Confederacy, who responded by sending an army to Vorarlberg. At Frastanz, a few kilometers south-east of Feldkirch, the Habsburg troops had blocked the entry to the Montafon valley with a strong wooden fortification called a Letzi. The Swiss used a flanking maneuver to bypass the Letzi and after a hard battle routed Maximilian's army. Many Landsknechte drowned in the river Ill.
The Battle of Trenčín or Battle of Trencsén was a battle between the Hungarian Kuruc forces of Francis II Rákóczi and the Imperial Army of the Habsburgs. It was part of Rákóczi's eight-year-long War of Independence.
The Army of Condé was a French field army during the French Revolutionary Wars. One of several émigré field armies, it was the only one to survive the War of the First Coalition; others had been formed by the Comte d'Artois and Mirabeau-Tonneau. The émigré armies were formed by aristocrats and nobles who had fled from the violence in France after the August Decrees. The army was commanded by Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, the cousin of Louis XVI of France. Among its members were Condé's grandson, the Duc d'Enghien and the two sons of Louis XVI's younger brother, the Comte d'Artois, and so the army was sometimes also called the Princes' Army.
Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg was an Austrian military commander. He achieved the rank of Field Marshal and died at the Battle of Stockach.
The Untersee, also known as Lower Lake Constance, is the smaller of the two lakes that together form Lake Constance and forms part of the boundary between Switzerland and Germany.
The Battle of Willstätt was fought during the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years' War near the Free city of Strasbourg, in the Holy Roman Empire. Having dealt a heavy defeat on the Swedish army at the Battle of Nördlingen in September, the armies of the Emperor, Spain and the Catholic League overran much of the Swedish-held southern Germany. At Wilsttätt, the armies of the Emperor and the Catholic League, led by Duke Charles IV of Lorraine and general Johann von Werth, defeated a Swedish force assembled by the Germans the Rhingrave of Salm-Kyrburg-Mörchingen, the Duke of Württemberg and the Margrave of Baden-Durlach. The battle lasted for three hours and ended with 2,000 Swedish soldiers dead on the battlefield and a bigger number in the rout. The Rheingrave Otto saved himself inside Strasbourg.
The Battle of Wurzach, was a battle during the German Peasants' War that took place near Bad Wurzach in the present-day district of Ravensburg in Upper Swabia.
Throughout history, in various wars and conflicts, there have been a number of historic victories won by a smaller force, against a larger foe. Conditions and situations for these sorts of military victories against the odds have been numerous. Some victories have been pivotal to the conflict they were part of, or provided inspiration for the other forces. In many cases, because of the heroic and remarkable nature of the victories, the events have become famous in that culture. In many cases, they have lifted morale of the forces, and been remembered many years, if not hundreds of years later, by that culture or historians.
