29 December in military history: Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890

In 1890 many Lakota took up the Ghost Dance, a religious movement that promised the return of their old way of life, and the alarmed US government sent troops to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to suppress it. The 7th Cavalry went after the band of the Lakota chief Big Foot, which had left the Cheyenne River Reservation for Pine Ridge, caught up with it and brought it to a camp on Wounded Knee Creek.²

On the morning of 29 December the soldiers, under Colonel James W. Forsyth, surrounded the camp, with artillery trained on it, and began to take away the band's weapons. During the disarming a shot was fired; who fired it, and whether by accident, is not known. It set off a storm of army rifle and artillery fire that killed men, women and children.³

The number of dead is uncertain. The National Park Service gives more than 200 Lakota killed, the National Library of Medicine more than 153, and the Library of Congress an estimated 200. Soldiers died too: 30 according to the Park Service, many of them in their own crossfire, and 25 according to the National Library of Medicine. Its full story is told in The Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890.⁴

29 December 1808 · 217 years ago

Benavente, 1808: Napoleon's Guard thrown back

In December 1808 Sir John Moore's British army, which had advanced into northern Spain against the French communications, turned and retreated toward Corunna when Napoleon marched against it with far larger forces. On the night of 28 December General Robert Crawfurd's men blew up the bridge over the River Esla at Castro Gonzalo, near Benavente, once the British cavalry had crossed. The next morning the last British infantry marched out of Benavente, leaving the cavalry of Lord Henry Paget to watch the fords.⁵

Seeing only a thin screen of outposts, General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who commanded the cavalry of Napoleon's Imperial Guard, found a ford near the broken bridge and crossed with the chasseurs of the Guard, between 500 and 600 men according to Oman and 600 according to Napier. The British pickets, joined by hussars of the King's German Legion, fought them as they fell back toward the town. Paget had drawn up the 10th Hussars behind the houses at its edge. He let the French come on, then charged with the 10th and the pickets together, and the chasseurs broke and fled back across the river. When they tried to re-form on the far bank, two British guns drove them off.⁶

Lefebvre-Desnouettes was caught in the pursuit and taken prisoner. He was sent to England and later escaped to France. Oman and Napier agree that the British lost about 50 men killed and wounded, while the French left 55 killed and wounded on the field and about 70 prisoners, and Napoleon's surgeon Larrey treated about 70 more wounded who got away. Moore's army went on to Corunna, where the battle fought in January has its own page: 16 January, Corunna, 1809.⁷