On 15 March 1781, at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, Lord Cornwallis's British army attacked the American southern army of Major General Nathanael Greene, drawn up in three lines. Greene retreated and left Cornwallis the field, but the victory cost the British about a quarter of their men. In 1939, German troops occupied Bohemia and Moravia.
The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, 1781: the victory that ruined Cornwallis
15 March 1781 · 245 years ago
At Guilford Courthouse on 15 March 1781, the British under Cornwallis drove Nathanael Greene's larger American army from the field but lost about a quarter of their men doing it. Greene had planned exactly this, trading ground for British blood.
Read the full story of The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, 1781: the victory that ruined Cornwallis ›Also on this day
Battle of Jarosław
15 March 1656 · 370 years ago
Near Jarosław on the San, Polish troops under Stefan Czarniecki struck at the retreating army of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during the Deluge. Czarniecki, whom the Swedes believed beaten, destroyed a unit of Swedish reiters near Wielkie Oczy in a series of clashes.
1939: In Berlin, the Czechoslovak President Hácha and his Foreign Minister signed a declaration placing the destinies of Bohemia and Moravia in the hands of the Reich; the Nuremberg judgment puts the signature at 4.30 in the morning and records Göring's threat to destroy Prague from the air. The French ambassador Coulondre reported that German troops would occupy Prague at ten that morning. That afternoon Prime Minister Chamberlain told the Commons, relying largely on press reports, that the occupation of Bohemia had begun at six o'clock. The Nuremberg judgment records that German troops occupied Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March, and Hitler's decree creating the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is dated 16 March.1
1944: Allied bombers and guns opened what Alexander's despatch calls the Third Battle of Cassino, the New Zealand Corps' attack on the town, with a bombardment of Cassino. The US Army official history counts 435 aircraft that dropped almost 1,000 tons of bombs between 8:30 and noon, only about 300 tons of them on the town, and artillery that fired almost 200,000 rounds by evening. Alexander puts the bombs on Cassino at over eleven hundred tons. When the New Zealanders advanced into the ruins, both accounts say, the German paratroopers were still fighting. More in our article on the Battle of Monte Cassino.2
