On 19 May 1643, outside the fortress of Rocroi in the Ardennes, a French army under the young Duc d'Enghien defeated Francisco de Melo's Spanish army, which was besieging the town. The Spanish infantry stood firm after the rest of the army had fled, but was finally broken. On 19 May 1863 Grant made his first assault on Vicksburg.
Battle of Rocroi
19 May 1643 · 383 years ago
France won the Battle of Rocroi on 19 May 1643, when a French army under the young Duc d'Enghien beat the feared Spanish tercios on the Ardennes frontier. The defeat cracked the reputation of Spain's infantry, long thought almost unbeatable, and signaled a shift in the balance of power in Europe.
Read the full story of Battle of Rocroi ›Also on this day
Battle of Mas Deu
19 May 1793 · 233 years ago
In the War of the Pyrenees, the Spanish army of Antonio Ricardos attacked the outnumbered French army of de Flers near Mas Deu, an old Templar estate. The French were driven back to Perpignan, and Ricardos could besiege Fort de Bellegarde on the road across the mountains.
1863: at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant ordered his first assault on the Confederate defenses. William T. Sherman's Fifteenth Corps attacked the Stockade Redan and failed to break through; the siege that followed is told on our 18 May page.1
1864: during the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, according to the American Battlefield Trust, Robert E. Lee sent Richard S. Ewell's Confederate corps forward to find out where the Federals were going, and it ran into a brigade of new Union heavy-artillery regiments fighting as infantry at the Harris farm; the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission summary describes a Confederate attempt to turn the Union right flank there that was beaten back with severe casualties; the battle has its own article.2
