On 23 September 1803, near the village of Assaye in the Deccan, Major General Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, attacked the combined armies of Daulat Rao Scindia and the Raja of Berar. He had planned to strike the next morning together with Colonel Stevenson's corps, but the enemy camp proved closer than reported, so he attacked at once, crossing the Kaitna River by a ford. His own letters call it a desperate battle: Scindia's infantry stood to their guns, and his losses were very heavy. He took more than ninety guns. On the same date in 1779, John Paul Jones's Bonhomme Richard captured HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head.
The Battle of Assaye, 1803: Wellesley's hardest fight
23 September 1803 · 223 years ago
Major General Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, won the Battle of Assaye on 23 September 1803 during the Second Anglo-Maratha War.
Read the full story of The Battle of Assaye, 1803: Wellesley's hardest fight ›Also on this day
Battle of Othée
23 September 1408 · 618 years ago
At Othée near Liège, the city's rebellious townsmen faced a princely army led by Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy, called in to aid the ousted prince bishop John of Bavaria. The Liège militia suffered a heavy defeat and the revolt against the bishop collapsed.
1779: off Flamborough Head, a squadron under John Paul Jones met a British convoy of, by Jones's count, 41 sail, escorted by HMS Serapis, Captain Richard Pearson, and the Countess of Scarborough. Pearson reported that the Bonhomme Richard carried 40 guns and 375 men, that the two ships lay so close "that the Muzzles of our Guns touched each others Sides", and that, lying in that position, they fought from half past eight until half past ten, when he struck; he had hailed the enemy ship at about twenty minutes past seven. Jones, writing to Benjamin Franklin on 3 October, puts his first broadside at seven in the evening and the striking of the British colors at half past ten. Asked whether he demanded quarters, Jones wrote, he answered "in the most determined negative"; the reply usually quoted, "I have not yet begun to fight", comes from the recollection of his first lieutenant, Richard Dale, printed in 1825.1
Jones wrote that "a person must have been an eye-witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin, that every where appeared", and that the Bonhomme Richard sank on 25 September. Pearson's abstract lists 49 killed and 68 wounded in the Serapis; he wrote that there were "many more, both killed and wounded," than the list showed, and he gave the Bonhomme Richard 306 men killed and wounded; Captain Piercy reported 4 killed and 20 wounded in the Countess of Scarborough, which struck to the Pallas. De Koven writes that Jones reported 49 killed and 67 wounded in the Bonhomme Richard. See our profile of John Paul Jones.2
