Night Falls When The Knight Falls Quiz

Answer: France

The Battle of Blenheim marked the beginning of the end for the French in their plans to eliminate Holy Roman Emperor Leopold from the War of the Spanish Succession by seizing the Habsburg capital of Vienna.
Commander of the allied forces, the Duke of Marlborough realised that although his men were vastly outnumbered, the battlefield positioning of the French cavalry did not allow them easy manoeuvrability. The French cavalry were routed by the allied cavalry, who then wheeled left and before the French could regroup, joined forces with the infantry, forcing the French into the Danube.
The French losses at this battle were huge, with almost 30,000 troops drowned, killed, wounded and captured but even greater was the loss of the reputation as an invincible army.

Answer: Morong, Philippines

Following the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WWII, allied troops leaving the islands were coming under an increasing number of attacks. In an act of supreme heroism, Ramsey led his 27 man cavalry platoon head first and at full speed into a much larger Japanese force at Morong, dispersing them and allowing the allies to leave safely.
Ramsey and his men were forced to retreat to the jungle and mountains as the Japanese advance gained momentum, and even had to eat their horses to survive, an act which always troubled the horse loving Ramsey.
For three years, Ramsey and his guerilla force of 40,000 Filipinos harassed the Japanese to such an extent that a reward of $200,000 was put on Ramsey's head, but he evaded capture and when General MacArthur famously returned to the Philippines in 1945, he paid special tribute to Ramsey, estimating that the actions of him and his forces, along with the intelligence they had been able to gather, had saved the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and Filipinos.

Answer: The Light Brigade

The Light Brigade of the British cavalry, was a combined force, made up of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers, and the 8th and 11th Hussars. At the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, the British Heavy Brigade charged the Russian cavalry and forced them back, and then for the unfortunate Light Brigade, chaos and catastrophe ensued.
Miscommunication and misdirection meant that instead of attacking the North Valley area, where British guns had been seized by Russian forces, the brigade rode toward the Causeway area where they were fired on from three sides, resulting in a 40% casualty rate as well as the loss of around 400 horses. After regrouping, less than 200 men with horses were still available to fight and what should have resulted in an allied battlefield victory became instead a Russian victory.
Both the charge of the Heavy Brigade and the ill fated charge of the Light Brigade are commemorated in poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Answer: Second Anglo-Afghan War

The Second Anglo-Afghan War raged for two years between 1878 and 1880 between the British Raj and the Emirate of Afghanistan. The 9th Queen's Royal Lancers saw action at the Battle of Charasiab in Afghanistan in 1879, and recorded a decisive victory for the British forces. Things were not quite as straightforward as Killa Kazi however when the regiment of 170 men charged an estimated force of 10,000 Afghans. To compound the British problems, the ground was terraced for irrigation purposes which severely impeded the cavalry charge leading to heavy losses of both horses and men, including Lieutenant-Colonel Cleland and Captain Neville.

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte

The 18th of June 1815 saw the forces of the French Empire, under Napoleon Bonaparte in battle against the Seventh Coalition, comprising the armies of UK, Prussia, Hanover, Netherlands, Nassau and Brunswick, led by the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Blucher.
Four heavily armed columns of French infantry marched on the Anglo-Allied forces who were outnumbered but fought bravely until the order was given for two British cavalry brigades, hidden behind a ridge to attack.
The cavalry brigades attacked with such force they smashed through the French infantry, decimating them and actually rode too far beyond them, being destroyed when French cavalry counter-attacked.
The damage was done though and two cavalry units, the Royal Scots Greys and the 1st Royal Regiment of Dragoons managed to capture two of Napoleon's French eagle standards.
Though the battle raged on, Napoleon's forces were defeated as dusk fell, with the loss of 73,000 men compared to the Anglo-Allied loss of an estimated 118,000 men and four days after Waterloo, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to St Helena, where he died in 1821

Answer: Sikh Empire

Part of the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-1846), the Battle of Aliwal saw the combined forces of the British and Indian troops of the Bengal Presidency battling the army of the Punjab, the Sikhs of the Khalsa.as the British East India Company expanded its territories.
This battle is found to be particularly fascinating by military historians as the Sikh cavalry had been trained by Paolo Di Avitabile, a Neapolitan mercenary, and were therefore familiar with the attack tactics used by European cavalry, and indeed, defended themselves against the British cavalry by forming a square, exactly as the British would have done.
Eventually, the 16th Lancers broke through the Sikh square and their infantry was then forced from cover into the open by Bengali infantry, where they were cut down by the Bengal Horse Artillery.
The victory, under the command of Sir Harry Smith has been described by military historians as the "Battle without a mistake", so complete was their domination and by 1849, following the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-1849), the Sikh Empire was no more.

Answer: George Custer

The Battle of Little Bighorn, which took place on June 25-26, 1876 as part of the Great Sioux War is commonly known as Custer's Last Stand.
It was here that the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army suffered a crushing defeat by the massed ranks of the Lakota, Dakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho indigenous peoples.
In 1868, the U.S. government had signed a treaty with the Lakota people promising them land in South Dakota including the Black Hills. However, soon after the signing of the treaty, gold was discovered in the Black Hills and the United States decided they wanted the land from the native tribes so they could mine the gold.
The natives refused to give up the land so the U.S. decided to force them out by sending in the army and when the army heard of a large gathering of tribes near the Little Bighorn River, Custer and his men were sent to attack them.
Custer expected a force of a few hundred men, but this turned out be thousands and Custer and his troops were forced to retreat to a small hill, where they continued to fight although they had no chance of winning. This became known as Custer's Last Stand as he and all of his men were killed by the native forces, overseen by the likes of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Chief Gall, Lame White Man, and Two Moon.
Although Custer and his men died, the U.S. government eventually got their wish as they sent more troops into the area, destroying native villages until the indigenous peoples moved on.

Answer: Playing Polo

Francis Grenfell was a talented polo player, who alongside his twin brother, the wonderfully named Riversdale, had won the American Open in 1910 and the Hurlingham Champion Cup in 1907.
As a commander of the 9th (Queen's Royal) Lancers in 1914, he led a charge against a German line of rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire before progress was halted by barbed wire.
Although the charge was futile and Grenfell was severely wounded, he remained as a rallying point for his troops, an action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross and although he was far from the first man to receive this honour, he was the first man to have the award mentioned in "The London Gazette".

Answer: Herbert Kitchener

Kitchener's 25,000 men were greatly outnumbered by the 52,000 Sudanese but possessed modern weapons and equipment, along with a better knowledge of battle tactics and overran the Sudanese. The rout was so decisive that Winston Churchill, who was there with the 21st Lancers, said he thought Kitchener had been too brutal and another eyewitness said, "It was not a battle but an execution".
The Sudanese forces lost over 12,000 men while allied forces lost less than 50 men, along with almost 300 horses.
When Kitchener's cavalry were ambushed by tribesmen hiding in a gully, resulting in the loss of the horses, the lancers simply regrouped and proceeded on foot, leading to the assertion that cavalry forces could offer more than those that are infantry.
This bloody battle precipitated the fall of the Mahdist State in Sudan, with the country being ruled as a British colony in tandem with Egypt from 1898 to 1956, when it became an independent country.

Answer: Moonlight Charge

The Household Cavalry had been specially requested by Queen Victoria herself and their bravery and determination was never in doubt in this battle over control of the Suez Canal.
The battle was even with neither side being able to gain the upper hand until the arrival, at dusk of the Household Cavalry who charged at full gallop into the enemy rifle fire, cutting their way through the Egyptian infantry to capture the battery of guns behind them.
The battle is immortalised in the poem "At Kassassin" (1891) by Arthur Clark Kennedy, the second verse of which begins, "'Charge!' And away through the night, Toward the red flashes of light Spurting in fire on our sight, Swifter and swifter we sped."