Though outnumbered, a ragtag Mexican army managed to defeat the crack French troops (back when they had crack troops).
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Though vaunted as a campaign by the crack troops of a free new state, it collapsed within three days.
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With no need to defend its Turkish frontier, Russia moved thousands of crack troops from the Caucasus to shore up its front lines.
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Nevertheless, Pleasants became affiliated with an organisation that served as Hitler's ideological crack troops, and will forever be associated with the most appalling atrocities of the war.
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Under General Vlad, the more than 10,000 crack troops of Ceausescu's Securitate, or state security department, were accused of suppressing dissent by torturing, jailing and killing protesters or confining them in mental wards.
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The weak French defending forces were pushed back without too much trouble, except for Mortier's guardsmen near Langres. These crack troops made a fighting withdrawal to Bar-sur-Aube where they offered battle in a strong position. Two days after the clash, Emperor Napoleon joined his reeling forces and the major fighting began.
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Souham's French and Pino's Italian divisions were made up of crack troops. Chabot's division consisted of one battalion of French soldiers and two of Neapolitans. The Neapolitans were widely regarded as the worst troops in Europe. Saint-Cyr's force also included Fontane's cavalry brigade, consisting of the Italian Royal Horse Chasseurs and the 7th Italian Dragoons.
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George III relied mainly on crack troops provided by the Kipchak mercenaries and Caucasian mountaineers. By force and diplomacy, he induced many of the rebel nobles to surrender. Orbeli, however, refused to comply and retired to the Lorhe fortress (now Lori, Armenia). The royal army quickly overran the fiefdoms of rebel lords and put Lorhe under siege.
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He concluded that the opposing Indian troops were among India's best, and to achieve victory would require deploying crack troops and relying on force concentration to achieve decisive victory. On 16 October, this war plan was approved, and on the 18th, the final approval was given by the Politburo for a "self-defensive counter-attack", scheduled for 20 October.
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Made up of crack troops, this formation was the heaviest, numbering over 20,000. Grant also had available to him four other commands, his cavalry, under Ben Grierson and George Custer numbered close to 6,000 sabers. Darius Couch commanded 20,000 90-day volunteers and militia. George Sykes commanded the fragment of the once proud Army of the Potomac which numbered close to 15,000-20,000.
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The imperial defeat at Sanhe was a major setback. Not only were the newly conquered towns lost again, but the siege of Anqing was also relieved. In addition, the Taiping army expanded its territory as a result of the victory. The 6,000-strong imperial force represented the Empire's crack troops, and their loss would take a long time to recover from.
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The supply situation convinced Robert of Gloucester that he must quit Winchester so he planned an orderly withdrawal. Earl Reginald of Cornwall and Brian fitz Count led an advance guard composed of crack troops designed to protect Empress Matilda. The main body guarded the baggage while Robert commanded the rearguard. On 14 September, the Angevins exited from the west side of Winchester on the road to Salisbury.
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As Kong Le led the only crack troops in town, his help was essential in helping Ouane and General Phoumi Nosavan install the latter in power to fill the political vacuum. The paras secured their airfield, captured the city's radio station, the national bank, municipal power plant, and various ministries without firing a single shot.Conboy & Morrison, p. 25. Prime Minister Phoui Sananikone had been decisively deposed.
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At the same time, the crack troops of Louis Friant's Old Guard division began crossing the bridge and took up a position to defend Arcis. Sebastiani's badly shaken horsemen slowly began to recover from their panic and reorganize. During this crisis an Allied howitzer shell landed sputtering near the rallying troops. Seeing his soldiers flinching from the missile, Napoleon intentionally rode his horse directly over the bomb.
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This failed; and in anticipation of possible retaliatory attacks, he ordered the construction of walls along the northern and southern borders, as well as along the course of the Zhang River. Marquess Su died in 326 BCE. The states of Qin, Chu, Yan, Qi, and Wei each sent ten thousand crack troops to Zhao to attend the funeral. His son, Zhao Yong, succeeded him and became King Wuling of Zhao.
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Whilst the numbers may have exaggerated, their appearance must have been impressive; Records of Three Kingdoms describes how their "flags and armour lit up Heaven and Earth". Though Yuan Shao's army was of comparable size, it consisted almost entirely of infantry. His commander Qu Yi was placed at the vanguard with 800 crack troops and 1,000 crossbowmen. Behind them stood masses of footsoldiers, numbering in the tens of thousands, commanded by Yuan Shao himself.
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At dusk, it was apparent the Germans were in the 1st Battalion's area in strength. About 01:30 am, on 7 August 1944 the 117th Infantry Regiment was attacked by crack troops of the 1st SS Adolf Hitler Division. Between midnight and 04:00 the regiment was blanketed by intense and devastating mortar and artillery fire. Enemy aircraft strafed supporting Artillery units as they tried to register their fire on Germany tanks and infantry.
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When Napoleon finally understood the scope of the problem in Catalonia, he made some significant changes. Already on 17 August 1808, Napoleon appointed Laurent Gouvion Saint- Cyr to be his new commander in Catalonia. Saint-Cyr was reinforced by 18,000 men from the garrison of Italy, though it would be weeks before they could arrive. Unlike Reille's motley soldiers, these included crack troops in the French division of Joseph Souham and the Italian division of Domenico Pino.
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Fresh British and Australian units were moved to the vital rail centre of Amiens and the defence began to stiffen. After fruitless attempts to capture Amiens, Ludendorff called off Operation Michael on 5 April. By the standards of the time, there had been a substantial advance. It was, however, of little value; a Pyrrhic victory in terms of the casualties suffered by the crack troops, as the vital positions of Amiens and Arras remained in Allied hands.
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The Shanhaiguan front consisted of two major sectors: the Shanhaiguan sector and the Jiumenkou (九门口) sector. The 1st and 3rd Fengtian Armies deployed in the Shanhaiguan sector did not make any progress because they faced crack troops enjoying the advantage of terrain. The stalemate was not broken until October 7, when the Fengtian army made progress in the Jiumenkou sector. Here Sun Xuchang (孙旭昌), a Fengtian commander, led his 10th Combined Brigade to victory.
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Borna attacked Ljudevit with crack troops, after storing as much as he could in his castles, seeing that he was no match for him. Worn down, attacked in the rear and flank, with heavy losses, Ljudevit was forced to retreat from Borna's territory. Ljudevit had 3,000 lost soldiers, and Borna seized more than 300 horses, and spoils of all kinds, then informed the Frankish emperor through his envoys of this. In January 820 another Frankish assembly was held in Aachen.
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Holding fast the mountains and the rivers, Tian Feng reasoned that Yuan Shao could fight a battle of agriculture to outlast Cao Cao while exhausting the enemy with crack troops from multiple directions, thus winning the battle in two years. Yuan Shao had the idea of a decisive battle and would not use Tian Feng's plan. When Tian Feng continued his remonstrances, Yuan Shao had him imprisoned on charges of demoralizing the army. Cao Cao was said to have been delighted at the news.
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Hearing of the fall of Pengcheng, Xiang Yu ordered the bulk of his forces to maintain the attack on Qi, while he personally led 30,000 crack troops to retake the capital. He encamped about ten miles from the city, in present-day Xiao County, Anhui. At dawn, Xiang Yu launched an attack on Pengcheng, and by noon had broken the unprepared Han army. Routed, the Han infantry fled into the nearby Gu () and Si () rivers, where over 100,000 of them were killed by Chu soldiers.
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War of the Pyrenees, Eastern Pyrenees To shield Figueres, Roses, and the Alt Emporda, Lieutenant General Luis Firmin de Carvajal, Conde de la Union constructed a chain of 90 redoubts. The defenders included crack troops such as the three battalions each of the Spanish Guard and Walloon Guard Regiments. Lower quality troops such as provincial militia also manned the lines. De la Union was assisted by an allied Portuguese division under Lieutenant General João Forbes, which included one battalion each of the 1st, 2nd, Olivença, Cascais, Peniche, and Freire de Andrade Infantry Regiments.
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As a precaution measure, Zhang Ti did order Zhang Qiao to remain by his side so that Zhang Qiao would not have the chance to escape back to Jin. As the Wu army continued on, they encountered Jin forces led by Zhang Han (張翰) and Zhou Jun (周濬). Shen Ying personally led 5,000 crack troops from Danyang to charge into the Jin army's formation thrice, but was beaten back with heavy losses. The defeat of the elite force seriously demoralised the rest of the Wu soldiers, and the result was a disorganised retreat.
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Remarkably though, he chose to stack his Thebans twenty-five shields deep, rather than the standard eight, to give them more pushing-power and punch. This marks the first recorded instance of any Greek general ever changing the standard depth of a hoplite unit. This novel technique worked wonders, as the Thebans rapidly broke through the Athenian left, and moved to encircle the rest of the Athenian army. However, the Thespians on the Boeotian left were up against the Athenians' crack troops, and were themselves quickly overwhelmed, surrounded, and killed almost to a man.
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However, the German commanders, Field Marshal Albert von Kesselring and General Eberhard von Mackensen suspected an American attack in the vicinity of Cisterna and sent a large force of crack troops, armored units, and artillery to cut off the Rangers. On the night of January 30, 1944, the 1st and 3rd Ranger battalions made their way behind enemy lines and killed the German sentries in Cisterna. Suddenly, concealed German artillery and armor opened fire on the Americans. One of the first shells killed Major Miller, the 3rd Battalion commander.
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The 170th had a reputation of crack troops, being nicknamed Les Hirondelles de la Mort, or The Swallows of Death. Bullard opted to serve in the 170th Infantry Regiment and the 170 military insignia is displayed on his uniform collar. In the beginning of 1916, the 170th Infantry along with the 48th Infantry Division (), to which the regiment belonged from February 1915 to December 1916, was sent to Verdun. During his convalescence, Bullard was cited for acts of valor at the orders of the regiment on July 3, 1917, and was awarded the croix de guerre.
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As part of the much greater Liaoshen Campaign, Communist forces led by Lin Biao, in the areas surrounding Changchun, cut off roads, railways, and other routes of entry and egress to the Northeast, and cordoned off the city of Changchun itself. Though not surrounded by an ancient city wall, owing to the modernity of the city, the garrison had constructed, with the help of conscripted civilian labor a large moat, eight feet deep and twelve feet wide in 1947. The defenders, veterans of many campaigns against communist and Japanese forces, were considered crack-troops. Lin Biao deemed an assault on the city was deemed too costly and dangerous.
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Knowing that Cleomenes got the money to pay for his mercenaries from Ptolemy, Antigonus, according to Peter Green, seems to have ceded some territory in Asia Minor to Ptolemy in return for Ptolemy withdrawing his financial support of Sparta. Whether this assumption is accurate or not, Ptolemy certainly withdrew his support, which left Cleomenes without money to pay for his mercenaries. Desperate, Cleomenes freed all helots able to pay five Attic minae; in this way he accumulated 500 talents of silver. He also armed 2,000 of the ex-helots in Macedonian style to counter the White Shields, the Macedonian crack troops, before planning a major initiative.Plutarch.
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To ensure total loyalty amongst these crack troops, there were five times as many political officers in the Directorate for Security Troops than there were in the regular army. They adhered to stricter discipline than in the regular military, but they were rewarded with special treatment and enjoyed far superior living conditions compared to their countrymen. They guarded television and radio stations, and PCR buildings and in the event of a coup, would have been called in to protect the regime. After the Revolution, the Directorate for Security Troops was disbanded and replaced first by the Guard and Order Troops (Trupele de Pază și Ordine), and in July 1990 by the Gendarmerie.
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By mid-September 1914 the Russians were driving the Austro-Hungarian Army deep into Galicia, threatening Krakow, and the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia was floundering. The armies that the Russian commander Grand Duke Nicholas was assembling in Poland were still enlarging, including the arrival of crack troops from Siberia, freed by the Japanese declaration of war against Germany on 23 August. Stavka (Russian supreme headquarters) intended for the forces assembled south of Warsaw—500,000 men and 2,400 guns—to march west to invade the German industrial area of Upper Silesia, which was almost undefended. On their Eastern Front the Germans had only one army, the Eighth, which was in East Prussia.
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Major-General Sir Archibald Hunter The plan was for Major-General Hunter and a flying column of crack troops to race with all possible speed from Merowe north-east to Abu Hamed, where they would surprise the numerically inferior Mahdist garrison and win control of the town.Alford 1898 p. 164. Speed was essential, for it was certain Hunter's column would be spotted by Mahdist scouts during the journey. If these scouts managed to send word and reinforce the town prior to Hunter's arrival, his column might find itself outmatched and forced to retreat. The troops selected for the operation were among the best soldiers in Kitchener's army: the 3rd Egyptian, 9th Sudanese, 10th Sudanese, and 11th Sudanese Battalions, composing Lieutenant Hector Archibald MacDonald's brigade.Arthur 1920 p. 215.
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The Fengtian army on the eastern front was initially victorious, with the Zhili forces holding on in a desperate rearguard action. However, as news of their defeat in the west reached the first echelon of the Fengtian army, brigade commander Bao Deshan (鲍德山) refused to continue to attack the enemy and left his flank dangerously exposed. In danger of being cut off, Zhang Zuolin ordered a general retreat to avoid total annihilation. The Fengtian second echelon, under the command of his son, Zhang Xueliang, was the cream of the Fengtian army and became the main target of the Zhili attack. Having achieved complete victory in the west, Wu Peifu redeployed his crack troops (the 3rd and 26th Divisions) and personally directed their attack on Zhang Xueliang's unit.
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Hearing of the fall of Pengcheng, Xiang Yu ordered the bulk of his forces to maintain the attack on Qi, while he personally led 30,000 crack troops to retake the capital. He encamped about ten miles from a city in present-day Xiao County, Anhui, and launched an attack on Pengcheng at dawn, and by noon had routed the unprepared Han army, driving them into the nearby Gu and Si Rivers, where over 100,000 men drowned or were killed by Chu soldiers. The remaining Han troops fled south to high ground, but were cornered by Chu forces by the Sui River, where another 100,000 drowned, their corpses damming up the river. Liu Bang escaped the city with a handful of mounted bodyguards, heading to nearby Pei to collect his family.
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During the night of 15 December, six Zulu regiments, an estimated 20,000 (or more) Zulu soldiers led by Dambuza (Nzobo), crossed the Ncome River and started massing around the encampment, while the elite forces of senior general Ndlela did not cross the river, thereby splitting the army in two. On 16 December, dawn broke on a clear day, revealing that "all of Zululand sat there", according to one Trekker eyewitness. General Ndlela and his crack troops, the Black and White Shields, remained on the other side of the river, observing Dambuza's men at the laager from a safe position across the hippo pool. According to the South African Department of Art and Culture: > In ceremonies that lasted about three days, izinyanga zempi, specialist war > doctors, prepared izinteleze medicines which made warriors invincible in the > face of their opponents.
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In the beginning of May Li Chun led the 8th Division from Baoding to Wuhan, and also brought his crack troops to reinforce Shanghai. On June 9, President Yuan removed KMT supporter Li Liejun as Governor of Jiangxi, he was replaced by Vice President Li Yuanhong.. Some modern scholars have rehabilitated Li Liejun in this light.李列钧在江西一带实行政治和经济改革，整顿财政、选派留学生出国、并捉捕了彭木香等匪徒。見： June 13, Military Governor of Guangdong Hu Hanmin (Kuomintang) was appointed to a position in Tibet, he was replaced by Chen Jiongming. June 30, Anhui Governor Bai Wenwei (KMT) was also dismissed, on the same day Li Yuanhong made mass arrests of underground party leaders in Wuhan.
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Asia Times reports that Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini, claimed in 2005 that "the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards have been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad." According to the report, Hojjatieh were endangering Iran by working for Shia supremacy,Shi'ite supremacists emerge from Iran's shadows Asia Times 9 September 2005 Feldman writing in 2006 in the New York Times suggests this rumor was spread by Ahmadinejad's enemies. It is also reported that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was to have been Ahmedinejad's First Vice President, may be a Hojjatieh member, but the source of this information is unclear. Leading clerics who supported the revolution were sympathizers of the organization, including Ali Akbar Parvaresh, Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, and Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri.
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Realizing the nationalists had overstretched themselves way beyond the threshold, the communists jumped on the opportunity to counterattack. While the crack troops of the nationalist force was penetrating deep into the enemy territory and taking more lands, their rear was guarded by the second rate troops most consisted of poorly trained conscripts who were drafted just shortly prior to the first encirclement campaign against the Honghu Soviet. Seizing the opportunity, communist force on the northern bank of the Yangtze River including the Independent Regiment attacked and took the town of Red River (Zhuhe 朱河) for four time, annihilated the 2nd Regiment of the nationalist Newly Organized 2nd Brigade in the process, forcing the nationalist brigade to be out of the action for the rest of the campaign. The communist force operated on the northern bank of the Yangtze River also attacked the town of Fengkou (峰口) twice, completely annihilated two battalions of the nationalist Newly Organized 3rd Brigade in the process.
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The goal of seizing Longyou was not easily achievable, because Wei had prepared for a probable Shu invasion in the region – Jia Si () and Wei Ping () were stationed at Mount Qi and formed an initial defence for Tianshui Commandery, while Dai Ling () and Fei Yao stationed their crack troops in the heartland of Tianshui. Zhuge Liang had sought aid from a Xianbei tribal chief, Kebineng, who went to Beidi Commandery (北地郡; around present-day central Shaanxi) to rally the locals to support the Shu forces.(漢晉春秋曰：亮圍祁山，招鮮卑軻比能，比能等至故北地石城以應亮。) Han Jin Chunqiu annotation in Sanguozhi vol. 35. The offensive began with a minor clash at Mount Qi, giving the Wei general Cao Zhen the impression that the attack was a diversion to mask a major offensive through the Qin Mountains aimed at Chang'an.
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It would not be easy to immediately take Didao and the invading enemy would soon run out supplies, and thus Chen Tai's request for immediate reinforcements was absolutely correct. As Chen Tai led his force to Shanggui (上邽; present-day Tianshui, Gansu), other reinforcements including those led by Deng Ai, Hu Fen (胡奮), and Wang Mi (王秘) also arrived. During a military council, Deng Ai claimed that after Wang Jing's devastating defeat in which most of their crack troops in the region were lost, the morale of the enemy was extremely high while that of their own troops was low, and that the reinforcements had been gathered in haste after the defeat, so it was difficult to achieve victory at this time. It would be wise to sacrifice some local interests in order to save the overall interest – it might be better to leave Wang Jing to fend for himself, wait until the enemy became tired and less alert, and then launch a counteroffensive.
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Coox pp. 1062–1064 Most of the new formations, staffed by the old, the infirm, civil servants, colonists, and studentsCoox p. 1062 were at barely 15% combat effectivenessThe Pacific War Encyclopedia: Manchuria and heavily lacking in weapons; out of 230 serviceable combat planes, only 55 could be considered modern. It was even briefly recommended that Army Headquarters be pre-emptively evacuated from Changchun, but this was rejected on security, political, and psychological grounds.Coox pp. 1064–1065 After the war, colonel Saburo Hayashi admitted: "We wanted to provide a show of force. If the Russians only knew the weakness of our preparations in Manchuria, they were bound to attack us."Coox p. 1062 Simultaneously, Japanese intelligence watched helplessly as Soviet strength opposite them began to soar: honoring his promise at Yalta to enter the war in the Pacific within three months of Germany's defeat, Joseph Stalin ordered the transfer from Europe to the Far East of some 403,355 crack troops, along with 2,119 tanks and assault guns, 7,137 guns and mortars, 17,374 trucks, and 36,280 horses.
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Ultra Magnus was first introduced — and, debatably, first constructed — in the Earth year 1986, as the underground Autobot resistance on Cybertron prepared to execute their daring "Operation: Volcano" plan, which would involve luring the Decepticons' crack troops to one location where Magnus and the Autobot commando squad, the Wreckers, would finish them off. However, when the Matrix Flame (a flame denoting the activity of the robot containing the Creation Matrix) suddenly extinguished, Magnus was dispatched to Earth to discover what had happened to Optimus Prime. With time nipping at his heels, the launch of Operation: Volcano going ahead whether he returned or not, Magnus allied himself with the Earth Autobots and worked to discover what had caused Optimus Prime, Prowl and Ratchet to vanish from the middle of the Autobot base, while the other Autobots battled the threat posed by Galvatron, a Decepticon who had travelled back in time from the future. The appearance of three more Autobots from the future, Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr, gave Magnus his answer: the mass-displacement effect yielded by Galvatron's time travel had shunted Prime and the others into the limbo between dimensions.
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Furthermore, unlike other warlords who stayed on the Chinese side during the conflict but were not under the direct control of Chiang Kai-shek and remained independent instead, such as the case of Yan Xishan, Ma clique, New Guangxi Clique, and Sichuan clique, these troops were directly under control of Chiang Kai-shek and his regime, just like Chiang's own troops. However, these troops of former Guominjun felt that their loyalty was not rewarded accordingly and they were discriminated against by Chiang Kai-shek and troops of his own clique. Such sentiment was certainly true because Chiang Kai-shek had planned to solve the warlord problem that had plagued China for so long together with the eradication of the communism, which proved to be a fatal mistake. These former warlords's troops believed that Chiang Kai-shek and his regime felt that they were expandable and used them just as tools of the civil war because instead of sending his crack troops such as the Newly Organized 1st Army, Chiang Kai- shek only send the second-rate troops to fight alongside with them, and moreover, it were them who bore the brunt of the fights instead Chiang's own troops.
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