Post moments in histroy/historical figures that are depressing, horrible or sad

Post moments in histroy/historical figures that are depressing, horrible or sad.

I'll start: Rape of Nanking.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuctra
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>"Throughout the afternoon, Confederate engineers scrambled to create a new defensive line 500 yards further south at the base of the Mule Shoe, while fighting at the Bloody Angle continued day and night with neither side achieving an advantage, until around 12:00 AM on May 13, the fighting finally stopped. At 4 A.M., the exhausted Confederate infantrymen were notified that the new line was ready and they withdrew from the original earthworks unit by unit. The combat they had endured for almost 24 hours was characterized by an intensity of firepower never previously seen in Civil War battles, as the entire landscape was flattened, all the foliage destroyed. An example of this can be found in the Smithsonian Museum of American History: a 22-inch stump of an oak tree at the Bloody Angle that was completely severed by rifle fire. There was a frenzy to the carnage on both sides. Fighting back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches for hours on end, using single shot muskets, the contending troops were periodically reduced to hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of battles fought during ancient times. Bodies piled up four and five high, and soldiers were forced to pause from time to time and throw corpses over the parapet since they formed an obstacle in the way of the fighting. Dead and wounded men were shot so many times that many of them simply fell apart into unrecognizable heaps of flesh. Surviving participants attempted to describe in letters, diaries, and memoirs the hellish intensity of that day, many noting that it was beyond words. Or, as one put it: "Nothing can describe the confusion, the savage, blood-curdling yells, the murderous faces, the awful curses, and the grisly horror of the melee." Some men claimed to have fired as many as 400 rounds that day. May 12 was the most intensive day of fighting during the battle, with Union casualties of about 9,000, Confederate 8,000; the Confederate loss includes about 3,000 prisoners captured in the Mule Shoe."

Why post something so over exaggerated when there are real tragedies like the Holocaust and 9/11?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin

My childhood

"But the skirmish line being deployed out, extending a little wider than the battle did--passing through a thicket of small locusts, where Brown, orderly sergeant of Company B, was killed--we advanced on toward the breastworks, on and on. I had made up my mind to die--felt glorious. We pressed forward until I heard the terrific roar of battle open on our right. Cleburne's division was charging their works. I passed on until I got to their works, and got over on their (the Yankees') side. But in fifty yards of where I was the scene was lit up by fires that seemed like hell itself. It appeared to be but one line of streaming fire. Our troops were upon one side of the breastworks, and the Federals on the other. I ran up on the line of works, where our men were engaged. Dead soldiers filled the entrenchments. The firing was kept up until after midnight, and gradually died out. We passed the night where we were. But when the morrow's sun began to light up the eastern sky with its rosy hues, and we looked over the battlefield, O, my God! what did we see! It was a grand holocaust of death. Death had held high carnival there that night. The dead were piled the one on the other all over the ground. I never was so horrified and appalled in my life. Horses, like men, had died game on the gory breastworks. General Adams' horse had his fore feet on one side of the works and his hind feet on the other, dead. The general seems to have been caught so that he was held to the horse's back, sitting almost as if living, riddled, and mangled, and torn with balls. General Cleburne's mare had her fore feet on top of the works, dead in that position.

cont.

General Cleburne's body was pierced with forty-nine bullets, through and through. General Strahl's horse lay by the roadside and the general by his side, both dead, and all his staff. General Gist, a noble and brave cavalier from South Carolina, was lying with his sword reaching across the breastworks still grasped in his hand. He was lying there dead. All dead! They sleep in the graveyard yonder at Ashwood, almost in sight of my home, where I am writing today. They sleep the sleep of the brave. We love and cherish their memory. They sleep beneath the ivy-mantled walls of St. John's church, where they expressed a wish to be buried. The private soldier sleeps where he fell, piled in one mighty heap. Four thousand five hundred privates! all lying side by side in death! Thirteen generals were killed and wounded. Four thousand five hundred men slain, all piled and heaped together at one place. I cannot tell the number of others killed and wounded. God alone knows that. We'll all find out on the morning of the final resurrection.

cont.

Kind friends, I have attempted in my poor and feeble way to tell you of this (I can hardly call it) battle. It should be called by some other name. But, like all other battles, it, too, has gone into history. I leave it with you. I do not know who was to blame. It lives in the memory of the poor old Rebel soldier who went through that trying and terrible ordeal. We shed a tear for the dead. They are buried and forgotten. We meet no more on earth. But up yonder, beyond the sunset and the night, away beyond the clouds and tempest, away beyond the stars that ever twinkle and shine in the blue vault above us, away yonder by the great white throne, and by the river of life, where the Almighty and Eternal God sits, surrounded by the angels and archangels and the redeemed of earth, we will meet again and see those noble and brave spirits who gave up their lives for their country's cause that night at Franklin, Tennessee. A life given for one's country is never lost. It blooms again beyond the grave in a land of beauty and of love. Hanging around the throne of sapphire and gold, a rich garland awaits the coming of him who died for his country, and when the horologe of time has struck its last note upon his dying brow, Justice hands the record of life to Mercy, and Mercy pleads with Jesus, and God, for his sake, receives him in his eternal home beyond the skies at last and forever."

-"Co. Aytch": Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment, Or, a Side Show of the Big Show by Samuel Rush Watkins, Chapter 16, pages 162-163

Betrayel of the Cossacks

>be Cossack
>don't like Stalin, so join the SS when the Germans invade
>part of an elite horseback unit
>your commander is a really cool German dude
>war ends
>you and you unit surrender under the condition that you'll be moved West
>you're all gathered together
>you are told be your captors that you are in fact being repatriated to the SU
>try to resist, but get smacked with butts of rifles
>your commander, despite being told that he is free to return to Germany, decides to go with his unit to a certain fate
>you and your commander die together in a Gulag

...

What happened to the people of the Caribbean islands:

"Over three hundred local dignitaries were summoned to welcome the then governor of the island29 when he paid a visit to the kingdom with sixty horse and a further three hundred men on foot (the horsemen alone were sufficient in number to ravage not only the whole island but the mainland as well). The governor duped the unsuspecting leaders of this welcoming party into gathering in a building made of straw and then ordered his men to set fire to it and burn them alive. All the others were massacred, either run through by lances or put to the sword. As a mark of respect and out of deference to her rank, Queen Anacaona was hanged.
There was one royal official on the island who, when he was allotted three hundred natives, worked them so hard that, at the end of three months, only thirty – that is to say, just one tenth of the original number – were still alive, the other two hundred and seventy having perished down the mines. Later, he received another consignment of much the same number, or even more, and he saw them off, too. The more he received, the more he killed. During the three or four months I was there, more than seven thousand children died of hunger, after their parents had been shipped off to the mines, and I saw many other horrors also.

It was later decided to hunt down the natives who had fled into the mountains, and the subsequent hunting parties were responsible for carnage beyond belief. Thus it was that the whole of the island was devastated and depopulated, and it now affords, as we discovered on a recent visit, a moving and heartrending spectacle, transformed, as it has been, into one vast, barren wasteland

What ethnicity was these people? Were they all genocided?

Injuns, the Carribean islands were where Columbus first landed and subsequently the Spanish conquered the region. Cortez later conquered Mexico, and he left from Cuba.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuctra

An absolute tragedy, with terrible results for Hellas. Brings a tear to the eye. I unironically advocate for the destruction of modern thebes.

>ACW
Who fucking cares?
I guess you could argue it's depressing because it's so fucking boring

the Americans that repatriated the Cossacks they captured had to walk them past trees full of the hanged bodies of the Cossacks the British had already repatriated

Tehran was a mistake

>Who fucking cares?

The collective population of the United States of America

>it's so fucking boring

It was literally an apocalyptic struggle to decide the future of America that turned neighbors, comrades, even friends against one another. It left a wound in the American psyche that's never completely healed and its shadow still hangs over the country today.

>American """"history""""
ACW is just like any other civil war, except it lacks any kind of interest whatsoever because Confederacy never had a chance

>American """"history""""

Of course you're a retarded fucking foreigner.

>except it lacks any kind of interest

It was literally the first industrial war. The things that would define the First World War, submarines, trenches, aircraft, machine guns had their groundwork laid in 1861-1865.

>Confederacy never had a chance

That's not what London and Paris believed, that's not what Richmond believed, that's not even what many in Washington believed.

Oh look. Another shitposting troll on Veeky Forums What a fucking surprise.

>Apocalyptic
It was nowhere near apocalyptic
>Friend against friend, brother against brother, etc
That happens all the time in a civil war

Nanking was only a tragedy in the minds of the soros-funded agitators. Fact the Japanese were killing soros-funded protesters in Nanking.

They did the same to the Guanche, shame really, there was much we could've learned about the genetic make of early Berber peoples. Shit, there are some that even say they may have been the closest we ever came to seeing living Cro-Magnons

...

>It was literally the first industrial war
no you fucking idiot
that was Crimean war

sorry mate i know the feel =[

cossacks sound like they were biggest scum of poland/russia through their entire existence desu so i dont feel bad for them

>The collective population of the United States of America
He obviously meant beside the USA.
You don't see me posting about the atrocities carried out by the swedes against the scanians when Scania fell into the swedish hands.

Fun fact: Hindenburg was a caddet at the time and at the actual ceremony.

>The collective population of the United States of America
Only the salty losers in the South care tho. They have more monuments up than the North. Really makes you think-

>I choose to be ignorant so this is relevent to no one

It was warfare conducted by the greatest military masterminds of their time. There's a reason why Lee's Maryland Campaign and Jackson's Shenandoah Raids are still studied by military historians world-wide to this day. Sorry your civil war isn't as important.

face it, no one outside of murrica cares about ACW

>Sparta getting rectap ravaged by Thebans so gay that they won't even march straight.

I laugh every time I read it. It's poetic.

Less than one million casualty, something terrible you should see the religious war in France or Germany to see , real terrible civil war

Hence why Northerners are so assblasted over said monuments that they're moving heaven and earth to get them all removed, thinking it will permanently render the South subservient rather than just increasing the number of Southerners who want the Confederacy back.

Really fires those neurons...

The Holocaust

Enough American sissy crap, here's some true bloodbath.

>China massively depopulated from the wars during the Three Memedoms
>Ruling Jin Dynasty has a retarded emperor (when he heard frogs croaking, he asked, in all seriousness, "Do they croak because they want to, or because the government ordered them to?")
>Everyone around him fighting to use him to get themselves more powerful
>Ensuing civil war results in nothing but the weakening of the emperor's clan and massive uncontrollable uprisings by a flood of opportunistic barbarians
>Northern China completely collapses into warring kingdoms ruled by the barbarians mainly from five ethnicities (the Wu Hu)
>Remnants of the Jin flee south
>Han Chinese by the millions fleeing south and west from the slaughterhouse of the Central Plains

>Be Ran Min, of Han ethnicity
>Adopted by the Shi family, rulers of the Kingdom of Later Zhao (belonging to one of the five Wu Hu, the Jie) in northern China
>The Shi family abuses Ran Min, making him detest his adopted family and all barbarians
>Somehow manages to seize control of Later Zhao
>"Gas the barbarians, race war nao!"
>Orders every single Wu Hu within his territory to be put to the sword
>Issues edict allowing Han to arbitrarily slaughter barbarians without penalty
>Even Han people with slight hairy features killed without trial
>Exterminates 200,000 in several days
>Declares a new kingdom of Wei and goes on an unstoppable rampage on all surrounding barbarian states
>Defeats 100,000 soldiers from Zhao refugees with only a couple thousand cavalry
>Other barbarian states pee in their pants at this genocidal maniac
>Barbarian coalition sends 300,000 reinforcements, Ran defeats them with only 110,000
>Proceeds to exterminate 400,000 Xiongnu and 320,000 other people
>Defeats 100,000 Tangut and Yue shi soldiers
>With only 2,000 cavalry crushes 70,000 reinforcements
>At this point, countless refugees of all kinds are trying to escape from Ran Min to avoid their death

>Every barbarian kingdom in the area except one in the northeast demolished, all singlehandedly due to him
>After doing nothing but incessantly wage war over four years, Wei is mostly depleted
>Goes on a invasion with 10,000 soldiers to raid more supplies
>Murong Ke, of the Xianbei ethnicity, surrounds him with 200,000
>After ten battles, Ran Min's army is eventually shattered
>Finally captured and executed, ending his reputation of invincibility
>Ending score: Over 2 million killed, not including civilians
>Total annihilation of the Jie, Xiongnu largely dead
>All major barbarians diminished to the point that, except the Xianbei, they all are to never again play a significant role in Chinese history ever again

Keep in mind China's population at the time was around 25 million.

Fuck off j*hn gr**n