The year is 1536. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V has taken Provence. The French, who had started this latest war to prosecute their claim to govern Milan the year before, have now found themselves very much on the back foot. Charles, whose long military career was typified by his lack of desire to expand territorially, was nevertheless obsessive about holding on to what lay within his remit as emperor. His patience with France had long been tested and now, with this latest audacious attempt to grab some of his land, it had snapped completely. With a huge army he had quickly secured Milan, driven the French back into their heartland, and is now poised to destroy them. He speaks openly about crushing the country. His mentor the pope provides him with even more money and armies to conquer the entire territory and bring it into the huge conglomeration of Catholic states which he and Charles see as a bulwark against Protestant reform in Europe. In short, the French have bitten off way more than they can chew. They are scuppered, and they know it.

Only winter saves France from immediate annihilation. But spring is well underway now and the great mobilisation of Charles's forces in Provence has begun afresh. The French, without christian allies (only the Ottoman Empire will make treaty with them) or time remaining to replenish their battered army, can only sit and wait for the hammer blow to fall.

But one man - to quote Blackadder - has a cunning plan. Step up one Blaise de Monluc, an impoverished young Gascon, a lesser nobleman who has with his limited means managed to raise an "army" of no more than 50 souls for the French cause. Amazingly he presents himself to his warrior king Francis and begs leave to attack Charles's forces as they mobilise, but not as part of a general assault - simply he and his own little army. The king refuses, though graciously thanks Blaise for his willingness to commit suicide on his behalf. Blaise responds with a "compromise". He will not commit his whole army of 50 to the task, just himself and 10 others. Francis, weary of defeatism and probably worn down by the terrible ennui of waiting for one's own and one's country's execution, thinks "what the hell" and extends his permission to this silly - if gallant - little fool.

de Monluc wastes no time. That very day he selects his men and all eleven of them embark on their assault. So suddenly does he do this that it is only the next day when it is discovered that they have left apparently without artillery and armour. His remaining men have a mass said a few days later for their colleagues' and leader's souls. They are surely already dead.

But they're not dead. In fact they are on their way back from a glorious victory. Early the next day all 11 return to Francis's headquarters to report on their success. Using horses for speed they had approached the small town of Auriol, deep in Provence and deeper within the occupied territory of Charles. While still some distance away they had stabled their steeds and waited for night. Then, wearing only dark clothes and having rubbed earth on their faces and hands they had crept towards their objective, the great riverbank mill in Auriol. Stealthily evading detection by Charles's soldiers they deployed the only weapon besides side-arms they had brought with them, a collection of gunpowder-filled flasks connected with one continuous fuse. This they arrayed in the mill's cellar and in parting, lit. They made good their escape as stealthily and as speedily as they could.

The resulting explosion almost destroyed the whole town of Auriol itself. Milled flour, once agitated and airborne, has a combustible property almost equal to the gunpowder which they had used to ignite it. In a matter of seconds the entire structure had been blown to smithereens with a report so loud it was apparently heard by Charles himself in his own headquarters 20 kilometres away. No one could understand what it signified. They were soon to find out.

Within a few days the unrest among Charles's growing army had broken out as the bread began to disappear. Within a week the defections had started, and within two weeks it was obvious to Charles that retreat was the only option. Blaise de Monluc's operation had blown up the only mill in the entire region equipped to produce enough flour to feed an army the size of which Charles had assembled. No one was killed. No one was even injured. But the war, Charles knew, was lost.

de Monluc went on to become a great military leader in his own right, as well as a writer of military strategy which became textbook reading for generations of commanders that followed.

Any other daring raids from history you know of?

Would we include the Nizari Assassins among special forces?

Two of their number killed Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem in 1192, amongst others.

The crusades produced quite a lot of special ops incidents, probably not surprising given the nature of much of the warfare that they entailed in which opponents often held well fortified bases for lengthy periods and did not normally engage in open battle with large scale committment of troops. Selective assassinations, sneak raids and (sometimes quite literally) underground activity were often used to gain important strategic advances and even outright victory at certain points during the two centuries of hostilities.

Whether or not you believe it actually happened, the story of Gideon in the Old Testament's Book of Judges has been described as one of the earliest accounts of a Special Op - a small, hand-picked team using stealth and specialist weapons to defeat a far larger conventional force.

The 1560s provide not 1 but 2 accounts of special forces operations from opposite ends of the earth.

1565 – During the Siege of Malta a small force of hand-picked Spanish marines under Garcia de Toledo made a daring night-time landing behind the lines of the massive Ottoman forces besieging the Knights Hospitaller on the island. Securing the beachhead they were thus able to facilitate a larger force from Sicily to land at dawn. The surprise of the Ottomans quickly turned to confusion and panic and they were then routed by a force which was in fact 3 times smaller than their own numbers. But they weren’t to know that. The victory marked the beginning of the end of the myth of Ottoman invincibility.

1561 – During a civil war between various Japanese clans, the wife and baby son of a young 18-year-old Matsudaira clan leader were being held hostage by the neighbouring Imagawa clan. The clansman hired 80 ninja to infiltrate the Imagawa’s fortress at Kaminojo at night and sieze the family of an Imagawa clan leader. The 80 ninja did so successfully and also killed hundreds of Imagawa clan warriors in the process. Japanese society was shocked because clan leaders were generally of Samurai class and hitherto looked down on ninja as being both low class and also dishonourable. The coup, however, achieved its purpose and the clansman was able to free his own family in exchange for his new captives. This young Samurai breaker of rules would become known to history as the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Vizzer wrote:

The 1560s provide not 1 but 2 accounts of special forces operations from opposite ends of the earth.

1565 – During the Siege of Malta a small force of hand-picked Spanish marines under Garcia de Toledo made a daring night-time landing behind the lines of the massive Ottoman forces besieging the Knights Hospitaller on the island. Securing the beachhead they were thus able to facilitate a larger force from Sicily to land at dawn. The surprise of the Ottomans quickly turned to confusion and panic and they were then routed by a force which was in fact 3 times smaller than their own numbers. But they weren’t to know that. The victory marked the beginning of the end of the myth of Ottoman invincibility.

1561 – During a civil war between various Japanese clans, the wife and baby son of a young 18-year-old Matsudaira clan leader were being held hostage by the neighbouring Imagawa clan. The clansman hired 80 ninja to infiltrate the Imagawa’s fortress at Kaminojo at night and sieze the family of an Imagawa clan leader. The 80 ninja did so successfully and also killed hundreds of Imagawa clan warriors in the process. Japanese society was shocked because clan leaders were generally of Samurai class and hitherto looked down on ninja as being both low class and also dishonourable. The coup, however, achieved its purpose and the clansman was able to free his own family in exchange for his new captives. This young Samurai breaker of rules would become known to history as the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Vizzer, read your two examples with great interest as the original post of nordmann...

Where do you find all this...I am a bit envious ...

Kind regards from Paul.

I'm glad you found them interesting Paul. The main source of reference regarding the Great Siege of Malta is the contemporary account by Francisco Balbi di Correggio published in 1567 under the rather lengthy title:

La Verdadera Relacion De Todo Loq este año de MDLXV ha sucedido en la Isla de Malta, dende antes que la armada del gran turco Soliman llegasse sobre ella, hasta la llegada del socorro postrero del poderosissimo y catolico Rey de España don Phelipe nuestro señor segudo deste nombre.
 
(A true account of all that took place in the year 1565 on the Island of Malta from before the arrival of the armada of the Great Turk Suleiman until the arrival of the final relief force of the most powerful and catholic King of Spain our lord Philip the second of that name.)
   
Balbi was a Spanish soldier who took part in the action and kept a journal. I’m not aware of any accounts giving the Ottoman side of the story but I’m sure that there probably are some. A good English-language history of the siege is Malta 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades by Tim Pickles published in 1998.       

The story of the attack on Kaminogo comes from Mikawa Go-fudoki (the Mikawa gazettes) a series of 17th century documents relating to the administration of the Mikawa province. A classic English-language text on the subject is The Maker of Modern Japan: the life of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1937) by Arthur Lindsay Sadler. It’s been re-published many times since.

Thanks a lot Vizzer for the sources.

Kind regards from Paul.

There was a programme on at the weekend about Alexander's capture of the Sogdian Rock.

300 volunteers ascended the cliff arriving unexpectedly behind the defenders who gave up despite still holding a large numerical advantage. 30 of the Macedonian mountaineers died in the climb:

Arrian: The Sogdian Rock.

Triceratops,

wasn't the trick of Wolfe to led the 78th highlanders up to the Plains of Abraham not a bit similar. I discussed the battle in every detail with a pro French Canadian on a French forum and I think it is still there.



http://www.jackmitchell.ca/plainsofabraham/history/

From the site:
A sizeable number of large and small vessels from the English fleet had been slipping upstream, past the guns of the citadel, for some weeks. This allowed the English another flank - though one no less heavily fortified - to threaten. Montcalm countered by detaching three thousand men under Bougainville to guard his lines of communication in that direction. Wolfe's rash plan was to assemble a force of about 4 500 men of his army in his transports upstream of Quebec and use the rest to divert Montcalm's attention with a feint attack towards Beauport. The main force would land at a small cove below the Plains of Abraham called L'Anse-au-Foulon, scale the cliffs, and confront the enemy on the battlefield. Helped by word that a supply convoy was expected on the night of the 12th, Wolfe scheduled the desperate attack for that night.


Montcalm, meanwhile, was not as certain as some of his officers that the English would abandon the siege, though he could not be sure where or when a last attack might come. He had slept in uniform since the beginning of the siege, but now he could not sleep at all. With Bougainville patrolling the shore upstream, and scouts continually watching the Beauport shore, there was little more he could do. He walked the defences at all hours.

On the moonless night of the 12th, the English forces crossed the St. Lawrence. Impersonating the supply convoy, officers of the 78th Fraser Highlanders, fluent in French, managed to trick the sentries, and the unwatchful guards at the top (led by the infamous Vergor) were overpowered. The English and Highland regiments followed up the steep path and had taken a strong position on the Plains of Abraham by early morning.

Kind regards from Paul.

Timeo Danaos ut dona ferentes.


Like Gideon, the Trojan War may, or may not, be historical. Ager Falernus (oxen with torches tied to their horns) pretty certainly is, so a revised latest possible inception date of 217 BCE can be asserted with some confidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ager_Falernus