We Have Reserves: Difference between revisions
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* During the battle at Guilford Courthouse during the American Revolution, Lord Cornwallis found his army facing severe defeat and ordered his artillery to fire grapeshot into the mass of men on the plain, American and British alike. The tactic worked and the Americans withdrew, [[Was It Really Worth It?|but at a shattering cost to Cornwallis's army]].
* In the US Civil War, Union General Grant was accused of this, being given the appellation "Butcher" Grant by some on the Union side after his high-casualty battles in Virginia. But he didn't spend his men needlessly (and deeply mourned the battle of Cold Harbour, the one high-casualty battle that was genuinely pointless), and was distinguished from previous Union generals by ''advancing'' after high-casualty battles rather than retreating, something which made the men happy because they could see they were actually making progress.
** Official policy of the North was that, as succession was illegal, the south never left the US. Under that, Sherman's march to the sea was destroying settlements that nominally ''belonged to his side'' en masse to deny their resources to the enemy.
* Some [[WWI]] commanders would shoot those attempting to retreat without orders, or who refused to go over the trenches. It was a sort of preemptive punishment for treason. Although the number of men so shot is grossly overexaggerated, there were men who were under ''two'' suspended sentences of death for desertion or sleeping at their posts. The armies on all sides got so sick of this that many of them mutinied late in the war and refused to take place in any further assaults on the enemy, as it always just resulted in piles of bodies and minimal progress.
** The entire point of the WWI strategy of [[wikipedia:Attrition warfare|attrition warfare]] was basically "we have '''more''' reserves than them!", with the result being the "lost generation".
** General Charles Mangin, a French division commander and Nivelle's right-hand man, is alleged to have given the following pep talk just before an attack:
{{quote|"Gentlemen, we attack tomorrow. The first wave will be killed. The second also. And the third. A few men from the fourth will reach their objective. The fifth wave will capture the position. Thank you, gentlemen."}}
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