History LastStand / RealLife

* In the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans, Thespians, Thebans, and likely the helots of the Spartans stayed and fought to cover the Greek retreat after they were outflanked by the Persians. Note that Spartan law forbade them to retreat.

* In the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans and Thespians stayed and fought to cover the Greek retreat after they were outflanked by the Persians. Note that Spartan law forbade them to retreat.

* A One-Man example occured during the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan Battle of Saipan]] of the Pacific War, with the US Army Soldier [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Baker_(Medal_of_Honor_recipient) Thomas Baker]]. During the battle, the Japanese launched a massive [[ZergRush Banzai Charge]] against the American forces. For several hours, Baker & his men desperately tried to fight off waves of Japanese forces attacking their position, even fighting when seriously wounded and when forced to resort to hand-to-hand combat. Eventually running out of ammunition, the Squad was forced to withdraw. Baker, mortally wounded, was carried by a fellow infantryman; but when that soldier was injured, he ordered his men to fall back to save themselves and leave him behind. The men then placed Baker against a tree and left him with a pistol, with only 8 rounds of ammunition. Later, when the soldiers recaptured the position, they found Baker dead at the same tree still holding the pistol, with ''all 8 bullets fired, and 8 dead Japanese soldiers lying before him.'' For his actions, Thomas Baker was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

*** The next morning, it was the Americans' turn for a small force to encounter surprise battleships; in this case, the Center Force found Taffy 3, a small escort group, in their way. Given that the Center Force included ''Yamato'', which outweighed Taffy 3 in its entirety, along with 3 other battleships (Nagato, Kongo, and Haruna), 8 cruisers (6 heavy, 2 light), and 11 destroyers, Taffy 3 couldn't possibly defeat it or flee (escort carriers aren't exactly known for high speed)... so instead, they attacked, hoping to at least buy time for Halsey to listen to their signals and come defend the land-based troops after they were sunk. In the process, they lost ''Johnston'', ''Hoel'', ''Samuel B. Roberts'', ''Gambier Bay'', and ''St. Lo'' (5 out of their 13 ships) but managed to confuse Admiral Kurita into thinking that he was attacking a major American fleet (the one that was actually off on a wild goose chase) and that reinforcements were inbound (they were, but they'd only just been detached from the main fleet and would take some time to arrive), leading him to order a retreat when he was actually on the cusp of victory.

* A One-Man example occured during the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan Battle of Saipan]] of the Pacific War, with the US Army Soldier [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Baker_(Medal_of_Honor_recipient) Thomas Baker]]. During the battle, the Japanese launched a massive [[ZergRush Banzai Charge]] against the American forces. For several hours, Baker & his men desperately tried to fight off the waves of Japanese soldiers attacking their position, even fighting when seriously wounded and being resorted to hand-to-hand combat. Eventually running out of ammunition, the Squad was forced to withdraw. Baker, mortally wounded, was carried by a fellow infantryman; but when the soldier was injured, he ordered his men to fall back to save themselves and leave him behind. The men then placed Baker against a tree and left him with a pistol, with only 8 rounds of ammunition. Later, when the soldiers recaptured the position, they found Baker dead against the tree, with ''all 8 bullets fired, and 8 dead Japanese soldiers lying before him.'' For his actions, Thomas Baker was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

* A One-Man example occured during the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan Battle of Saipan]] of the Pacific War, with the Marine [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Baker_(Medal_of_Honor_recipient) Thomas Baker]]. During the battle, the Japanese launched a massive [[ZergRush Banzai Charge]] against the American forces. For several hours, Baker & his men desperately tried to fight off the waves of Japanese soldiers attacking their position, even fighting when seriously wounded and even resorting to hand-to-hand combat. Eventually running out of ammunition, the Squad's Marines were forced to withdraw; Baker, mortally wounded, was carried by a fellow marine, but when the marine was injured, he ordered his men to fall back to save themselves and leave him behind. The men then placed Baker against a tree and left him with a pistol, with only 8 rounds of ammunition. Later, when the marines recaptured the position, they found Baker dead against the tree, with ''all 8 bullets fired, and 8 dead Japanese soldiers lying before him.'' For his actions, Thomas Baker was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

* Speaking of Carthage, during the Third Punic War, the Carthaginian people knew that it was all over for them. Rome had backed them into a corner and forced them to war with impossible demands. Their response? An all-out defense of their city, holding the Romans at bay for ''three years'' (it also helped that Rome was busy with the UsefulNotes/LusitanianWars and the conquest of Greece) and eventually requiring Rome to send their best man, the rising star Scipio Aemilianus. When the Romans finally battered their way in, fighting house-to-house, the Punics sold their lives and city as dear as they could before being crushed. Rome won the war but paid a very high price, and Aemilianus himself was seen to weep over the destruction, as it made him reflect that the same that had happened to Carthage might happen some day to Rome (and he was right).

* The Aztecs may have been bloodthirsty conquerors, but nobody, not even the Spaniards, ever called them cowards. Even with most of their empire now filing up the enemy ranks and out for revenge, racked with diseases they couldn't fight, and up against vastly superior technology, they fought like maniacs to defend their capital of Tenochtitlan against UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and his MultiNationalTeam. Hugh Thomas said: "For a time, (Cortés) and his friends seem to have been looked upon by some Mexica at least as being reincarnations of deities. But in the end, to be honest, it had been the Mexica who fought like gods."

!!Ancient to early modern

* During the Third Punic War, the Carthaginian people knew that it was all over for them. Rome had backed them into a corner and forced them to war with impossible demands. Their response? An all-out defense of their city, holding the Romans at bay for ''three years,'' and when the Romans finally battered their way in, fighting house-to-house and selling their lives and city as dear as they could. Rome won the war but paid a very high price, and Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman general in command, was seen to weep over the destruction, as it made him reflect that the same that happened to Carthage might happen some day to Rome (and he was right).

* A battle in Puerto Rico in 1514 could serve as a proof of how crazy the Spanish Conquest of America was. During UsefulNotes/JuanPonceDeLeon's rule of the island, a warlike Caribe tribe attacked their settlements, so reinforcements were sent in headed by Capitán Sancho de Arango and nothing less than Ponce de León's attack dog Becerrillo, who was known for being fearsome and amazingly intelligent. The defenders were forced to retreat to the house of Pedro Mexía, a mulatto conquistador (yep, that was a thing) who was married to Luisa, a baptized chieftainess of an allied native tribe (that was a thing too), and there they faced the Caribes, with Pedro and Luisa [[BattleCouple fighting side by side]] until the defenders were all killed or captured. Becerrillo managed to escape, but seeing Sancho was being carried away alive, the dog attacked the Caribes and killed many of them until freeing the Spaniard, at the cost of being killed himself by a poisoned arrow.
* The Aztecs may have been bloodthirsty conquerors, but nobody, not even the Spaniards, ever called them cowards. Even with most of their empire now filing up the enemy ranks, racked with diseases they couldn't fight, and up against vastly superior technology, they fought like maniacs to defend their capital of Tenochtitlan against UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and his MultiNationalTeam. Hugh Thomas said: "For a time, (Cortés) and his friends seem to have been looked upon by some Mexica at least as being reincarnations of deities. But in the end, to be honest, it had been the Mexica who fought like gods."
* During the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527) 1527 Sack of Rome]], the [[PraetorianGuard Swiss Guards]], who numbered only one hundred and eighty-nine, stood up to an invading force of more than twenty thousand mutineering mercenaries from Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, fighting on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. Their final stand allowed the Pope to escape to the Castel Sant'Angelo, and once the occupation of Rome ended, the Swiss Guards were reconstituted and remained the Holy See's guards into the modern day. This event is considered so central to the ethos of the Guard that all new recruits to the Guard are sworn in on the anniversary of this event, May 6.
* The 1539 Siege of Castelnuovo earned the popular nickname of the "Spanish Thermopylae" on its sheer insanity. To sum it up, a Spanish contingent of 4,000 from the ''Tercio de Nápoles'' captured the Ottoman bulwark of Castelnuovo (modern day Herceg Novi, Montenegro), but when the Ottomans sent in a relief army, the Spaniards found themselves surrounded by ''50,000'' enemies headed by the famous Turk admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa. The defenders were offered to surrender honourably the place, but despite knowing nobody would help them because the allied fleets were in a ravaged state and the nearest Christian states wouldn't collaborate, they answered with the unanimous BadassBoast ''que vengan cuando quieran'' ("let them come whenever they want"). A massive two-week siege took place, in whose course the defenders inflicted utterly massive casualties in the Ottomans before being killed almost to the last of them.
* Another instance was the Battle of Rocroi in 1643, traditionally considered the point where the aura of invincibility of the Spanish ''tercios'' was shattered, although it could also considered an excellent showcase of discipline in the face of terrible circumstances. The battle saw French general Condé capitalizing on his superior cavalry to break the Spanish lines in two with a frontal charge CrazyEnoughToWork, after which Spanish general Francisco de Melo essentially lost control of his army, saw the non-Spaniards elements routing, and opted to entrench himself with the remnants to wait for promised reinforcements. Despite being virtually encircled and bombarded by enemy cavalry, infantry ''and'' artillery, the Spaniards' resistance was so strong that Condé, still not wanting to be enveloped by the arriving army, opted to offer the survivors generous terms of surrender and basically let them withdraw. Ironically, the reinforcements never came, as their general had left Melo for dead.

* [[UsefulNotes/{{Blackbeard}} Edward Teach, A.K.A Blackbeard]] and his crew made their (unexpected, since they were about to retire) last stand against Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who laid an ambush on his crew. Before the battle began, Blackbeard reportedly [[BadassBoast said]] "[[BloodKnight Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you.]]". A fierce [[BigBadassBattleSequence battle]] ensued between the two crews, [[OneManArmy Blackbeard]] proceeded to slaughter the greatest number of people he could, and managed to survive five shots and ''twenty'' stabs. Ultimately, Blackbeard and Maynard ended up locked in a fierce duel amidst the battle, when Blackbeard was about to kill Maynard once and for all, a British sailor attacked him from behind, sliced his neck ''and'' chopped off his head, finally killing [[ImplacableMan Blackbeard]]. The rest of his crew put up a fight even after the fact, but were outnumbered by the Sailors and ultimately surrendered.
* UsefulNotes/MusashiboBenkei deserves special mention, despite being listed in the first Website/{{Cracked}} article, as he codified the DiedStandingUp trope while engaged in this one. After fighting to buy time for his lord [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled to commit]] {{Seppuku}}, none of the enemy wanted to test his wrath, believing him to be ''a demon from hell'', as he'd killed 300 soldiers that had tried to cross. It was only after a long while that they realized he had died, due to their fear to approach. Medically speaking, it's believed that the lactic acid his muscles produced from the fighting caused a sudden onset of rigor mortis, causing his body to "lock up" while still standing [[RuleOfCool and holding his halberd]]. He has a small shrine today where this happened.

* As the capital of the Khwarazmian Empire was finally breached by the Mongols In 1219, the Shah Inalchuq responded by taking roughly 1/10 of the cities garrison (~1000 people) with him and barricading himself inside the citadel. What followed was a brutal, room to room assault that saw ten Mongols die for every Khwarazmian and which lasted for over a month. Eventually, Inalchuq and his two remaining bodyguards was cornered in the attic of the citadel and was at that point out of anything resembling ammunition, so the trio [[DefiantStoneThrow proceeded to dislodge bricks from the walls and throw them down the staircase at the attackers.]] History doesn't tell how long this final act lasted, but its said that several mongol soldiers actually died from the rock barrage before Inalchuq was finally captured and reportedly [[CruelAndUnusualDeath executed by having molten silver poured over his head.]]

* A battle in Puerto Rico in 1514 could serve as a proof of how insane the Spanish Conquest of America was. During UsefulNotes/JuanPonceDeLeon's rule of the island, a warlike Caribe tribe attacked their settlements, so reinforcements were sent in headed by Capitán Sancho de Arango and nothing less than Ponce de León's attack dog Becerrillo, who was known for being fearsome and amazingly intelligent. The defenders were forced to retreat to the house of Pedro Mexía, a mulatto conquistador (yep, that was a thing) who was married to Luisa, a baptized chieftainess of an allied native tribe (that was a thing too), and there they faced the Caribes, with Pedro and Luisa [[BattleCouple fighting side by side]] until the defenders were all killed or captured. Becerrillo managed to escape, but seeing Sancho was being carried away alive, the dog attacked the Caribes and killed many of them until freeing the Spaniard, at the cost of being killed himself by a poisoned arrow.

* The 1539 Siege of Castelnuovo earned the popular nickname of the "Spanish Thermopylae" on its sheer insanity. To sum it up, a Spanish contingent of 4,000 men from the ''Tercio de Nápoles'' captured the Ottoman bulwark of Castelnuovo (modern day Herceg Novi, Montenegro), but when the Ottomans sent in a relief army, the Spaniards found themselves surrounded by ''50,000'' enemies headed by the famous Turk admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa. The Spaniards were offered to surrender honourably the place, but despite knowing nobody would help them because the Christian fleets were in a ravaged state and the nearest Christians wouldn't collaborate, they answered with the unanimous BadassBoast ''que vengan cuando quieran'' ("let them come whenever they want"). A massive two-week siege took place, in whose course the Spaniards inflicted utterly massive casualties in the Ottomans before being killed almost all of them.

* The Theban Sacred Band (a homosexual warrior fraternity) at the Battle of Chaeronea did ''even better'' than the Spartans and Thespiae at Thermopylae. Not "just" guarding a mountain pass they stood in the open field and thumbed their collective noses at UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat himself. Unlike the Spartans however, their cause [[DoomedMoralVictor died]] [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife with them.]]
* During the Third Punic War, the Carthaginian people knew that it was all over for them... Rome had backed them into a corner and forced them to war with impossible demands. Their response? An all-out defense of their city, holding the Romans at bay for ''three years,'' and when the Romans finally battered their way in, fighting house-to-house and selling their lives and city as dear as they could. Rome won the war but paid a very high price, and Scipio, the Roman general in command, was seen to weep over the destruction.

* During the 1539 Siege of Castlenuovo, popularly called the Spanish Thermopylae, a Spanish contingent from the ''Tercio de Nápoles'' of around 4,000 men stood its ground against an Ottoman army numbering the 50,000, inflicting utterly massive casualties before being killed.

%%* Battle of Thermopylae. Note that Spartan law forbade them to retreat.
%%-->''"Go tell the Spartans, passer-by, that here, by Spartan law, we lie."''
%%--->-- '''Simonides''', epitaph for the Spartan dead at the Battle of Thermopylae

%%* RememberTheAlamo!
* In the months following the end of the Civil War, the US government resumed its focus on westward expansion, ordering the Army to establish forts along the Bozeman Trail. Fearing encroachment, Sioux Chief Red Cloud formed a [[EnemyMine tenuous alliance]] with the Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne to resist this move, kicking off Red Cloud's War. On December 21st, 1866 a large war party led by Oglala war chief Man Afraid of His Horses ([[NonIndicativeName who was actually a serious badass]]) and his [[YoungFutureFamousPeople young protege Crazy Horse]] attacked a woodcutting party to draw out the defenders of Fort Phil Kearny. Captain William Fetterman took the bait and led 81 cavalry and mounted infantry (most of whom were brand-new recruits with only the most rudimentary training; some hadn’t even fired their weapons yet) to respond. One of the only experienced Soldiers was Private Adolf Metzger, a German immigrant and Civil War combat veteran who was assigned as bugler. A notorious GloryHound, Fetterman ignored orders not to cross Lodge Trail Ridge and led his force out of range of the fort’s artillery, and straight into an ambush by over 1,000 warriors. The CurbStompBattle was over in less than twenty minutes, and a patrol from the fort that evening found all 81 men dead (in exchange for about a dozen Indian casualties). 80 of them had been stripped naked, scalped, gruesomely mutilated, and left face-down, but Adolf Metzger’s body was untouched apart from the wounds that killed him, and was not only still in his uniform, but left face-up and covered in a buffalo skin, with his bent and blood-covered bugle placed on his chest. According to Lakota accounts of the battle, the untrained US soldiers quickly panicked and lost all unit cohesion. Fetterman failed to direct his men to any effect and is said by some to have killed himself. Metzger tried in vain to rally the new recruits into something resembling a cohesive defense but was soon the last white man left alive. He fired his pistol until it ran dry, and then fought several warriors in close combat, swinging his bugle as a bludgeon, killing at least one of his attackers with it before being fatally wounded himself. Man Afraid of His Horses witnessed Metzger's bravery and [[WorthyOpponent ordered that he be honored in death]], exempting his body from mutilation and, according to Lakota custom, sending him to the afterlife as a hero. When the Oglala warriors celebrated their victory the following night, Crazy Horse himself sang a death song in honor of Private Metzger.

* UsefulNotes/TheFallOfConstantinople in AD 1453 marked the end of the Roman Empire, which had been by far the most ancient country in the Western world, 2,206 years old. The last emperor, Constantine XI, chose to go out with a fight, rather than have the empire dismantled by submitting to the Ottoman sultan. With the Roman army barely being a city garrison by this point, he managed to get 7,000 defenders inside the city, both Greek and foreign. The night before the final battle, native Orthodox and foreign Catholic defenders held a joint service in the Hagia Sophia. The emperor's final address to his troops was as fitting as one could be for such an occasion, [[ItHasBeenAnHonor thanking them]] for their service and calling them "worthy heirs of the heroes of Ancient Greece and Rome." During the final assault, when the Ottomans finally breached the defenses, the emperor said, "The city is fallen, yet I am alive," and led his remaining troops in one last charge. His body was never found, and he became the Greek people's KingInTheMountain.

* The Battle of Stamford Bridge, Harold Godwinson's 1066 battle against Harald Hardrada, had one of these, as the Norwegian forces retreated across the eponymous bridge in order to regroup and prepare for battle after a devastating English attack. As they retreated across the bridge, a lone viking volunteered to stay behind and hold off the English. He took down around forty men on his own, before a Saxon soldier got the better of him by floating under the bridge and hitting him from below with a spear.

* During the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527) 1527 Sack of Rome]], the [[PraetorianGuard Swiss Guards]], who numbered only one hundred and eighty-nine, stood up to an invading force of more than twenty thousand mutineering mercenaries from Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, fighting on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. Their final stand allowed the Pope to escape to the Castel Sant'Angelo, and once the occupation of Rome ended, the Swiss Guards were reconstituted and remained the Holy See's guards into the modern day. This event is considered so central to the ethos of the Guard that all new recruits to the Guard are sworn in on the anniversary of this event, May 6.

* During the Third Punic War, the Carthaginian people knew that it was all over for them...Rome had backed them into a corner and forced them to war with impossible demands. Their response? An all-out defense of their city, holding the Romans at bay for ''three years,'' and when the Romans finally battered their way in, fighting house-to-house and selling their lives and city as dear as they could. Rome won the war but paid a very high price, and Scipio, the Roman general in command, was seen to weep over the destruction.
* The Aztecs may have been bloodthirsty conquerors, but nobody ever called them cowards. Even with their empire mostly revolted against them, racked with diseases they couldn't fight, and up against vastly superior technology, they fought like maniacs to defend their capital of Tenochtitlan. Hugh Thomas said: "For a time, (Cortes) and his friends seem to have been looked upon by some Mexica at least as being reincarnations of deities. But in the end, to be honest, it had been the Mexica who fought like gods."
* As the capital of the Khwarazmian Empire was finally breached by the Mongols In 1219, the Shah Inalchuq responded by taking roughly 1/10 of the cities garrison (~1000 people) with him and barricading himself inside the citadel. What followed was a brutal, room to room assault that saw ten Mongols die for every Khwarazmian and which lasted for over a month. Eventually, Inalchuq and his two remaining bodyguards was cornered in the attic of the citadel and was at that point out of anything resembling ammunition, so the trio [[DefiantStoneThrow proceeded to dislodge bricks from the walls and throw them down the staircase at the attackers.]] History doesn't tell how long this final act lasted, but its said that several mongol soldiers actually died from the rock barrage before Inalchuq was finally captured and reportedly [[CruelAndUnusualDeath executed by having molten silver poured over his head.]]