January 3 in Military History

The trial of Joan of Arc, the teenage peasant girl who had turned the tide of the Hundred Years' War, began at the castle of Rouen under the authority of Bishop Pierre Cauchon. The English-orchestrated proceedings sought to discredit Joan as a heretic and witch, thereby delegitimizing the coronation of Charles VII that she had made possible.

George Washington's Continental Army defeated British forces at Princeton, New Jersey, just ten days after the stunning victory at Trenton. Washington personally led a charge that rallied his wavering troops, rescuing the American Revolution from collapse.

The Delaware legislature rejected a proposal to join the Southern states in secession, keeping the border state firmly in the Union. Though Delaware was a slave state with strong economic ties to the South, its geographic position and small enslaved population made secession impractical. Delaware's loyalty was strategically vital, its loss would have isolated Philadelphia and complicated Union control of the Chesapeake Bay.

German forces fired tear gas grenades (xylyl bromide) at French positions near Nieuwpoort on the Western Front, marking one of the earliest uses of chemical agents in World War I. Though this initial attack was ineffective due to cold temperatures, it foreshadowed the horrific escalation to chlorine and mustard gas that would make chemical warfare one of the defining horrors of the Great War.

The U.S. 1st Marine Division completed its landing at Cape Gloucester on the western tip of New Britain, part of Operation Cartwheel's campaign to isolate the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. The Marines fought through dense jungle and torrential rain against determined Japanese resistance, securing the airfield by mid-January in some of the most miserable conditions of the Pacific War.

The British XV Corps launched its final offensive in the Arakan region of Burma, advancing southward along the coast toward Akyab. The operation was supported by the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions, whose soldiers fought through dense mangrove swamps. Akyab fell the following day after the Japanese withdrew overnight.

Admiral William Halsey's Task Force 38, built around a dozen Essex and Independence class carriers, opened a sweeping raid against Japanese airfields on Formosa and Okinawa. The strikes were designed to suppress kamikaze bases that threatened the imminent Luzon landings, pounding runways, hangars, and shipping across a 1,000-mile arc.

Chinese People's Volunteer Army forces launched a massive offensive across the 38th parallel, driving UN forces southward and capturing Seoul for the second time on January 4. The offensive, involving over 500,000 Chinese and North Korean troops, pushed the front line to the deepest point of UN retreat since the Pusan Perimeter, though it would be reversed by counteroffensives within weeks.

President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the START II treaty in Moscow, agreeing to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads each. The treaty banned all land-based multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), eliminating the most destabilizing weapons of the Cold War.

A U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone strike at Baghdad International Airport killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces. Soleimani had been the architect of Iran's proxy warfare strategy across the Middle East for two decades. His killing brought the United States and Iran to the brink of open war and prompted Iran to launch ballistic missiles at American bases in Iraq.