November 27 in Military History

At the Council of Clermont in France, Pope Urban II preached a sermon calling for Christian warriors to march east and reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim rule. The call ignited nearly two centuries of religious warfare between Christendom and the Islamic world and reshaped European military organization, logistics, and castle-building for generations.

The remnants of George Washington's Continental Army reached Hackensack, New Jersey, continuing the desperate retreat across New Jersey after the fall of Fort Lee. With his force reduced to roughly 3,000 men and winter approaching, Washington's survival depended on crossing the Delaware River before British pursuit under Charles Cornwallis could catch him.

Union forces under General George Meade advanced against Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia along Mine Run in Virginia. After reconnoitering the heavily fortified Confederate positions, Meade wisely decided against a frontal assault, avoiding the kind of slaughter that had occurred at Fredericksburg a year earlier. The decision to withdraw without attacking closed the 1863 campaigning season in the Eastern Theater.

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry in a dawn attack on a Cheyenne village along the Washita River in Indian Territory. Chief Black Kettle, a peace chief who had survived the Sand Creek Massacre four years earlier, was killed along with his wife. The engagement remains deeply controversial: the Army called it a battle, while many historians and Native Americans consider it a massacre of a peaceful encampment.

Secretary of War Elihu Root officially established the U.S. Army War College in Washington, D.C., as part of his comprehensive reform of the Army following the organizational failures of the Spanish-American War. The institution was created to prepare senior officers for strategic-level command and staff duties, and it remains the Army's premier institution for professional military education and strategic leadership development.

The French Navy scuttled 77 warships at Toulon, including 3 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, and 12 submarines, to prevent their capture by Nazi Germany during Operation Anton. The mass scuttling, one of the most dramatic acts of self-destruction in naval history, destroyed Vichy France's last significant military asset. Several submarines managed to escape and sailed to North Africa to join the Allies.

Approximately 4,000 tons of high explosives detonated at the underground RAF Fauld munitions depot in Staffordshire, England, in the largest non-nuclear explosion of the Second World War. The blast killed 70 people, destroyed a dairy farm and gypsum mine, and forced a fundamental review of British munitions storage practices for the remainder of the war.

Some 120,000 Chinese troops attacked 30,000 Marines and soldiers at the Chosin Reservoir in minus-35-degree temperatures. The ensuing 17-day fighting withdrawal, one of the most brutal in military history, earned its survivors the name "The Chosin Few."

The Pentagon informed President Lyndon B. Johnson that troop levels in Vietnam needed to increase from 120,000 to 400,000 if planned operations were to succeed. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended the massive escalation despite growing private doubts about the war's winnability. This recommendation committed the United States to a major ground war in Southeast Asia that would consume the next decade.

General William Westmoreland authorized preliminary staff work on Operation Fracture Jaw, a contingency plan to introduce tactical nuclear weapons into South Vietnam to relieve the besieged Marine combat base at Khe Sanh, before President Lyndon Johnson countermanded the project once he learned of it.