September 7 in Military History

Crusader forces under Richard I of England defeated Saladin's Ayyubid army at Arsuf on the coast of Palestine during the Third Crusade. Richard's disciplined Hospitaller and Templar cavalry held their formation under hours of Turkish horse archery before executing a timed countercharge that broke the Muslim line. The victory secured the coastal road to Jaffa but could not recapture Jerusalem.

Sergeant Ezra Lee piloted David Bushnell's one-man submersible Turtle in the first submarine attack in military history, targeting the British flagship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor. Lee was unable to attach the explosive charge to the ship's copper-sheathed hull and was forced to withdraw, but the attempt demonstrated the potential of underwater warfare and is considered the birth of submarine combat.

Napoleon's Grande Armée fought the Russian army under Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov at Borodino, 75 miles west of Moscow, in one of the bloodiest single-day battles of the Napoleonic Wars. Over 70,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in a frontal assault that Napoleon later called his greatest battle. Though the French held the field, Kutuzov's army withdrew intact, and the pyrrhic victory set the stage for Napoleon's catastrophic retreat from Moscow.

Prince Regent Pedro of Brazil, on the banks of the Ipiranga stream near Sao Paulo, declared Brazil's independence from Portugal with the cry Independencia ou Morte. The subsequent War of Independence lasted 18 months and ended with Portuguese forces defeated at Salvador, Maranhao, and the Cisplatine province. Brazil became an empire under Pedro I and avoided the fragmentation that affected Spanish America.

Representatives of the Qing government and the Eight-Nation Alliance signed the Boxer Protocol in Peking, formally ending the Boxer Rebellion. China was required to pay 450 million taels of silver in reparations over 39 years, permit foreign troops to garrison the railway from the capital to the coast, and execute or exile officials who had supported the Boxers. The treaty effectively reduced the Qing dynasty to a client of the great powers.

The German Luftwaffe launched a massive bombing campaign against London, sending 348 bombers and 617 fighters to pound the British capital. The shift from bombing RAF airfields to cities paradoxically saved Fighter Command from destruction.

Following the start of the Blitz, British Home Forces issued the codeword "Cromwell," indicating that a German invasion was imminent. Church bells were rung across southern England, the prearranged invasion warning signal, and Home Guard units manned their positions. No invasion came, but the false alarm reflected the genuine terror that Britain's darkest hour had arrived.

Australian forces completed the destruction of a Japanese naval landing force at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea, marking the first time in the Pacific War that a Japanese amphibious invasion was decisively defeated on land. The Australian defenders, supported by P-40 Kittyhawk fighters, repelled two Japanese assault waves and killed or captured over 700 enemy troops.

Nikita Khrushchev was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, beginning a decade of leadership that would include the de-Stalinization campaign, the Hungarian Uprising, the Berlin Crisis, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war.

US President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos signed the Panama Canal Treaty and the Neutrality Treaty at OAS headquarters in Washington. The agreements committed the United States to transfer the canal and the Canal Zone to Panama by December 31, 1999, ending 75 years of American military and sovereign control. The Senate ratified both treaties in 1978 by the narrowest of margins.