Argueable, he always complained about what kind of infantry he was getting. I don’t think the result of Breed’s hill would have made much of a difference in what he got. Continental Congress was always skimping on regular forces.
“Get” him?
No one says “get him”. Unless…
GUARDS! SEIZE HIM! SEIZE HIM!
No - they were trying to get far enough south in boats on time to march down New York State before the winter set in, dividing the colonies in two.
Doesn’t Napoleon’s Capture of Moscow count?
Does post #6 count? 
Ah, the old “second paragraph stealth mention.” That’s the third time I’ve fallen for that this week!
How about the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs?
The French managed to fight a much smaller portion of the enemy’s army – almost a universal goal of operational planning is to attack a part of the enemy force with your main strength – and totally crushed it, annihilating it almost to a man. A complete tactical victory.
The victors then withdrew and made peace.
My understanding is that the French king was so impressed by the suicidal fury of the Swiss that he decided prosecuting the war wouldn’t be worthwhile.
Sailboat
Does Chancellorsville count?
Lee won an incredible victory, and yet, Stonewall Jackson was accidently killed by his own men. Lee obviously felt it was a big loss, though it’s unknown if Jackson’s survival would have resulted in a confederate victory.
I think the battle at the Alamo fits the OP.
The importance of the battle was not in the casualties and damage inflicted upon the Mexican army, though the defenders of the Alamo did well against a much larger force.
The goal of the Alamo defenders was to buy time for Sam Houston to raise an army capable of fighting Santa Anna and winning. They knew that Santa Anna could not leave a group of fortified fighters behind his lines on his advance through Texas. Travis and his men delayed the Mexican army for almost two weeks at the cost of all their lives. This delay gave Sam Houston time to move and prepare his army for when the Mexicans resumed their advance.
The Mexican army won a battle that day at the Alamo, but had they left a small force to contain the defenders and advanced the main army on to fight Houston before he was ready for them, the history of Texas would have been a little different.
Didn’t you guys notice that the US was ultimately destroyed?? :smack: What timeline indeed…
-XT
At least the opening phases of it. Germans had hugely successful battles-millions of Russian soldiers captured, large areas of territory take. By the fall of 1940, German troops were at the gates of Moscow. Hitler was even thinking of demobilising several army divisions. Then (of course) came General Mud, General Frost, and General Winter. By the time December rolled around, the Germans had racked up 250,000 casualties-and the Russians were getting harder and harder. The Germans learned the hard way-don’t pick a fight with somebody 5 times your size.
Strictly speaking that was not an invasion. The Soviet troops went in to prop up a government that had come to power in a purely homegrown Communist revolution. It was more like Soviet support for Castro than the occupation of Poland.
At least, it started out that way. Eventually the Soviets started acting more and more like an occupying force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan
Does the Battle of Verdun count? The Germans inflicted heavy casualties and gained some critical ground, but at a great cost to themselves that they could not afford. While the Allied nations lost more people, the Germans simply lost too many relative to their strength, especially with the arrival of US troops in 1917.
Well, it was a mere propping up action until the relatively few Soviet troops in Kabul staged a coup and executed the President of Afghanistan, clearing the way for the Soviet-organized Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee to “invite” the Soviets into the country. So, whether it was an invasion or not is perhaps a matter of perspective.
I’ll disagree with that. I think that Santa Anna was so pumped up enough over the victory and the resulting panic (the Runaway Scrape) that it led to his incredibly stupid decision to split his forces. As a result, he arrived at the San Jacinto battlegroud with significantly fewer troops than he left San Antonio with and that gave Houston the tactical edge that he had been looking for.
Wasn’t the crossing of the Rhine shortly afterwards a mass use of paratroopers ?
I’d certainly agree with that. Similar examples I’d say were:
Battle of Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence.
Easter Rising against the British in Ireland during WW1. Though you could argue it was the decsion to execute some many of those involved afterwards, rather than putting down the rising itself, that proved most costly.
… which was really impressive, considering that they invaded Russia in June of 1941. Damn Nazi Chronostürmtroopen!
Not on the same scale.
John Keegan wrote of the four great parachute operations.
The German, of course, was Crete – successful strategically but tactically a slaughter for the paratroops.
For the Western Allies it was D-Day and Market-Garden (Arnhem)…both also costly, and one an outright disaster.
For the Soviets, it was the Battle of the Dneiper. Dniepr was hideously costly to the paras and deterred the Soviets from future use.
Operation Varsity was a medium-large Allied glider operation, not necessarily the same thing as paratroops proper.
Overall, the record of parachuting into battle in large-scale operations was ineffective, expensive both in terms of training and blood, and fraught with danger. The world’s militaries have, perhaps rightly, moved on to other concepts, such as helicopters, and use parachutes for small-scale insertions only.
Sailboat