Washington, with 7,000 Americans, while pursued by 20,000 British and Hessians under Lord Cornwallis, captured a Hessian advance column at Trenton (Dec. 25, 1776) and destroyed a British detachment at Princeton, (Jan. 3, 1777). * * * * * Bonaparte, with 30,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 40 cannon, invaded Italy, (March 26, 1796) which was defended by 100,000 Piedmontese and Austrian regulars under Generals Colli and Beaulieu. In fifteen days he had captured the former, driven the latter to his own country and compelled Piedmont to sign a treaty of peace and alliance with France. At Castiglione, Arcole, Bassano and Rivoli, with an army not exceeding 40,000 men Bonaparte destroyed four Austrian armies, each aggregating about 100,000 men. * * * * * At Wagram, Napoleon, with less than 100,000 men, overthrew the main Austrian army of 150,000 men, foiled the attempts at succor of the secondary Austrian army of 40,000 men, and compelled Austria to accept peace with France. In the campaign of 1814, Napoleon, with never more than 70,000 men, twice repulsed from the walls of Paris and drove backward nearly to the Rhine River an allied army of nearly 300,000 Austrians, Prussians and Russians. * * * * * In the year 480 B.C., Xerxes, King of Persia, invaded Greece with an army, which by Herodotus, Plutarch and Isocrates, is estimated at 2,641,610 men at arms and exclusive of servants, butlers, women and camp followers. Arriving at the Pass of Thermopolae, the march of the invaders was arrested by Leonidas, King of Sparta, with an army made up of 300 Spartans, 400 Thebans, 700 Thespians, 1,000 Phocians and 3,000 from various Grecian States, posted behind a barricade built across the entrance. This celebrated defile is about a mile in length. It runs between Mount Oeta and an impassible morass, which forms the edge of the Gulf of Malia and at each end is so narrow that a wagon can barely pass. Xerxes at once sent a herald who demanded of the Grecians the surrender of their arms, to which Leonidas replied: “_Come and take them._” On the fifth day the Persian army attacked, but was unable to force an entrance into the pass. On the sixth day the Persian Immortals likewise were repulsed, and on the seventh day these troops again failed. That night Ephialtes, a Malian, informed Xerxes of a foot path around the mountains to the westward, and a Persian detachment was sent by a night march en surprise against the Grecian rear. On the approach of this hostile body, the Phocians, who had been detailed by Leonidas to guard this path, abandoned their post without fighting and fled to the summit of the mountains, leaving the way open to the enemy, who, wasting no time in pursuit, at once marched against the rear of the Grecian position.