I'm gathering research to write a book. I've read and watched many things where militia is next to useless in actual battles, but I'm curious if there's one where they were effective or turned the tide? I know about the American Revolution battles, but those militia received training before they were useful. Anyone know of any others, or is that about it?
USAFisnumber1
Columbus, New Mexico. Pancho Villa was crossing over the border and raiding on the American side. He hit Columbus and ran into a National Guard unit and bunch of locals with guns. They shot the hell out of his bandits. Northfield, MN. The James Gang went into the bank to rob it. Locals saw him, armed themselves and when his gang came out they got the hell shot out of them. If your are looking for a bigger action, the first troops of the USA were nothing but militia, at Lexington and Concord. In the battle of Concord the British had left Boston to seize an arms cache in Concord. They were met by a quickly armed militia in Lexington. They continued onto Concord, holding a key bridge. They were driven back when the militia did a volley fire on them. The British began a retreat and more and more militia came after them. The British started abandoning equipment so they could retreat faster. (Run faster.) The British continued to retreat until they got to a place where they had naval support. I would call that a win for the militia and they had minimal if any training before the fight. Washington in fact had to hire a German officer to train his army. As far as today, the Geneva Conventions recognizes THREE components of a nations military forces. The Regular (full time) forces, the Reserve (Reserve and Guard) and levee en masse. (Civilians taking up arms to drive out an invader.) In other words, the last is the classic idea of a civilian militia. These conventions were signed after WW TWO, in 1949.
Anonymous
Depends what you mean by "militia". Note that in many parts of the world for much of history there were no organised "armies" as we know them in modern times in countries such as the USA and the UK and France. Thus many battles were fought (at least mostly) by "part-time soldiers" on both sides. Some of those "part-time soldiers" might well answer to the description of "militias" that you are asking about.
Note that I am writing about time well before the establishment of the USA, and indeed before European knowledge of the Americas.
Note that your "watching" is watching modern reconstructions of battles, which might have biased coverage. There was no moving image recording before about 1890 - thus WW1 was the first big war in which real movie footage was recorded on the battlefield. Even still photography is less than 200 years old, and could record only static scenes in its first few decades, thus still photos from the American Civil War are "posed".
Paintings of battle scenes in earlier wars were usually from the victor's point of view, and were painted weeks or months after the battles themselves. And remember the old saying, that history is written by the victors.
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The Battle of Marathon
ocularnervosa
Every war up until WWI when the US created a standing army.
Old Man Dirt
Militia units were used during the war of 1812, many of the units who fought in the US Civil war were Militia units. The US continued to depend on militia units through at least the Spanish American war.
As support information consider the names of the units that fought these wars/battles, more then one unit had a name associated with a state.