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BattleofSluys

Melee aboard ships at the Battle of Sluys 1340 (BNF Fr. 2643, 15th century)

Battle of Lutzen

Battle of Lützen by Carl Wahlbom depicting a melee in which King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed on 6 November 1632.

Melee (/ˈml/ or /ˈmɛl/, French: mêlée [mɛle]) or pell-mell battle generally refers to disorganized hand-to-hand combat in battles fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts.[1]

In the 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, Sir Thomas North uses the term 'pelmel' to refer to a disorganized retreat.[2] The phrase was later used in its current spelling in Shakespeare's Richard III, 1594:

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The phrase comes from the French expression pêle-mêle, a rhyme based on the old French mesler, meaning to mix or mingle. [2][3]

The French term melee was first used in English in c. 1640 (also derived from the old French mesler,[4] but the Old French stem survives in medley and meddle).[1]

In military aviation, a melee has been described as "[a]n air battle in which several aircraft, both friend and foe, are confusingly intermingled".[5]

Lord Nelson described his tactics for the Battle of Trafalgar as inducing a "pell mell battle" focused on engagements between individual ships where the superior morale and skill of the Royal Navy would prevail.[6]

The destroyer night action of the second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942, was so chaotic, and the opposing ships so intermingled, that an officer on USS Monssen later likened it to "a barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out".[7]

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