The military death toll was approximately how many?

• A. 164,000
• B. 264,000
• C. 64,000
• D. 364,000

Answer: (B)

Casualty numbers come from combining many sources—official records, unit rosters, hospital and burial data, and historians’ later work—so they’re given as approximate ranges rather than exact counts. For this particular conflict, the most commonly cited figure for military deaths sits around a quarter of a million, about 264,000. This middle estimate reflects both deaths in combat and those who died from war-related causes while in service, aligning with credible archival tallies and scholarly reviews.

Why the other amounts don’t fit as well: numbers much lower don’t match the scale of the campaigns and the typical loss rates reported in sources, while a figure as high as 364,000 would exceed the standard consensus for this event. So the around-264,000 figure best matches the widely accepted estimates, given the available records and the need to acknowledge uncertainty.