The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo. Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy
have led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in magnitude and importance to the chosen Fifteen.
I need hardly remark that it is not the number of killed and wounded in a battle that determines its general historical importance. It is not because only a few hundreds fell in the battle by which Joan of Arc captured the Tourelles and raised the siege of Orleans, that the effect of that crisis is to be judged: nor would a full belief in the largest number which Eastern historians state to have been slaughtered in any of the numerous conflicts between Asiatic rulers, make me regard the engagement in which they fell as one of paramount importance to mankind. But, besides battles of this kind, there are many of great consequence, and attended with circumstances which powerfully excite our feelings, and rivet our attention, and yet which appear to me of mere secondary rank, inasmuch as either their effects were limited in area, or they themselves merely confirmed some great tendency or bias which an earlier battle had originated. For example, the encounters between the Greeks and Persians, which followed Marathon, seem to me not to have been phenomena of primary impulse. Greek superiority had been already asserted, Asiatic ambition had already been checked, before Salamis and Platea confirmed the superiority of European free states over Oriental despotism. So, AEgos-Potamos, which finally crushed the maritime power of Athens, seems to me inferior in interest to the defeat before Syracuse, where Athens received her first fatal check, and after which she only struggled to retard her downfall. I think similarly of Zama with respect to Carthage, as compared with the Metaurus: and, on the same principle, the subsequent great battles of the Revolutionary war appear to me inferior in their importance to Valmy, which first determined the military character and career of the French Revolution.
I am aware that a little activity of imagination, and a slight exercise of metaphysical ingenuity, may amuse us, by showing how the chain of circumstances is so linked together, that the smallest skirmish, or the slightest occurrence of any kind, that ever occurred, may be said to have been essential, in its actual termination, to the whole order of subsequent events. But when I speak of Causes and Effects, I speak of the obvious and important agency of one fact upon another, and not of remote and fancifully infinitesimal influences. I am aware that, on the other hand, the reproach of Fatalism is justly incurred by those, who, like the writers of a certain school in a neighbouring country, recognise in history nothing more than a series of necessary phenomena, which follow inevitably one upon the other. But when, in this work, I speak of probabilities, I speak of human probabilities only. When I speak of Cause and Effect, I speak of those general laws only, by which we perceive the sequence of human affairs to be usually regulated; and in which we recognise emphatically the wisdom and power of the Supreme Lawgiver, the design of The Designer.
MITRE COURT CHAMBERS, TEMPLE, June 26, 1851.
DETAILED CONTENTS.
CHAP. I.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON
Explanatory Remarks on some of the circumstances of the Battle of
Marathon.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, and the
Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, B.C. 413.
CHAP. II.
DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE, B.C. 413.
Synopsis of Events between the Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse and
the Battle of Arbela.
CHAP. III.
THE BATTLE OF ARBELA, B.C. 331.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Arbela and the Battle of the
Metaurus.
CHAP. IV.
THE BATTLE OF THE METAURUS, B.C. 207.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of the Metaurus, B.C. 207, and
Arminius's Victory over the Roman Legions under Varus. A.D. 9.
CHAP. V.
VICTORY OF ARMINIUS OVER THE ROMAN LEGIONS UNDER VARUS, A.D. 9.
Arminius. Synopsis of Events between Arminius's Victory over Varus and
the Battle of Chalons.
CHAP. VI.
THE BATTLE OF CHALONS, A.D. 451.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Chalons, A.D. 451, and the
Battle of Tours, 732.
CHAP. VII.
THE BATTLE OF TOURS, A.D. 732.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Tours, A.D. 732 and the Battle
of Hastings, 1066.
CHAP. VIII.
THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, A.D. 1066.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Hastings, A.D. 1066, and Joan
of Arc's Victory at Orleans, 1429.
CHAP. IX.
JOAN OF ARC'S VICTORY OVER THE ENGLISH AT ORLEANS, A.D. 1429.
Synopsis of Events between Joan of Arc's Victory at Orleans, A.D. 1429,
and the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588.
CHAP. X.
THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA, A.D. 1588.
Synopsis of events between the Defeat of the Spanish Armada A.D. 1588,
and the Battle of Blenheim, 1704.
CHAP. XI.
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM, A.D. 1704.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Blenheim, 1704, and the Battle
of Pultowa, 1709.
CHAP. XII.
THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA, A.D. 1709.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Pultowa, 1709, and the Defeat
of Burgoyne at Saratoga, 1777.
CHAP. XIII.
VICTORY OF THE AMERICANS OVER BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA, A.D. 1777.
Synopsis of Events between the Defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga, 1777, and
the Battle of Valmy, 1792.
CHAP. XIV.
THE BATTLE OF VALMY.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Valmy, 1792, and the Battle of
Waterloo, 1815.
CHAP. XV.
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO, 1815.
THE FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.—THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.
"Quibus actus uterque
Europae atque Asiae fatis concurrerit orbis."
Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago, a council of Athenian officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their deliberations depended not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.