The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo by Edward Creasy (sad books to read .txt) 📖

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.

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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER III.

THE BATTLE OF ARBELA, B.C. 331.

Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Arbela and the Battle of the Metaurus.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM, A.D. 1704.

Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Blenheim, 1704, and the Battle of Pultowa, 1709.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BATTLE OF VALMY.

Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Valmy, 1792, and the Battle of Waterloo, 1815.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO, 1815.

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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.

There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were the generals, who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local tribes into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority. One also of the Archons was associated with them in the joint command of the collective force. This magistrate was termed the Polemarch or War-Ruler: he had the privilege of leading the right wing of the army in battle, and of taking part in all councils of war. A noble Athenian, named Callimachus, was the War-Ruler of this year; and as such, stood listening to the earnest discussion of the ten generals. They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how the generations to come would read with interest that record of their debate. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly all the kingdoms and principalities of the then known world. They knew that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little army entrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of the Great King sent to wreak his special wrath on that country, and on the other insolent little Greek community, which had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces. That victorious host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance. Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals could discern from the heights the island of AEgilia, in which the Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that in the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, Hippias, who was seeking to be reinstated by foreign scimitars in despotic sway over any remnant of his countrymen that might survive the sack of their town, and might be left behind as too worthless for leading away into Median bondage.

The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was fearfully apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making a general estimate.

Every free Greek was trained to military duty: and, from the incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service. But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this epoch probably did not amount to two-thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of these were unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to the operations of the regular infantry. Some detachments of the best armed troops would be required to garrison the city itself, and man the various fortified posts in the territory; so that it is impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men. [The historians who lived long after the time of the battle, such as Justin, Plutarch and others, give ten thousand as the number of the Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their authority, if unsupported by other evidence; but a calculation made from the number of the Athenian free population remarkably confirms it. For the data of this, see Boeck’s “Public Economy of Athens,” vol. i. p. 45. Some METOIKOI probably served as Hoplites at Marathon, but the number of resident aliens at Athens cannot have been large at this period.]

With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them.

Sparta had promised assistance; but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and that a most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her great peril.

For some years before this time, the little state of Plataea in Boeotia, being hard pressed by her powerful neighbour, Thebes, had asked the protection of Athens, and had owed to an Athenian army the rescue of her independence. Now when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Plataeans, unsolicited, marched with their whole force to assist in the defence, and to share the fortunes of their benefactors. The general levy of the Plataeans only amounted to a thousand men: and this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount Cithaeron, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reinforcement was numerically small; but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians: and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan succours was calculated to create among the Athenian ranks.

This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally was never forgotten at Athens. The Plataeans were made the fellow-

countrymen of the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political functions; and from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athenians, and the Plataeans also. [Mr. Grote observes (vol. iv. p. 484), that “this volunteer march of the whole Plataean force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all Grecian history.” In truth, the whole career of Plataea, and the friendship, strong even unto death, between her and Athens, form one of the most affecting episodes in the history of antiquity. In the Peloponnesian War the Plataeans again were true to the Athenians against all risks and all calculation of self-interest; and the destruction of Plataea was the consequence. There are few nobler passages in the classics than the speech in which the Plataean prisoners of war, after the memorable siege of their city, justify before their Spartan executioners their loyal adherence to Athens. (See Thucydides, lib. iii. secs. 53-60.)]

After the junction of the column from Plataea, the Athenians commanders must have had under them about eleven thousand fully-

armed and disciplined infantry, and probably a larger number of irregular light-armed troops; as, besides the poorer citizens who went to the field armed with javelins, cutlasses, and targets, each regular heavy-armed soldier was attended in the camp by one or more slaves, who were armed like