



Produced by John Hill







THE FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD FROM MARATHON TO WATERLOO

By Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

(Late Chief Justice of Ceylon) Author of 'The Rise and Progress of the
English Constitution'




Dedicated to ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S. Late Fellow of King's
College Cambridge; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London.

Member of the Ethnological Society, New York; Late Professor of the
English Language and Literature, in University College, London.

By his Friend THE AUTHOR.




Transcriber's Notes:

Capital letters have been used to replace text in italics in the printed
text. Accents have been omitted.

Footnotes have been inserted into the text enclosed in square '[]'
brackets, near the point where they were indicated by a suffix in the
text.

Greek words in the text have been crudely translated into Western
European capital letters. Sincere apologies to Greek scholars! Longer
passages in Greek have been omitted and where possible replaced with a
reference to the original from which they were taken.




PREFACE.

It is an honourable characteristic of the Spirit of this Age, that
projects of violence and warfare are regarded among civilized states
with gradually increasing aversion. The Universal Peace Society
certainly does not, and probably never will, enrol the majority of
statesmen among its members. But even those who look upon the Appeal
of Battle as occasionally unavoidable in international controversies,
concur in thinking it a deplorable necessity, only to be resorted to
when all peaceful modes of arrangement have been vainly tried; and when
the law of self-defence justifies a State, like an individual, in using
force to protect itself from imminent and serious injury. For a writer,
therefore, of the present day to choose battles for his favourite topic,
merely because they were battles