



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, merely because so many myriads of
troops were arrayed in them, and so many hundreds or thousands of human
beings stabbed, hewed, or shot each other to death during them, would
argue strange weakness or depravity of mind. Yet it cannot be denied
that a fearful and wonderful interest is attached to these scenes of
carnage. There is undeniable greatness in the disciplined courage, and
in the love of honour, which make the combatants confront agony and
destruction. And the powers of the human intellect are rarely more
strongly displayed than they are in the Commander, who regulates,
arrays, and wields at his will these masses of armed disputants; who,
cool yet daring, in the midst of peril reflects on all, and provides for
all, ever ready with fresh resources and designs, as the vicissitudes of
the storm of slaughter require. But these qualities, however high they
may appear, are to be found in the basest as well as in the noblest of
mankind. Catiline was as brave a soldier as Leonidas, and a much better
officer. Alva surpassed the Prince of Orange in the field; and Suwarrow
was the military superior of Kosciusko. To adopt the emphatic words of
Byron:--

     "'Tis the Cause makes all,
      Degrades or hallows courage in its fall."

There are some battles, also, which claim our attention, independently
of the moral worth of the combatants, on account of their enduring
importance, and by reason of the practical influence on our own social
and political condition, which we can trace up to the results of those
engagements. They have for us an abiding and actual interest, both
while we investigate the chain of causes and effects, by which they have
helped to make us what we are; and also while we speculate on what we
probably should have been, if any one of those battles had come to
a different termination. Hallam has admirably expressed this in his
remarks on the victory gained by Charles Martel, between Tours and
Poictiers, over the invading Saracens.

He says of it, that "it may justly be reckoned among those few battles
of which a contrary event would have essentially varied the drama of the
world in all its subsequent scenes: with Marathon, Arbela, the Metaurus,
Chalons, and Leipsic." It was the perusal of this note of Hallam's that
first led me to the consideration of my present subject. I certainly
differ from that great historian as to the comparative importance of
some of the battles which he thus enumerates, and also of some which he
omits. It is probable, indeed, that no two historical inquirers would
entirely agree in their lists of the Decisive Battles of the World.
Different minds will naturally vary in the impressions which particular
events make on them; and in the degree of interest with which they
watch the career, and reflect on the importance, of different historical
personages. But our concurrence in our catalogues is of little moment,
provided we learn to look on these great historical events in the spirit
which Hallam's observations indicate. Those remarks should teach us
to watch how the interests of many states are often involved in the
collisions between a few; and how the effect of those collisions is not
limited to a single age, but may give an impulse which will sway the
fortunes of successive generations of mankind. Most valuable also is the
mental discipline which is thus acquired, and by which we are trained
not only to observe what has been, and what is, but also to ponder on
what might have been. [See Bolingbroke, On the Study and Use of History,
vol. ii. p. 497 of his collected works.]

We thus learn not to judge of the wisdom of measures too exclusively by
the results. We learn to apply the juster standard of seeing what the
circumstances and the probabilities were that surrounded a statesman or
a general at the time when he decided on his plan: we value him not by
his fortune, but by his PROAIRESIZ, to adopt the expressive Greek word,
for which our language gives no equivalent.

The reasons why each of the following Fifteen Battles has been selected
will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may be well to
premise a few remarks on the negative tests which 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 <DW44> 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.


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