The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo
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Sir Edward Creasy, M.A. >> The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo
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39 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.
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 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.
*
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.
*
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 the inferior freemen. [At
the battle of Plataea, eleven years after Marathon, each of the
eight thousand Athenian regular infantry who served there, was
attended by a light-armed slave. (Herod. lib. viii. c. 28,29.)]
Cavalry or archers the Athenians (on this occasion) had none:
and the use in the field of military engines was not at that
period introduced into ancient warfare.
Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw
stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the
tents and shipping of the varied nations that marched to do the
bidding of the King of the Eastern world. The difficulty of
finding transports and of securing provisions would form the only
limit to the numbers of a Persian army. Nor is there any reason
to suppose the estimate of Justin exaggerated, who rates at a
hundred thousand the force which on this occasion had sailed,
under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the Cilician
shores, against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. And
after largely deducting from this total, so as to allow for mere
mariners and camp followers, there must still have remained
fearful odds against the national levies of the Athenians. Nor
could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the superior
quality of their troops which ever since the battle of Marathon
has animated Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics; as, for
instance, in the after struggles between Greece and Persia, or
when the Roman legions encountered the myriads of Mithridates and
Tigranes, or as is the case in the Indian campaigns of our own
regiments. On the contrary, up to the day of Marathon the Medes
and Persians were reputed invincible. They had more than once
met Greek troops in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and had
invariably beaten them. Nothing can be stronger than the
expressions used by the early Creek writers respecting the terror
which the name of the Medes inspired, and the prostration of
men's spirits before the apparently resistless career of the
Persian arms. It is therefore, little to be wondered at, that
five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of
fighting a pitched battle against an enemy so superior in
numbers, and so formidable in military renown. Their own
position on the heights was strong, and offered great advantages
to a small defending force against assailing masses. They deemed
it mere foolhardiness to descend into the plain to be trampled
down by the Asiatic horse, overwhelmed with the archery, or cut
to pieces by the invincible veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus.
Moreover, Sparta, the great war-state of Greece, had been applied
to, and had promised succour to Athens, though the religious
observance which the Dorians paid to certain times and seasons
had for the present delayed their march. Was it not wise, at any
rate, to wait till the Spartans came up, and to have the help of
the best troops in Greece, before they exposed themselves to the
shock of the dreaded Medes?
Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five generals
were for speedier and bolder operations. And, fortunately for
Athens and for the world, one of them was a man, not only of the
highest military genius, but also of that energetic character
which impresses its own type and ideas upon spirits feebler in
conception.
Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens:
he ranked the AEacidae among his ancestry, and the blood of
Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his
immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of the Thracian
Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same time Athenian
citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time when
Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the relatives of
Miltiades--an uncle of the same name, and a brother named
Stesagoras--had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its
prince. He had been brought up at Athens in the house of his
father Cimon, [Herodotus, lib. vi. c. 102] who was renowned
throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic chariot-races,
and who must have been possessed of great wealth. The sons of
Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at Athens,
caused Cimon to be assassinated, but they treated the young
Miltiades with favour and kindness; and when his brother
Stesagoras died in the Chersonese, they sent him out there as
lord of the principality. This was about twenty-eight years
before the battle of Marathon, and it is with his arrival in the
Chersonese that our first knowledge of the career and character
of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act recorded of
him, proof of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit that
marked his mature age. His brother's authority in the
principality had been shaken by war and revolt: Miltiades
determined to rule more securely. On his arrival he kept close
within his house, as if he was mourning for his brother. The
principal men of the Chersonese, hearing of this, assembled from
all the towns and districts, and went together to the house of
Miltiades on a visit of condolence. As soon as he had thus got
them in his power, he made them all prisoners. He then asserted
and maintained his own absolute authority in the peninsula,
taking into his pay a body of five hundred regular troops, and
strengthening his interest by marrying the daughter of the king
of the neighbouring Thracians.
When the Persian power was extended to the Hellespont and its
neighbourhood, Miltiades, as prince of the Chersonese, submitted
to King Darius; and he was one of the numerous tributary rulers
who led their contingents of men to serve in the Persian army in
the expedition against Scythia. Miltiades and the vassal Greeks
of Asia Minor were left by the Persian king in charge of the
bridge across the Danube, when the invading army crossed that
river, and plunged into the wilds of the country that now is
Russia, in vain pursuit of the ancestors of the modern Cossacks.
On learning the reverses that Darius met with in the Scythian
wilderness, Miltiades proposed to his companions that they should
break the bridge down, and leave the Persian king and his army to
perish by famine and the Scythian arrows. The rulers of the
Asiatic Greek cities whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from this
bold and ruthless stroke against the Persian power, and Darius
returned in safety. But it was known what advice Miltiades had
given; and the vengeance of Darius was thenceforth specially
directed against the man who had counselled such a deadly blow
against his empire and his person. The occupation of the Persian
arms in other quarters left Miltiades for some years after this
in possession of the Chersonese; but it was precarious and
interrupted. He, however, availed himself of the opportunity
which his position gave him of conciliating the goodwill of his
fellow-countrymen at Athens, by conquering and placing under
Athenian authority the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, to which
Athens had ancient claims, but which she had never previously
been able to bring into complete subjection. At length, in 494
B.C., the complete suppression of the Ionian revolt by the
Persians left their armies and fleets at liberty to act against
the enemies of the Great King to the west of the Hellespont. A
strong squadron of Phoenician galleys was sent against the
Chersonese. Miltiades knew that resistance was hopeless; and
while the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded five galleys
with all the treasure that he could collect, and sailed away for
Athens. The Phoenicians fell in with him, and chased him hard
along the north of the AEgean. One of his galleys, on board of
which was his eldest son, Metiochus, was actually captured; but
Miltiades, with the other four, succeeded in reaching the
friendly coast of Imbros in safety. Thence he afterwards
proceeded to Athens, and resumed his station as a free citizen of
the Athenian commonwealth.
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