The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World

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The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World is a book written by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy and published in 1851. This book tells the story of the fifteen military engagements (from Marathon to Waterloo) which had a significant impact on world history.

Chapters

Each chapter of the book describes a different battle. The fifteen chapters are:

1. The Battle of Marathon, 490 BC
   • Excerpt: 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.
2. Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, 413 BC
   • Known as the Battle of Syracuse.
   • Excerpt: Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and mediaeval times than has the city of Syracuse.
3. The Battle of Arbela, 331 BC
   • Also called the Battle of Gaugamela.
   • Excerpt: ... the ancient Persian empire, which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela.
4. The Battle of the Metaurus, 207 BC
   • Excerpt: That battle was the determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage, but between the two great families of the world...
5. Victory of Arminius over the Roman Legions under Varus, 9 AD
   • Known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
   • Excerpt: ..that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race.
6. The Battle of Chalons, 451
   • Also called the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields or the Battle of the Catalun.
   • Excerpt: The victory which the Roman general, Aetius, with his Gothic allies, had then gained over the Huns, was the last victory of imperial Rome.
7. The Battle of Tours, 732
   • Also called the Battle of Poitiers.
   • Excerpt: the great victory won by Charles Martel ... gave a decisive check to the career of Arab conquest in Western Europe, rescued Christendom from Islam, [and] preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilization...
8. The Battle of Hastings, 1066
   • Excerpt: ..no one who appreciates the influence of England and her empire upon the destinies of the world will ever rank that victory as one of secondary importance.
9. Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orléans, 1429
   • Known as the Battle of Orléans.
   • Excerpt: ..the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English.
10. Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588
    • Excerpt: The England of our own days is so strong, and the Spain of our own days is so feeble, that it is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world.
11. The Battle of Blenheim, 1704
    • Excerpt: Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.
12. The Battle of Pultowa, 1709
    • Also called the Battle of Poltava.
    • Excerpt: The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as for what it established
13. Victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga, 1777
    • Known as the Battle of Saratoga.
    • Excerpt: The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of Rome from humble beginnings to the greatest magnitude which the world had then ever witnessed. But the citizen of the United States is still more justly entitled to claim this praise.
14. The Battle of Valmy, 1792
    • Excerpt: ..the kings of Europe, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military republic.
15. The Battle of Waterloo, 1815
    • Excerpt: The exertions which the allied powers made at this crisis to grapple promptly with the French emperor have truly been termed gigantic, and never were Napoleon's genius and activity more signally displayed than in the celerity and skill by which he brought forward all the military resources of France...

Additions to the List

Since the publication of Creasy's book, other historians have attempted to modify or add to the list.

• In 1930 Texas historian Clarence Wharton published San Jacinto: The Sixteenth Decisive Battle, in which he made the case for adding the final battle of the Texas Revolution to Creasy's list. In 1936 the San Jacinto Monument was given an insciption that echoed Wharton's view: Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American Nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.
• In 1964, American historian Lt. Col. Joseph B. Mitchell published Twenty Decisive Battles of the World, an update of Creasy's list with five additions:
  1. The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863. By capturing the Mississippi River during the American Civil War, the Union seperated the Confederacy into two halves.
  2. Battle of Sadowa, 1866. This Prussian victory over the Austrians during the Seven Weeks War paved the way for a German empire.
  3. First Battle of the Marne, 1914. The French prevented a German assault of Paris and an early German victory in World War I.
  4. Battle of Midway, 1942. The beginning of the United States offensive in the Pacific Ocean during World War II and the devastating loss of four Japanese aircraft carriers.
  5. Battle of Stalingrad, 1942-43. The defeat of the German attempt to conquer the Soviet Union and a significant loss of German resources in World War II.
• In 1976, Noble Frankland and Christopher Dowling published Decisive Battles of the Twentieth Century, which listed 23 battles, from the Battle of Tsushima to the Tet Offensive.

External links

• Free eBook of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4061) at Project Gutenberg

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World) version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World&action=history) GNU Free Documentation Lizenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License) CC-by-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

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