The Battles that Changed History

Fletcher Pratt

Description

Profiles of 16 decisive struggles from ancient and modern times. Gripping accounts range from Alexander the Great's conquest to World War II. Pratt depicts the circumstances leading up to the decisive clashes, the personalities involved, and the historically important aftermath.

Sujets

• History
• Military
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 05 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774643037
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Battles that Changed History

by Fletcher Pratt

First published in 1956

This edition published by Rare Treasures

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE BATTLES THAT CHANGED HISTORY

by

FLETCHER PRATT
A Few Words In Introduction

Viewing a wide and accidented landscape, it is sometimes necessary to half close the eyes to determine what are the most important features involved. If one is to make any sense of history as a whole, the process is somewhat similar. Putting in all details and qualifications adds up to accuracy and is indispensable for analysis, but often leads to analysis of minor features only and prevents the perception of the really outstanding features, around whose sides cluster so liberal an accumulation of minutiae.

The present volume is a half-closed-eye view of one aspect of Western history. From such a viewpoint one of the most striking features of Western European culture has been its ability to achieve decisive results by military means. It may even be the critical factor, the reason why that culture has encircled the world. Not that the Far East and Africa have been lacking in great battles or great victories, but their results have had less permanent effect on the stream of world history. The conquests of China are a classic case; they resulted in nothing but the absorption of the victors, and the resultant cultural pattern was transmitted only to the narrowest range of peripheral areas. The seepage through the Afghan passes into India would have taken place without any accompaniment of military events, and more importantly, did little either to change the basic patterns of Indian life or to extend them to other areas. The genuinely decisive wars began when the peoples of Western European culture (and those who acquired it by osmosis, like the Arabs) discovered that it was possible to change the course of history on the battlefield.

There will be ample room for disagreement as to the choice of the battles named here as decisive, and it is therefore worth while explaining the basis on which the choices were made. The first criterion was that the war in which the battle took place must itself have decided something, must really mark one of those turning points after which things would been a good deal different if the decision had gone in the other direction. It would be possible, for instance, to introduce a battle or two from World War I, and on the technical side to discuss the vast changes that conflict made in the ideology and technique of combat; but the war itself decided nothing, and it had to be fought all over again in twenty years. Moreover, certain decisions taken in battle have turned out to be reversible. Tsushima is an instance; anyone writing this book in 1930 might well have set it down as decisive, and someone did; but the subsequent course of history has not allowed this to be the case.

The second requirement in compilation was that the battle in question represent a positive decision. History is full of negatives, of things prevented from happening. Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles , the first book in the series of which this is a member, includes Chalons and Tours, fought only a small distance apart, both of which were preventive decisions. But the special genius of Western European culture when it takes up arms is that for really changing the course of history in battle, not merely arresting a movement, but completely altering its direction. The battles described all did this, regardless of whatever subjective regrets one may have in the individual case.

It was also necessary to impose a limitation to keep this from being a general military history of the Western world, approximately as long as the Encyclopedia Britannica. This limitation was achieved by omitting all those cases where the battle or campaign, although decisive, could hardly have had any other result, given the forces engaged. There will doubtless be some disagreement as to the choices on this ground also, but the point may be illustrated by the case of the Battle of Tenochtitlan, in which Cortes overthrew and the empire of the Aztecs. In view of the small number of Spaniards engaged, there was certainly an element of doubt about the outcome of the immediate operation, and Tenochtitlan was preceded by a battle which was definitely a Spanish defeat. But the European technical and logistic background was so superior, with the seagoing ship, the horse, the sword, the musket, armor, and knowledge of how to use all five, that even if Cortes’ force had been destroyed it would have been no more than an accident in the tide of conquest.

The sweep of the Vikings over England had a similar inevitability, not through superior technological equipment, but more efficient social organization. Hastings decided nothing but the names of the Norman families that were to rule England, and the change in basic system was really very slight. In the reverse case the decaying Byzantine Empire could have been preserved against the Turks only by a decisive victory which never took place, and the Battle of Manzikert, generally taken as the deathblow of that empire, merely confirmed an existing trend.

The battles listed here may thus be described as decisive in a counterdeterminist sense. Not all of them reversed existing tendencies, although this is a very common case among the battles chosen. It is quite clear that the absorptive power of the ancient Persian Empire on Greek civilization could have been neutralized only in battle; as it was, after Alexander’s victory at Arbela the absorption was turned in the other direction.

The question then became one of the extent of the absorptive power of the Greek system. It is often held that the severest test of the Roman system came in the great struggle with Carthage, but I think that close examination will not allow this to be the case. Carthage was a tremendous opponent and she was served by one of the greatest geniuses of military history, but the fundamental structure beneath the Carthaginian effort was flawed. Defeats for Carthage were always disasters; defeats for Rome only called forth more effort from the incomparably strong and resilient polity that supported the effort. That polity was menaced only once, at Beneventum, when it came in contact with the Greek system that was the heritage of Alexander, and which itself contained elements of permanence that the Carthaginian system never had.

After this the development of the Roman Empire was inevitable; all the battles, however otherwise decisive, were made up of predetermined elements. There is no real point at which one can say that the basic structure of Western civilization was altered by a single event, off the battlefield or on it, for many generations. Even the failure of the Roman effort to conquer Germany was in the cards; the Romans never developed a real technique of forest warfare, and it would have taken a decisive battle, which did not occur, to change matters. The Nike sedition, the first true crisis, the point at which there might have been a fundamental change, occurred late in the game (532 A.D.), and in Constantinople, which had already become the seat of whatever Rome there was left.

After this more than one deluge came down and beneath them the long ground swell of the barbarian invasions or, more properly, infiltrations. It was an age rich in changes and personalities, but not one in which there were basic changes in the cultural pattern. One can point to developments, but to no such abrupt shift of direction and emphasis as that following Arbela. When the Battle of Kadisiyah did effect a change, it was at a tangent to the flow and not a reversal; and it is necessary to understand Kadisiyah to comprehend why the newly risen power of Islam became a threat to the developing European system. That threat was brought to a halt in Western Europe through Spain for reasons explained in the text; it was the reversal of the threat in this area and the manner of the reversal that counted.

Far more serious for the West was the Islamic drive up the Danube valley, where the Turks had developed not only a better military system than any Islamic predecessors, but a military-political system capable of indefinite expansion. Vienna was a reversal of tendency; when the tide rolled back down the Danube, there passed with it the last chance that an exterior system would be imposed on the European, and the decisions henceforth were within variations of that Western European culture.

The farther we are from the peaks, the higher they must be to become visible. After Vienna the line is easier to follow, the parts become more integrated. It is possible that the story of the relief of Orleans should have been placed in that later complex instead of where it is set down for chronological reasons. But this would have involved pulling out of position one of the key facts in connection with Vienna, that the Turk was a greater danger to Charles V than the Protestant Reformation.

No apology is offered for construing the term “battle” in a rather loose sense. Not all military decisions have hinged on the result of a single clash of arms. The Vicksburg campaign is th