From: c34657b@saha.hut.fi (Tuomas Viljanen)
Subject: Re: The most decisive battle in history ?
Keywords: decisive battles
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 14:33:54 GMT

OK, folks, 'ere it comes ! This is my list of the most decisive battles ever
(in chronological order)

1. The battle of Plataiae 479 BC

The Greeks, led by Spartan king Pausanias, beat the Persian war hordes' on-
slaught, thus saving the Western civilization blah blah blah (more pathetic
and high-spirited text, but anyway, Greece was saved).

2. The battle of Gaugamela 331 BC

Macedonians, led by king Alexandros (Alexander), beat the Persian Great King
Dareios III's army, thus enabling A. to conquer the whole Persian empire.
The battle also confirmed that a pike phalanx supported with psiloi and shock
cavalry was invincible when faced by other troops.

3. The battle of Ma Ling 341 BC

The first battle ever which outcome was decided by missile fire. Son Bin (said
to be a relative to the great Son Ze (Sun Tzu)) of Chi, ambushed and shot into
pieces with crossbow fire the army of Wei, led by Pang Choan. This was also
the first recorded use of crossbow in battle.

4. The battle of Beneventum 272 BC

Romans won the army of Pyrrhos of Epeiros, thus eliminating the last of her
rivals in Italy, the Hellenistic state of Tarentum. The heavy but mobile 
Legiones proved to be more than a match against less flexible pike phalanges,
and the battle showed also that the main battle value of the elephants was 
their ability to induce fear, and if it was overcome, the elephants were easily
beaten.

5. The battle of Zama 202 BC

Publius Cornelius Scipio, the most brilliant Roman general along with Fabius
during the PWII, outwitted and outfought the great Punic general Hannibal,
thus opening Rome the way to the Western Mediterranean supermacy. The battle
efficiently meant the end of Carthago and the Phoenikean era.

6. The battle of Alesia 53 BC

Caesar won Vercingetorix's Gallic army, thus efficiently annihilating any 
further Keltic resistance, allowing Rome to expand northwest.

7. The battle of Hadrianopolis 378 AD

Goths, led by king Alarik, beat the Roman imperial army of Valens. The battle,
decided by the heavy cavalry charge of the Goths, meant the beginning of the
end of the Roman empire and the beginning of the era of cavalry supermacy over
infantry.

8. Campi Catalaunici 451 AD

Aetius,leader of the allied Frankish-Gothic-Roman forces, beat the hordes of
Attila at the battle of the Catalaunic Fields at Troyes, Chalons-sur-Marne,
near Poitiers. The Huns were decisively beaten, but the allies did not risk
the close pursuit. The battle has also been sayed as the greatest single battle
ever before the First World War, the number of participants said to be over
1,200,000 (!).

9. The battle of Poitiers, 732 

Merovingian Frankish warlord Charles Martel, the grandfather of the future
emperor Charles the Great (Charlemagne), won the Andalusian Arab army which
had crossed the Pyrenees in the seven-day battle. He put the stop for the
Islam advance in the west.

10. The battle of Hastings, 1066

Do you really need the description ?

11. The battle of Manzikert, 1071

The Byzantine army of Romanos Diogenes was wiped out by Saljuq sultan
Alp Arslan because of the treachery of the Byzantine subordinates. The
Empire lost a great part of its domains in the East, leaving the Saljuqs
an open way to the Holy land, thus igniting idea of the Crusades movement.

12. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212 

The united Christian forces of Castilla, Leon, Aragon, Navarra and Portugal
won the Andalusian army of Almohades. Some 180,000 Muslims were killed of
the original 600,000, most of them Negro slave soldiers from Morocco. The
battle finally decided the outcome of the Reconquista and was the beginning of 
the end of the Arab empires.

13. The Mongol China campaign, 1234

Sung empire was destroyed by the Mongols without pitched battles, but taking
the key cities of Jingdu, Gaifeng and Lo Yang, the Chinese empire collapsed,
leaving the Mongols as the rulers of China. The Mongol Imperial Era was begun.

13. The battle of Crecy, 1346

This was the first time in 1000 years when a cavalry (or should I say,
chivalry) army (the French) was beaten by an infantry army (the English,
combining the missile power of the massed longbow and the shock power
of the dismounted knights) _in an open field_. From this battle onwards,
the knights fought primarily on foot. The era of knights, however, was far from
over, the heavy gendarmes surviving until the late 16th century.

14. The battle of Kulikovo, 1380

Dimitri Donskoi and his Muscovite army of 300,000, beat the Mongol Golden
Horde army twice its size in this bloody battle where about 40% of the
participants were killed. This battle meant the beginning of the rise of 
Russia and the fall of the Mongol empire. 

15. The battle of Castillon, 1453

The first battle where the field artillery and gunpowder weaponry came into 
its own, decimating the English efficiently. But it was not until...

16. The Battle of Nagashino, 1580

when the gunpowder weapons really became the primary weaponry of the battle-
field, the romantic, pathetic, high-spirited Samurai chivalry charge of the 
Takeda clan was virtually mowed down by the low-born, scorned Ashigaru 
arquebusier rascal scum commoners of Nobunaga Oda and Ieyasu Tokugawa. As Oda 
died, Tokugawa rose to power after the battle of Seki-ga-hara, 1600, this being
the last battle of the Samurai Era.

17. The battle of Breitenfeld, 1631

The army of Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, consisting of Swedes, Finns and Saxon
mercenaries, beat the Imperialist army of Tilly. The battle meant the death
knell for pike squares and primarily hand-to-hand -weapon-armed infantry,
giving way to fire-and-movement -tactics and troops, which are the primary 
tactics of warfare even today. The battle also meant the beginning of the
Swedish great power era, which efficiently ended 1809 as she lost Finland
and her German territories.

18. The battle of Yorktown, 1783

The English army of Lord Cornwallis, was forced to surrender to the American-
French joint army. The United States of America was born ! But this drove
France into bankrupt, the King Louis XVI lost his head during the Revolution,
giving a certain corporal named N. Bonaparte his opportunity. He surely did
not miss it, claiming himself as Emperor 1804 (what a career !), but as often
happens, his reign was not long, ending after

19. The battle of Leipzig, 1813

The "Battle of peoples", as it also was called, the united forces of the
nearly all of the rest of the Europe, won Le Grande Armee, thus ending the
empire of Napoleon. He had his chance again, but the French empire was merely
a shadow of its former self, and when napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo
1815, it was all over. The peace in Europe was more or less a fact for the
next sixty years. 

20. The battle of Marne, 1914

The German onslaught in the Western Front was stopped, and the war degenerated
into trench warfare. But if the Germans had not been stopped, Germany had won
like fifty years earlier, Czar Nikolai II would have lost the main supporter
of Russia and forced into peace, Vladimir Lenin would have died in exile in
Switzerland, Stalin would have risen into the leadership of Gori town organized
crime instead of that of Soviet Union (which had never been born) and a another
certain corporal named A. Hitler would have possibly been taken into the Techn-
ical University of Vienna, becoming just another Austrian architect, but never 
succeeding of making into the Bauhaus, the less making into the dictatorship
of Germany, but history just does not happen as we wish it would :-(

21. The battle of Guadalcanal, 1942-43

The Japanese, although being severly checked at Midway, continued pressing on. 
They won some smaller naval battles, but they stuck to the stubborn resistance
of USMC at Guadalcanal island. The Japanese made it into a question of honor
but the fighting spirit and the skill of the scorned, degenerated Westerners
proved to be at least as high as their own, and when the descendants of the
Samurai became disillusioned, it was a severe blow to their morale. The Japan-
ese finally quitted the battle after losing thousands of experienced soldiers
and enough warships to make up a peacetime navy. The Savo strait got the much-
telling name of the "Ironbottom Sound" because of the US and Japanese hard-
ware sunk there. After the Midway the Japanese were no longer sure whether they
could win USA; after the Guadalcanal they were sure USA could not be won and 
they began the fanatic defense of what they had.

22. The battle of Kursk-Prohorovka, 1943

The greatest tank battle ever. This meant the breaking of the spine of the
German army as they were seriously weakened in Stalingrad, and now lost their
panzer arm there as the Operation Zitadelle failed. Germany was never again
offensive in the east, beginning their slow but sure fight to the defeat.

23. The Battle of the Leyte Gulf, 1944

The Battle of the Pacific was more or less stuck in place during the previous
two years. The Imperial GHQ decided to make the greatest gamble ever and to
make an all-out attack, hoping to destroy the US naval forces. They nearly
succeeded; but the gamble failed, as Japanese armed forces had drop by drop
been milked dry from experienced high-quality troops, leaving only second rate
troops to fight on. With pre-Midway forces the risk could have born fruit, it
nearly did wit the current forcces, but as the Imperial Navy was decimated
during the battle, the outcome of the Pacific war was decided for sure, thus
the battle of Leyte Gulf being the decisive battle of the Pacific War.

24. Tet offensive, 1968

North Vietnamese showed that deviousness in warfare bears fruit and that
Macchiavelli had not died, he had just painted himself red. As the US hands
were efficiently tied, the Commie offensive was checked only after a bloody
fight, but this showed the world that as long as the US government was not
given free hands to operate with the NV (as it was never given), US could
never win the Viet Nam war. US lost its credibility as a superpower, which
it finally regained during the Gulf War 1991.

25. The Yom Kippur war, 1973

Israeli forces showed the world their skill and lethality, beating again
the united Arab forces that invaded its territories. Israel even conquered
the strategically important Golan heights from Syria, which it has ever
since occupied. Israel finally showed the world what the only democracy in
the Middle East is for its military power.

  ++ Tuomas Viljanen                     ++ For a battle like Crecy, you do  ++
  ++ Lahderanta 20 A 19                  ++ not need a military genius like  ++
  ++ SF-02720 Espoo 72 FINLAND           ++ Edward III. All you need is an   ++
  ++ 358-0-592175 or c34657b@saha.hut.fi ++ idiot like the Duke of Alencon.  ++
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