The World's Most Important Battles

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Tingkai
It seems to me that a lot of the battles mentioned fall into the category of an inevitable victory.

Saratoga probably falls into this category

I don't think so. Admittedly without Saratoga the U.S. would have still pulled away from Britain, but would have probably been a la Canada, a member of the Commonwealth, not the first modern republic. Saratoga crucial importance isn't as a Yankee victory over the British as rather as a republican victory over monarchists.

[Imran, that's republican with a small "r." ]

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I think one of the world's most important battles occured when Mohammad's forces tried to retake Mecca in 732. If they had lost then the moslem religion would have been crushed and christianity would have become the sole dominate religion of the old world west of India. Unfortunately, they won and the next 1300 years were marked by religious warfare.

Yeah, i think someone mentioned this earlier. If this battle would have been lost, then the battle in france and the wars between the constintine empire and the turks would never have happened. Shoot, we should go way back in human history, to find major battles. IIRC, Neanderthals lived during the same time period as modern humans. A theory as to why they no longer exist but we do is because they were both somewhat assimilated by modern humans, and those that wernt were wiped out by both nature and prehistoric warfare. What if they were not killed by warfare, and we presently would live side by side with this species of human. Or even more bazarre, is if they would have either assimilated us and wiped out those that remained. Humans as we know it wouldnt even exsist. Hmm... makes you think. But then again, what if the dinosaurs never went exstinct, or insectoids evolved as the dominant race before the dinosaurs, instead of reptiles.... My head hurts...

Kman

[Adam Smith]

Reading over these posts, I think I would now vote for two battles that were not on the original list.

1. Han Chinese defeat Huns. This had a major effect on both Eastern and Western civilization. But two caveats. First, was there any one climatic battle, or was it a series of drawn out campaigns? Second, I think I remember reading somewhere that the Huns did not lose to the Han Chinese so much as were pushed out of the way by a larger nomadic tribe, thus starting their migration westward. Anybody else know more about this campaign or situation????

2. First siege of Byzantium, for reasons addressed by leunames. Looks like this bought western Europe several hundred years time.

[SlowwHand]

Gettysburg.

[Ecthy]

Manzikert.

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Adam Smith
Reading over these posts, I think I would now vote for two battles that were not on the original list.

1. Han Chinese defeat Huns. This had a major effect on both Eastern and Western civilization. But two caveats. First, was there any one climatic battle, or was it a series of drawn out campaigns? Second, I think I remember reading somewhere that the Huns did not lose to the Han Chinese so much as were pushed out of the way by a larger nomadic tribe, thus starting their migration westward. Anybody else know more about this campaign or situation????

I still have to give you a summary about some Chinese battles I mentioned. Just got too tied up with Civ3 forums and that Pyramid thread.

The Han victory over the Huns was a series of campagns lasting from 127BC all the way to 36BC. The bulk of the battles, a total of 11 campagns, were fought under Wu Di's reign from 141BC to 87BC. Historians consider the fourth and fifth of Wu Di's campagns to be the most decisive.

When Chin first unified China in 221BC, the Hun nation had already been unified and proven to be a serious threat. Shi Huang Di had some success against them initially, but after his death China fell into a civil war, and when Han Dynasty was established, it lacked strength and an effective cavalry to deal with Huns. Instead, early Han rulers resorted to humiliating peace keeping measures such as marrying over princesses and paying annual tributes. But even that, Huns would still raid border regions and kill or loot hundreds to thousands people depending on occasions. When Han rule was finally stabilized after 188BC, the next 2 emperors embarked on a major economic and military buildup that lasted for more than 40 years. When Wu Di inherited the throne in 141BC, the country was ready to fight back.

It took Wu Di another decade to build up the strike force he needed and to find the right generals to lead it. In 127BC, Han launched its first offensive against Huns in the Ordos region and completely surprised them. This first victory removed Hun threat to the Han capital Chang An.

The second offensive in 126BC routed Hun forces in Northeast of China.

The third offensive in 124BC fought against the main Hun army and forced it to retreat from the near Great Wall region. After this offensive, Han forces not only achieved strategic initiative, but also gained tactical advantage on the battlefield. Hun retreat to the inhospitable Outer Mongolia took a heavy toll on their population and livestocks.

The fourth offensive in 123BC surprised Huns in the West opened up China's communication with Central Asian countries. It allowed the Han to make allies against Huns.

The fifth offensive in 119BC was kind of armageddon. Han mobilized about one hundred thousand cavalries as the strike force and several hundred thousand more infantries to secure logistic lines. The goal was to seek the main Hun force and destroy it. It was this offensive that shattered the Huns and forced their migration to the west.

The other 6 campagns under Wu Di were more limited and often poorly planned. It didn't do too much harm to the Huns and merely served to exhaust both sides. The emperor chastiszed himself later in his reign and ceased hostility in 90BC.

Han would not conduct another offensive until 72BC. This offensive didn't destroy many Hun forces, but managed to capture lots of its population and livestocks. After this offensive, Hun nation disintegrated and couldn't compete against Central Asian states.

Finally in 36BC, Han governor of its Western Protectorates forged an imperial edict and managed to gather force of 50,000 to attack the Huns. The result of this offensive mark the destruction of Yuezhi Kingdom and complete victory of Han.

[Urban Ranger]

After the Huns were driven out, they in turn drove out lesser tribes in front of them like waves rippling out from a source. The final effect was waves of barbarians invading the Rome Empire.

[Ned]

When China sneezes, the West catches a cold.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
After the Huns were driven out, they in turn drove out lesser tribes in front of them like waves rippling out from a source. The final effect was waves of barbarians invading the Rome Empire.

When the Huns arrived, they scared the sh#t out of the Goths who then begged the Romans for shelter. The Romans allowed the Goths into the Empire voluntarily. The Goths soon revolted, wiped out the Roman army, and spent next decades ripping the heart, lungs and soul from the Empire. In a strange twist of fate, however, these same Goths allied with the Romans to defeat the Huns at the climatic battle of Chalons in 451.

Had the Huns never arrived, the Empire probably would have survived. So, in a sense, the Han offensives against the Huns did cause the Fall of the Roman Empire.

[Ecthy]

Waterloo was bloodily irrelevant compared to Leipzig 1813.

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Ned


When the Huns arrived, they scared the sh#t out of the Goths who then begged the Romans for shelter. The Romans allowed the Goths into the Empire voluntarily. The Goths soon revolted, wiped out the Roman army, and spent next decades ripping the heart, lungs and soul from the Empire. In a strange twist of fate, however, these same Goths allied with the Romans to defeat the Huns at the climatic battle of Chalons in 451.

Had the Huns never arrived, the Empire probably would have survived. So, in a sense, the Han offensives against the Huns did cause the Fall of the Roman Empire.

When the Huns arrived in Europe, all those classical empires were in trouble. Both Chinese capitals had already been sacked by the Huns by 317AD, and North China were littered with barbarian kingdoms. Rome was also in a terminal decline as civil wars, despotism, and exorbitant taxes bled the country dry. Had the Huns arrived around 0AD, Rome would certainly have withstood the onslaught.

[Ecthy]

Chalons = Katalaunische Felder?

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by leunames
I am going to go with the trend of Byzantine battles and say that if you're going to count Poitiers 732 as an important battle, you are overlooking a battle of far more significance.

Constantinople had been, and would continue to be for several more centuries, Europe's first and last line of defense against the frontline of Muhammad's legions of soldiers. That the heartland of Islam is in the Middle East, against which Byzantium provided the only obstacle into a Europe that had just begun to reach the level of sophistication of the Romans, makes this battle far more important that 732. For if Constantinople had been overwhelmed, the last vestiges of the Roman Empire would have been destroyed soon enough, and the creation of a road to all of Europe virtually paved from Baghdad, Damascus and all the other powers of Islam would have been insured.

Like my professor of Byzantine history, it's sad how this battle continuously gets sidetracked by lesser battles like Poitiers. To quote George Ostrogorsky,

"In the defence of Europe against the Arab onslaught this triumph of Emperor Constantine IV was a turning point of world-wide importance, like the later victory of Leo III in 718 [the second Arab siege of Constantinople], or Charles Martel's defeat of the Muslims in 732 at Poitiers at the other end of Christendom. Of these three victories which saved Europe from being overwhelmed by the Muslim flood, that of Constantine IV was the first and also most important. There is no doubt that the Arab attack which Constantinople experienced then was the fiercest which had ever been launched by the infidels against a Christian stronghold, and the Byzantine capital was the last dam left to withstand the rising Muslim tide. The fact that it held saved not only the Byzantine Empire, but the whole of European civilization."

AMEN

Another reason why Poitiers was nothing in comparison with the defense of Constantinople:
Western Christianity was hardly civilised at all at this time of history!

"The third segment was Latin Christendom, which about AD 700 did not look very promising. It was what was left over from the other two -what the Byzantines were unable to hold, and the Arabs unable to conquer. It included only Italy (shared in part with the Byzantines), France, Belgium, the Rhineland, and Britain. Barbarian kings were doing their best to rule small kingdoms, but in truth all government had fallen to pieces. Strange and uncouth people milled about. Usually the invading barbarians remained a minority, eventually to be absorbed. Only in England, and in the region immediately west of the Rhine, did the Germanic element supersede the older Celtic and Latin. But the presence of the invaders, armed and fierce amid peasants and city dwellers reduced to passivity by Roman rule, together with the disintegration of Roman institutions that had gone on even before the invasions, left this region in chaos.
[...]

Life became local and self-sufficient. People ate, wore, used and dwelt in only what they themselves and their neighbors could produce. Trade died down, the cities became depopulated, money went out of circulation, almost nothing was bought or sold. The Roman roads fell into neglect; people often used them as quarries for ready-cut building blocks for their own crude purposes. The West not only broke up into localized villages, but also ceased to have habitual contacts across the Mediterranean. It became isolated from the eastern centres from which its former civilization had always been drawn. The West was reverting. From roughly 500 AD on, Europe was in the so-called Dark Ages."

(source: R.R.Palmer, J.Colton: 'A History of the Modern World',1978)
note for the Zionist lobby: the 'A History of the Modern World' is not identical to 'How Israel Was Won' by B.Thomas; it was written by another author and has a different title; nor was it published by Neturei Karta
Nevertheless this knowledge is of dubious sources and factually incorrect or misleading. True specialists do not need to go to the library and search for quotes proving that this is bull; they prove their right by repeating it a zillion times.
The fact that person after person, who studied Israeli history and Israeli law for final tests in Israel does not agree with this information, proves that this information is most probably wrong.
No one should bother much for one misleaded historian, professor at Yale University(USA) with an alt.history book

[Fiera]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
Chalons = Katalaunische Felder?

Yep. Spanish historians also call it Katalaunische Felder (Catalanic Fields?), or at least used it to call it that way.

[Saras]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
note for the Zionist lobby: the 'A History of the Modern World' is not identical to 'How Israel Was Won' by B.Thomas; it was written by another author and has a different title; nor was it published by Neturei Karta
Nevertheless this knowledge is of dubious sources and factually incorrect or misleading. True specialists do not need to go to the library and search for quotes proving that this is bull; they prove their right by repeating it a zillion times.
The fact that person after person, who studied Israeli history and Israeli law for final tests in Israel does not agree with this information, proves that this information is most probably wrong.
No one should bother much for one misleaded historian, professor at Yale University(USA) with an alt.history book

What the **** was that?