A History of War in 100 Battles Read online

  A HISTORY OF WAR IN

  100

  BATTLES

  A HISTORY OF WAR IN

  100

  BATTLES

  RICHARD OVERY

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  © Richard Overy, 2014

  First published in the UK by HarperCollins Publishers.

  Richard Overy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Overy, R. J.

  A history of war in 100 battles / Richard Overy.

  pages cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-19-939071-7

  1. Battles. 2. Military history. I. Title. II. Title: History of war in one hundred battles. III. Title: History of war in a hundred battles.

  D361.O77 2014

  355.0209—dc23

  2014023889

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in Hong Kong

  on acid-free paper

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION: THE TRUTH OF BATTLE

  CHAPTER 1:

  LEADERSHIP

  1 BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA

  2 BATTLE OF CANNAE

  3 BATTLE OF ACTIUM

  4 BATTLE OF THE MILVIAN BRIDGE

  5 BATTLE OF HASTINGS

  6 BATTLE OF ZHONGDU

  7 BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN

  8 BATTLE OF MOHACS

  9 SIEGE OF VIENNA

  10 BATTLE OF VALMY

  11 BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR

  12 BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ

  13 BATTLE OF MAIPÚ

  14 BATTLE OF VOLTURNO

  15 BATTLE FOR WARSAW

  16 THIRD BATTLE OF KHARKOV

  CHAPTER 2:

  AGAINST THE ODDS

  17 THERMOPYLAE AND SALAMIS

  18 BATTLE OF ZELA

  19 BATTLE OF EDINGTON

  20 BATTLE OF CLONTARF

  21 BATTLE OF LEGNANO

  22 BATTLE OF THE RIVER SALADO

  23 BATTLE OF AGINCOURT

  24 SIEGE OF BELGRADE

  25 BATTLE OF PLASSEY

  26 BATTLE OF LEUTHEN

  27 RORKE’S DRIFT

  28 BATTLE OF ADWA

  29 BATTLE OF OMDURMAN

  30 FALL OF SINGAPORE

  31 BATTLE OF SANTA CLARA

  CHAPTER 3:

  INNOVATION

  32 BATTLE OF LEUCTRA

  33 BATTLE OF CARRHAE

  34 BATTLE OF AIN JALUT

  35 BATTLE OF CRECY

  36 BATTLE OF LEPANTO

  37 THE SPANISH ARMADA

  38 BATTLE OF BREITENFELD

  39 BATTLE OF NASEBY

  40 BATTLE OF POLTAVA

  41 BATTLE OF SOLFERINO–SAN MARTINO

  42 BATTLE OF KÖNIGGRÄTZ (SADOWA)

  43 BATTLE OF SHANGANI

  44 BATTLE OF TSUSHIMA

  45 THIRD BATTLE OF EDIRNE

  46 THIRD BATTLE OF CAMBRAI

  47 BATTLE OF FRANCE

  48 BATTLE OF BRITAIN

  49 PEARL HARBOR

  50 BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

  51 HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

  52 OPERATION DESERT STORM

  CHAPTER 4:

  DECEPTION

  53 THE FALL OF TROY

  54 BATTLES OF MOUNT VESUVIUS

  55 BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES

  56 BATTLE OF KLEIDION–STRUMITSA

  57 BATTLE OF MANZIKERT

  58 BATTLE OF LAKE PEIPUS

  59 FALL OF TENOCHTITLÁN

  60 BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

  61 BATTLE OF HOHENFRIEDBERG

  62 BATTLE OF THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

  63 SIEGE OF YORKTOWN

  64 BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN

  65 BATTLE OF ALAM HALFA

  66 THE NORMANDY INVASION

  67 OPERATION BAGRATION

  68 THE SIX DAY WAR

  69 TET OFFENSIVE

  CHAPTER 5:

  COURAGE IN THE FACE OF FIRE

  70 BATTLE OF MARATHON

  71 BATTLE OF THE CATALAUNIAN FIELDS (CHLONS)

  72 BATTLE OF POITIERS-TOURS

  73 BATTLE OF LECHFELD

  74 BATTLE OF ARSUF

  75 BATTLE OF BORODINO

  76 BATTLE OF LEIPZIG

  77 BATTLE OF NAVARINO BAY

  78 FIRST BATTLE OF MANASSAS (BULL RUN)

  79 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

  80 BATTLE OF TACNA

  81 THE BATTLE OF VERDUN

  82 FIRST DAY OF THE SOMME

  83 GUADALCANAL

  84 STALINGRAD

  85 FOURTH BATTLE OF MONTE CASSINO

  CHAPTER 6:

  IN THE NICK OF TIME

  86 BATTLE OF KADESH

  87 BATTLE OF ZAMA

  88 BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE

  89 FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

  90 BATTLE OF SEKIGAHARA

  91 BATTLE OF MARENGO

  92 BATTLE OF WATERLOO

  93 BATTLE OF TANNENBERG

  94 THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE MARNE

  95 DEFENCE OF TSARITSYN

  96 SINK THE BISMARCK

  97 BATTLE OF MIDWAY

  98 BATTLE OF KURSK

  99 BATTLE OF DIEN BIEN PHU

  100 BATTLE FOR THE FALKLANDS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PREFACE

  Choosing just 100 battles from recorded human history is a challenge. Not just because it is necessary to cover a period of almost 6,000 years, but because men have fought each other almost continuously for millennia. Any century of battles has to be arbitrary. Anyone who knows anything about the history of war may be disappointed at what has had to be omitted, but each of the battles described here has something memorable about it. Between them, they tell us something about how the nature of armed combat has changed over time, and also how some things have remained the same, whatever changes in technology, organization or ideas separate one era from another.

  It is an old adage that you can win a battle but lose a war. The battles featured here almost always resulted in victory for one side or another, but the victor did not necessarily win the war. Some battles are decisive in that broader historical sense, others are not. The further back in time we go, the more likely it is that an enemy could be finished off in one blow. The wars of the modern age, between major states, involved repeated battles until one side was battered into submission. Some of the great generals of the recent past – Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, Erich von Manstein – were on the losing side but are remembered nonetheless for their generalship. Some on the winning side have all but disappeared from the history books or from public memory.

  In many of the battles featured here, the issue is not victory or defeat, but what the battle can tel
l us about the history of warfare itself. New weapons, new tactics and new ways of organizing armed forces can have a sudden impact on the outcome of a battle. But so, too, can leadership, a clever deception or raw courage. A history of battles through the ages shows that it is not just technical novelty that can make the difference, but the exercise of operational skill and imagination in planning, or qualities displayed on the field of battle itself, many of which are perennial. That is why the book has been divided up into a number of clear themes, which apply equally to the battles of the ancient world as they do to the battles of today.

  Many of the descriptions here rely, of course, on contemporary accounts that are contradictory, confusing or plain wrong. Many battles have passed into legend. This means that some of the descriptions are best guesses by historians using all the evidence that is currently available. Tempting though it is to choose the most dramatic account, narratives of battle have to be treated with caution. Even the most modern battles – Stalingrad is a good example – are not free of embellishment or simplification or propaganda. This is perhaps inherent in the nature of the beast. Battles are remembered differently by victor and vanquished, and few people who are in the heart and heat of battle really know what is going on around them.

  Alexander the Great is portrayed at the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE) on a mosaic found on the floor of the House of the Faun in Pompeii. He is astride his famous horse Bucephalos and wears a breastplate decorated with the head of Medusa.

  One remarkable thing about battles is the extent to which they have been recorded as art, from Greek friezes and Roman columns to the monumental paintings of the Napoleonic age or the modernist record of the two world wars. As a result, it proves much easier to illustrate the long history of combat than other aspects of the distant past. Where contemporary art is lacking, later generations have rendered great battles of the past with imagination and power. Each of the 100 battles featured here has been brought to life by the addition of some form of an image.

  Imagination is important for the reader, too. No description, however rich, can capture the clamour of battle, the shrieks of the dead and dying, the squeal of horses, the thunder of guns, the smell of fear and the strange, eerie calmness that descends on the bloodstained landscape after the fighting is done. If these cannot be properly conveyed, they should not be forgotten. Battles are not computer games but pieces of living history – messy, bloody and real. That, at least, has not changed in 6,000 years.

  Richard Overy

  London and Exeter, 2013

  INTRODUCTION: THE TRUTH OF BATTLE

  This fresco shows the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, which secured the imperial crown for Constantine. It was created by Giulio Romano between 1520 and 1524 after designs by the Italian artist Raphael (1483-1520) and now decorates the Hall of Constantine in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

  A Japanese soldier, writing in his wartime diary during the Pacific War, confessed that, for all the horrors he confronted daily, the one beautiful thing about fighting ‘is the “truth” that only war can possess’. He was writing not principally about war, but about battle – the truth that soldiers face when they are actually in combat. It is a raw, unmediated truth, for the end point of conflict can be death, injury or surrender for those in combat on either side. No other human activity makes these demands, for they lie at the extremity of human endeavour: kill or be killed, survive or perish, conquer or be conquered. The moment of truth is compelling because there is no obstruction from the outside world between you and the possibility of death. It is a truth that can seldom be veiled because it is there to see in the harsh aftermath of a field or sea littered with corpses, in the silence of the dead and the screams of the dying, the triumphant victors often as battered, exhausted and depleted as those they have defeated. It is a truth that men, and it is almost always men, have faced from the earliest recorded battles in the civilizations of the ancient Near East to the conflicts of the contemporary world.

  There is, of course, a distinction between wartime and battle. Wartime describes a state of conflict between two polities, whether tribes, city-states, nations or empires, which continues temporally even when no fighting is going on, and which can be ended by negotiation or truce rather than battle. Many wars drag on for decades, punctuated by numerous battles, some more significant than others. The modern world wars did not last for decades, but their truly global scope, in three dimensions, produced hundreds of individual battles from only a few of which it would be possible to predict the outcome of the entire conflict. Battles are certainly about achieving victory, however hollow it might prove, in defined space and defined time on land or sea (and for the last half-century only, in the air), but they do not necessarily win wars. They have their own distinct historical character as particular events rather than as states of conflict. Simply put, battles involve large bodies of armed men whose principal purpose is to overwhelm the body of armed men opposed to them by killing them, capturing them or forcing them to abandon the field. The reasons why they find themselves on the battlefield are always the product of a particular historical moment. But any study of a hundred battles over recorded history shows that the outcome is almost always decided by the same mix of general characteristics: leadership, raw courage, deception, innovation or, time and again, a moment of good fortune – the legendary cavalry topping the crest of the hill. This time span also makes it clear that there is no optimum battle plan towards which humankind has been gravitating. Though strategists search for the military equivalent of the philosopher’s stone to explain victory in battle, clever tactics, stratagems and novelties, morale or luck have always won battles, even if the technology available has become infinitely more sophisticated. Using battle to study the history of war is a reminder that, at the basic level of armed men pitted against armed men, warfare has changed much less over time than might be expected. This is why so many great commanders have avidly read accounts of battles fought long ago.

  It is tempting to assume that fighting is something humans are predisposed towards, either psychologically or biologically, but the archaeological record shows that there have been long periods when human populations exhibited very little or no evidence of violence. Studies of the prehistoric populations of the southwest United States across a 5,000-year period have found no evidence of warfare whatsoever – neither skeletons with tell-tale cuts or broken skulls, or arrow heads lodged in them, nor evidence of stockade defences around the first small villages or settlements. Even after the population became more sedentary and cultural distinctions more marked, the archaeological evidence suggests that there was no organized violence for a further half a millennium. Only with a sharp change in environmental conditions and rising population levels from around 1100 to 1300 CE does evidence of warfare suddenly emerge in the burial record, with the skeletal remains of massacred groups or skulls broken open by weapons.

  A rather different pattern emerges in the archaeology of northeast America. Here, evidence from around 5000 BCE of bone damage, weapon traces in skeletons and defensive ramparts shows that warfare seems to have been endemic, only to die out once settled communities were constructed. There are only scant traces of violence for the next 2,000 years; then, at some point after the turn of the first millennium CE, violence suddenly manifests itself on a large scale, evident in the discovery of a pit in South Dakota containing the skeletons of almost 500 massacred men, women and children. Clearly there are important environmental, social or cultural explanations for why humans choose to fight rather than collaborate, or find non-violent resolutions of conflict. The manifestations of violence in prehistoric communities across the Old World are similarly ambiguous. Evidence in pre-state Egypt shows that people were killed using arrows or spears; at Gebel Sahaba in Egyptian Nubia, more than 40 per cent of the burials in a cemetery dated to 12000 BCE have multiple injuries from weapons. In a Stone Age cave in Germany, the decapitated skulls of thirty-four men, women and children have been
discovered, each head broken in by stone axes. In Europe, there is evidence of violence well before settled agricultural communities, which suggests that early nomadic cultures were as likely to be violent as the later, more sedentary ones. Yet here, too, can be found long periods in the archaeological record that show few if any signs of organized conflict or mass homicides.

  The fact that violence between human communities over the past 20,000 years has been sporadic and at times uncommon suggests that warfare must have historical explanations rather than evolutionary ones. The early evidence of violence says little about whether these conflicts were battles as they are understood today, or mere raids for slaves and booty, ambushes to prevent encroachments on food or water sources, or ritualized acts of limited or mock violence like that still evident among tribal communities in early twentieth-century New Guinea. The idea of battle as a way of organizing violence in a disciplined way with a particular aim and a specific enemy is, according to the historical record, common only to particular cultures and across particular global regions. A study of the 2,000 years from the second millennium BCE to around 500 CE – the period when battles entered the historical record – has shown that battles were rare in most civilizations and that they were concentrated geographically in a swathe of territory from Mediterranean Europe through the Near East to Southern Asia. Out of 288 conflicts worthy of the name ‘battle’, 94 per cent occurred in this region, including 73 battles in civil wars. China records only two major battles over the same time span. The idea of a battle as a distinct event with its own choreography and rules seems to have been an invention of pharaonic Egypt. It was widely imitated in the Near and Middle East, and taken up with enthusiasm by the ancient Greeks and the Romans.

  This is the form of battle that is familiar today and clearly it came to be widely imitated in the millennia that followed. That is not to say that all battles are equal. The exact ways in which battles have been organized and conducted over the past 2,000 years closely reflect specific cultures and prevailing historical conditions, for which anthropology is as useful as history. There have been periods when efforts were made to avoid battle, even when large armies were available. Late medieval Europe saw infrequent battles if deterrence, threats or political cunning could avoid them; eighteenth-century Europe saw a preference for manoeuvre warfare, in which armies were moved around as if on some giant chessboard with the aim to checkmate an opponent rather than force a real fight. Early modern warfare in Southeast Asia was limited by the desire to avoid battle while finding ways of seizing slaves or workers, though this did not exclude occasional conflicts of extreme violence. The refusal to accept battle, even when two armies are only miles apart, as Octavian did at Actium to frustrate Mark Antony, is highly ritualized and relies on what is regarded as culturally acceptable to both sides. Different cultures have evidently defined battle differently, from the sacred ritual surrounding Greek warfare to the utilitarian view of battle in modern warfare.