Moment of Battle Read online




  Copyright © 2013 by James Lacey and Williamson Murray

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Maps by Dave Merrill

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Lacey, James.

  Moment of battle: the twenty clashes that changed the world / James Lacey and Williamson Murray.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52699-1

  1. Battles. 2. Military history. 3. Military art and science—History.

  I. Murray, Williamson. II. Title.

  D25.5.L27 2013 355.0209—dc23 2012034481

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  www.bantamdell.com

  246897531

  Jacket design: Carlos Beltrán

  Web asset credit: Excerpted from Moment of Battle by James Lacey and Williamson Murray, copyright © 2013 by James Lacey and Williamson Murray. Published by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  MARATHON Athens Saves Western Civilization (490 B.C.)

  GAUGAMELA Alexander Creates a New World (311 B.C.)

  ZAMA An Empire in the Balance (202 B.C.)

  TEUTOBURGER WALD The Division of Europe (A.D. 9)

  ADRIANOPLE The End of Roman Supremacy (A.D. 378)

  YARMUK The Islamic Conquest Begins (636)

  HASTINGS The Remaking of Europe (1066)

  THE SPANISH ARMADA Miracle at Sea (1588)

  BREITENFELD The Creation of Modern War (1631)

  ANNUS MIRABILIS The Rise of British Supremacy (1759)

  SARATOGA The Victory of Amateurs (1777)

  TRAFALGAR Napoleon’s Plans Thwarted (1805)

  VICKSBURG Breaking the Confederacy (1863)

  THE MARNE The End of Old Europe (1914)

  THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN The Nazis Stopped (1940)

  MIDWAY Imperial Japan Stopped (1942)

  KURSK The End of the Drang Nach Osten (1943)

  NORMANDY The Death Knell for Nazi Germany (1944)

  DIEN BIEN PHU Imperialism Defeated (1954)

  OBJECTIVE PEACH The Drive for Baghdad (2003)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Dedication

  NOTES

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Authors

  INTRODUCTION

  LEON TROTSKY, ONE OF THE MORE COMPETENT PRACTITIONERS OF THE art of war, is reputed to have commented that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Nevertheless, over the past several decades, the whole trend in American academic history seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Its fundamental mantra appears to be that wars and military and strategic history are irrelevant to the study of the past, which should instead involve the study of great sweeping social movements and factors other than military power. The adherents of this approach have their point, because the study of “pure” military history and battles, divorced from their political and social context, can perhaps seem not only arcane but unmoored from the very events that precipitated them and gave them meaning. Moreover, today’s academics also argue that the so-called great men of history have in fact played minor roles in the ultimate flow of pivotal events. In other words, battles, wars, generals, and statesmen are simply the colorful but materially insignificant blips on the radar screen of any serious analysis of historical change. Yet it is the contention of the authors of this volume, who have seen war all too closely, that wars and battles have had a direct and massive impact on the course of history, one that is essential to understanding the world in which we live. We suspect the reader may agree with us.

  For all of the intriguing insights of the wider academic analysis of the deep and complex currents that run through history, wars and battles have turned the course of human events in fundamentally new directions. In fact, the impact of military factors has changed the course of history not only in the short term, but in the long term as well. However, there are dangers when one removes war and battles from the cultural context in which they take place. The Battle of Cannae, the great clash between Hannibal’s Carthage and the Roman Republic, is a particularly good example. Few battles in history have attracted as much interest from a spectrum of individuals ranging from military historians to strategists. By the end of that gruesome day in 216 B.C., some fifty thousand Romans lay dead on a blood-soaked plain in southern Italy. Yet what did Hannibal’s victory achieve? Rome did not collapse. Though seriously wounded, the Republic continued to produce legions one after another and to challenge the Carthaginians throughout the western Mediterranean as well as in Italy and eventually on their home ground.

  The only significant result of Cannae was that it allowed Hannibal and his army to remain in Italy for another decade, a troublesome factor for the Romans but one that failed to shake their resolve. In the end, Scipio’s legions invaded North Africa and forced Carthage to recall Hannibal to defend his city. The resulting Battle of Zama then led to his defeat and the establishment of Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean that lasted for over half a millennium.

  In deciding what battles to include in this volume, the authors have followed the direction set out by Edward Creasy in his classic study, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: “There are some battles … which claim our attention … on account of their enduring importance, and by reason of their practical influence on our own social and political condition, which we can trace up to the results of those engagements. They have for us an abiding and actual interest … by which they have helped to make us what we are; and also while we speculate on what we probably should have been, if any one of those battles had come to a different termination.” In other words, like Creasy, we have selected our battles on the basis of their long-term impact on the course of history, not on the basis of their importance to the study of military art. Thus, Napoleon’s most decisive victories, Austerlitz and Jena-Auerstedt, have no place in our volume, because they failed utterly to achieve Napoleon’s aim of creating a French hegemony over the European Continent. So too neither Crécy nor Agincourt, despite the impressive killing power of the longbow, managed to achieve anything other than short periods of English domination in France.

  Battles that have piqued our interest are particularly those that still reverberate down through the ages. And that in turn has forced us to delve into the precarious game of counterfactual history. In other words, had the outcome been different, would it have turned the course of the future in substantially different directions? The Battle of Hastings is a case in point, because William the Conqueror’s victory tied England closely to the Latin West. Moreover, the subsequent amalgamation of the Saxon and Norman cultures resulted in the creation of the English language. Ironically, in strictly military terms King Harold’s victory at Stamford Bridge a few weeks earlier than the Battle of Hastings was far more decisive. But Stamford Bridge remains a mere footnote in history, while the long-term impact of Hastings continues to reverberate in the current world. That, of course, did not stop the British Labour Party in 1933 from passing a resolution, the thrust of which was that “war had never changed anything in human history,” despite the fact that its annual conference was meeting near the site of the battle.

  As with much of history that attempts to ask the larger questions, our choices of those battles that we believe to have been decisive are idiosyncratic. Yet, for example, the first five battles in our list provide a clear indication of what we mean by decisive:

  1. MARATHON—Made possible the continued existence of a distinct Greek civilization and culture, exemplified by Periclean Athens in succeeding decades.

  2. GAUGAMELA—Led to the creation of the Hellenistic world, which in turn proved crucial to the spread of Christianity.

  3. ZAMA—Broke the economic and political power of Carthage forever and made Rome the dominant power in the Mediterranean for the next five centuries.

  4. TEUTOBURGER WALD—Placed a limit on Roman expansion and created the Latin-German divide that has plagued European peace over the course of the past two millennia.

  5. ADRIANOPLE—Marked the beginning of the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire and ended a five-hundred-year period of the military and strategic domination by the Roman army.

  There will be those who object to our selection of decisive battles, an inevitable reality for those who write military history. In fact, the authors are more than willing to admit that a number of important battles are deserving of consideration. Certainly Lepanto was in serious contention, but in the end we decided against it. While the Ottomans indeed represented a terrible threat to the Christian lands of the western Mediterranean, in the late sixteenth century history was already moving away from them. In fact, because of the explosion of the Europeans on the global stage in that century, the Mediterranean world was losing its position as the dominant focus of the European powers in political, economic, and cultural terms.

  Part of our interest in the subject of decisive battles was sparked by the bizarre claims of defense analysts in Washington in the late 1990s who posited the idea that America’s military was on the verge of c
reating capabilities that would allow its military forces to conduct rapid decisive operations against any power that dared to stand against the United States. In effect, they were pursuing the mirage of battle for battle’s sake—the myth of an overwhelming decisive battle that is won at little cost to the victors. What they missed was the fact that all too many battles are not decisive in the long run, that victory on the day of battle is all too often followed by dark days of defeat, death, and brutal sacrifice.

  In the end, the battles that we have discussed in this volume were wretched, miserable, and bloody affairs even for those on the victorious side. But what marks them as special, we believe, is the fact that they changed the flow of history in profoundly fundamental ways that still echo through our world. The fact that there are 350 million fluent English speakers in India today who live in a democratic nation that functions under the rule of law is a direct reflection of two battles fought an ocean apart in 1759, what the British at the time termed “the annus mirabilis”—“the year of miracles.”

  It is to those battles that continue to reverberate through to the present that we have addressed this volume.

  MARATHON

  Athens Saves Western Civilization

  TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, TEN THOUSAND ATHENIAN HOPLITES stood against the full might of the Persian Empire. But rather than meekly await the approach of the Persian horde, the Athenians attacked. As they surged forward, they shouted their fierce war cry: Alleee! To the vast host of waiting Persians, the Athenian charge was reckless to the point of insanity. How could a mere ten thousand foot soldiers hope to defeat more than three times their number of Persian veterans? But still they came on, first at a trot and then at a sprint. In another instant, the Persian line reeled under the crushing impact of Athenian heavy infantry, on whose prowess this day rested the survival of Western civilization.

  The Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in mid–sixth century B.C., was the greatest empire in the ancient world until the rise of Rome. It stretched from the Indus River to the Mediterranean Sea and from the shores of the Black Sea to Egypt. Created in war, Persia maintained its empire for over two hundred years only through the mighty exertions of its powerful army. Nevertheless, just over twenty years before Marathon, a Persian army came close to disaster when the Great King, Darius, led it north of the Danube into the empty vastness of Scythia. Drawn deep into the steppes, Darius’s army was tormented by hit-and-run attacks by highly mobile foes who withdrew before any serious engagement could begin. Unable to bring the Scythians to battle, Darius wisely retreated before his army was decimated by a thousand small cuts. While Darius’s losses in the Scythian campaign were probably not as disastrous as the ancient Greek historian Herodotus claims, they were certainly substantial.

  The mostly Greek cities of Ionia, which had been conquered decades before by Cyrus, witnessed the return of the defeated Persian army. Sensing weakness, they revolted. Herodotus describes the conflict as an ill-considered enterprise doomed to failure from its inception. However, as it took the Persians six years of near maximum effort to crush the revolt, one may question Herodotus’s judgment that the outcome was preordained. Still, Persian power was formidable. To meet it, Ionian envoys were sent to enlist Spartan and Athenian support. The Spartans, always reluctant to send their army far from home, refused. Athens, with closer ties to Ionia, along with Eretria sent a small force. In conjunction with its Ionian allies, this force marched on, captured, and then burned Sardis, the western capital of the Persian Empire. But when the Persians brought the full extent of their military power to bear, the Athenians beat a hasty retreat across the Aegean. The retreat came too late to avoid Darius’s undying enmity. Informed that the Athenians had participated in the burning of one of his cities, Darius inquired about them. According to Herodotus, who likely inserted the name of a god familiar to his Greek audience, after being told, Darius

  took a bow, set the arrow on its string, and shot the arrow towards the heavens. As it flew high into the air, he said, “Zeus let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.” After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him three times whenever his dinner was served: “My lord, remember the Athenians.”

  After half a dozen years of war, Ionia succumbed. Darius, ostensibly having dined nightly contemplating revenge, was now free to turn his full attention to Greece. All along the empire’s coasts, ports were alive with shipbuilding activities, for Darius had ordered the construction of a great fleet, including special transports for his cavalry. In tandem with this construction, Persia’s greatest general, Datis, began gathering the battle-hardened veterans of the Ionian revolt. As this irresistible force assembled, the Great King sent envoys to demand tokens of submission from the Greeks.

  Darius I (550–486 B.C.), king of Persia and founder of Achaemenid dynasty; on throne, relief, Achaemenid era, sixth-fifth century B.C., Persepolis, Iran

  Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

  Many submitted and sent back earth and water—the sign of submission. Sparta and Athens killed the Persian envoys. For them, it would be war.

  THE PERSIAN ONSLAUGHT

  After subduing a number of Aegean islands, including Eretria, the Persian army landed at Marathon in August 490 b.c. Datis chose the site for a number of reasons. Probably the most important was the advice of Hippias, a deposed Athenian tyrant. Hippias was now near eighty and making a final bid to regain power. He surely had memories of landing on this same coast when his father, Pisistratus, made a similar military bid for power in Athens. At that time, the hill people had rallied to his father’s cause and joined him on his triumphal march into Athens. No doubt Hippias expected a comparable welcome on this occasion and promised as much to the Persians.

  For a larger version of this map, click here.

  The plain of Marathon may have seemed a safe landing site, and it did provide a secure harbor. However, it had one serious disadvantage. There was only one exit from the plain suitable for an army’s rapid movement. Moreover, rather than seizing that exit and marching immediately on Athens, the Persians tarried on the coastal plain for an extended period. How long they lingered is uncertain, but it was long enough to allow the Athenians to mass their hoplites on the only practicable outlet from the plain. It is almost inconceivable that the Athenians would have not strongly outposted this exit, as it had been the road used by the last successful invader of Attica—Pisistratus. The most likely reason the Persians did not march off the Marathon plain, therefore, was that there were several hundred determined Athenian hoplites standing behind a fortified wall across the southern road. They could not have held this Thermopylae-like position indefinitely, but they did not have to. By the time the Persians had assembled sufficient forces to be certain of overrunning the Greek position, the rest of the Athenian army had arrived.

  At the same time the main Athenian army was marching to Marathon, the Athenians had sent one of their runners, Pheidippides, to Sparta to enlist the support of the finest army in Greece. The Spartans would have been under no illusion as to their eventual fate if Athens fell, so they resolved to help. Unfortunately for Athens, however, they were celebrating one of their many religious festivals and refused to march until the full moon.

  The Athenian vanguard would have arrived at Marathon in less than half a day after setting out and was probably there before sunset. From the hills, they watched over thirty-five thousand Persians deploy across the plain, with tens of thousands more sailors lounging near the shore, preparing an evening meal. One wonders if the clever old commander of the Athenian army, Callimachus, was pleased as he surveyed the ground. He had reason to be, as the Persians had placed themselves in a bottle, and he and his army were the cork.

  Datis’s lack of energy remains inexplicable, as he needed to make relatively quick work of the Athenians before dwindling supplies forced an ignominious Persian withdrawal. Callimachus knew this, of course, so one may reasonably picture him smiling as he considered the advantages with which Datis had presented him. If the Persians advanced for a decisive fight, they would find his army arrayed in a fortified position, on ground of his choosing. If Datis ordered a withdrawal, there would be a moment when they would have some troops loaded and others milling on shore. In that moment of vulnerability, Callimachus would order the Athenian phalanx forward. In the meantime, the Athenians could train, prepare, and await the Spartans.