The Decisive Battle

A decisive battle, or the decisive battle, is a military engagement that significantly influences the outcome of a war or conflict. Such battles typically result in a clear and conclusive victory for one side, leading to a major shift in power, territory, or political situation. Examples include the Battle of Waterloo, which ended Napoleon’s rule in Europe, and the Battle of Stalingrad, a turning point in World War II favoring the Allies. These battles are often characterized by their strategic importance, large-scale participation, and lasting impact on the course of history.

Decisive Battle

Introduction

Many forces can influence the course of history—great ideas, economic trends, demographic shifts—but one of the most frequent and dramatic is warfare. One obvious explanation for the widespread existence of war throughout human history is its potential for causing rapid change, and within warfare, the most concentrated form of change is individual battles. It has the potential to rapidly alter the status quo and initiate dramatic shifts in fortune or dominance that cause battles to be identified as turning points in history. This is the idea behind this course: to examine some of the key battles that, for one reason or another, have signaled fundamental shifts in the direction of events.

When Is a “Decisive Battle” Not?

• (1) On July 20, 1866, just off the coast of modern Croatia, Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff led an Austrian naval squadron against an Italian fleet that was both technologically and numerically superior. Undeterred, Tegetthoff arranged his ships into an arrowhead formation and boldly drove them straight at the long, menacing line of Italian warships. This confrontation, which would be known as the Battle of Lissa, had all the makings of one of the decisive battles in history:
  (a) Its immediate outcome would determine the fate of the city of Venice.
  (b) It would decide who would control the Mediterranean Sea.
  (c) It was part of a larger confrontation between two grand coalitions of nations.
  (d) It marked the first time that a major sea battle was fought between large numbers of ironclads, a potent new form of naval vessel that promised to instantly render all previous wooden warships obsolete.
• (2) The turning point of the battle came when Tegetthoff used his flagship to ram one of the most powerful Italian ironclads, the Affondatore. The attack ripped a huge hole in the side of the Italian vessel and, within minutes, the stricken ship rolled over and went to the bottom.
• (3) Yet today, the Battle of Lissa is hardly remembered. Why? First, its strategic importance as an Austrian victory was eclipsed when, in the same month, the Battle of Konnigratz delivered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Prussians, resulting in the fall of the Austrian Empire. Second, the conclusions that naval strategists drew from Lissa were completely wrong.
  (a) The battle was interpreted as establishing the dominance of ramming as a tactic in future naval warfare, with the effect that all major warships for the next 40 years were built with rams. In reality, the utility of ramming was an anomaly.
  (b) For several generations, huge battleships still sported ludicrous and useless rams, even though naval battles of the next half century would be fought at increasingly long ranges by massive cannons.

Features of Decisive Battles

• (1) In this course, we will examine famous and not-so-famous battles, generals, tactics, strategies, weapons, and wars. Yet it is also a course about historical causation: why things turned out the way they did and how sometimes the most significant events turned on, or were determined by, the very smallest of acts or chances.
• (2) If we look at the entire span of human warfare, twists of fate at pivotal moments turn out to be common. Consider:
  (a) In the 17th century, did the theft of an officer’s horse, which caused him to fail to make his customary nightly patrol, allow a successful surprise attack, with the effect that most of North America became British territory rather than a colony of France?
  (b) During the American Civil War, did a messenger’s carelessness result in the loss of vital battle plans, contributing to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy?
  (c) During World War II, did a faulty mechanism on an aircraft launching catapult cause a fatal half-hour delay in launching a single plane, resulting in the destruction of the Japanese navy and overall American victory in the pacific ?
• (3) In certain instances, we will explore slightly more obscure battles than more famous ones if an interesting case can be made for the decisiveness of the less well-known battle. For example, from the Napoleonic wars, we will look at Leipzig rather than Waterloo.

What makes a battle decisive?

• (1) First, it was one that was militarily decisive in that the defeat of one military force by another resulted in an immediate and obvious transfer of political power. A variant of this type is a decisive battle that results in the near or total destruction of a vital component of an opponent’s forces. Major naval battles, with their concentration of high-value units in one place, are especially prone to fall into this category. The Battle of Trafalgar, for example, had a profound effect on the rest of Napoleon’s career. The loss of his fleet definitively curshed his plans to invade England and drove him to the fatal decision to invade Russia instead.
• (2) Second, perhaps the most common type of decisive battle is one that subsequently had important social, political, or religious effects. In many cases, these battles may not have seemed pivotal at the time but have been recognized only in retrospect as demarcating a turning point. For example, the American War of Independence would have ended much sooner but for Washington’s daring crossing of the Delaware River and success at the Battle of Trenton. If not for this unlikely victory, the young American Republic would have been snuffed out of existence before it ever really got going.

Other Considerations

• (1) Over the next 36 lectures, we will rummage through nearly 4,000 years of history and travel all around the globe looking for key turning points. During our search, we will examine both land battles and naval clashes, and we will consider some battles that involved millions of participants, while others featured just a handful of people. Some of our battles were immediately recognized at the time as being important transitional moments, while for others, their true importance was acknowledged only much later.
• (2) The list tends to favor battles that curbed or ended the growth of various expansionist empires because without such key defeats, those empires might well have extended their political and cultural domination yet further. The siege of Vienna in 1683, for example,
  represents the high-water mark of expansion for the Ottoman Empire.
• (3) Another consideration in favor was for a battle whose outcome was either unexpected or uncertain. We will look at battles in which the sides were roughly evenly matched or for which it is easily possible to imagine a dramatically different outcome.
• (4) Finally, some battles were selected as decisive because they represent the introduction of a key technological advance or the triumph of one type of military force over another. In the technology category could be considered the Battle of Midway, which set the pattern for future naval clashes being decided by air power rather than big guns. Of the second type, the Battle of Cynoscephalae revealed the superiority of the Roman military system over the previously dominant Hellenistic one and, thus, heralded Rome’s ascension over, and conquest of, the entire Mediterranean basin.
• (5) Many of the battles we will look at could be placed into more than one of these categories. Also, strictly speaking, some of the battles presented here could be considered campaigns, and occasionally, we will lump together several closely related battles that resulted in a collective outcome.
• (6) Although this course is by no means a comprehensive history of warfare, it will inevitably trace or, perhaps more accurately, mirror the development of weapons, strategy, and tactics over time.
• (7) A recurring theme of the lectures is technological change. The mighty steel dreadnaughts of the First World War—direct descendants of the Affondatore—boasted cannons that could fling tons of explosive shells 20 miles in one broadside. These ships were so expensive that the naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany nearly bankrupted both countries. When we examine the Battle of Midway, we will encounter aircraft carriers, which represented another key technological shift. Each of these types of vessels represented the most cutting-edge technology and was among the most expensive mobile man-made objects of its day.

Conclusion

Examining the course of history by focusing on the idea of finding decisive battles can be a useful analytical tool because it encourages us to view history not as a boring and immutable timeline but, instead, as a series of constantly branching pathways whose outcomes and effects are frequently unpredictable and whose real significance often emerges only with the passage of time.

FAQ about The Decisive Battle?