Histories Most Significant Battles

[peter]

I'm going to 'mine' the Wikipedia page for the starting points on this topic and where better to start with than The Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Easy one this - in the 200 years after the defeat of the persians we see the rise of Classical Greek Civilisation and thus this beginning of the said defeat has to be regarded as a pivotal moment in history. Less simply however comes the next entry on the list - the Seige/Battle of Syracuse [413 BC] which marks the turning point of the 3 stage Peloponessian War between Athens and Sparta. From a quick bit of reading I gather that the ultimate defeat of the democratic Athens in favour of the oligarchical Spartan society can be seen as the beginning of the end of Greece's 'golden age' [not qute sure how this sqares with the above] which clearly had deep significance at the time - but can it be seen as 'pivotal' in the same sence as Marathon above? Would the progress of the world have occured much faster had the 'Golden Age' not turned to brass? Was a mediteranian 'dark-age' ushered in because of this failure?

Moving up to modern times I note that no 'updated' version of the list seems to include The Battle of Britain in which the British RAF repulsed the German Luftwafe in the skies over Southern England in the dark days of WWII. Surley the continued freedom of the UK [which could not have survived the loss of air supremacy] to be thus positioned to prepare and mount the D-Day invasion, was key to the defeat of the Nazi abomination a few years later. Surely this has to be regarded as 'pivotal'?

[Avatar]

The battle of Watling Street? I suppose things like Thermopylae and Waterloo are given? Culloden Moor? Teutoburg Forest?

--A

[peter]

The battle of Watling Street? I suppose things like Thermopylae and Waterloo are given? Culloden Moor? Teutoburg Forest?

--A

Watling Street I don't know nor Teutoborg Forrest; will check them out. Waterloo is on the list. Thermopylae, a historically brave defence but pivotal? And Culloden - again I don't really know enough about it. Will do some reading and come back.

[edit; a few points. Waterloo was indeed the point at which Napoleon was finally defeated, but many historians believe that even in the event if his victory the writting was on the wall in the form of the Russians and Austrians which had yet to join the resumed fray and could have feilded much larger and stronger forces than Wellington and Blucher - so mayhap the battle was not quite as pivotal as it seems on first appearance. The battle of Tours in which Charles Martel finally checked the seemingly unstopable advance of Islamic forces has to be of major significance; had it not been for that then perhaps.....!]

[Avatar]

Quintili Vare, legiones redde!

Watling Street was the defeat of the Iceni, effectively ending resistance to the Romans in Britain.

Thermopylae not only bought crucial time against the Persians, but had a massive psychological effect on them. Without it, the outcome of the Greco-Persian wars could easily have been in doubt. Instead, it effectively started what would become Greece as a super power of the day.

--A

[peter]

can't argue with that!

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

IDK if they're on the list in question, but here are some battles, or wars/conflicts/military sequences in which such battles, took place as were relatively pivotal for the overall bent of world history:

• 1.Something during the liberation of Vietnam from China's ancient imposition.
  
  2. Something during the Reconquista (in al-Andalus).
  
  3. The sack of Beziers during the Albigensian crusade. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the final battle of the war in southern France but it at least marked the end of Gnosticism in Europe, as a populous force, in the sense of marking the whole genocidal war in itself. This was the negative resolution to over a millennia of tension between the "orthodox" Catholic faction in the general church, and the Gnostic/affiliated ones. (Later, there would be another sort of civil war in the consolidated Church, and I'm not talking about the Reformation but the Franciscan transition. However, I think that resembled more a police-state scenario than an outright mass armed conflict. Like there was a Ruby Ridge or Waco kind of scenario involved with one subsect, I guess you could say, but nothing like a huge battle in a major city, maybe.)
  
  4. The sack of Baghdad. One of the major reasons for the decline of the more scientifically minded strands of Islamic civilization in history. Brought on by a fanatical Mongolian Christian overlord, quickly juxtaposed with the whole decimation of the Arabic/Persian/w/e regions by other Mongolian forces around the same time (century).
  
  5. Wherever-whenever it was that Britain took India.
  
  6. The suppression of the Boxer Rebellion by the West.
  
  7. The Western intervention versus the nascent Soviet Union (around WWI).
  
  8. Jumping backwards in time, something during the Thirty Years' War. As far as I know from the vague descriptions I've read of it, it kinda ended it a sort of stalemate resolved by the Treaty of Westphalia (I think). So maybe there was no one decisive battle, in the sense of no battle that decisively wearied all continuing factions out, or whatever along that line, it could have been a cumulative effect for all I know.