The Battle of the Golden Spurs!

French professional army defeated by Flemish peasants

Gallic Wars for me. As usual, Roman strategy was absolutely incredible. Caesar pursued a policy of allying with certain Gaulish, Germanic, and Celtic groups and essentially playing off of already hostile inter-tribal relations. These wars were essentially fought for Caesar's propaganda purposes, as well. It's amazing how history repeats itself huh?

The Pelopennesian War by Donald Kagan.
The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise

I like those especially.

I like the "Peloponnesian War" as much as you, Thucydides, but let's get the spelling right. You were 0/2 in attempts. ;-)

I think "The war of Peloponesian" by...Thucydides (the man living in at the turn between V and IV centuries BC, who also took part in the war, not our nice and well documented member of this forum!) is definitely worth reading. I read it through (not the original however) and it has an amazingly modern and crisp style.

@Pandora
If you're interested into Roman expansion in France (Gallia at the time), a fascinating book is "The Gaul war", by Ceasar. It's a masterpiece of literature, of subtle political self promotion (Ceasar wrote it just before deciding to overthrow the Senate and take the State control) yet crisp and very keen view of history and of strategy. It also gives a full account of the raid Ceasar made in the mid 50's BC across the Rhine river you mention above.

Hannibal got a few more than two or three elephants across the alps alive. Not a whole lot more, but a few.

As to how to use them in battle.... well, I think you just armour them, attach pointy things to them, sit on them, point them at the enemy and charge!

The Gauls had probably never even heard of elephants. They must have thought that monsters had arisen from hell....

Eventually, Roman tactics adapted to the new threat. If a swordsman can't run away from a charging elephant, his best bet is to hack through the trunk. A safer bet is to prepare for battle by loading camels with large saddlebags full of straw, point the camels at the elephants, and fire the straw.... which sends the camels fleeing from you (and so towards the elephants) in panic.... either of these techniques will send the elephants stampeding back to where they came from, at which point they become the enemies problem, and not yours....

Hannibals elephants would charge through the line - he intended to break the formation before a charge.

At the battle of Zama, Scipio Africanus was prepared for Hannibal's elephants and trained his men to tighten their formation and leave corridors so that the elephants would not go through his line and not trample anyone. He then has skirmishers throw Javelins onto them from all sides.

They also used trumpeteers to scare the elephants.

I'm an Ancient History student, so that period interests me the most. Mainly the battles of the middle Roman republic (The Punic wars, as well as the wars against the Successor states). I've never thought about which of the battles is my favourite, but I must say I am quite partial to Scipio Africanus' campaign in Iberia.

I also have a huge interest in the Napoleonic period (Especially the Hundred Days) and the American Civil War.

39 posts, and no mention of Alexander the Great! Tactically, the Companion cavalry at Gaugamela decimated their far more numerous Persian opponents - think 50,000 facing 1 million. And no, that is no exaggeration according to the archaeology.

Odd word 'decimated' - comes from the Romans, who if a unit was found to be cowardly, would take a decimus - a tenth - of a unit and kill them to teach the others a lesson. So if you talk about decimating an opponent, it actually only means killing one tenth, not all of them, which is a common misconception.

Semantics, eh?!

Another thing with decimation - the ones that were not picked were ordered to beat those that were to death. Just to make sure everyone understood what it meant to run from service to Rome.

Stalingrad.

decimation (random extraction of one tenth of the men for execution) was still used in 1917 in Italian lines (and I think also in French ones) to "maintain discipline" according to headquarters minds.
Austrian used to set machine guns at the back of assaulting troops (their own...) to "decimate" those who ran back in fear of the enemy fire (read Karl Kraus).

WWI always interested me. I'm not German, but if I was, I would be proud of the effort of the German people, even if the war was lost, the two leading german nations of the world, with really only a weak power(turkey) aiding them, almost defeated the armies of the entire world.

Yeah, WWI is one of my faves too. It is always forgotten because of WWII, but I think it's more interesting. Before the war, Europe set itself up so that war would be inevitable, and it really can not be classified as "good vs. evil." It was just the classic battle of alliances taken to the extreme.

Napoleon's campaigns have been of significant interest to me, although trudging through the prose of some of the history books was nigh unbearable. I recently read a book called "The Two Koreas" that sparked my interest in history again.

Right, Revstar. I think that the war was seen as mandatory by everyone who joined in, except Italy. Austria had to respond to an assassination. Russia had to prevent Austria from becoming stronger, Germany had to prevent Russia from becoming too strong. France and England had to keep Germany boxed in.

WWI is the landmark event of the last century. It actually ended the "long" nineteenth century and opened up a new age. Probably WWII has been sort of continuation/consequence, but the real turning point were those tragic four years and a half. The order of the world as it had been established after a number of centuries since Renaissance, and specifically during the ninenteenth century was crushed under the fire of machine guns and drowned in the mud of European countryside and mountains.
I think it was more or less the end of European civilization era.
It was first time that huge masses of people were thrown into a "technological" warfare were they were literally "meat for bombs". Yet this started awareness of the power of organized masses and of the impact of technology; women left at home and massively employed into army factories became an active part of the western industrialized societies. Modern age was about set, only the atomic bomb and computers missing...

I agree. WWI ended monarchism and the middle ages for good. Essentially, the war was a loss for the forces of monarchism, and a win for the idea of American (liberal) democracy and to a lesser extent, communism.

Four significant battles in history:
Salamis Arguably the first great naval battle. There were fleets before, 'tis true, but part of the reason for its significance is that the Athenians (and the Greeks in general) relied heavily on maritime economy for their livelihood, so the outcome of the battle was more important than if it had been a land fight for the city itself (which, incidentally, had been evacuated and abandoned). This not only ended further Persian expansion in the Aegean and set the course of Athenian strategy until the end of the Peloponnesian war, but established the very idea of a "naval power".

Tours Charles Martel shut down expansion of Islamic/Moorish empire into Europe by defeating a force superior in both numbers and theoretical power (though it seems that Frankish infantry had better arms and armor than their opponents). The Moors would have lost a major battle sooner or later, but if they first established a foothold over
the Pyrenees it would not have been so easy to push them back out of Europe (as it is it took about six centuries after the battle to finally drive them out).

Tenochtitlan A siege, rather than a stand-up battle, but it guaranteed Spanish control of Mexico and most of the New World, setting the stage for rivalry with the Portuguese, Dutch, and English for the next few centuries. It also was the beginning of a new process of colonialism; previously colonies had been confined to strategically important ports and costal areas (such as along the African coasts, Goa, Malacca, etc), but Cortez and Velazquez were the first to conceive of seizing and exploiting the interior land themselves, instead of simply trading for its products.

Austerlitz Basically the last great battle of tactical maneuvers. It solidified Napoleon's reputation as a brilliant commander and made him public enemy number one for all of Europe. It also convinced the Spanish and Russians that beating on a level playing field was virtually impossible, influencing their decisions to rely on guerilla tactics and scorched earth instead. This, in turn, continues to influence military and foreign policy today. Since then, strategic advantage (in the form of equipment, material, intelligence, and planning) have become the decisive factors in warfare. I remain convinced that the decisive battle of the American civil war was in fact Vicksburg, and not Gettysburg, for the simple reason that it brought someone who understood the new reality of war to prominence in the form of General Grant.

I agree with those. Especially Tenochtitlan. That is often overlooked.

Tours is the least like the others, which otherwise caused serious redefinitions in the nature of warfare and international relations. But the "Christian confederation" of Europe has gone on to become the dominant world power for the last five or so centuries, and provided most of the tools, brains, and materials for the continuing technological revolution we've enjoyed.

Just to keep the WWI flag flying...

My book collection has more about this than any other period/event in history. I posted in another thread about this a month or so ago. For some reason, I always feel sad when I read about WWI, I feel a strange connection to it.

Just to stir things up, maybe I share something of the belief of General Patton regarding the ancient battlefields of North Africa...?