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Battles that changed the course of history - Differing views

Iqbal Latif - 12/5/2006

History is a bounded slave of Eurocentric version of mankind's evolution. Unless proper effort is made to understand historical events in their proper context the gap between civilizations cannot be filed, the bridges can only be made if efforts are made to understand the vents that led to present confrontation between radicals and the moderates of the world.

The great battles that have changed the course of history are defined in rather very myopic terms, the rise of Islam form the forgotten unknown lands and deserts have led today to more than 1;2 billion faithful, the battles that Islam to victory are rarely considered as battles that would have changed history, that exactly what they did, the Byzantine Eastern Romans Empire carved out differently once the desert warriors conquered the Hellenistic and Sassanians? Without the rich booty of intellectual Sassanian civilization on which Umayyads and Abbasids thrived extensively the course of events would have been very different.

An eminent historian profiles 16 decisive struggles from ancient and modern times—conflicts that forever changed the course of world events. Gripping accounts range from Alexander the Great's overthrow of the Persian empire in the fourth century b.c. to World War II's Battle of Midway. With dramatic flair, Pratt depicts the full panorama of circumstances leading up to the decisive clashes, the historical personalities involved, and the battles' historically important aftermath.As a post script to his monumental efforts I have added few events that he missed due to his Eurocentric view of history , a malady that grips a lot of historians.


The Battle of Marathon, 490 BC

* Excerpt: Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago, a council of Athenian Officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica.

The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.


The Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, 413 BC

* Known as the Battle of Syracuse.
* Excerpt: Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and mediaeval times than has the city of Syracuse.


The Battle of Gaugamela, 331 BC

* Also called the Battle of Arbela.
* Excerpt: ... the ancient Persian empire, which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela.


The Battle of the Metaurus, 207 BC

* Excerpt: That battle was the determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage, but between the two great families of the world...


Victory of Arminius over the Roman Legions under Varus, 9 AD

* Known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
* Excerpt: ..that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race.


The Battle of Chalons, 451

* Also called the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields or the Battle of the Catalun.
* Excerpt: The victory which the Roman general, Aëtius, with his Gothic allies, had then gained over the Huns, was the last victory of imperial Rome.


The Battle of Tours, 732

* Also called the Battle of Poitiers.
* Excerpt: the great victory won by Charles Martel ... gave a decisive check to the career of Arab conquest in Western Europe, rescued Christendom from Islam, [and] preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilization...


The Battle of Hastings, 1066

* Excerpt: ..no one who appreciates the influence of England and her empire upon the destinies of the world will ever rank that victory as one of secondary importance.


Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orléans, 1429

* Known as the Siege of Orléans.
* Excerpt: ..the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English.


Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588

* Excerpt: The England of our own days is so strong, and the Spain of our own days is so feeble, that it is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world.


The Battle of Blenheim,1704

* Excerpt: Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.


The Battle of Pultowa, 1709

* Also called the Battle of Poltava.
* Excerpt: The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it overthrew as well as for what it established.


Victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga, 1777

* Known as the Battle of Saratoga.
* Excerpt: The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of Rome from humble beginnings to the greatest magnitude which the world had then ever witnessed. But the citizen of the United States is still more justly entitled to claim this praise.


The Battle of Valmy, 1792

* Excerpt: ..the kings of Europe, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military republic.


The Battle of Waterloo, 1815

* Excerpt: The exertions which the allied powers made at this crisis to grapple promptly with the French emperor have truly been termed gigantic, and never were Napoleon's genius and activity more signally displayed than in the celerity and skill by which he brought forward all the military resources of France.

In my opinion..the euro centric view of history is the biggest problem the worst is that really no efforts are seriously made to correct the prevalent gaps; events that have really impacted the than known world far bigger than some battles above are..


The first battle of Islam at Badr:

Battle of Badr changed the course of the history in a far bigger manner than any battles mentioned above; if Quraysh would have been successful the Arab land would have remained a forgotten part of the world until oil would have been discovered. 1400 years of known world history would have been very differently written.

If Saad Bin Waqas would have been defeated at Qadisiya Iran would have been still a big buffer between the peninsula of ignorance and Stans, without the rich culture of Iran may be the dynamicism seen in the early days of Islam would have not materialized!!

The battle of Qadisiya, 637 AD. This decisive combat between Muslim Arabs and the Persian army of the Sassanians resulted in the Islamic conquest of Iran .

If Abbasids kingdom would not have fallen to Mongols may be the tolerant version of Islam would have taken firm seat in the heartland of Islam!!

The Battle of Baghdad in 1258 was a victory for the Mongol leader Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan. Baghdad was captured, sacked, and burned.

* "Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by a canal network thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centres in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them." (Steven Dutch)

* "They swept through the city like hungry falcons, attacking a flight of doves, or like raging wolves attacking sheep, with loose reins and shameless faces, murdering and spreading terror...beds and cushions made of gold and encrusted with jewels were cut to pieces with knives and torn to shreds. Those hiding behind the veils of the great Harem were dragged...through the streets and alleys, each of them becoming a plaything...as the population died at the hands of the invaders." (Abdullah Wassaf as cited by David Morgan)

The course of the Euro-Asia would have been different if Ayyubids, the dynasty of Saladin and of the Mameluk Turks, would have not vanquished the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalout in 1260.

Two battles more important than Potiers are- In Lepanto or if siege of Vienna would have been successful and if Ottomans would have won who knows who would have ruled the sea lanes of the World instead of England and with riches of Vienna the terminal decline of the Ottomans may not have commenced!!!!

The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League, a sometimes flimsy coalition of the Papacy (under Pope Pius V), Spain, Venice, Republic of Genoa, Duchy of Savoy, the Knights of Malta and others, defeated a force of Ottoman galleys. The 5-hour battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece, where the Ottoman forces sailing westwards from their naval station in Lepanto met the Holy League forces, which had come from Messina, in the morning of Sunday 7 October[2]. It was the final major naval battle in world history solely between rowing vessels.

Despite the massive defeat, however, the Holy League's disunity prevented the victors from capitalizing on their triumph. Plans to seize the Dardanelles as a step towards recovering Istanbul , formerly Constantinople, for Christendom, were scuppered by bickering amongst the allies. With a massive effort, the Empire rebuilt its navy, adding eight of the largest capital ships ever seen in the Mediterranean. Within six months this new fleet was able to reassert Ottoman naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. On 7 March 1573 the Venetians thus recognized by treaty the Ottoman possession of Cyprus, which had fallen to the Turks under Piyale Pasha on 3 August 1571, just two months before Lepanto, and remained Turkish for the next three centuries, and that summer the Ottoman navy ravaged the geographically vulnerable coasts of Sicily and southern Italy . A Turkish Grand Vizier famously said "In wresting Cyprus from you we deprived you of an arm; in defeating our fleet you have only shaved our beard. An arm when cut off cannot grow again; but a shorn beard will grow all the better for the razor."


The Battle of Vienna (as distinct from the Siege of Vienna in 1529) took place on September 11 and September 12, 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by Turks for two months. It was the first large-scale battle of the Great Turkish War, yet with the most far-reaching consequences.

The siege itself began on 14 July 1683, by the Ottoman army commanded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha. The decisive battle took place on 12 September, after the united relief army of 70,000 men had arrived, pitted against the Ottoman army of approximately 138,000 men — although a large number of these played no part in the battle, as only 50,000 were experienced soldiers, and the rest less-motivated supporting troops.[1] King Jan III Sobieski of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been made Commander in Chief of his own 30,000-man Polish forces and the 40,000 troops of Habsburg and their allies, led by Charles V, Duke of Lorraine.

The battle marked the turning point in the 300-year struggle between the forces of the Central European kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire . Over the sixteen years following the battle, the Habsburgs of Austria, and their allies gradually occupied and dominated southern Hungary and Transylvania , which had been largely cleared by the Turkish forces.

If Saladin would have lost at Hattin the crusades and hatred of centuries might have evolved differently!! Jerusalem remains until today at the heart of the Middle East crisis!

The Battle of Hattin took place on Saturday, July 4, 1187, between the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the forces of the Ayyubid dynasty under Saladin. It was a major setback in the fortunes of the Crusader movement, enabling the Muslims to regain control of Jerusalem from the Christians who had invaded the Middle East from Europe.