A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

  A 1901 illustration in the American Life magazine of the Battle of Marathon in the summer of 490 BCE. The Athenians on the left ran across the Plain of Marathon in the face of a hail of Persian arrows to win a stunning victory over the army sent by the Persian emperor, Darius I (the Great).

  Sacrifices to the gods carried out beforehand suggested good omens, which may have shored up any doubts among the Greek soldiers. Miltiades led them onto the plain, his line thicker on the two wings, deliberately thinner in the centre, until they were about a mile (eight stadia in the ancient Greek units of length) from the Persian lines. A trumpet sounded, and Miltiades gave the order, ‘Rush at them!’

  Those ten minutes of running, not too fast to exhaust them but fast enough to disconcert the enemy, were a formidable trial for the Greek army. The Persian archers shot cascades of arrows, but they were less effective at a running target, and the Greek line held. Before the Persian horses could join the action, the Athenians crashed into the Persian line, warmed up, like modern sportsmen, from the run. There is no record of how long the battle with sword and spear lasted, but when the Persians broke through the weaker centre, the two wings, where the Greeks had succeeded, wheeled round to envelop the advancing enemy from the side and rear. The Persians probably panicked, and tried to fight their way back to their boats. At this point the Athenians exploited their advantage ruthlessly, killing the Persians with their better thrusting spears or drowning them at the edge of the sea. Only seven ships were captured as Datis made his getaway, but the Persian dead numbered 6,400. It is said that the Athenians lost 192, including Kallimachos, who, legend has it, died holding onto a Persian ship with his teeth after losing both his arms. The enemy corpses were stripped of gold and left to rot.

  A Corinthian bronze helmet from the period of Marathon. Greek soldiers were otherwise lightly armoured, a fact that allowed them to run the gauntlet at Marathon.

  Marathon has been hailed many times as the battle that saved Western civilization from oriental despotism. More than a single battle was needed to achieve that, but it confirmed the special status of Athens and paved the way for the later victories that really did end Persian ambitions in Attica. It has also left a permanent imprint on the modern view of ancient Greece. The brave and disciplined run across the plain at the enemy was the key to victory; it is echoed in the awful run through no-man’s land forced on the infantry of the First World War, which brought a bitter stalemate rather than a rich and legendary victory.

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  No. 71 BATTLE OF THE CATALAUNIAN FIELDS (CHLONS)

  20 June 451

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  One of the most famous battles of antiquity occurred at an unknown site in northeastern France in June 451 between a mixed Roman–Gothic force and the raiding army of Attila, commander and king of the fearsome Huns, a nomadic people from Central Asia. Their reputation for ferocity has echoed down the ages, and ‘Hun’ was the pejorative term chosen by the Allies to describe the Germans in the First World War as an indication of how savage and barbarous their war-making was considered to be. In the late Roman period, the approach of the Huns struck terror into peoples who had become accustomed to the regular incursions of other nomadic invaders. The Huns were seen as an unstoppable force and their menace almost apocalyptic. The victory over Attila – it was in truth closer to a draw – showed that, in the right circumstances, no force is unstoppable. However, the army that gathered at the Catalaunian Fields to oppose him did not know that. They needed a double courage to confront the Huns and the terrible reputation that preceded them.

  In 451, Attila, after campaigns in the Eastern Roman Empire, decided to launch a large raid into Roman Gaul from his base in modern Hungary, there to seek further booty. His advance caused consternation, and later Christian chroniclers saw him as the scourge of God, sent to punish Christian communities for their lack of faith. Attila sacked Metz and Rheims (their murdered bishops became instant martyrs, and later saints) and laid siege to Orléans. His army, according to the Byzantine historian Jordanes, writing a century later, numbered half a million. It was almost certainly a fraction of this figure, but nevertheless a formidable host composed not only of Hun tribes but also eastern Goths under three brothers, Valamar, Thiudimer and Vidimer.

  An illustration of the Hun leader, Attila, featured in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. Written by Hartmann Schedel in Latin, it was one of the first printed books. In popular legend Attila remained the ‘scourge’ of Christendom.

  However, besieging a large, well-defended city was not a Hun speciality, and when news arrived that a large Roman army was approaching from the south, Attila broke off the siege, apparently anxious to avoid a major confrontation. The Huns began to withdraw, but were caught by their enemy at some point on the plain of Champagne between Rheims, Châlons (from which the battle has generally taken its name) and Troyes.

  An illustration from the Histoire Populaire de la France (1860) shows the Hun camp at Châlons-sur-Marne after the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451 CE. Following Attila’s defeat, the Huns retreated to their enclosed encampment where they allegedly built a pyre of their saddles, ready to burn them if the camp was stormed.

  The presence of a Roman army was not accidental. The westward march of the Huns clearly made the loss of Gaul, a major territory in the Western Roman Empire, a possibility. This danger alerted the Roman general Flavius Aetius, who had at one time allied with Hun tribes for his own purposes, to the defence of Gaul. The common threat also brought the local king of the Visigoths, Theodoric, together with his eldest son Thorismund, into alliance, along with the Burgundians and Bagandae from eastern Gaul, who had already suffered at the hands of the Huns, and the Alans from the west. The allied armies numbered perhaps 30–50,000, though the exact numbers are not known. Attila’s host has been estimated at around the same size, but both figures are largely guesses. The Huns fought with their traditional cavalry armed with bows and swords and lassos, but also fought on foot with swords and axes. The Roman–Visigothic army had heavy cavalry, light cavalry, traditional Roman infantry with sword and javelin, and more lightly armed troops from the non-Roman allies. Aetius, who as a hostage with the Huns many years before had developed a shrewd understanding of their battle tactics, opted for a formation that put his weaker forces in the centre and his stronger forces on the wings. Attila adopted the contrary pattern, with his stronger veterans in the centre, but more vulnerable forces on either side.

  It is thought that the battle began in the early afternoon and went on to a bloody crescendo at dusk. The combat hinged around a low ridge overlooking a sloping plain. The Roman army attacked it from the right, the Huns from the left, but the fight for the crest of the ridge fell to the Roman side, aided by a flanking attack from the Visigothic cavalry. The Huns were pushed back on their flanks and finally broke back down the slope. Attila is supposed to have admonished them to stand and fight: ‘For what is war to you but a way of life?’ They charged back up the slope but were always at a disadvantage. Bitter hand-to-hand fighting followed. The gore-soaked ground was supposed to have turned a small river running across the fields red with blood. Theodoric was killed in the mêlée. At the end of the battle Aetius was unable to find his camp, so he stayed with his Gothic allies overnight. But the clear result was the retreat of the Huns, worn down by the long battle, who returned to their camp of encircled wagons and waited to see what the following day would bring.

  This was indeed a historic moment and it was achieved by a mixed army of men whose individual motives and fears explained their courageous stand against the waves of Hun cavalry and foot soldiers. They showed that the Huns were not invincible, though it had been an unfamiliar contest for Attila, who preferred weaker opponents or a battle on the run rather than one against a large, disciplined army. The memory of that victory lingered on in European folklore as the moment when Europe was saved again from the domination of Asia. In truth, Attila was followed over the centuries by waves of other nomad
ic invaders from the east, but nothing has stayed in the collective consciousness of the West so firmly as the turning of the tide against the Huns.

  Over the days that followed the battle, the Visigoths and Romans broke camp and left, allowing Attila the opportunity to take his battered army swiftly back to Hungary. According to the best-known account, he died two years later from a nosebleed that choked him to death after a night of heavy drinking. As so often in the ancient world, Aetius was not thanked for his pains. Three years later he was suspected of attempting to usurp the imperial throne, and was slain at court in Ravenna by the emperor Valentinian himself, wielding a meat-cleaver. Savagery was not a Hun monopoly.

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  No. 72 BATTLE OF POITIERSTOURS

  25 October 732

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  Few battles in European history are more famous than the defeat of an Islamic army somewhere between the northern French cities of Poitiers and Tours in October 732. For centuries this has been seen as the battle that finally turned the tide of an inexorable Arab expansion and saved Europe from an Islamic future – a battle, therefore, of world-historical significance. As in so many medieval conflicts, however, the battle is shrouded in mystery. Almost everything about it, including the exact site, the number of soldiers present, the pattern of the battle and the number of casualties, has to be surmised from the scantiest of surviving manuscripts and from the topographical evidence. What is certain is that the battle came to symbolize the turning of a tide of conquest that had seemed remorseless. The Arab incursion into Spain in 711 had proved unstoppable; the capture of southwest France was completed by 725; heavy raids into the rest of southern and central France had followed. If no-one had stopped the raid of 732 it is difficult not to assume that sooner or later much of France would have become an Arab province.

  The stumbling block to further Arab expansion was the Frankish Merovingian kingdom, ruled for decades not by the king but by the ‘mayor of the palace’ whose position came by inheritance. The mayor in 732 was Charles, nicknamed Martel after the word for ‘hammer’. He had twenty years of campaigning behind him defending his empire from the barbarian east and from the rival claims of ambitious French nobles and bishops. He had not fought the Arab armies, though he knew of the raids they had carried out deep into French territory, while the Arab rulers of Spain (known then as al-Andalus) knew little about the Merovingians or their military prowess. In 731, the new governor of al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqui, planned a major raid (perhaps even an invasion) into the western French territory of Aquitaine. Booty and slaves may well have been the principal motive, but it cannot be ruled out that this was indeed an exploratory excursion preliminary to more permanent settlement. The call went out for volunteers, many of whom came from the Berber territories of Arab-ruled North Africa. Starting out from Pamplona in northern Spain, Abd al-Rahman led an army of perhaps 15–20,000 (various estimates suggest a lower or much higher number) towards Bordeaux and the rich pickings of western France.

  Aquitaine was ruled by Duke Eudes (generally known as Odo the Great). Caught between Arab expansion from al-Andalus and the ambitions of Charles’s Merovingian kingdom, Eudes tried to maintain his independence. In spring 732, Abd al-Rahman marched unexpectedly through the difficult passes of the western Pyrenees and arrived in southern Aquitaine. Within weeks he had captured and sacked Bordeaux. He then destroyed Eudes’s army at the Battle of the River Garonne, where Christian refugees were slaughtered. Eudes threw himself on the mercy of Charles Martel by agreeing to become a Merovingian vassal. Charles seems to have been keen to prevent the Arab army reaching his own territory in northwest France and sent out a call to muster his scattered forces. He led them to the city of Tours, where the wealthy monastery of St Martin was probably the Arab goal. After three months ravaging western France and amassing wagon trains of booty and slaves, Abd al-Rahman moved north towards Poitiers and Tours. How far he went is not known with certainty. It is clear that the advance took place in the middle of October as far as, or perhaps across, the River Vienne. From here on, the evidence is almost non-existent.

  A nineteenth-century engraving of a fifth-century Frankish soldier drawn from a description in the letters of Apollinaris Sidonius (c.430-–c.489), a Gallo-Roman aristocrat. By the time of Poitiers the Franks were generally more heavily armed and armoured, though the spear and long sword were still standard.

  So little did the Arab army think of the threat from the Franks that scant effort seems to have been made to scout far ahead. It is likely that the usual Arab advance guard and skirmishers ran into Charles’s army camped south of Tours and pulled back. By 18 October, the Arab army was behind the Vienne where it set up camp. Charles, it is assumed, followed at a distance, crossed the river, and then drew up in a defensive position of his own choosing. The two sides were organized and armed differently. Abd al-Rahman’s army consisted of a core of Arab warriors and a large number of Berber levies; both forces were on horseback, probably using stirrups (a point of continuing controversy), and were armed with swords and spears. There was a smaller body of infantry using bows, slings and javelins. The Frankish army was mainly infantry, using long spears, swords and axes in a phalanx formation. How many cavalry were present is simply not known. Both were experienced armies rather than raw recruits. How many men Charles had with him is again mere speculation, though a similar number of 15–20,000 is possible.

  The course of the battle is again open to conjecture. By chance the date, Saturday 25 October, is known with certainty from both Arab and Christian sources. Brief accounts, written later in the century by ‘Anonymous of Córdoba’ and in Continuator of Fredegar’s Chronicle, suggest that Charles drew up his army in a strong defensive line, supported by cavalry commanded by Eudus, and perhaps sheltered on both flanks by thick woodland. Here the Arab cavalry probably attacked head-on and were beaten back (the Franks managed to ‘grind them small in slaughter’ according to the Chronicle). Eudus may have outflanked the Arab army and attacked its large camp, full of loot and Berber families and followers. It seems likely that Abd al-Rahman retreated back to his camp to save it from being pillaged and that it was here that he was killed, possibly by a javelin. The camp was not captured but the defeat was clearly heavy enough to compel the Arab army to withdraw during the night, leaving the tents and most of the wealth behind them. They made their way back to Narbonne in the Arab southwest and thence back to al-Andalus, an intact, if defeated, force.

  A painting from 1837 of the Battle of Poitiers-Tours by the German-born artist Charles Auguste Steuben, who lived and worked in Paris. The picture was hung in the Palace of Versailles by the French king Louis-Philippe in a collection of battle paintings. Steuben used a great deal of imagination for a battle about which very little is known in detail.

  Historians argue over the significance of the victory at Tours or Poitiers, as well as over the unrecoverable details of the battle. The Arab name for the battle is ‘The Road of Martyrs’, which suggests heavy losses. The figures given later range from 1,000 to an implausible 300,000, but losses there would certainly have been. The victory did not stop further Arab depredations in France over the next four years, but they were confined to major raids. By 759, most of southwest France, including Narbonne, had fallen under Merovingian rule. The battle was perhaps not the grand clash of religions as it has so often been presented. Charles Martel did not see the Arab threat as much different from the threat from his unruly vassals or his pagan neighbours; the Umayyad Empire was also crumbling from within, so Poitiers could be seen as more effect than cause. Nevertheless it was a battle worth winning against an enemy that the battered Christian populations of Europe had thought might scourge them for ever.

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  No. 73 BATTLE OF LECHFELD

  10 August 955

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  The battle that took place over a number of days in and around the Bavarian city of Augsburg in 955 signalled a dramatic change in European history. The defeat of an invad
ing Hungarian (Magyar) army, organized on principles that had dominated warfare in Eurasia for centuries, brought to an end the long age of violent migrations from the Asian heartland. The only object that stood in the way of Hungarian conquest was an army of Germans hastily brought together by the Saxon king Otto I early in August. The Saxons knew their enemy, as German armies had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Hungarian horse-archers forty-five years earlier on the plain of Lechfeld. Otto understood that the hail of arrows likely to greet his men had destroyed most armies that had suffered such an attack, from the Parthian defeat of the Romans at Carrhae onwards. He led his army towards the invaders hoping that courage and luck would be enough.

  The battle was sought by the Hungarian leaders, among whom the best-known was the general Horka Bulksú. Their aim was to impose Hungarian military domination on central and southern Germany and even beyond, but above all they wanted booty and tribute. Otto had troubles of his own with local insurrections and Slav wars to the east, but in the summer of 955, these dangers were dwarfed by the threat of Hungarian military might undermining the whole region of central Europe. When emissaries from the Hungarians arrived in late June at Otto’s base in Magdeburg, it was evident that they were there to assess his readiness for war. What they saw reassured them, and a large Hungarian army of infantry, siege weapons and, above all, an estimated 9–15,000 horsemen, lightly armoured but carrying the lethal short bow of the steppe archer, set out for southern Bavaria. They crossed the River Lech and ravaged the countryside over a wide area, taking plunder but also creating a barren waste for any approaching army. They then laid siege to Augsburg, ruled by a very martial bishop, Ulrich, in the hope of tempting Otto south for a decisive battle.