The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo | Page 5

exclusively by the results. We learn to apply the juster standard of seeing what the circumstances and the probabilities were that surrounded a statesman or a general at the time when he decided on his plan: we value him not by his fortune, but by his PROAIRESIZ, to adopt the expressive Greek word, for which our language gives no equivalent.
The reasons why each of the following Fifteen Battles has been selected will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may be well to premise a few remarks on the negative tests which have led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in magnitude and importance to the chosen Fifteen.
I need hardly remark that it is not the number of killed and wounded in a battle that determines its general historical importance. It is not because only a few hundreds fell in the battle by which Joan of Arc captured the Tourelles and raised the siege of Orleans, that the effect of that crisis is to be judged: nor would a full belief in the largest number which Eastern historians state to have been slaughtered in any of the numerous conflicts between Asiatic rulers, make me regard the engagement in which they fell as one of paramount importance to mankind. But, besides battles of this kind, there are many of great consequence, and attended with circumstances which powerfully excite our feelings, and rivet our attention, and yet which appear to me of mere secondary rank, inasmuch as either their effects were limited in area, or they themselves merely confirmed some great tendency or bias which an earlier battle had originated. For example, the encounters between the Greeks and Persians, which followed Marathon, seem to me not to have been phenomena of primary impulse. Greek superiority had been already asserted, Asiatic ambition had already been checked, before Salamis and Platea confirmed the superiority of European free states over Oriental despotism. So, AEgos-Potamos, which finally crushed the maritime power of Athens, seems to me inferior in interest to the defeat before Syracuse, where Athens received her first fatal check, and after which she only struggled to retard her downfall. I think similarly of Zama with respect to Carthage, as compared with the Metaurus: and, on the same principle, the subsequent great battles of the Revolutionary war appear to me inferior in their importance to Valmy, which first determined the military character and career of the French Revolution.
I am aware that a little activity of imagination, and a slight exercise of metaphysical ingenuity, may amuse us, by showing how the chain of circumstances is so linked together, that the smallest skirmish, or the slightest occurrence of any kind, that ever occurred, may be said to have been essential, in its actual termination, to the whole order of subsequent events. But when I speak of Causes and Effects, I speak of the obvious and important agency of one fact upon another, and not of remote and fancifully infinitesimal influences. I am aware that, on the other hand, the reproach of Fatalism is justly incurred by those, who, like the writers of a certain school in a neighbouring country, recognise in history nothing more than a series of necessary phenomena, which follow inevitably one upon the other. But when, in this work, I speak of probabilities, I speak of human probabilities only. When I speak of Cause and Effect, I speak of those general laws only, by which we perceive the sequence of human affairs to be usually regulated; and in which we recognise emphatically the wisdom and power of the Supreme Lawgiver, the design of The Designer.
MITRE COURT CHAMBERS, TEMPLE, June 26, 1851.
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CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON
Explanatory Remarks on some of the circumstances of the Battle of Marathon.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Marathon, B.C. 490, and the Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, B.C. 413.


CHAPTER II.
DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE, B.C. 413.
Synopsis of Events between the Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse and the Battle of Arbela.


CHAPTER III.
THE BATTLE OF ARBELA, B.C. 331.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Arbela and the Battle of the Metaurus.


CHAPTER IV.
THE BATTLE OF THE METAURUS, B.C. 207.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of the Metaurus, B.C. 207, and Arminius's Victory over the Roman Legions under Varus. A.D. 9.


CHAPTER V.
VICTORY OF ARMINIUS OVER THE ROMAN LEGIONS UNDER VARUS, A.D. 9.
Arminius. Synopsis of Events between Arminius's Victory over Varus and the Battle of Chalons.


CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF CHALONS, A.D. 451.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Chalons, A.D. 451, and the Battle of Tours, 732.


CHAPTER VII.
THE BATTLE OF TOURS, A.D. 732.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Tours, A.D. 732 and the Battle of Hastings, 1066.


CHAPTER VIII.
THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS, A.D. 1066.
Synopsis of Events between the Battle of Hastings, A.D. 1066, and