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Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy’s The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World was so significant a book in its day that it would have sat in the libraries of middle-class households alongside the Bible, Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. While the 1851 work is seen as somewhat dated and flawed today, its influence remains, both in the enduring use of the term ‘decisive battle’, and in the subsequent obsession with adding to the list.
Inevitably, as history (and war) progressed, further battles were indeed added: four in an 1899 edition, eight in 1908, along with other contenders proposed by different books. Newer but derivative works include Great Battles of the World by Stephen Crane, The Decisive Battles of the Western World by J F C Fuller, and Fifteen Battles that Changed the World by Robert Silverberg, who used seven from Creasy’s original list.
Given that Creasy undoubtedly popularised (if not invented) the term, what exactly do we mean by ‘decisive battle’? One definition might be a clash of arms that is clearly and obviously won by one side. On this basis, many battles might be considered ‘decisive’. But Creasy had something grander in mind. Essentially, he saw that the decisiveness lay in changing the course of history.
Creasy’s introduction to his very first battle, the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, sets out his approach, with all its strengths and weaknesses:
The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the two nations. It broke forever the spell of Persian invincibility, which had paralysed men’s minds. It generated among the Greeks the spirit which beat back Xerxes, and afterwards led Xenophon, Agesilaus, and Alexander, in terrible retaliation, through their Asiatic campaigns. It secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendancy for many ages of the great principles of European civilisation.
Notwithstanding his rather grand language, Creasy is reaching out here for a wider significance to an event. Many later historians add the 1942 Battle of Midway to the list, and it does fit into this framework – we could easily say that it ‘broke forever the spell of Japanese invincibility’ even though three more hard years of war were to follow.
Similarly, Stalingrad, in the same year, is an almost universal addition to later lists, yet the Fall of Berlin in May 1945 is not. The latter saw the war all but finished, and Hitler dead, but the true turning point was much earlier. Interestingly, when the Russians interrogating Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt asked him which battle he considered most decisive, he caused considerable annoyance by saying, ‘The Battle of Britain’.
Creasy was writing in an age when ‘enlightened’ Victorians deplored war yet saw in the expansionist British Empire a force for civilisation and progress. This gave Creasy the excuse and indeed moral imperative to present vivid accounts of battles, often in the context of an epic struggle to defend Western values against the decadence and barbarism of the East.
Thus we have Marathon and Gaugamela (Greece v. Persia), Châlons (Rome v. the Huns), the Metaurus (Rome v. Carthage), and the defeat of the Armada (Protestant Britain v. Catholic Spain). Creasy is not averse, however, to commemorating revolutionary victories, such as Saratoga in 1777 and Valmy 15 years later, both of which saw the rise of republican nations in the face of monarchist opposition.
The 1429 Siege of Orleans and the Battle of Hastings are two English defeats that Creasy is happy to include. Typically, he sees the latter as an essential step in the fulfilment of his country’s national destiny: ‘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.’
Ironically, it was Harold’s conscious decision to seek out a decisive battle that was his undoing. Most historians agree that if he had bided his time inland and accumulated the large forces that were mobilising, William’s army would have struggled to secure a victory.
The book inspired many with its epic narratives of desperate struggles between gallant foes.
Epic narratives
Creasy’s stirring prose is very much of his day. It inspired many readers with its epic, flowing narratives of desperate struggles between gallant foes. But you will search in vain for the kind of detailed, analytical, and balanced account we expect nowadays. Take, for example, this extract from Waterloo:
The hostile cavalry, which Kellermann led forward, consisted chiefly of Cuirassiers. This steel-clad mass of French horsemen rode down some companies of German infantry, near La Haye Sainte, and flushed with success, they bounded onward to the ridge of the British position. The English Household Brigade, led on by the Earl of Uxbridge in person, spurred forward to the encounter, and in an instant, the two adverse lines of strong swordsmen, on their strong steeds, dashed furiously together. A desperate and sanguinary hand-to-hand fight ensued, in which the physical superiority of the Anglo-Saxons, guided by equal skill, and animated with equal vigour, was made decisively manifest.
The anachronism of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is fairly typical of Creasy, ever ready to impose a sense of national and racial destiny on the seeming chaos of the battlefield. It is easy to scoff at this, but the enduring popularity of the format suggests that there is something in us that seeks to extract meaning from great battles beyond the shedding of blood.
Most of Creasy’s list has in this sense stood the test of time. The Siege of Orleans and the Battle of Pultowa, between Sweden and Russia in 1709, are perhaps not frequently discussed nowadays, but deserve their place. The former is a welcome corrective to the jingoistic obsession with Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers, and reminds us that the French ultimately prevailed. Pultowa was a significant step in the rise of Russia, and a much-neglected warning to any European nation thinking it could crush that power.
And what of the later arrivals at the party? As our sad history of global conflict continued, fresh battles were put forward as ‘decisive’. Gettysburg and Sedan were obvious and enduring contenders. Santiago and Manila, both in 1898, were more of their time, now consigned to American colonial history. It’s difficult to find a naval battle more conclusive than Tsushima in 1905; certainly it was a victory that propelled Japan on to the world stage. The First World War is known chiefly as an attritional stalemate, so it is no surprise that the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914 is one of the few battles from that conflict given the ‘decisive’ label.
The Second World War, of course, gave fresh impetus to the listing trend, though with the rich choice available, it is interesting that the most widely agreed battles date from 1942, generally seen as the year the war turned.
Creasy made his mark on historical writing in many ways. He must also be the only historian referenced in an operetta. In Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, a character boasts that he can ‘quote the fights historical; from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical!’
Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy
Born: 12 September 1812
Died: 17 January 1878
Nationality: British
Born three years before the Battle of Waterloo, Creasy was educated at Eton College and later King’s College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1837 and appointed assistant judge at the Westminster sessions court. In 1840, Creasy began teaching history at the University of London and wrote a number of historical works. Twenty years later, he moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he served as Chief Justice, before poor health forced him to return to England in 1875, three years before his death. His other works include a volume of biographies of ‘eminent Etonians’ and histories of the British and Ottoman Empires. He wrote one novel, Old Love and the New, in 1870.
