Battle: the moments that transformed warfare from ancient Greece to Ukraine

The concept of ‘decisive battle’ is a familiar one to military history buffs. Mid-Victorian writer Edward Creasy chose 15 encounters, from Marathon to Waterloo, which he regarded as the most significant in history. A century later, the maverick military theorist Major-General J F C Fuller (see also feature on here) published his own selection. Iain MacGregor has taken a different approach in Battle. Instead of a strictly chronological survey, he has grouped his chosen battles to illustrate five factors: morale, leadership, innovation, subterfuge, and timing and numbers.

This thematic treatment allows for original insights, although MacGregor also has to acknowledge that frequently more than one factor was at work. He places Constantinople’s survival of the Arab siege of AD 717-718 under the heading of ‘subterfuge’, and undoubtedly deception played  a part. But famine and disease in the Arab camp were important too, as was the arrival of Bulgar relief forces, trapping the besiegers against the city walls. Similarly, the fall of the Belgian border fortress of Ében-Émael in May 1940 earns its place in the section on leadership, as an example of German officer training in taking the initiative. But it was also made possible by the availability of new technology – gliders which allowed the attackers to descend silently, and innovative hollow charges which concentrated explosive force on the fort’s roof.

MacGregor writes fluently and the book is based on an impressive breadth of source material. He is  equally at home describing Robert Bruce’s shield wall at Bannockburn in 1314 or Pétain’s dogged defence-in-depth of the fortress city of Verdun 600 years later. Each battle is brought to life, the action economically described, and its importance explained. Weaponry and tactics are clearly detailed –  from spear-carrying Greek hoplites, in their bronze helmets and breastplates, to Ukrainian engineers thwarting the Russian armoured assault on Kyiv in 2022.

Eye-witness testimony places  the reader in the thick of the fighting. From the January 1968  Tet Offensive, for example, we have a US Marine recalling what it was like to be tasked with clearing urban buildings one by one: ‘The noise, the fear – it was unlike anything I’d trained for.’ On the other side is a Viet Cong soldier who remembers being ordered to hold every house against the enemy: ‘The Americans were strong and relentless. Sometimes  we ran low on ammunition, and  we watched friends fall without being able to help.’

Pivotal points

Many of the selected battles are ones that a reader would expect – the Spanish Armada, Blenheim, Trafalgar, and Stalingrad are all here. But there are also some less predictable choices. MacGregor has included the naval battle of Red Cliffs, on the Yangtze River in AD 208, a turning point in the struggle between competing warlords for control of southern China. He discusses Otto I’s victory at Lechfeld in 955, which ended the Magyar invasions of western Europe, consolidated the German empire, and led eventually to the creation  of the kingdom of Hungary.

MacGregor has chosen battles which he regards as moments that ‘altered the direction of a war or a campaign’. These are events which he considers to have been ‘a genuine hinge – strategic, political or technological – on which later events turned.’ This does not necessarily mean that they directly brought about final victory. The Battle of Britain, for example, occurred in the first year of World War II. Not only was it a technological landmark in terms of the development of integrated air defence, but by denying Nazi Germany control of the British  land mass, it also made possible  the build-up of Allied forces for  the liberation of western Europe  four years later.

The choice of some of the engagements in Battle is open  to question. Why, for example, do we have Hannibal’s victory at Lake Trasimene, rather than the larger-scale and more critical battle at Cannae the following year? From the American Civil War, why the tactically brilliant but temporary Confederate success at Chancellorsville (May 1863) and not the Union victory at Gettysburg two months later, or Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ in 1864-1865? MacGregor’s description of Robert E Lee as ‘arguably the finest military strategist and leader of not just this war, but any war in modern history’ is exaggerated, even taking account of his undoubted skill in making the most of vastly inferior material resources.

MacGregor predicts that wars may become extended struggles of endurance.

Winning wars

In his conclusion, MacGregor predicts that the model of decisive battle may become less valid in future, and wars may become extended struggles of endurance. This case has also been made by Cathal J Nolan inThe Allure of Battle: a history of how wars have been won and lost, reviewed in MHM 109 (October 2019). Nolan argued that victory was more often due to logistics, industrial capacity, and an ability to outlast one’s opponent. Agincourt, for example, is celebrated by MacGregor as an outstanding example of innovation – intelligently deployed longbowmen facing armoured yet vulnerable cavalry. But it was a short-lived triumph, undone within a generation as the French state reorganised itself and mobilised against a fiscally weaker, poorly led opponent. In World War II, despite the initial success of Blitzkrieg tactics, Germany and Japan proved unable in the long run to compete with the might of the Soviet and  US war economies. 

Perhaps the truth lies in a combination of the two approaches. The build-up of resources alone will not be enough without leadership capable of deploying them. Hannibal was defeated by Rome’s campaign of attrition, combined with the battlefield skill of Scipio Africanus in the final confrontation at Zama. The Soviet Union won the war on the Eastern Front in large part by moving its industry east of the Urals and deploying enormous manpower. But it also took the planning skills of the Soviet high command to make a success of Operation Bagration, which broke Germany’s Army Group Centre and paved the way for Marshal Zhukov’s final push on Berlin.

Readers seeking a concise and well-written introduction to a global span of warfare will gain a great deal from the book. At the same time, it raises important questions about the notion of a pivotal military encounter. Battle should encourage an ongoing debate among readers and scholars alike.

REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD