A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

  The extent of the disaster was brought home to Crassus when he saw a Parthian lance carrying the severed head of his son. His Roman legionaries tried to keep close order as they were subjected to repeated charges from the cataphracts trying to break the Roman line, and a relentless wave of arrows began to eat away at Roman strength. Only when night fell did the killing stop, with few of the Parthians slain but thousands of injured, dying and dead legionaries piled on the sandy soil. Crassus ordered a retreat back to Carrhae, leaving, it was estimated, 4,000 wounded to be killed by the Parthians. The surviving army began to break up and move back to Syria. Crassus was invited to parley with Surena, but an altercation between the delegations ended with the murder of Crassus and his senior officers. Molten gold, it was claimed, was poured down the throat of his corpse as mocking retribution for his greed. The vast Roman army lost 20,000 dead and 10,000 captured. Later Roman accounts blamed Crassus for military incompetence, for which there was some justification, but the problem for Rome was the unconventional tactics they confronted. With the Romans unable to conquer Parthia, the Euphrates remained their unstable frontier.

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  No. 34 BATTLE OF AIN JALUT

  3 September 1260

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  The Battle of Ain Jalut, fought in the Jezreel Valley in southeast Galilee, in present-day Israel, signalled the end of the threat posed by the great Mongol khans to the Middle East and Europe. It also marked the start of a remarkable age of military innovation. During the encounter, small cannon, which used explosives developed first in China and possibly diffused to the Arab world from Mongol sources, were deployed for the first time in the recorded account of a battle. They did not win the battle – artillery would become important only centuries later – but they defined a moment of transition to a type of warfare that would culminate in the giant guns of the twentieth century, long after the Mongol threat was no more than a fading folk memory.

  Beginning with the conquests of Genghis Khan across Asia, the Mongol overlords had ambitions to dominate the whole of the known world. For decades, the march of Mongol armies west and south from their Asian heartland had seemed unstoppable. In 1251, Möngke Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, became Great Khan. His ambition was to complete the imperial conquest of the Christian and Islamic worlds and establish a Mongol world empire. He assembled a vast army, supplied by many of the vassal states that the Mongols had already conquered, and put it under the command of another grandson of Genghis Khan, Hülegü Khan. In 1256, after five years of preparation, the Mongol army moved out from its stronghold in Persia to complete the conquest of the world.

  The huge force swept aside Islamic states in its path and destroyed Baghdad, the heart of Islam and the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, which had ruled from there for 500 years. The population was slaughtered and the cultural and architectural treasures of the city destroyed. Next, Hülegü moved on to capture Damascus, seat of the Muslim Ayyubid dynasty. He planned to move south through Palestine to destroy the last remaining Islamic power in the Middle East, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. This would open the way to Mongol domination of North Africa and the Mediterranean. In 1260, Hülegü sent envoys to Cairo to demand the sultanate surrender or suffer the consequences. ‘Resist,’ wrote Hülegü, ‘and you will suffer the most terrible catastrophes.’ The Mamluk Sultan Qutuz replied by murdering the envoys and displaying their heads on the gates of Cairo. This was a declaration of war.

  Just as Hülegü prepared to move south, news arrived that Möngke Khan had died. Hülegü hurried eastwards with much of his army in the hope that he could claim the Great Khanate for himself. The remains of his army, an estimated 10–20,000 men, was placed under the command of a Christian Turk, Kitbuqa Noyan. The army moved south through Palestine, crossing the River Jordan in late August 1260. Qutuz formed an alliance with another Mamluk leader, Baibars, and moved northwards with an army of approximately the same size, 20,000 horsemen and archers. When news arrived of Kitbuqa’s approach, Qutuz advanced to meet him at the spring of Ain Jalut, in the Jezreel Valley.

  The Egyptians had the advantage that they knew the terrain well. It was decided that Baibar’s army would stand and face the Mongols, but engage only in small punitive sallies, provoking the Mongols, but not risking the whole Mamluk force. The rest of Qutuz’s army hid in the highlands around the valley, unobserved by the Mongols, and waited for Baibars to bait the enemy enough to provoke an advance into the valley. The Mongol army responded angrily to the failure of Baibars to stand and fight and finally, believing that the weaker Mamluk force was retreating, Kitbuqa ordered the whole Mongol army to pursue the enemy into the valley ahead. The trap was sprung. The Mongol army found itself the object of fierce attack from Mamluk soldiers and cavalry hidden in the trees on the valley sides, and an easy target for the many Egyptian archers. The Mamluks used small explosive hand cannons (midfa) for the first time in battle, designed to frighten enemy horses and horsemen, though not capable of inflicting serious damage. The Mongol forces nevertheless fought a desperate hand-to-hand battle to escape and almost succeeded until Qutuz, at the head of his own elite unit, rushed into the battle to rally the Mamluks. Qutuz was heard to shout out ‘Oh my Islam!’ to urge his followers to the defence of the faith. The tide turned in his favour, and while some Mongol troops fled, Kitbuqa fought to the end until he and thousands of his men were slaughtered.

  It was a historic victory. Although Hülegü planned to avenge Ain Jalut on his return to Persia in 1262, the Mongol Empire was splitting up and his own lands were threatened by the Muslim Khanate in Russia. A second small expedition sent against the Mamluks was driven back. The Mamluk victory marked the end of Mongol expansion, broke the spell of Mongol invincibility and preserved the Islamic world.

  The triumph did Qutuz little good. He was murdered on his way back to Cairo by emirs almost certainly in the pay of Baibars, who feared that Qutuz would not honour his pledge to grant Syria to him in the event of a Mamluk victory. Baibars became the new sultan. Under his rule, the Mongols were expelled from Syria and the remaining Christian crusaders from Palestine, and Islamic rule placed on a firmer foundation. The decisive battle had been won through a simple act of battlefield deception, but the use of small cannon had a much greater implication. From this meagre start began the long evolution of gunpowder weapons that made the battlefield a more lethal environment and threatened the immunity of fortified cities. Qutuz could never have realized how rapidly this modest innovation would change the nature of battle.

  This illustration of an early medieval cannon appears in Stories from Swedish History by the Swedish historian Otto Sjogren (1844–1917). The first primitive cannon, such as the devices used at Ain Jalut, were more likely to intimidate the enemy than to do serious harm.

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  No. 35 BATTLE OF CRÉCY

  26 August 1346

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  The Battle of Crécy was an exceptional medieval battle. The risks of actual combat were high for monarchs and the nobles and knights they took with them to war, so in many cases in the High Middle Ages, battle was not actually joined. Raids, skirmishes and sieges were common, but a full-scale battle between two major armies was a relative rarity. Crécy, so it is estimated, pitted an estimated 10–14,000 Anglo-Welsh men-at-arms and archers against perhaps 20,000 French and mercenary forces, at least 12,000 of them mounted and armoured men-at-arms. What made the battle so remarkable was that this smaller force inflicted a devastating defeat on the ‘flower of Christendom’ fighting for the French king, Philip VI. The army of the English king Edward III won the battle as a result of a simple cluster of operational and tactical innovations, which turned a kingdom regarded as militarily mediocre into Europe’s most dangerous battlefield opponent.

  England and France were old enemies. The campaign which ended with the English triumph at Crécy was part of a long-drawn-out struggle between the French and English crowns over lands in France. In 1346, Edward III planned a major operation to stake hi
s claim to the French throne. After raising a great deal of money, men and supplies, and requisitioning, it is estimated, up to 1,000 vessels, his vast armada landed, with complete surprise, at St-Vaast-la-Hougue on the Normandy coast. This combined arms assault on France was the first major innovation: no army of this size, complete with thousands of horses, had ever engaged in an amphibious operation of this size and complexity – a remote ancestor of D-Day, 600 years later. Not much is known about Edward’s motives, but historians now suggest that he had planned to lure Philip to battle on ground of his choosing and that the area of Ponthieu south of Calais (which was technically English territory), in which the forest and village of Crécy were situated, was his intended destination. This was a high-risk strategy, and for six weeks the English army forced its way along a 30-kilometre (20-mile) wide corridor towards the Seine and then the Somme, devastating everything in its path and risking retaliation. This was a challenge to the honour of France that Philip could not ignore and he summoned his military nobility, allies and paid mercenaries to march on the impertinent English and offer them battle.

  Edward’s army reached its destination, having broken across the River Somme on 24 August. After marching through the Crécy forest, they arrived at the slope at the top of the Vallée des Clercs, where Edward positioned his forces to block the northwards advance of Philip’s vast army. The English had many advantages from their ability to choose the place and time of engagement, but the critical factor was the way in which Edward disposed his forces. The various early accounts of the battle are inconsistent, but it seems clear that Edward divided his army into three divisions, probably one behind the other, with the king’s son, the Black Prince, leading the vanguard so that, according to legend, he could ‘win his spurs’. The long wagon train that had accompanied the army was drawn into a tight circle like an improvised fortress, with the pack animals and horses inside, protected by archers and cannon. Most accounts agree that the English longbowmen, the key to the new English battlefield tactics, were positioned in triangles facing the oncoming French, probably on each wing of the English men-at-arms, as well as in front. Pits and trenches were dug to hamper the French cavalry, but once the archers had done their damage, Edward’s military elite abandoned their horses in favour of fighting on foot. This was a tactical arrangement tried a number of times before, but Crécy saw its triumphant fulfilment.

  Edward was fortunate that Philip VI had little room for manoeuvre in every sense. Recent study of the topography of the battle has demonstrated that the French had to advance on a narrow and difficult front to get at the English, an outcome almost certainly planned by Edward and his commanders. On other occasions, Philip might have mustered his forces while avoiding open combat, but on this occasion the savage passage of the English through northern France had been a calculated challenge. He pursued the English and arrived at Crécy late on the afternoon of 26 August. Some of his senior advisers cautioned delay until the morning rather than fighting in the twilight; others, it seems, were impatient to get at the English and felt any delay would dishonour them. Philip hesitated, but before a clear decision could be taken, numerous French cavalry moved forward towards the English lines, eager to take up the challenge. The decision was taken out of the king’s hands. He ordered the sacred banner of France, the Oriflamme, to be raised, indicating that no quarter was to be given. Edward responded by raising the Dragon banner, which meant the same. Few prisoners were taken at Crécy.

  Philip expected his mercenary Genoese crossbowmen to open the battle. They hurried forward, hampered by the crowd of French horsemen. The crossbow was a formidable weapon with a range of up to 400 metres (1,300 feet) and a heavy, lethal bolt; but it could only be fired intermittently, after laborious reloading. Some accounts have a shower of rain just before the Genoese advanced, which would have damaged their bowstrings. Whatever the truth, the crossbow was outdone by the simple English longbow, with a rapid rate of fire, three times that of a crossbow, and a deadly impact at 300 metres (1,000 feet). The Genoese had been sent forward without their shields. After the first hail of arrows they panicked and fell back among the advancing French cavalry.

  This image of the Battle of Crécy fought between the army of the English king, Edward III, and the king of France, Philip VI, on 26 August 1346 appears in the chronicles of the French author Jean Froissart (c.1337–c.1405). The key to the English victory was the longbow, which could be shot faster and further than the French crossbow, visible on the lower left.

  The nature of the narrow approach maximized the damage the English archers could inflict and made it impossible for Philip to use his greater numbers to his advantage. As the first divisions of French horsemen moved forward, they were mown down by the missiles. The English men-at-arms then joined the mêlée, taking advantage of the French confusion and pushing back the enemy until, so it now seems, those behind were crushed to death by the retreating knights. The ebb and flow of the battle has differing accounts, but there is no doubt about the outcome. Over 1,500 of the French elite lay dead on the field for the loss of 300 English knights. Philip fought bravely on some accounts and was wounded, but he was eventually led from the field to avoid his capture. The most famous knight in Europe, John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, though now blind, tied his horse together with those of his retainers and plunged into the fray. He and his companions were all found dead the following day on the battlefield. This news perhaps shocked Europe more than the battle itself.

  Reports and newsletters swiftly travelled to Europe’s major cities. Crécy was seen at the time as a stunning victory for an upstart king against the very flower of Europe. Edward moved on to besiege Calais, which fell the following year. Philip tried to salvage his reputation by blaming others. The real explanation for French defeat lay in the new English way of warfare. The defensive longbow, properly exploited, together with the deployment of armoured men on foot, unhinged the traditional domination of battlefield cavalry. The battle demonstrated that quite simple tactical innovations could transform, if temporarily, the art of war.

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  No. 36 BATTLE OF LEPANTO

  7 October 1571

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  It is hard to imagine a more extraordinary battle scene than the carnage at the decisive clash between the Muslim and Christian fleets in the narrow strait dividing mainland Greece from the Peloponnesian peninsula. Grand paintings made to celebrate the Christian victory give some sense of the tumult and the innumerable dead. More than 450 ships rowed by tens of thousands of oarsmen, most of them slaves, crashed together in the narrow seas. What the paintings fail to show is the slender but probably decisive advantage enjoyed by the Christian fleet: large, heavily gunned ‘galleasses’, bristling with cannon and men armed with light muskets (the ‘arquebus’), whose raking fire broke up the Ottoman line, were an innovation that stunned the enemy vessels and left more than eighty of their number at the bottom of the sea.

  The battle came about as a result of the increasingly desperate efforts of the Spanish emperor and the Papacy to hold back the moving tide of conquest of the Muslim Ottoman emperor, Selim II. In 1571, the Turks seized Cyprus from the Venetians with an orgy of cruel violence, massacring 20,000 inhabitants in Nicosia and seizing 2,000 young captives for sexual slavery. The cautious Venetians, whose whole empire in Greece and Dalmatia now seemed open to Ottoman ambitions, finally joined with Spain, Genoa and the Papal States in a Holy League to free the Christian world from the looming threat to Italy, and to frustrate the Ottoman boast that St Peter’s in Rome would soon become a mosque. King Philip II of Spain, who later sent the Armada to conquer Protestant England, gave command of the fleets of the Holy League to Don Juan de Austria, the title given to his brother Gerónimo, the illegitimate son of the Habsburg emperor, Charles V. It proved an inspired choice. Don Juan (Don John in English) was an able commander, a skilful diplomat between the differing forces assembled under his flag, and an inspiration to the thousands serving under him.

&
nbsp; The seizure of Cyprus was completed with a long siege of the Venetian fortified town of Famagusta. After the garrison negotiated surrender, the Venetian commander had his ears and nose cut off, was exhibited in chains on all fours and was finally flayed alive, his skin then stuffed with straw and paraded as a Turkish trophy. The commander of the Turkish fleet, Admiral Ali Pasha, next took his force, which numbered in the end 251 galleys, galliots and smaller vessels, to the advance Ottoman naval base at Lepanto, on the southern coast of mainland Greece. He had with him perhaps 50,000 men, militia, archers, slaves and the better armed elite janissaries. It was late autumn and Ali was uncertain whether he would winter there unmolested. Sultan Selim sent him a messenger to say that if the fleet of the Holy League appeared, he was to seek battle.

  Unknown to Ali Pasha, Don John had succeeded in assembling a large fleet, eventually some 208 vessels, including 154 galleys, 38 smaller vessels or ‘lanterns’, and six new ships put together in the dockyards at Venice. These giant galleasses carried 40 guns apiece, 30-pound guns on the deck, 50-pounders down below. The regular galleys carried perhaps four or five guns. The object was to send them out ahead of the main fleet, with 500 men aboard armed with the standard musket or ‘arquebus’, to smother the enemy decks with fire. Don John also ordered galleys to remove the large prow used for ramming an enemy ship, so that the forward guns could fire directly down at the Turkish waterline. It has been estimated that the Holy League had 1,334 guns to the Ottomans’ 741. Concentrated gunfire in Mediterranean warfare was a novelty and its effects were devastating.