Richard Overy: War: A History in 100 Battles

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

First published in Great Britain as A History of War in 100 Battles by William Collins in 2014

This Ebook edition published 2016

Text © Richard Overy 2014

Richard Overy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Cover photograph © Getty Images

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007452514

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008220761

Version: 2016-09-21

‘One of the great works of historical reference in the English language. If you were allowed only one history book in the whole of your life, The Times Complete History of the World would be hard to beat because it conveys a sense not only of time, but also of place’

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History, Harvard University

‘Magnificent … It is probably the most important book published on the history of the second world war this century’

Guardian

‘Monumental … this is a major contribution to one of the most controversial aspects of the Second World War … hugely impressive’

Literary Review

‘This tremendous book does what the war it describes signally failed to do. With a well-thought-out strategy and precision, it delivers maximum force on its objectives … the result is a masterpiece of the historian’s art’

The Times

‘Excellent … Overy is never less than an erudite and clear-eyed guide whose research is impeccable and whose conclusions appear sensible and convincing even when they run against the established trends’

Financial Times

‘An extraordinary and far-reaching history … Overy’s scope is incredibly broad and well-researched, also highly readable’

Spectator

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Professor Richard Overy

Maps

Preface

Introduction: The Truth of Battle

Chapter 1: Leadership

1 Battle of Gaugamela

2 Battle of Cannae

3 Battle of Actium

4 Battle of the Milvian Bridge

5 Battle of Hastings

6 Battle of Zhongdu

7 Battle of Bannockburn

8 Battle of Mohács

9 Siege of Vienna

10 Battle of Valmy

11 Battle of Trafalgar

12 Battle of Austerlitz

13 Battle of Maipú

14 Battle of Volturno

15 Battle for Warsaw

16 Third Battle of Kharkov

Chapter 2: Against the Odds

17 Thermopylae and Salamis

18 Battle of Zela

19 Battle of Edington

20 Battle of Clontarf

21 Battle of Legnano

22 Battle of the River Salado

23 Battle of Agincourt

24 Siege of Belgrade

25 Battle of Plassey

26 Battle of Leuthen

27 Rorke’s Drift

28 Battle of Adwa

29 Battle of Omdurman

30 Fall of Singapore

31 Battle of Santa Clara

Chapter 3: Innovation

32 Battle of Leuctra

33 Battle of Carrhae

34 Battle of Ain Jalut

35 Battle of Crécy

36 Battle of Lepanto

37 The Spanish Armada

38 Battle of Breitenfeld

39 Battle of Naseby

40 Battle of Poltava

41 Battle of Solferino–San Martino

42 Battle of Königgrätz (Sadowa)

43 Battle of Shangani

44 Battle of Tsushima

45 Siege of Edirne

46 Battle of Cambrai

47 Battle of France

48 Battle of Britain

49 Pearl Harbor

50 Battle of the Atlantic

51 Hiroshima and Nagasaki

52 Operation Desert Storm

Chapter 4: Deception

53 The Fall of Troy

54 Battles of Mount Vesuvius

55 Battle of Roncesvalles

56 Battle of Kleidion–Strumitsa

57 Battle of Manzikert

58 Battle of Lake Peipus

59 Fall of Tenochtitlán

60 Battle of Blenheim

61 Battle of Hohenfriedberg

62 Battle of the Plains of Abraham

63 Siege of Yorktown

64 Battle of the Little Big Horn

65 Battle of Alam Halfa

66 The Normandy Invasion

67 Operation Bagration

68 The Six Day War

69 Tet Offensive

Chapter 5: Courage in the Face of Fire

70 Battle of Marathon

71 Battle of the Catalaunian Fields (Châlons)

72 Battle of Poitiers–Tours

73 Battle of Lechfeld

74 Battle of Arsuf

75 Battle of Borodino

76 Battle of Leipzig

77 Battle of Navarino Bay

78 First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)

79 Battle of Gettysburg

80 Battle of Tacna

81 Battle of Verdun

82 First Day of the Somme

83 Guadalcanal

84 Stalingrad

85 Fourth Battle of Monte Cassino

Chapter 6: In the Nick of Time

86 Battle of Kadesh

87 Battle of Zama

88 Battle of Adrianople

89 Fall of Constantinople

90 Battle of Sekigahara

91 Battle of Marengo

92 Battle of Waterloo

93 Battle of Tannenberg

94 First Battle of the Marne

95 Defence of Tsaritsyn

96 Sink the Bismarck

97 Battle of Midway

98 Battle of Kursk

99 Battle of Dien Bien Phu

100 Battle for the Falklands

Picture Section

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Choosing just 100 battles from recorded human history is a challenge. Not just because it is necessary to cover a period of almost 6,000 years, but because men have fought each other almost continuously for millennia. Any century of battles has to be arbitrary. Anyone who knows anything about the history of war may be disappointed at what has had to be omitted, but each of the battles described here has something memorable about it. Between them, they tell us something about how the nature of armed combat has changed over time, and also how some things have remained the same, whatever changes in technology, organization or ideas separate one era from another.

It is an old adage that you can win a battle but lose a war. The battles featured here almost always resulted in victory for one side or another, but the victor did not necessarily win the war. Some battles are decisive in that broader historical sense, others are not. The further back in time we go, the more likely it is that an enemy could be finished off in one blow. The wars of the modern age, between major states, involved repeated battles until one side was battered into submission. Some of the great generals of the recent past – Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, Erich von Manstein – were on the losing side but are remembered nonetheless for their generalship. Some on the winning side have all but disappeared from the history books or from public memory.