Creasy's 15 decisive battles of the world

[Junius]

Always thought the idea of a decisive battle was interesting. Seems one of the moments when history could have gone another way and opens up all sorts of interesting counterfactuals. This list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World is the most famous, but i never bought into a lot of Creasy's thinking.

1. Marathon may belong, but i would probably use Salamis instead. After all Marathon only delayed the war to conquer Greece. Hard to say it was more decisive when it was Salamis that effectively ended any chance the persians had to add the city-states to the empire.

2. Syracuse. Not really seeing it. It may be interesting to speculate about what effect it would have to replace Rome with Athens, but i find it pretty farfetched to think Athens could have maintain rule over Syracuse even if they could somehow win the battle. Not to mention does that help them win the Peloponnesian War? Maybe, but i'm not convinced.

3. Arbela is one i agree with. Alexander was unlikely to lose, i would think, given how he had already established a huge superiority over persian arms, but what if he had? The Hellenistic period never exists or is significantly altered? Perhaps the Achaemenids continue to rule or maybe an even stronger empire replaces them (an earlier version of the Sassanids?). I agree with him there, seems one of the most decisive.

4. Can't agree here. I think Hannibal had already lost whatever chance he would have had to win the war. This probably just hastens the inevitable.

5. Not seeing this one either. I think 19th century German Nationalists did an excellent job of selling this as decisive and a turning point in history, but Rome avenged the defeat as well as they could have under Germanicus and i think the withdrawal to the Rhine was probably bound to happen.

6. I disagree here as well. The Hunnic Empire was very unstable and it's hard to see it lasting much longer than it did regardless. Seems overrated in importance.

7. I can see Creasy's (and Gibbons before him) point, but it too seems overhyped. Looks more like a raid than something eyeing conquest. Perhaps more important for securing more power for Charles Martel and his descendents.

8 and 9. Both look legit to me. Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but i really think things could have easily turned out differently.

10. Don't see it. The spanish troops i think could have defeated the english in battle, but only in the short-term. Interested to read others views on this.

11. French had too many enemies at this point and Louis was near the end IMO. Can't really see France winning the war or adding much more territory if they somehow had.

12. Maybe it just seems this way because of what we know now, but i think the size, resources, and population of Russia makes the battle for top Baltic nation too one-sided for one battle to have been truly world-altering.

13. I suppose i could be persuaded either way. Seems the most important battle of the war to me, which could easily have been lost, but if anyone else has another nominee from the ARW or thoughts on Saratoga, I would be interested.

14. Proponents would say it saved the revolution, but it wasn't really even a win. I mean the Prussians withdrew, but they had hardly been beaten. Most interesting to me for what Goethe supposedly said afterwards.

15. Very famous, but with so many states lined up against him seems Napoleon's defeat was going to come sooner or later. Leipzig seems to me more important.

Hope that wasn't too long, just wanted to give my thoughts. Personally i would include Manzikert and possibly Yarmuk. Also one of the great arab sieges of constantinople seems more decisive than something like Poitiers. Also i will say what i'm sure everyone is thinking before it gets posted: yes this list is heavily eurocentric. Its just a jumping off point. What does everyone think? Are these battles really of great historical importance? What other battles were truly decisive?

 

[LightSpectra]

A good deal of what he says is pretty lulzy by the standards of modern history (Tours was a booty-looting excursion, not a massive march for conquest), but this:

The Battle of Blenheim, AD 1704

Excerpt: Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.

is pretty absurd by anybody's standards.

 

[schlaufuchs]

A good deal of what he says is pretty lulzy by the standards of modern history (Tours was a booty-looting excursion, not a massive march for conquest), but this:



is pretty absurd by anybody's standards.

lol indeed. I thought for a decisive battle to be considered decisive it had to be, you know...decisive.

 

[LightSpectra]

lol indeed. I thought for a decisive battle to be considered decisive it had to be, you know...decisive.

Oh, Blenheim was definitely decisive; it resulted in the occupation of Bavaria by the pro-Archduke Karl coalition. But to suggest that the destruction of one French army, in a war where the French lost 150,000 troops, was the deciding factor against conquests the magnitude of Alexander is absurd.

 

[Junius]

Obviously Blenheim's importance to history was exaggerated by Creasy. Though I think he was just as bad when it came to the siege of Syracuse. It was clearly decisive to the peloponnesean war, costing Athens huge amounts of men, ships, and money. Although if they are somehow able to take syracuse, i still don't see how he makes the leap to anoint them the alternate Rome. Not sure that even leads them to defeat the Spartans.

 

[Dachs]

The argument that withdrawing to the Rhine was the only sensible cost-effective course for the Romans in Germania Magna (and therefore that the defeat in the Teutoberger Wald was negligible) overlooks the fact that it was losing three legions in those forests that made such a withdrawal cost-effective. Before 9, the Romans were well on their way to establishing the same provincial government in Germania as they had in Gaul; after it, they never tried again, with the exception of the Agri Decumates. Compare it to the Gallic Wars; say, if Caesar had been disastrously defeated in the Vogesus, been killed, and his legions scattered by Ariovistus, would there have been any real impetus to try to conquer Gaul afterward? I'm not sure there would've been.

That said, I think it's silly to state that, had Rome won out against Arminius et al., the Empire would have continued to endure and the fifth-century crisis forestalled indefinitely. That falls prey to the elementary mistake of assuming that the fifth-century crisis was caused by "barbarians", who destroyed the Roman Empire in the West. Civil wars killed the Western Roman Empire, and adding extra territory (and thus, extra power bases for potential usurpers) doesn't forestall that. Perhaps it would even hasten a breakdown of of the emperors' ability to manage competing provincial elites, with more such elites to manage. Of course, the linguistic effects would be incalculable.

Obviously Blenheim's importance to history was exaggerated by Creasy. Though I think he was just as bad when it came to the siege of Syracuse. It was clearly decisive to the peloponnesean war, costing Athens huge amounts of men, ships, and money. Although if they are somehow able to take syracuse, i still don't see how he makes the leap to anoint them the alternate Rome. Not sure that even leads them to defeat the Spartans.

Considering the Athenians almost defeated the Spartans despite losing at Syrakousai, I think it's reasonable to assume that they would have been able to win the war having captured it. Maintaining control need not be particularly difficult; Athens had its own partisans in the city itself, of course, and Syrakousan power could be further decreased by the reconstitution of poleis that the Syrakousans had destroyed e.g. Hyblaia or Leontini. What made Syrakousai more difficult to control than, say, Samos or Naxos, both of which stayed firmly under the Athenian thumb until after the Athenian military had virtually ceased to exist?

The alternate Rome is fanciful, but then again, so is most of the rest of the book. It's quite silly, from its purpose to the nitty-gritty of the implementation. It's books like this one that give alternate history and military history a bad name - and this coming from someone whose introduction to both was this very book.

 

[aronnax]

I hate "decisive battles". Especially when you try to compare it with the entirety of Human History.

Firstly, I hate these things because by right, every action and event ever is a decisive action in changing the face of the current time frame of human history because preceding every event, is another event that could only happen because of a preceding one.... <Put point between two mirrors>

When we say something is decisive, it is at that moment where it is an either or situation. You either pick the red pill and situation 1 happens or you pick the blue pill and situation 2 happens(often there are a lot pills and resulting situations as a well). But clearly, for something to be decisive, it needs to be a now or never moment. A point in time where whatever the decision picked, it is impossible or at least, incredibly hard to turn back and pick the second option.
Often in History, that is not the case. Most wars do not consist of two opposing sides with only one equally sized army for attack/defense each that results in a battle in which the complete destruction of one side's army happens.
It's often a series of battles and campaigns and a series of factor aside from one battle that results in Final Victory. Napoleon was finally defeated in a 50 different battles, not in one battle. Hitler wasn't finally defeated at Stalingrad, he was defeated in hundreds of battles across Europe. And this is if you dismiss economic, social and supply factors.

Decisive battles in the face of human History are in my opinion illogical. There are some battles that are more important than others, but in most cases, there are never decisive battles.

 

[Junius]

My thinking was that Syracuse was far larger and farther away than the aegean islands or ionian cities that made up the Athenian empire. Also it wasn't a situation where they could supplant the tyrant and they would have wide democratic support. Syracuse was already a democracy. They would have required much more effort there than usual. More men, possibly a permanent garrison. More ships away from the main theater. Yes Athens was incredibly able to recover and they could have won. Still see it as for from a sure thing. I guess for me it depends on how the persians take this Athenian victory. If they stay out of the war because of it and the Spartans don't have money for ships and sailors then Athens probably does win. Otherwise i think a negotiated peace like the peace of nicias or the one that ended the first peloponnesian war is possible. Can't see a decisive Athenian victory like the one the Spartans and allies had.

As far as the Rhine frontiers i was thinking later in roman history. Something analgous to the abandonment of Dacia. Just seems so difficult to hold and not wealthy enough to be worth the effort.

 

[Dreadnought]

Wait, we're still calling Valmy a battle?

 

[aronnax]

great arab sieges of constantinople

Im just wondering. How significant can a siege be if it fails? The sieges certainly didn't make it stronger.

 

[Dachs]

Firstly, I hate these things because by right, every action and event ever is a decisive action in changing the face of the current time frame of human history because preceding every event, is another event that could only happen because of a preceding one.... <Put point between two mirrors>

Nah. I think it's awfully hard to dispute that there are identifiable instances of high indeterminacy in history with identifiable short-term consequences. The butterflies emanating from, say, Anaximandros taking an alternate route to market one morning may very well have been dramatic in their eventual effect on history, but they are not identifiable, much less necessary consequences of that action.

When we say something is decisive, it is at that moment where it is an either or situation. You either pick the red pill and situation 1 happens or you pick the blue pill and situation 2 happens(often there are a lot pills and resulting situations as a well). But clearly, for something to be decisive, it needs to be a now or never moment. A point in time where whatever the decision picked, it is impossible or at least, incredibly hard to turn back and pick the second option.
Often in History, that is not the case. Most wars do not consist of two opposing sides with only one equally sized army for attack/defense each that results in a battle in which the complete destruction of one side's army happens.
It's often a series of battles and campaigns and a series of factor aside from one battle that results in Final Victory. Napoleon was finally defeated in a 50 different battles, not in one battle. Hitler wasn't finally defeated at Stalingrad, he was defeated in hundreds of battles across Europe. And this is if you dismiss economic, social and supply factors.

Decisive battles in the face of human History are in my opinion illogical. There are some battles that are more important than others, but in most cases, there are never decisive battles.

For one thing, I think you're placing much more of a burden on these "decisive" things than they can reasonably be expected to bear. This is history, not physics; we cannot know the exact consequences of changing any given thing in the past. Expecting althistorical military history bukkake like this to come up to standards that are impossible to meet for the political scientists and historians who do spend serious time on counterfactuals is ludicrous. So of course you're going to be dealing with varying levels of indeterminacy and with probability, not an on/off switch. Grow up.

At the same time, whenever one makes a statement about the causality of any event in history, one is implicitly making a counterfactual argument as well. Say you claim that Abraham Lincoln was reelected to the Presidency in 1864 because of the capture of Atlanta and Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah Valley. You're therefore implicitly saying that, had those things not occurred, Lincoln would probably not have been reelected; otherwise, you can hardly say that those things "caused" him to be reelected, right? Would it be unreasonable to claim that Sherman and Sheridan's operations in Georgia and Virginia were "decisive" as far as the election of 1864 went?

As to the rest of your comment, that (tactical? doesn't seem clear) military history is effectively irrelevant compared to economic/social/logistical factors (all of which, I might add, are affected by contingency as well), I would advise you to stop living in the sixties. Contingency is one of the new fads, chief.

My thinking was that Syracuse was far larger and farther away than the aegean islands or ionian cities that made up the Athenian empire. Also it wasn't a situation where they could supplant the tyrant and they would have wide democratic support. Syracuse was already a democracy. They would have required much more effort there than usual. More men, possibly a permanent garrison. More ships away from the main theater.

Syrakousai wasn't actually much larger than either Samos or Naxos (which is why I brought them up) and again could be made much smaller by parceling out the territories that it had conquered in Sicily back to the poleis it had destroyed (you know, the main reason the Athenians intervened there back in the 420s). Sure, it was farther away than the Aegean islands, but it was on an island and it was well fortified and, as the history of fourth-century Syrakousai shows in OTL, very easily controlled with only a few soldiers (check out Timoleon for that). And again, yes, Syrakousai was a democracy, but so were all of Athens' other holdings in the empire, and all of them - including Syrakousai - had sizable pro-Athenian parties. Had Lamachos or Demosthenes organized a quick purge of Hermokrates and his supporters upon capturing the city, I can't see why Syrakousai would be any less quiescent than Athens' other holdings. The fact that it was further away also meant that it was further away from Sparta, and thus relatively impregnable.

Yes Athens was incredibly able to recover and they could have won. Still see it as for from a sure thing. I guess for me it depends on how the persians take this Athenian victory. If they stay out of the war because of it and the Spartans don't have money for ships and sailors then Athens probably does win. Otherwise i think a negotiated peace like the peace of nicias or the one that ended the first peloponnesian war is possible. Can't see a decisive Athenian victory like the one the Spartans and allies had.

The Achaemenids wouldn't intervene without the Aegean revolts, Thukydides was quite explicit on that point. And, of course, total Athenian victory is not assured. But I have to laugh at the idea that Sparta and the allies achieved a "decisive" victory that the Athenians couldn't have matched. Sparta caught basically all the breaks it could reasonably expect to catch during the war. The Peloponnesos remained inviolate with the sole exception of the Battle of Mantineia, and even without the Athenians backing the Argives up the Spartans almost lost. The Athenians failed to effectively defend their holdings in Thrace. The Athenians blew a vast navy and army on the siege of Syrakousai and lost both disastrously. The Athenian empire rebelled and much of it allied with Sparta. And yet, ultimately, Spartan victory rested on Iranian cash and Ionian ships, and was heavily buttressed by Theban manpower, not on Spartan troops, ships, and silver. Even Sparta's half-hegemony was seriously weakened within a year of its inception, ruined within two decades, and completely destroyed after thirty years.

Athens, on the other hand, had colossal native resources available and a consistent history of innovation to overcome obstacles, and even when most of the breaks went the other way the Athenians held off Sparta, Thebes, Korinthos, and the Iranians for almost three decades. And a few decades later, the Athenians were building a second naval empire. If any power in Greece had the capacity to subject all of the Greeks to the rule of one city, it was Athens, not Sparta.

As far as the Rhine frontiers i was thinking later in roman history. Something analgous to the abandonment of Dacia. Just seems so difficult to hold and not wealthy enough to be worth the effort.

You could say the same thing about Gaul.

Im just wondering. How significant can a siege be if it fails? The sieges certainly didn't make it stronger.

They are relevant for what did not happen rather than for what did.

 

[aronnax]

Nah. I think it's awfully hard to dispute that there are identifiable instances of high indeterminacy in history with identifiable short-term consequences. The butterflies emanating from, say, Anaximandros taking an alternate route to market one morning may very well have been dramatic in their eventual effect on history, but they are not identifiable, much less necessary consequences of that action.

I don't see your point in pointing this out.

For one thing, I think you're placing much more of a burden on these "decisive" things than they can reasonably be expected to bear. This is history, not physics; we cannot know the exact consequences of changing any given thing in the past. Expecting althistorical military history bukkake like this to come up to standards that are impossible to meet for the political scientists and historians who do spend serious time on counterfactuals is ludicrous. So of course you're going to be dealing with varying levels of indeterminacy and with probability, not an on/off switch. Grow up.

And precisely because "althistorical military history bukkake" has impossible standards to meet, I find figuring out the whole "decisive battles in the face of all history" very very pointless. And I dispute the idea that political scientists and historians spend serious time on counterfactuals. I have never heard of either two discussing the implications of Alternative History without adding a "of course, we will never know, we can only guess." Because History is more about understanding how and why an event happened, not what if this happened.

And even so, because I think every moment and every event is pivotal to the outcome of history, it diminishes the 'decisiveness' of a single event.
If you said "The Ottoman-Byzantine Wars was a decisive event in history" I wouldn't disagree.
If you said "The Siege of Constantinople was a decisive event in history", I would disagree. The event you have chosen is too small and too limited to be considered decisive by itself. It is not that more decisive as the event of a Turkish Janissary storming the breach.


And the thing is, the word we are debating here is 'decisive'. It is now or never. Of course History is not physics. Which is why decisive, should not be a word applied to events in history in the context of the whole history of everything on earth. Important, significant, contributing, crucial. It leaves room for other possibilities. That makes more sense. Decisive is just one way. Because it has decided.

At the same time, whenever one makes a statement about the causality of any event in history, one is implicitly making a counterfactual argument as well. Say you claim that Abraham Lincoln was reelected to the Presidency in 1864 because of the capture of Atlanta and Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah Valley. You're therefore implicitly saying that, had those things not occurred, Lincoln would probably not have been reelected; otherwise, you can hardly say that those things "caused" him to be reelected, right? Would it be unreasonable to claim that Sherman and Sheridan's operations in Georgia and Virginia were "decisive" as far as the election of 1864 went?

I don't see that one makes such an argument.
I can claim that Lincoln's election can be significantly attributed or to the Capture of Atlanta. Atlanta meant that point A, point B and point C happened, contributing to Lincoln's election
But that doesn't mean I endorse the view that if Atlanta failed, Lincoln would had not been elected.
That one battle didn't win the Civil War or ensure Lincoln's elections. Had Atlanta fail, anything could have happened. Union troops could have tried a second time and capture Atlanta, Jefferson Davis could have been shot. Yada yada. Point is, we just don't know what can happen and because we don't know, we can't just assume the opposite.

I'll like to add on on why this whole, decisive battles in history things are not that decisive at all.

Suppose we have two points. Point A, you punch me. Point B, land in jail. Now, Point A was decisive reason why you landed in jail. You are in jail because the cops threw you in for assault because I called them after my nose bled when you punched me. You can easily draw links between point A and B because, well they are close enough for you to identify.

Now you have two points. Point C, the battle of Agincourt and Point D, present day. Now C and D are obviously connected. C has influenced events that influence D. But because the timeline of history for this branches into so many factors and so many links due to the length of, how much more decisive is Agincourt to modern day history and peasant Tan Zhi Xing moving his family to Nanjing from Xian in the 17th Century? Especially when 'modern day' itself is a vague term. Point is, When your timeline you are comparing with is "The entirety of History", your single event lasting several hours and your selective limitation "Modern Day", everything becomes of similar (thought equal) decisiveness.

And this is why I find these "15 decisive battles of the world" redundant.

 

[Tahuti]

What about Poitiers 732 and Vienna 1683? Didn't the victories of the Franks and Austrians respectively prevented Europe (and possibly North America as well) from becoming Islamic?

 

[Ajidica]

Poiters was a raiding mission, not an all-out attempt at conquest and I don't know enough about Vienna, but I would assume that the loss of Vienna, while devestating to the Habsburgs, would not have resulted in an 'Islamic Europe'. The Turks simply didn't have the military force to do so.

 

[Tahuti]

Vienna, but I would assume that the loss of Vienna, while devestating to the Habsburgs, would not have resulted in an 'Islamic Europe'.

It was important enough to get Austria's archenemy Poland to fight them by their side, nevertheless.

I'm also sceptical of the possibility of an Islamic Europe resulting from Ottoman victory in Vienna 1683, considering the military might, of for example France, as well the possibility of the German states galvanizing as a reaction to Ottoman expansion.
Thus 1683 might have shaken up history though due the latter in that Germany could well have been unified in the 1700's as an Anti-Turkish bulwark.

 

[Junius]

To me the 1529 siege of Vienna was more decisive than the more famous 1683 one. The Ottomans had recently conquered much of Hungary and Suleiman had a greater advantage in numbers and i would argue quality of troops in the earlier siege (especially after the relief army arrived) than the Ottomans enjoyed in 1683. I don't think they would have made any lasting conquests or large-scale conversions like Anatolia. Biggest difference i think is with a weakened, perhaps severly, Austria. How is the Reformation different? Is there a Thirty Years War? Maybe it doesn't make top 15, but it strikes me as the most important battle of the Ottoman-Austrian wars.

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, the Ottomans weren't going to maintain a serious presence in central Europe without massive military reforms, which probably weren't going to happen. Capturing Vienna in either 1529 or 1683 might have been quite bad for the Habsburgs in the short term, but in the long term the Ottomans weren't going to hold that territory and the ultimate winners would probably have been the French. John Lynn has hypothesized that Louis XIV would be able to make bank one way or the other out of an Ottoman victory in 1683, perhaps even to the point of being elected Holy Roman Emperor; Willem van Oranje, of course, would make an excellent alternative candidate, as would Maximilian Emanuel. So you can certainly say that there would have been knock-on effects in Western Europe, but it's hard to say what they would have actually been. Fertile ground for an ATL, of course.

I don't see your point in pointing this out.

It was a direct response to your comment. ESL?

And the thing is, the word we are debating here is 'decisive'. It is now or never. Of course History is not physics. Which is why decisive, should not be a word applied to events in history in the context of the whole history of everything on earth. Important, significant, contributing, crucial. It leaves room for other possibilities. That makes more sense. Decisive is just one way. Because it has decided.

...yeah, ESL. Not as bad as r16, but still. This is an impediment to communication.

And precisely because "althistorical military history bukkake" has impossible standards to meet, I find figuring out the whole "decisive battles in the face of all history" very very pointless.

Obviously these aren't objective statements and nobody important these days takes Creasy's book seriously. Making lists of the fifteen decisive battles in history is mostly just onanism, and it does detract from the reputation of military historians and of people interested in counterfactuals, as I complained in my first post in this thread, which you obviously didn't read. That doesn't make counterfactual speculation qua counterfactual speculation pointless, nor does it invalidate the concept of identifying points of high indeterminacy in history.

And I dispute the idea that political scientists and historians spend serious time on counterfactuals. I have never heard of either two discussing the implications of Alternative History without adding a "of course, we will never know, we can only guess." Because History is more about understanding how and why an event happened, not what if this happened.

That's a very sixties thing to say. Since you want names, I shall give them to you: Tetlock and Belkin, Elster, Schroeder, and Showalter.

And even so, because I think every moment and every event is pivotal to the outcome of history, it diminishes the 'decisiveness' of a single event.
If you said "The Ottoman-Byzantine Wars was a decisive event in history" I wouldn't disagree.
If you said "The Siege of Constantinople was a decisive event in history", I would disagree. The event you have chosen is too small and too limited to be considered decisive by itself. It is not that more decisive as the event of a Turkish Janissary storming the breach.

I think you need to learn more about causation and chaos.

I don't see that one makes such an argument.
I can claim that Lincoln's election can be significantly attributed or to the Capture of Atlanta. Atlanta meant that point A, point B and point C happened, contributing to Lincoln's election
But that doesn't mean I endorse the view that if Atlanta failed, Lincoln would had not been elected.
That one battle didn't win the Civil War or ensure Lincoln's elections. Had Atlanta fail, anything could have happened. Union troops could have tried a second time and capture Atlanta, Jefferson Davis could have been shot. Yada yada. Point is, we just don't know what can happen and because we don't know, we can't just assume the opposite.

For one thing, you're not actually discussing the proposition. I did not actually claim that said events were decisive and without their occurrence, Lincoln would not have been reelected: it was an example. You know, something intended to demonstrate a point. Arguing about the specific example gets away from that point. This contributes to quote wars, which I am sure we can all agree is a Bad Thing.

Of course lots of different things contribute to the occurrence and the nature of the occurrence of any given event in history. Some of the contributions are necessary conditions, and some are not; the latter can hardly be placed into the category of 'cause'. Some of the necessary conditions for an event occurring can also not be placed into the category of 'cause'. An example, since you apparently refuse to discuss the 1864 one on its own merits: a man crosses the street at a legal crosswalk and is hit by a car driven by a drunk driver running a red light. Now, there are many necessary conditions for this, such as the need for a sidewalk and road, that hardly need to be mentioned as causative. Another necessary condition was that the pedestrian had to be crossing the street. But we don't say that that's "causative", either; nobody is going to blame the pedestrian for crossing the street. A condition that is probably necessary is the drunkenness of the driver; it's hard to say, without knowing the drunk driver's driving history and skill, whether it would've been likely to occur otherwise.

That sort of judgment, weighting potential causes like drunkenness, prior history of poor driving, poor car maintenance, low visibility, and so forth, is rather like the task of the historian. But creating a laundry list of causes without weighting them at all, or determining how contributory each was, is antihistorical. It reduces you to the level of an archivist or clerk, not a historian.

Now obviously there are going to be a lot of events in history that are hard to influence in any meaningful way, and very likely to occur more or less the same way despite major changes. Hence the comment on "points of high indeterminacy", which you seem to deny exist.

As to "other, less predictable stuff happening", I would like to introduce you to the Latin term ceteris paribus, and remind you that no one seriously claims to be able to predict the subsequent course of events in any counterfactual with any exactitude (how 'bout probability!), especially as one gets further and further away from the point of departure. I'm very involved in writing timelines and "guess the PoD maps", but I would never presume that these are anything but fiction.

I have already written a post summarizing some counterfactual/historical theory here, in a significantly more congenial environment; nobody in that thread could be assed to respond, of course. Perhaps you will find it enlightening, and perhaps you'll just brush it off and ignore it.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Considering the Athenians almost defeated the Spartans despite losing at Syrakousai, I think it's reasonable to assume that they would have been able to win the war having captured it. Maintaining control need not be particularly difficult; Athens had its own partisans in the city itself, of course, and Syrakousan power could be further decreased by the reconstitution of poleis that the Syrakousans had destroyed e.g. Hyblaia or Leontini. What made Syrakousai more difficult to control than, say, Samos or Naxos, both of which stayed firmly under the Athenian thumb until after the Athenian military had virtually ceased to exist?

Did Athens really have much to gain in against Syracuse? I kind of got the impression that their motivation was mostly just to get a symbolic victory against Sparta since they couldn't land a direct blow against them. Sure, not losing would have been great, but so would have not going in the first place. Athens was resilient. As bad as their loss was in Sicily, I don't think it was decisive. It struck me as a Cannae in many ways. Persian support was a lot more devastating.

 

[Dachs]

Did Athens really have much to gain in against Syracuse? I kind of got the impression that their motivation was mostly just to get a symbolic victory against Sparta since they couldn't land a direct blow against them. Sure, not losing would have been great, but so would have not going in the first place. Athens was resilient. As bad as their loss was in Sicily, I don't think it was decisive. It struck me as a Cannae in many ways. Persian support was a lot more devastating.

Syrakousai would add badly-needed cash, somewhat less-needed ships, and unencumbered access to the Sicilian mercenary markets. The financial problems of the era of Perikles would be greatly mitigated, if not extinguished, and more Argive manpower could be hired. (Perhaps Argos would even be willing to reenter the war. If one makes the PoD something that would prevent Alkibiades from being brought up on charges, it's easy to see him approaching Argos once again to restart his Peloponnesian counter-league project.) And as one of the main ways back into the Peloponnesos, Syrakousai was one of the best avenues to a real victory by conquest. The best, full stop, was a victory at the Battle of Mantineia in 418, to which the Athenians ought to have dispatched extra troops (there are plausible grounds for this to have happened) to aid their Argive allies. But victory at Syrakousai was potentially a longer and more circuitous path to the same goal.

The defeat of OTL in Sicily was epically disastrous in demographic terms (Athenian manpower did not recover for the remainder of the war; Athens' ability to launch land offensives was basically nil, and they were hard pressed to garrison what they had), in addition to naval terms. I'm not entirely sure where you got the idea that it was Achaemenid support that sounded the death-knell for the first Athenian empire. It was after the news of Syrakousai, and long before the Iranian satraps joined Sparta, that the Aegean islanders launched their rebellions, from which Athens would never wholly recover. And indeed the defeat in Sicily was the sine qua non for Iranian intervention.

 

[r16]

thanks for the mention and especially the small r .

this post would be more an attempt to follow the discussion for this wannabe historian .

checking the list , &#305; don't know anything practically for the entire lot , and considering &#305; don't think much even about Alexander , &#305; could simply talk against the whole . Reading down the Wikipedia link &#305; see it is Victorian and that would be an extra boost to my personal position.