Single most important battle in History?

Archbob

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What do you think is the single most important battle in all of History that had the farthest reaching consequences?

I'd have to say Salamis. This battle determined the future foundation of all western culture.
 
Milvian Bridge, 312 AD. Ended up unifying Rome under one emperor and launching Christianity from a small cult to the most powerful religion in the world.

Similarly, Yarmouk in 636 AD is what propelled Islam from an Arabian kingdom into an empire that would eventually span the center of the world.

Earlier than that; couldn't say.
 
Battle of Tours (Poitiers) comes to mind.
Battle of Vienna
Battle of Leipzig
Battle of Britain

That's all I can think of right now.
 
I can't say that the Battle of Britain really rates up there. Britain was under no realistic threat of invasion. Failure in that battle also would not have won Germany the war. At best it ensured that there would be a Western front so that the Soviets didn't roll through Western Europe after they rolled through Germany.
 
The Battle of Singapore was pretty important.

It help thrash the image that the Europeans were "Invinceble" leading to sucessive independence of several countries.

However the most important would be.... When Caveman Ugg killed Caveman Jega
 
Ancient Times:
Battle of Zama
Battle of Milvian Bridge
Battle of Changping
Battle of Actium

Medieval:
Battle of Badr
Battle of Yarmouk
Battle of Talas
Battle of Manzikert
Battle of Ain Jalut

Early Modern:
Battle of Tenochtitlan
Battle(s) of Panipat
Battle of Noryang
Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Valmy
Battle of Saratoga

Modern:
Battle of Singapore
Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Pearl Harbour
 
Battle of Tenochtitlan? By that time, the collapse of the Aztecs was basically assured thanks to European diseases...it just would have taken the Spaniards a wee bit longer to enslave them all and take the land.
 
tk: I wouldn't rate Trafalgar higher than, say, Lepanto. Oh and Midway had to be more important than Pearl Harbour, right?
 
I would say D-Day. That is the most important battle due to the fact that had it failed we would be looking at a vastly different world we live in right now.

Stalin would've eventually invaded Germany if we didn't. D-Day was so Europe could remain under democracy and not communism, if the Soviets had decided to intervene.
 
Wow, no one else said Salamis? Interesting, or is that too far back for you guys.

My votes would be for Salamis and Zama because those battles determined control of modern western culture(not sure about Zama, but certain about Salamis).
 
I tend to think so much was left to chance and circumstance back then that the cause-and-effect is difficult to assertain.

I also think people tend to go a bit overboard drawing the link between modern culture and Ancient Greece.
 
I would say D-Day. That is the most important battle due to the fact that had it failed we would be looking at a vastly different world we live in right now.

As already mentioned, only important insofar as it prevented the Soviets from overrunning western Europe as well. Which may well have been very significant, but who knows.

I tend to think so much was left to chance and circumstance back then that the cause-and-effect is difficult to assertain.

I also think people tend to go a bit overboard drawing the link between modern culture and Ancient Greece.

I'd generally agree with both points. There is definitely a tendency to try to draw history into neat, easily understandable lines of cause and effect. We can certainly say that 'but for this battle..' this nation probably would have fallen. But that failure hardly means that the victor nation would remain dominant for long itself. Hard to tell what, if anything, would come up in its place. Just because Rome gets demolished in the Punic Wars doesn't mean that Carthage rises to prominence in the Med., that sort of thing.

As for the second part, they are credited as the foundational basis for much of Western thought. Certainly influential. And their 'Helenization' of much of the world is one of the reasons that it endured so long. (A thousand years of pseudo-adoption by the Romans helped too) If the city-states fell to Persia early and their works destroyed, thinkers repressed, etc...something would certainly rise up in its place. But it probably wouldn't look that familiar.
 
Its going to be skewed to longer ago battles because more has happened that can be traced since then, so try and take them in isolation. Thermopylae, Teutoburg Forest, Stalingrad do spring to mind immediately though.
 
Battle of Tours (Poitiers) comes to mind.

Battle of Ain Jalut

I'll quote these two together since I have the same thing to say about both of them: they are totally played up.

The Battle of Tours seemed to be a great victory for the Franks against the Caliphate, at least from the Christian perspective. However, in reality, the Caliphate hardly even felt it, it was not a catastrophic blow in any sense of the word, nor was it the high water mark of Umayyad expansion it's often said to be. Hell, it didn't "halt" expansion at all, the Umayyads had decided long before then not to enter further into Europe.

There are several reasons for this. The most prominent reason was that north of the Pyranees, the climate gets exponentially colder, as well as becoming more hilly, more heavily forested, and generally a nightmare to manouver in. Considering that the bulk of the Arab armies, and the key to their stunning victories, lay in their large cavalry formations, the ground was disadvantageous to their style of warfare.

Another reason is that, however much the Christians looked down their noses at the "Muhammadins," the Muslims did so twofold in return. To the highly cultured and organized Caliphate, Europe was a backwards place full of smelly barbarians. In other words, they really had no interest in venturing into Europe to conquer these people.

Thirdly, the party that the Franks met at Tours in 732 was not an invasion, nor was it a force of any substantial size. What the Franks fought - and beat - was a raiding party, running sorties in and out of southern France, collecting booty and whatnot. Such was their primary purpose in the Dar-al-Harb, and their expressed right by the Qu'ran; to sieze whatever they could in warfare against the non-believers. This is why, when another Frankish party threatened the Umayyad base camp containing their captured treasure and whatnot, they called off their assault on the Frankish force; their whole mission purpose in France was in jeopardy: the booty.


Ain Jalut was a similar situation. Granted, the Mameluks were the first in the West to halt the Mongol expansion by force, but the force they met was hardly the sort of military hammer they threw at Baghdad, Merv, or Kiev. The force that departed for Egypt was already of a substantially smaller size than your "normal" Mongol outfit, only 20,000, in comparison to the 120,000 that sacked Baghdad, or the 35,000 at Kiev. The Mameluk victory over this force was nearly complete, but again, internal politics are what prevented further Mongol ambitions in the Middle East, not the "decisive blow" of Ayn Jalut, which was again nothing more than a sortie.
 
Stalin would've eventually invaded Germany if we didn't. D-Day was so Europe could remain under democracy and not communism, if the Soviets had decided to intervene.

Erm, 65%+ of Europe WAS communist after WW2.
 
Battle of Talas imho.If this battle didnt happen...Well I dont know.
 
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