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Generally, a battle is an instance of combat in warfare between two or more parties wherein each group will seek to defeat the others. Battles are most often fought during wars or military campaigns and can usually be well defined in time, space and action. Wars and campaigns are guided by strategy whereas battles are the stage on which tactics are employed. German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles to gain the end of war" was the essence of strategy.

Characteristics of battle

British military historian Sir John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them" though the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarised so neatly.

The "action" of battle is to reach a decision — the ideal decision is victory but strategy and circumstances often require a compromise. One party is deemed to have achieved victory when its opponent has surrendered, been dispersed, forced to retreat or been rendered militarily ineffective for further combat operations. However, a battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory which ultimately favours the defeated party. If no decision is reached in battle, the result is a stalemate. A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision in battle often becomes an insurgency.

Up until the 20th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting a day or less — the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Nations were exceptional for lasting three days. This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying an army in the field. Typically the means of prolonging a battle was by siege warfare. Improvements in transportation and the onset of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature, saw the duration of battles increase to weeks and months, peaking during the First World War. Nevertheless, in a long battle the regular rotation of units meant that the periods of intensive combat to which an individual soldier was subjected tended to remain brief.

Battles may be small scale, only involving a handful of individuals, perhaps two squads, up to battles on army levels where hundreds of thousands may be engaged in a single battle at one time. The space a battle occupies depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. Until the advent of artillery and aircraft, battles were fought with the two sides in sight, if not reach, of each other. The depth of the battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with supporting units in the rear areas — supply, artillery, medical, etc. — now outnumbering the front-line combat troops.

Battles are, on the whole, made up of a multitude of individual combats and the individual will usually only experience a small part of the events. To the infantryman, there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of a minor raid or a major offensive, nor is it likely that they anticipate the future course of the battle; few of the British infantry who went over the top on the first day on the Somme, 1 July, 1916, would have anticipated that they would be fighting the same battle in five months time. Conversely, some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again the next day.

The factors of battles

Battles are decided by various factors. The number of men, the commanders of each army, and the terrain advantages are among the most prominent factors. Battles throughout history have shown that morale and the quality of troops are often more important than quantity. The Persian Wars, for example, show that superior morale can overcome numerical disadvantages, especially in the Battle of Thermopylae. A good example of the opposite is the Battle of Gaugamela. Quality of the army is determined by morale, that is, spirit of the troops; equipment, and training of the troops. A unit may charge with high morale but less discipline and still emerge victorious. This tactic was effectively employed by Napoleon. Weapons and armor may also play as a decisive factor; however, during the Wars of Scottish Independence the Scots emerged victorious over the English despite inferior weaponry. Discipline within the troops is also important; at the Battle of Alesia, the Romans were greatly outnumbered but won because of superior training. A squad that does not retreat is far more valuable than an army that flees upon sight. Battles can also be determined by terrain. Capturing high ground, for example, has been the central strategy in inumerable battles. An army that holds the high ground forces the enemy to climb, and thus wear down. Another advantage is it is physically easier to strike a blow from a higher position than from a lower position. Although this does not hold as much in modern warfare, with the advent of aircraft, terrain is still vital for camouflauge, especially for guerrilla warfare. Generals and commanders also play a decisve war during combat. Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar were both legendary generals and, consequently, their armies were extremely successful. An army that can trust the commands of their leader's with convinction in its success invariably has a higher morale than an army that doubts its every move. The British in the naval battle of Trafalgar, for example, owed its success to the reputation of celebrated admiral Lord Nelson.

Types of battle

Battles can be fought on land, sea, or by the modern age, in the air. Naval battles have occurred since before the 5th century BC. Air battles have been far less common, due to its late conception, the most prominent being the Battle of Britain in 1940. However since the Second World War land or sea battles have come to rely on air support. Indeed, during the Battle of Midway, five aircraft carriers were sunk without either fleets coming in to direct contact.

There are numerous types of battle. A "battle of encounter" is a meeting engagement where the opposing sides collide in the field without either having prepared their attack or defence. The goal of a "battle of attrition" is to inflict greater loss on the enemy than you suffer yourself; many battles of the First World War were intentionally (Verdun) or unintentionally (Somme) attrition battles. A "battle of breakthrough" aims to pierce the enemy's defences, thereby exposing the vulnerable flanks which can be turned. A "battle of encirclement" — the Kesselschlacht of the German Blitzkrieg — surrounds the enemy in a pocket. A "battle of envelopment" involves an attack on one or both flanks; the classic example being the double-envelopment of the Battle of Cannae. A "battle of annihilation" is one in which the defeated party is destroyed in the field, such as the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.

A "decisive battle" is one of particular importance; often by bringing hostilities to an end, such as the Battle of Hastings, or as a turning point in the fortunes of the belligerents, such as the Battle of Stalingrad. A decisive battle can have political as well as military impact, changing the balance of power or boundaries between countries. The concept of the "decisive battle" became popular with the publication in 1851 of Edward Creasy's The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. British military historians J.F.C. Fuller (The Decisive Battles of the Western World) and B.H. Liddell Hart (Decisive Wars of History), among many others, have written books in the style of Creasy's work.

The differences among land battles throughout history

There is an obvious difference in the way battles have been fought throughout time. Early battles were probably fought between rival hunting bands as disorganized mobs. However, during the Battle of Kadesh, the first documented battle, in 1275 BC, actual discipline was instilled in both armies. This continued through the Ancient Times and the Middle Ages. However, during the many wars of the Roman Empire, barbarians continued using mob tactics. As the Age of Enlightenment dawned, armies began to fight in highly diciplined lines. Each would follow the orders from their officers and fight as a single unit instead of individuals. Each army was successively divided into regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons. These armies would march, line up, and fire in divisions. Native Americans, on the other hand, did not fight in lines, utilizing instead guerrilla tactics. The United States of America during the American Revolution also followed suit. Europe, during the Napoleonic Wars, continued using diciplined lines, continuing into the American Civil War. A new style, during World War I, known as trench warfare, developed nearly half a decade later. This also lead to radio for communication between batallions. Chemical warfare also emerged with the use of poisonous gas during World War I and the Austro-Prussian War. By World War II, the use of the smaller divisions, platoons and companies, became much more important as precise operations became vital. Instead of the locked trench warfare of World War I, during World War II, a dynamic network of battles developed where small groups encountered other platoons. As a result, elite squads became much more recognized and distinguishable. Vehicle warfare also developed with an astonishing pace with the advent of the tank, replacing the archaic cannons of the Enlightenment Age. Artillery has since gradually replaced the use of frontal troops. Modern battles now continue to resemble that of World War II, though prominent innovations have been added. Indirect combat through the use of aircraft and missiles now comprise of a large portion of wars in place of battles, where battles are now mostly reserved for capturing cities.

The difference of naval battles throughout history

One significant difference of modern naval battles as opposed to earlier forms of combat is the use of marines, which introduced amphibious warfare. Today, a marine is actually an infantry regiment that sometimes fights solely on land and is no longer tied to the navy. A good example of an old naval battle is the Battle of Salamis. Most ancient naval battles were fought by fast ships using the battering ram to sink opposing fleets or steer close enough for boarding in hand-to-hand combat. Troops were often actually used to storm enemy ships as used by Romans and pirates. This tactic was usually used by civilizations that could not beat the enemy with ranged weaponry. Another invention in the late Middle Ages was the use of Greek fire by the Byzantines, which was used to light enemy fleets on fire. Empty demolition ships utilized the tactic to crash into opposing ships and set it afire with an explosion. After the invention of cannons, naval warfare became useful as support units for land warefare. During the 19th Century, the development of mines led to a new type of naval warfare. The ironclad, first used in the American Civil War, resistant to cannons, soon made the wooden ship obsolete. The invention of a U-Boat, that is, submarine, during World War I by the Germans brought naval warfare to both above and below the surface. With the development of aircraft during World War II, battles were fought in the sky as well as below the ocean. Aircraft carriers have since become the central unit in naval warfare, acting as a mobile base for lethal aircraft.

Aerial battles throughout history

Although the use of aircraft has for the most part always been used as a supplement to land or naval engagements, since their first major military use in World War I aircraft have increasingly taken on larger roles if warfare. During World War I, the primary use was for reconnaissance, and small-scale bombardment, using ineffectual hand-dropped bombs. Aircraft began becoming much more prominent in the Spanish Civil War and especially World War II. Aircraft design began specializing, primarily into two types: bombers, which carried explosive payloads to bomb land targets or ships; and fighter-interceptors, which were used to either intercept incoming aircraft or to escort and protect bombers (engagements between fighter aircraft were known as dog fights. Some of the more notable aerial battles in this period include the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Midway.

Another important use of aircraft came with the development of the helicopter, which first became heavily used during the Vietnam War, and still continues to be widely used today to transport and augment ground forces.

Today, direct engagements between aircraft are rare - the most modern fighter-interceptors carry much more extensive bombing payloads, and are used to bomb precision land targets, rather than to fight other aircraft. Anti-aircraft batteries are used much more extensively to defend against incoming aircraft than interceptors. Despite this, aircraft today are much more extensively used as the primary tools for both army and navy, as evidenced by the prominent use of helicopters to transport and support troops, the use of aerial bombardment as the "first strike" in many engagements, and the replacement of the battleship with the aircraft carrier as the center of most modern navies.

Battle naming

Battles are almost invariably named after some feature of the battlefield geography, such as the name of a town, forest or river. Occasionally battles are named after the date on which they took place, such as The Glorious First of June. In the Middle Ages it was considered important to settle on a suitable name for a battle which could be used by the chroniclers. For example, after Henry V of England defeated a French army on 25 October, 1415, he met with the senior French herald and they agreed to name the battle after the nearby castle and so it was called the Battle of Agincourt. In other cases, the sides adopted different names for the same battle, such as the Battle of Gallipoli which is known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. Some place names have become synonymous with the battles that took place there, such as Passchendaele, Pearl Harbor or the Alamo. Military operations, many of which result in battle, are given codenames, which are not necessarily meaningful or indicative of the type or the location of the battle. Operation Market Garden and Operation Rolling Thunder are examples of battles known by their military codenames.

When a battleground is the site of more than one battle in the same conflict, the instances are distinguished by ordinal number, such as the First and Second Battles of Bull Run. An extreme case are the twelve Battles of the Isonzo — First to Twelfth — between Italy and Austria-Hungary during the First World War.

Some battles are named for the convenience of military historians so that periods of combat can be neatly distinguished from one another. Following the First World War, the British Battles Nomenclature Committee was formed to decide on standard names for all battles and subsidiary actions. To the soldiers who did the fighting, the distinction was usually academic; a soldier fighting at Beaumont Hamel on 13 November 1916 was probably unaware he was taking part in what the committee would call the "Battle of the Ancre".

Many combats are too small to merit a name. Terms such as "action", "skirmish", "firefight", "raid" or "offensive patrol" are used to describe small-scale battle-like encounters. These combats often take place within the time and space of a battle and while they may have an objective, they are not necessarily "decisive". Sometimes the soldiers are unable to immediately gauge the significance of the combat; in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, some British officers were in doubt as to whether the day's events merited the title of "battle" or would be passed off as merely an "action".

The effects of a battle

Battles have both personal and political effects. The personal effect of a battle can be a psychological or a physical effect; a psychological effect is on the minds of the participants. For example, many battle-survivors have nightmares or abnormal reactions to certain sights or sounds. The physical effects of battle on survivors can include scars, amputations, lesions, loss of hearing, blindness, and paralysis.

Battles also affect politics. A decisive battle that is won can cause one side to surrender – or that same victory can be a Pyrrhic Victory. An example of a Pyrrhic Victory would be the Battle of Isandlwana. A decisive victory can force one side to submit to the interests of the victor, perhaps by ceding territory or changing policies. Battles have been fought in civil wars to decide the fate of monarchs and different political factions. Examples include the War of the Roses and the Jacobite Uprisings. Battles have also affected such things as the continuance of a war. An example is the Battle of Inchon.

See also

• Naval battle
• Pitched battle
• Military tactics
• Warfare
• List of battles

References

• Keegan, John (1976). The Face of Battle. Pimlico. ISBN 1844137481.

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• Battles