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       PREFACE

      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.

      In many of the battles featured here, the issue is not victory or defeat, but what the battle can tell us about the history of warfare itself. New weapons, new tactics and new ways of organizing armed forces can have a sudden impact on the outcome of a battle. But so, too, can leadership, a clever deception or raw courage. A history of battles through the ages shows that it is not just technical novelty that can make the difference, but the exercise of operational skill and imagination in planning, or qualities displayed on the field of battle itself, many of which are perennial. That is why the book has been divided up into a number of clear themes, СКАЧАТЬ