Some days decide centuries. These are the greatest and most important battles in history, the ones where empires, faiths and nations rose or fell between dawn and dusk. We have gathered them the way Echoes of Battle does, era by era across seven ages of war, from the plain of Marathon to the ruins of Berlin, each one told in full.
The ancient world
War in antiquity was decided by the discipline of the phalanx and the legion, by citizen soldiers and god-kings. These were the days that saved the young idea of the West and set the templates commanders would study for the next two thousand years.
Marathon, 490 BC. Athens stands alone and saves the West.
Thermopylae, 480 BC. Three hundred hold the pass.
Gaugamela, 331 BC. Alexander breaks the Persian Empire.
Cannae, 216 BC. Hannibal's perfect encirclement, still taught today.
Zama, 202 BC. Rome finally answers Hannibal.
The Middle Ages
The medieval battlefield belonged to the mounted knight and the castle, until the arrow and the pike began to answer them. Faith, crown and land hung on single afternoons, and a few of them redrew the map of Europe for good.
Tours, 732. The tide turned in the heart of Europe.
Hastings, 1066. The day England changed hands.
Grunwald, 1410. One of the largest battles of medieval Europe.
Agincourt, 1415. The longbow's finest hour.
The early modern age
Gunpowder changed everything. Pike and shot, ships of the line and the first true empires met in battles that ran from the Mediterranean to the gates of Vienna, deciding which powers would shape the modern world.
Lepanto, 1571. The last great clash of galleys halts the Ottomans at sea.
Vienna, 1683. The great relief at the gates of Europe.
Poltava, 1709. Russia rises as the Swedish empire falls.
The Napoleonic age
Napoleon turned war into a science of mass and speed, moving whole nations in arms across Europe. For twenty years his campaigns dazzled the continent, until that same continent finally combined to bring him down.
Trafalgar, 1805. Nelson takes command of the sea.
Austerlitz, 1805. Napoleon's masterpiece, the battle of the three emperors.
Waterloo, 1815. The end of Napoleon.
The industrial age
Railroads, the telegraph and the rifled musket made war bigger and deadlier than ever before. The American Civil War was its proving ground, where a single field could swallow tens of thousands and decide the fate of a nation.
Fort Sumter, 1861. The first shots of the American Civil War.
Gettysburg, 1863. The high-water mark of the Confederacy.
The First World War
Industry met the battlefield and produced a slaughter no one had imagined, with trenches, machine guns and artillery that turned open ground into a moonscape. These were the battles that ended the old world.
The Marne, 1914. The miracle that saved Paris.
Gallipoli, 1915. The doomed gamble on the Dardanelles.
Verdun, 1916. They shall not pass.
The Somme, 1916. The bloodiest day the British Army ever knew.
The Second World War
The largest war in history was fought across oceans, deserts and frozen cities, by tanks, carriers and air fleets. A handful of days between 1942 and 1945 turned the tide and decided the shape of the world we live in.
Midway, 1942. Five minutes that turned the Pacific.
Stalingrad, 1942. The tide of the Second World War turns.
Normandy, 1944. The longest day on the beaches.
Berlin, 1945. The last battle in Europe.
No single battle is the greatest of all. Each was the most important day of its own age.
Want the full sweep? Battles That Changed the World gathers thirty-two decisive days across more than two thousand years, or dive into an era: the greatest ancient battles, the greatest medieval battles, the greatest early modern battles, the greatest Napoleonic battles, the greatest industrial battles, the greatest battles of the First World War, or the greatest battles of the Second World War.