What was the greatest battle of the industrial age?

In our ranking it is Gettysburg in 1863, the best known battle of the age, where rifled muskets and massed artillery broke Pickett's Charge. Tsushima in 1905 is second and Vicksburg in 1863 third. The fifteen battles on the list run from Sevastopol in 1854 to Tsushima in 1905.

When was the industrial age of war?

For this list, from Waterloo in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the century in which rifles, railways, the telegraph, steam and armor and the machine gun were all tried in battle.

How did railroads change warfare?

They moved armies to the battlefield and supplied them there. Johnston's men reached First Bull Run by train, Moltke moved the Prussian armies into Bohemia by rail before Königgrätz, and at Petersburg a military railroad ran behind the Union trenches.

Which naval battles of the industrial age mattered most?

Tsushima in 1905, where the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian one and decided the Russo-Japanese War, and Hampton Roads in 1862, the first duel of ironclads, which the National Park Service says ushered in a new era in naval warfare.

Why is Fort Sumter not on the list?

It opened the Civil War, but its bombardment killed no one in the fighting and showed nothing about industrial war, so it scored 1 on our industrial test and 35 points in all, two short of the last place. It is described under Close calls.

The 15 Greatest Battles of the Industrial Age, Ranked

Q: Was the American Civil War the first modern war?

Not the first. Many historians call it that, but the Crimean War had already brought rifles, a field telegraph and a military railway to the siege of Sevastopol, and in 1859 France moved its army to Italy by rail and used rifled guns at Solferino.

At a glance
Rank	Battle	Date	Forces	Result
1	Gettysburg	1863	93,921 Union vs 71,699 Confederate	Union victory; Lee retreats
2	Tsushima	1905	Japanese Combined Fleet vs 38 Russian ships	Japanese victory; Russian fleet destroyed
3	Vicksburg	1863	77,000 Union vs 33,000 Confederate	Surrendered; Union took the Mississippi
4	Sedan	1870	200,000 to 240,000 vs 120,000 to 130,000	German victory; Napoleon III captured
5	Antietam	1862	About 87,000 vs 41,000 to 45,000	Draw; Lee withdrew
6	Adwa	1896	80,000 to 120,000 vs about 17,000 to 17,700	Ethiopian victory; Italy defeated
7	Petersburg	1864 to 1865	Over 180,000 in all; Union about two to one	Lines broken; Petersburg and Richmond fell
8	Omdurman	1898	25,800 vs 35,000 to 52,000	Mahdist army destroyed
9	Hampton Roads	1862	1,400 vs 188 sailors	Draw between ironclads
10	Königgrätz	1866	Over 200,000 a side	Prussian victory; Austria out of Germany
11	Solferino	1859	118,600 vs 120,000	Allied victory; war ended
12	Atlanta	1864	98,000 vs 65,000 (campaign)	Union victory; city taken
13	First Bull Run	1861	28,450 vs 32,230	Confederate victory
14	Sevastopol	1854 to 1855	Allied armies vs 35,100 garrison (1854)	Russians abandon the city
15	Plevna	1877	33,000 to 50,000 vs 100,000 to 150,000	Ottoman surrender after five months

See the whole era on one page: the industrial age, with a map of every battle, a timeline and its commanders ›

Quick answer

What were the greatest battles of the industrial age?

Gettysburg in 1863 tops our ranking of the battles fought between Waterloo and 1914: it is the best known battle of the age. Next come Tsushima in 1905, Vicksburg in 1863, Sedan in 1870 and Antietam in 1862. The fifteen battles on the list run from Sevastopol in 1854 to Tsushima in 1905.

Between Waterloo and 1914, rifles, railways, the telegraph, steam and armor and the machine gun changed how wars were fought and won. This list ranks fifteen land and sea battles of that century, sieges fought as battles included, in Europe, America, Africa and Asian waters. It is ranked by score, not by date: each battle was scored on recognition, on what it showed about the new machines of war and what it decided, on consequence, memory and certainty, as set out in how we chose and ranked them. Seven of the fifteen come from the American Civil War, but it was not the first war of the new kind, as the section below the list explains.¹

1 Gettysburg, 1863

Where: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
War: American Civil War
Sides: Army of the Potomac (Meade) vs Army of Northern Virginia (Lee)
Strength: 93,921 Union vs 71,699 Confederate
Result: Union victory; about 51,000 killed, wounded, captured or missing

In June 1863 Robert E. Lee carried the war into Pennsylvania, and on 1 July his men ran into Union cavalry outside Gettysburg, where the largest battle of the Civil War began by accident. Behind the Union army ran a new kind of supply line: according to the historian Sarah Kay Bierle, Herman Haupt, whom the War Department had put in charge of army transportation, took over the nearest unbroken line at Westminster, twenty miles from the fighting, and got thirty trains a day into it; afterward his crews rebuilt the track into Gettysburg so that the wounded could be carried out by rail.²

The battle turned on firepower. On 3 July some 150 Confederate cannon opened a bombardment near 1 p.m., and the guns of both sides dueled for nearly two hours, but the shelling did little to soften the Union line. Then some 12,000 Confederates advanced across open fields in Pickett's Charge. Union artillery tore gaps in their ranks, close-range rifle and cannon fire threw them back, and the attack cost Lee over 5,000 men in an hour. The American Battlefield Trust estimates 51,112 casualties in three days, the most of any battle of the war, and on 4 July Lee began his retreat. That November Lincoln's two-minute address dedicated the soldiers' cemetery.³

Why it ranks here: It is No. 1 as the only battle of the age with full marks for recognition, memory and certainty: everyone knows Pickett's Charge and the Gettysburg Address. Rifles and massed guns decided it, but it ended a campaign rather than the war, so the industrial test and consequence are 4, which still leaves it a point clear of Tsushima.

Read the full story of the battle of Gettysburg ›

2 Tsushima, 1905

Where: Tsushima Strait, between Korea and Japan
War: Russo-Japanese War
Fleets: Japanese Combined Fleet (Togo) vs Russian Second and Third Pacific Squadrons (Rozhestvensky)
Strength: Japan: 4 modern battleships, the old ex-Chinese Chin Yen, 8 armored cruisers, 15 other cruisers and about 70 torpedo craft vs 38 Russian ships
Result: Japanese victory; 34 of 38 Russian ships sunk, captured or interned; Japan lost 3 torpedo boats and 117 killed

Russia's Baltic Fleet had steamed some 18,000 nautical miles and arrived worn out. Japan was waiting with a fleet built largely in British yards and fitted with modern guns, range finders and radio. Its navy had adopted wireless telegraphy in 1901 and two years later began fitting its ships with the improved Type 36 set. Before dawn on 27 May 1905 the auxiliary cruiser Shinano Maru sighted the Russians and sent the news by wireless; the report was taken down in the radio room of Togo's flagship Mikasa, and the Combined Fleet put to sea at once.⁴

Speed and gunnery did the rest. The Japanese line averaged 18 knots against the Russians' 15, so Rozhestvensky could neither escape nor dictate the fight. Togo crossed the Russian "T" at 7,500 yards, and his British-made Barr & Stroud range finders gave his gunners a reach and accuracy the Russians' 1880s sights could not match; Japanese shells were filled with Shimose explosive. Night torpedo attacks followed, and on 28 May Nebogatov surrendered. Of 38 Russian ships, 34 were sunk, captured or interned, and the British naval historian Julian Corbett counted 4,830 Russians killed and 5,907 taken prisoner, against 117 Japanese killed and three torpedo boats lost. Russia made peace at Portsmouth in September 1905, and the Mikasa survives as a memorial ship.⁵

Why it ranks here: Full marks for the industrial test, consequence and certainty: steel, steam, radio and range finders decided a war in two days, the clearest such case on the list. It is less known in the West than Gettysburg and less alive in memory, 4 for both, which leaves it a point behind on 45.

Read the full story of Tsushima ›

Painting of Japanese naval officers standing on a battleship bridge behind protective hammocks under a flag — Admiral Togo Heihachiro on the bridge of the battleship Mikasa with his staff, painted by Tojo Shotaro in 1906. Public domain

3 Vicksburg, 1863

Where: Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the Mississippi River
War: American Civil War
Besiegers: Ulysses S. Grant's Union army with David D. Porter's gunboats; 77,000 Union troops engaged
Defenders: John C. Pemberton's Confederates, 33,000 engaged, with over 170 cannon
Outcome: Surrendered 4 July 1863 after a 47-day siege; some 29,000 Confederates laid down their arms

Vicksburg sat on bluffs above the Mississippi, and its batteries closed the river to the Union; Lincoln called it the key to the war. The Confederates had over a year to ring it with earthen forts and more than 170 cannon. Steam broke the deadlock. On the night of 16 April 1863, while Grant's army marched south down the Louisiana bank, Rear Admiral David D. Porter ran seven ironclads, a ram, three army transports and a tug downriver past the guns, engines muffled and lights out, their exposed sides piled with bales of cotton and hay and with coal barges lashed alongside. Of 525 rounds fired, the American Battlefield Trust counts only 68 hits, and one transport sank.⁶

Below the city the boats ferried Grant's army across the river at Bruinsburg on 30 April; the Trust calls the landing of 17,000 men the largest American amphibious operation before Normandy. Grant marched inland, struck the railroad and took Jackson, cutting Vicksburg off from the east. Two assaults in May failed, so he besieged the city while army guns and navy gunboats shelled it, and civilians sheltered in caves dug into the hills. On 4 July some 29,000 Confederates marched out and stacked their rifles, and the Union held the Mississippi.⁷

Why it ranks here: Full marks for consequence and certainty: it split the Confederacy and gave the Union the river. Ironclads and steam transports made the campaign possible, but the siege won a region rather than the war, so the industrial test is 4, as are recognition and memory; it ties Sedan on 43, on recognition and on consequence, and goes first as the older.

Read the full story of the siege of Vicksburg ›

4 Sedan, 1870

Where: Sedan, on the Meuse, in the French Ardennes
War: Franco-Prussian War
Sides: German armies under Moltke (Prussia and allies) vs French Army of Châlons (MacMahon, with Napoleon III)
Strength: 200,000 to 240,000 Germans with 800 guns vs 120,000 to 130,000 French with 400 to 600 guns
Result: German victory; Napoleon III captured; 83,000 French surrendered on 2 September, about 100,000 taken in all

Prussia had rebuilt its army around new machines: the Dreyse breech-loading rifle and Alfred Krupp's cast-steel breech-loading cannon. When war came in July 1870 a dense railway network let Prussia and its allies put about 600,000 men in the field at once, far more than France could mobilize, and the Prussian staff had worked the railway and the telegraph into its plans. France had the better rifle, the Chassepot, but its muzzle-loading bronze guns were outranged and outperformed by the Krupp breechloaders. By 31 August MacMahon's army and the emperor were in Sedan, and Moltke closed in with about 200,000 men and 800 guns; Larousse gives 240,000. The trapped French numbered 120,000 to 130,000, with 400 to 600 guns.⁸

On 1 September two German armies met north of the town and completed the ring. The French went through three commanders that day, and German shells set the packed citadel ablaze; crushed by the artillery, the French could not break out. On 2 September 83,000 men capitulated, on top of some 21,000 captured in the fighting, about 100,000 in all by the German Historical Museum's count, and the emperor went into captivity. Two days later Paris proclaimed the Republic, and the Second Empire was gone. Germany kept 2 September as Sedan Day until the Weimar government abolished it in 1919.⁹

Why it ranks here: Railways and Krupp's steel breechloaders trapped an army, captured an emperor and brought down a regime, so full marks for the industrial test and consequence, with recognition 4. Nobody marks the day any more, so memory is 3; it ties Vicksburg on 43, on recognition and on consequence, and follows it as the younger battle.

5 Antietam, 1862

Where: Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland
War: American Civil War
Sides: Union Army of the Potomac (McClellan) vs Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (Lee)
Strength: About 87,000 Union vs 41,000 to 45,000 Confederates
Result: Tactical draw; Lee withdrew to Virginia; about 22,700 to 23,000 casualties

In September 1862 Lee invaded Maryland for the first time, and George McClellan caught him behind Antietam Creek with about 87,000 men against some 41,000. On 17 September the two armies fought for twelve hours with rifled muskets and massed artillery. A Union surgeon remembered "the rattle of 150,000 muskets, and the fearful thunder of over 200 cannon"; in the West Woods 2,200 of 5,300 Union soldiers fell in twenty minutes, and the Sunken Road became Bloody Lane. By nightfall some 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing, the bloodiest single day in American history; the American Battlefield Trust's estimate is 22,717. Lee slipped back into Virginia, and five days later Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.¹⁰

Antietam also showed the public what the new weapons did. Two days after the battle Alexander Gardner, who worked for Mathew Brady, began photographing the field, the first time an American battlefield was photographed before the dead were buried. He used glass plates that had to be coated, exposed and developed within minutes, and most of his views were stereographs for the new home viewers. In October Brady's New York gallery hung them under a sign reading "The Dead of Antietam". The New York Times reported crowds climbing the stairs and wrote that Brady had brought home "the terrible reality and earnestness of war".¹¹

Why it ranks here: A tactical draw whose result was political, the Emancipation Proclamation, so 3 on the industrial test but 5 for consequence; recognition and memory are 4, and Gardner's photographs keep it vivid. It ties Adwa on 41 and goes first on recognition.

Read the full story of the Battle of Antietam ›

Bodies of Confederate soldiers lying in a sunken farm lane in 1862 — Confederate dead in the Sunken Road, the Bloody Lane, photographed by Alexander Gardner two days after the battle. Public domain

6 Adwa, 1896

Where: The hills east of Adwa, Tigray, northern Ethiopia
War: First Italo-Ethiopian War
Sides: Ethiopian Empire (Menelik II) vs Kingdom of Italy (Baratieri)
Strength: 80,000 to 120,000 Ethiopians vs about 17,000 to 17,700 Italians and Eritrean askari with 56 guns; disputed
Result: Ethiopian victory; about 6,000 Italian dead and some 3,000 prisoners; Ethiopia stayed independent

Menelik II expected his enemy to be European and armed his empire to match. Paying with ivory, gold and taxes, he imported tens of thousands of magazine rifles and dozens of modern guns, mostly through French-held Djibouti, and by the mid-1890s his army was fully outfitted with modern weapons. When Italy invaded he called a general mobilization; HISTORY puts the army he raised at 80,000 to 120,000, EBSCO at about 100,000. General Baratieri had about 17,000 men, Italians and Eritrean askari, and HistoryNet credits him with 17,700 men and 56 guns.¹²

In the night before 1 March Baratieri sent three brigades forward through the mountains to seize the heights above Adwa. Imprecise maps pulled one brigade away from the rest, and Menelik attacked each column in turn. By HistoryNet's account his army had 82,000 rifle- and sword-armed infantry, 20,000 spearmen, 8,000 cavalry and 40 quick-firing mountain guns, whose crews had been trained by Russian volunteers. By evening on 1 March the Italians were in flight, leaving behind their artillery, about 6,000 dead and some 3,000 prisoners; the World History Encyclopedia calls it the worst defeat of a European army in the history of colonialism. Ethiopia kept its independence, and 2 March is still a national holiday, marked in 2026 with a parade for the 130th anniversary.¹³

Why it ranks here: Imported rifles and guns let an African state destroy a European army and stay free, so 4 on the industrial test, full marks for consequence and for memory. The numbers vary widely between sources, so certainty is 4, and it is less known than Antietam, recognition 3, so it follows it on 41.

Read the full story of the Battle of Adwa ›

7 Petersburg, 1864 to 1865

Where: Petersburg and the approaches to Richmond, Virginia
War: American Civil War
Besiegers: Union armies under Ulysses S. Grant, about twice the Confederate strength for most of the campaign; at least 110,000 by April 1865
Defenders: Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia; more than 50,000 evacuated in April 1865
Outcome: Lines broken 2 April 1865 after 292 days; Petersburg and Richmond evacuated; about 42,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate casualties

By 1864 Petersburg mattered for one reason: five railroads met there, linking Richmond to the rest of the South. When Grant's assaults failed in June, the war became nine months of trenches, and the National Park Service says both armies fought, killed and died over those railroads. The Union built its own. From the river port of City Point the United States Military Railroad laid about 21 miles of track behind the trenches, following them wherever they went; it ran 25 locomotives and more than 275 cars, about 18 trains a day, and fed an army of over 100,000 men and 65,000 horses and mules.¹⁴

Grant meanwhile struck west, offensive after offensive, at Lee's supply lines. On 30 July 1864 Pennsylvanians fired 8,000 pounds of powder in a 510-foot tunnel under the Confederate works, though the assault through the crater failed. Union troops cut the Weldon Railroad in August, leaving the South Side Railroad as the last rail line into the city; after Five Forks on 1 April 1865 they seized that too, and the next day the Sixth Corps broke through. Lee evacuated Petersburg and Richmond and surrendered at Appomattox six days after Union troops entered the city. Myth vs fact: it is called the longest siege in American history, but Lee was never trapped, so the American Battlefield Trust argues it was not a true siege.¹⁵

Why it ranks here: Trench warfare over railways, the nearest thing to 1914 before 1914, ended in Appomattox, so full marks for the industrial test and consequence. Gettysburg and Vicksburg overshadow it, recognition and memory 3; it ties Omdurman on 40, level on recognition and consequence, and goes first as the older.

Read the full story of the siege of Petersburg ›

Pencil drawing heightened with white of Union infantry running forward from sandbagged trenches toward smoke and broken earthworks on a ridge — Scene of the explosion Saturday July 30th: a field drawing of the Crater attack by the artist Alfred R. Waud, made in 1864 and now in the Library of Congress. Union troops advance from their trenches toward the smoking breach in the Confederate line. Public domain

8 Omdurman, 1898

Where: Near Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, Sudan
War: Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of the Sudan (Mahdist War)
Sides: Kitchener's British, Egyptian and Sudanese army vs the Khalifa's Mahdist army
Strength: 25,800 Anglo-Egyptians vs an estimated 35,000 to 52,000 Mahdists (estimates vary)
Result: Anglo-Egyptian victory; about 10,000 Mahdists killed for 48 Anglo-Egyptian dead; the Mahdist state destroyed

To cut out the long Nile route and its cataracts, the railway builder Percy Girouard laid a line 235 miles (about 380 km) straight across the Nubian Desert from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography credits Kitchener's victory in large part to his army's ability to move men and supplies. Armored gunboats steamed up the Nile with the army.¹⁶

At dawn on 2 September 1898 the Khalifa's army, an estimated 35,000 to 52,000 men armed mostly with spears, swords and worn single-shot rifles, attacked about 25,800 British, Egyptian and Sudanese troops drawn up with their backs to the river. Maxim machine guns, quick-firing artillery and the gunboats tore the attacks apart, and Egyptian battalions with Martini-Henry breech-loaders pinned them at five hundred yards. About 10,000 Mahdists were killed and many more wounded; Kitchener's army lost 48 dead. The charge of the 21st Lancers, with the young Winston Churchill in the saddle, became the best known episode and mattered least: 21 lancers died riding into a gully that hid some 2,500 warriors. The Mahdist army ceased to exist as a fighting force, the Mahdist state fell with it, and the Sudan passed under Anglo-Egyptian rule.¹⁷

Why it ranks here: A railway, gunboats and machine guns destroyed a state in one day, so full marks on the industrial test and on consequence, but in Britain it is remembered mostly for Churchill's charge and it has no national day, so memory 3; it ties Petersburg on 40, level on recognition and consequence, and follows it as the younger.

9 Hampton Roads, 1862

Where: Hampton Roads, off Newport News and Norfolk, Virginia
War: American Civil War
Fleets: CSS Virginia vs the Union blockading squadron and, on 9 March, USS Monitor
Strength: About 1,400 Union vs 188 Confederate sailors, by the American Battlefield Trust's count
Result: Draw between the ironclads; the Union lost two warships on 8 March and 261 killed in the two days

The Confederates captured the Union steam frigate Merrimack at Norfolk, covered her with iron armor above the waterline and renamed her CSS Virginia. On 8 March 1862 she steamed into Hampton Roads against the wooden ships of the Union blockade. She rammed and sank USS Cumberland, which took 121 sailors down with her, and shelled USS Congress until she caught fire and surrendered. In the two days of fighting the Union lost 261 men killed, and 8 March 1862 stayed the bloodiest day in the history of the US Navy until Pearl Harbor.¹⁸

That night the answer arrived: John Ericsson's USS Monitor, an iron deck rising only 18 inches above the water with a single revolving turret that carried two 11-inch Dahlgren guns. On 9 March the two ironclads fought at close range, and neither could pierce the other's armor; the battle ended in a stalemate. Everything in it was industrial: steam engines instead of sails, iron plate instead of oak, a turning turret instead of a broadside. The National Park Service calls it the start of a new era in naval warfare. In the war itself the fight changed less. The Monitor saved the blockade and let McClellan move up the Virginia Peninsula, and two months later, as Union troops advanced, the Confederates scuttled the Virginia themselves.¹⁹

Why it ranks here: No battle on this list is more purely a contest of new machines, and its recognition, memory and certainty are high, but the duel was a draw that decided nothing in the war, so only 3 on the industrial test, which leaves it alone on 39, between the battles on 40 and those on 38.

10 Königgrätz, 1866

Where: Near Königgrätz (Hradec Králové) and Sadowa, Bohemia, today in the Czech Republic
War: Austro-Prussian War (Seven Weeks' War)
Sides: Prussia (Moltke, three armies) vs Austria and Saxony (Benedek)
Strength: Over 200,000 Prussians vs almost as many Austrians and Saxons; about 220,000 a side by another estimate
Result: Prussian victory; Austria lost about 43,000 men; Prussia about 2,000 killed and 7,000 wounded or captured; Saxony about 1,500

Prussia went to war with Austria in June 1866 with two new tools. Its general staff had a railway section, and Moltke used five railway lines to send three separate armies into Bohemia in under a month; the German Historical Museum says he steered them by telegraph and rail at a speed never seen before, to unite on the battlefield. Its infantry carried the Dreyse needle gun, a breechloader adopted in 1846, which could fire about five shots a minute and be reloaded lying down, while the Austrians still trained for bayonet charges in dense columns.²⁰

On 3 July two Prussian armies met the Austrians in a strong position near Königgrätz, and the needle gun cut down the Austrian attacks into the woods in the center; but Austria's rifled artillery was excellent, and the Prussians only held on until their Second Army struck the Austrian flank. By the museum's figures Austria lost about 43,000 men, nearly 6,000 of them killed, against about 2,000 Prussians killed and 7,000 wounded or captured. The Peace of Prague on 23 August ended Austrian influence in Germany and paved the way to the German Empire. Myth vs fact: the needle gun is often said to have won the day alone, but modern research, as the museum notes, questions that and stresses Prussian organization.²¹

Why it ranks here: Railways, the telegraph and the breech-loader decided a war and Germany's future in one day, so consequence 5. But, as the myth line shows, their weight is now disputed, so the industrial test is 4. Little known outside Germany and Austria, recognition and memory 3, it ties Solferino and Atlanta on 38 and heads them on consequence.

11 Solferino, 1859

Where: Solferino, near Mantua, northern Italy
War: Second War of Italian Independence (Franco-Austrian War)
Sides: France and Piedmont-Sardinia vs Austria
Strength: About 118,600 French and Piedmontese vs about 120,000 Austrians (EBSCO)
Result: Allied victory; over 21,000 Austrian and about 17,000 allied casualties; truce at Villafranca on 8 July

In 1859 France went to war beside Piedmont to drive Austria out of northern Italy, and it got there by train. Historian Richard Brooks calls the campaign the first large-scale use of railways in war: the lines of southern France and northern Italy put a large French army in Lombardy in about two weeks. The French also brought rifled field guns. The battles of 1859 were the first in which rifled artillery was used on a large scale, and the French 4-pounder reached nearly twice as far as the Austrian smoothbores.²²

On 24 June about 118,600 French and Piedmontese met about 120,000 Austrians, by EBSCO's count, in a fifteen-hour battle. The Austrians lost more than 21,000 men killed, wounded or missing and the allies about 17,000. Napoleon III concluded a truce at Villafranca on 8 July, Piedmont gained Lombardy, and the road to a united Italy lay open. A Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, organized local people to care for the wounded left on the field. His book about it, Un souvenir de Solférino, led to the committee in Geneva that became the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863, and to the first Geneva Convention in 1864.²³

Why it ranks here: Railways and rifled guns shaped the campaign and the battle ended the war and opened the way to Italian unity, but the fighting itself was an old-style slog, so 4 on the industrial test, and the Red Cross keeps it in memory; it ties Königgrätz and Atlanta on 38, follows Königgrätz, which had the greater consequence, and goes ahead of Atlanta, level with it on recognition and consequence, as the older.

12 Atlanta, 1864

Where: Atlanta and north Georgia
War: American Civil War
Sides: Sherman's Union armies vs the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Johnston, then Hood
Strength: About 98,000 Union vs about 65,000 Confederates in the campaign (World History Encyclopedia); 34,863 vs 40,438 at the Battle of Atlanta on 22 July (American Battlefield Trust)
Result: Union victory; Hood abandoned Atlanta on 1 September and the city surrendered on 2 September 1864

Atlanta mattered because of its rails. Four railroads met there, linking what was left of the Confederacy east of the Mississippi. In May 1864 William T. Sherman marched south from his base at Chattanooga with about 98,000 men in three armies, planning to supply them by railroad, while Joseph E. Johnston's Confederates fell back along the same line, the Western and Atlantic. The campaign was a fight for track as much as for ground.²⁴

Johnston's successor, John Bell Hood, attacked. On 22 July, in the Battle of Atlanta proper, fought along the Georgia Railroad, he lost about 5,500 men to the Union's 3,722, and the Union general James B. McPherson was killed. Sherman then went after the railroads rather than the city. At the end of August his infantry swung south to destroy the Macon and Western and the Atlanta and West Point lines, which he believed would force the Confederates out; after Hardee's line broke at Jonesborough, Hood evacuated Atlanta on the evening of 1 September, and the city surrendered the next day. The campaign had cost each side about 35,000 men. Its fall came two months before the presidential election and helped re-elect Abraham Lincoln in November 1864.²⁵

Why it ranks here: A campaign fought along railways and won by cutting them, so 4 on the industrial test, but it decided an election rather than the war on its own, so consequence 4; it ties Königgrätz and Solferino on 38 and follows both: Königgrätz on consequence, and Solferino, level with it on recognition and consequence, as the younger.

Men with tools standing on a railroad track during Civil War military railroad operations in northern Virginia, 1862 or 1863 — Men on the track during military railroad operations in northern Virginia, photographed by Andrew J. Russell in 1862 or 1863 (Library of Congress). Public domain

13 First Bull Run, 1861

Where: Bull Run, near Manassas Junction, Virginia
War: American Civil War
Sides: McDowell's Union army vs the Confederate armies of Beauregard and Johnston
Strength: 28,450 Union vs 32,230 Confederate (American Battlefield Trust)
Result: Confederate victory; 2,896 Union and 1,982 Confederate casualties; the Union army routed to Washington

Manassas Junction was worth a battle because two railroads met there, the Orange and Alexandria and the Manassas Gap, and the second ran west to the Shenandoah Valley. In July 1861 Irvin McDowell marched about 35,000 untried Union troops out of Washington toward it, against the 22,000 Confederates under P.G.T. Beauregard who guarded the fords of Bull Run. A second Confederate army, under Joseph E. Johnston, stood in the Valley, and a Union force there was supposed to keep it from leaving.²⁶

Johnston slipped away and put his brigades on the Manassas Gap Railroad. The National Park Service calls this one of the first uses of rails to move an army to battle; one of its pages gives Johnston's army as 10,000 men, another says the railroad carried 12,000, and most arrived on 20 and 21 July. On 21 July McDowell's flanking attack pushed the Confederates back until, on Henry Hill, Thomas J. Jackson's brigade held and earned him the name Stonewall. With the troops from the Valley in the line the Confederates stemmed the Union tide, and the Union retreat became a rout back behind the defenses of Washington. The Union lost 2,896 men and the Confederates 1,982. The battle showed both sides that the war would be long and bloody.²⁷

Why it ranks here: A railway did shape the result, but the battle showed that a long war lay ahead rather than deciding one, so 3 on the industrial test and on consequence; it ties Sevastopol and Plevna on 37 and heads them because it is better known.

Read the full story of the First Battle of Bull Run ›

14 Sevastopol, 1854 to 1855

Where: Sevastopol, Crimea
War: Crimean War
Besiegers: British and French armies, joined in 1855 by 15,000 Sardinians
Defenders: Russian garrison and Black Sea Fleet sailors: 35,100 men left in the city in 1854, by BritishBattles' count
Outcome: The French stormed the Malakoff on 8 September 1855 and the Russians abandoned the city

After the Alma in September 1854 the British and French marched round Sevastopol, Russia's Black Sea naval base, and opened their bombardment on 17 October. Eleven months of trenches and guns followed, and the new age showed at every level. French and British infantry carried rifles, while only about 6,000 Russian infantrymen had them and the rest fought with smoothbore muskets. After the supply disaster of the first winter, a railway was built from the port of Balaklava to the siege lines, and it was running by the end of April 1855. A field telegraph linked headquarters with the trenches, and a cable across the Black Sea carried its first message from Balaklava to London on 28 April 1855, according to the telegraph historian Steven Roberts.²⁸

The British attack on the Redan failed on 18 June 1855. On 8 September the French took the Malakoff bastion; that night the Russians crossed to the north side of the harbor and left the city in ruins. The last assault alone cost the allies nearly 10,000 men and the Russians 12,913, by BritishBattles' figures and our sum. The loss of the base, with the threat that Austria would join the allies, pushed Russia to the Treaty of Paris in March 1856.²⁹

Why it ranks here: Rifles, a railway, the telegraph and eleven months of trenches make it the fullest industrial test of its decade, so 5, but few general readers know it, so recognition 3; it ties First Bull Run and Plevna on 37, follows the better known Bull Run, and goes ahead of Plevna, level with it on recognition and consequence, as the older.

Engraved panorama of a harbour city on hills, with a long line of sailing warships firing broadsides in clouds of white smoke in the foreground — Sebastopol: First Day's Attack by the Allied Fleet and Armies of France and England, a wood engraving issued as a supplement to the Illustrated London News. The bombardment of 17 October 1854 opened the siege of Sevastopol, which lasted until September 1855. CC0. Illustrated London News supplement, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-P-2018-1901), via Wikimedia Commons.

15 Plevna, 1877

Where: Pleven (Plevna), northern Bulgaria
War: Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878
Besiegers: Russian army with Romanian allies: about 60,000 in the second assault, over 100,000 in the third; about 150,000 by the end (estimates vary)
Defenders: Osman Pasha's Ottoman corps: about 33,000 in July, probably more than 50,000 later; 43,338 at the surrender
Outcome: Ottoman surrender on 10 December 1877 after three repulsed assaults and a failed breakout

In July 1877 Osman Pasha marched an Ottoman corps into the small town of Plevna, on the flank of the Russian advance south of the Danube, and dug in behind earthworks, rifle pits and guns set in fortifications. His infantry fought with modern breech-loaders imported from the United States. The main one was the Peabody-Martini, made by the Providence Tool Company of Rhode Island, from which the Ottoman government had ordered 600,000 in 1874; the historian Julian Bennett puts the Plevna delay down above all to the garrison's wholesale use of it. Some units also had Winchester lever-action repeaters, between 8,000 and 12,000 by one collector's estimate.³⁰

The Russians attacked twice in July and, with their Romanian allies, a third time in September, and were thrown back each time. In the second assault some 60,000 Russians lost over 8,000 dead by Osman's report, against about 400 Ottoman killed and wounded; the third, on 11 September, by more than 100,000 men with 432 guns, cost the attackers between 15,550 and 21,000 men by different counts. The Russians then sealed the town and starved it. On 10 December Osman, wounded in a failed breakout, surrendered with 43,338 men. The Treaty of San Stefano of March 1878 then created a large Bulgaria.³¹

Why it ranks here: Entrenched riflemen with American-made breech-loaders held a far larger army for nearly five months, the clearest proof of the new firepower before 1914, but the defense delayed the Russians rather than saving the empire, so 4 on the industrial test and on consequence; level on 37 with Sevastopol in recognition and consequence, it follows it as the younger and takes the last place.

How we chose and ranked these battles of the industrial age

We counted a battle as one of the industrial age when it was fought anywhere in the world between Waterloo in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Those are the bounds because the armies of 1815 still fought with smoothbore muskets, horses and sail, and by 1914 rifles, railways, the telegraph, steam and armor and the machine gun had all been tried in battle; what came before is ranked in the greatest Napoleonic battles, what came after in the greatest battles of World War I. Sieges fought as battles, such as Sevastopol and Petersburg, count here and are also compared in the greatest sieges in history. The American Civil War has more entries here than any other war, but it was not the first industrial one: the Crimean War and Solferino came before it.³² › Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War

We considered 25 candidates and scored each one from 1 to 5 on five criteria. Recognition counts three times, because this page answers the question of which battles of the industrial age are the greatest and best known; the industrial test, which asks both what the battle showed about the new machines of war and what it decided, counts twice, as do consequence and memory, and certainty counts once:

Recognition (×3). 5 if the name is known far beyond military history and appears on most published lists of the age's great battles, 1 if only specialists know it.
Industrial test (×2). 5 if new industrial means (rifled and breech-loading arms, railways and the telegraph, steam and armor, machine and quick-firing guns) shaped the result AND the battle decided a war or the fate of a state; 4 if one of the two holds fully and the other in part; 3 if the new means shaped the result but it decided little, or it decided a war that was fought in the old way; 2 if the new means were present but not decisive; 1 if it showed nothing about industrial war.
Consequence (×2). 5 if it decided a war or the fate of a state, 1 if the war went on as if it had not been fought.
Memory (×2). 5 if it is still a living tradition (a holiday, a national monument, a famous speech, poem or march), 1 if it is forgotten.
Certainty (×1). 5 if the numbers and events are confirmed by independent sources, 1 if they rest on one source or are disputed.

The list is ranked by total score, not by date. Ties go to the better known battle, then to the one with the greater consequence, then to the older one. The scores are our editorial judgment, made on the evidence in the sources below, and the table shows every one of them, so you can see exactly why Gettysburg is first and why Hampton Roads, the most purely industrial fight of all, sits only ninth: the first duel of ironclads ushered in, in the National Park Service's words, a new era in naval warfare, but it was a draw that decided nothing in the war.

The scores behind the ranking
Rank	Name	Recognition ×3	Industrial test ×2	Consequence ×2	Memory ×2	Certainty ×1	Total
1	Gettysburg	5	4	4	5	5	46
2	Tsushima	4	5	5	4	5	45
3	Vicksburg	4	4	5	4	5	43
4	Sedan	4	5	5	3	5	43
5	Antietam	4	3	5	4	5	41
6	Adwa	3	4	5	5	4	41
7	Petersburg	3	5	5	3	5	40
8	Omdurman	3	5	5	3	5	40
9	Hampton Roads	4	3	4	4	5	39
10	Königgrätz	3	4	5	3	5	38
11	Solferino	3	4	4	4	5	38
12	Atlanta	3	4	4	4	5	38
13	First Bull Run	4	3	3	4	5	37
14	Sevastopol	3	5	4	3	4	37
15	Plevna	3	4	4	4	4	37

Close calls

Five battles came close and did not make the fifteen:

Manila Bay, 1898. On 1 May 1898 George Dewey's four cruisers and two gunboats destroyed or disabled the Spanish squadron at Manila, while eight Americans were wounded and none was killed by enemy fire. The one American death came from heat and exhaustion, as the revenue cutter McCulloch's chief engineer fought a funnel fire. A mismatch rather than a test of new ideas, it missed by one point, on 36.³³

Port Arthur, 1904 to 1905. Russian trenches, barbed wire, electrified fences and Maxim guns made the siege a preview of the Western Front, and once 203 Metre Hill fell, Japanese 28 cm (11-inch) guns sank the Russian fleet in the harbor; Japan lost some 58,000 to 59,000 killed and wounded. It decided a fleet and a fortress, not the war, which Tsushima did, and the figures vary, so 35.³⁴

Balaclava, 1854. The charge of the Light Brigade, in which about 260 of 673 men were killed or wounded, and the Thin Red Line of the 93rd Highlanders make it the best remembered day of the Crimean War. But it ended in stalemate and turned on horsemen and volleys, not new machines, so 2 on the industrial test; memory alone lifts it to 35.³⁵

Fort Sumter, 1861. The bombardment of 12 and 13 April 1861 opened the Civil War, and the garrison held out for 34 hours, yet the shelling killed no one: the first deaths came when a cartridge went off during the farewell salute on 14 April. Famous as a beginning rather than as a battle, it shows nothing about industrial war, so 1 on the test, and scored 35.³⁶

Little Bighorn, 1876. Many of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who destroyed Custer's command carried Henry and Winchester lever-action repeaters, and firing-pin marks on the cartridge cases show at least 350 different guns in their hands. It is remembered as a frontier fight, not an industrial one, so 1 on the test; it ranks in our last stands and American history guides, and scored 34.³⁷

Was the American Civil War the first modern war?

Not the first. Many historians call the Civil War the first modern war, but the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 had already brought rifles, a field telegraph and a military railway to the siege of Sevastopol, and in 1859 France moved an army to Italy by rail and fought at Solferino with rifled guns. Richard Brooks calls the war of 1859 the first in which both sides used railways, the telegraph and rifled weapons.³⁸

What the Civil War added was length and number. Seven of the fifteen battles here belong to it, from the rail move that helped win First Bull Run and the duel of ironclads at Hampton Roads to the nine months of trenches at Petersburg, where both armies, in the National Park Service's words, fought, killed and died over the railroads.³⁹

How did railways change warfare?

Railways moved armies to the battlefield and kept them supplied there, faster than marching ever could. Joseph E. Johnston's brigades reached First Bull Run by train, Moltke used five lines to move the bulk of the Prussian army into Bohemia in less than a month before Königgrätz, the United States Military Railroad ran on average 18 trains a day behind the trenches at Petersburg, and a line across the Nubian Desert carried Kitchener's army toward Omdurman. Railways also became the target: Sherman took Atlanta by going after the lines that fed it.⁴⁰

Why are some famous battles of the age not on the list?

Because fame alone does not win a place: the list also asks what a battle showed about industrial war and what it decided. Fort Sumter opened the Civil War, but its bombardment killed no one in the fighting. Balaclava, Little Bighorn and Rorke's Drift are remembered for courage, not for new machines, and at Isandlwana breech-loaders did not save the British camp. All of them are scored in the table above and appear in the greatest last stands, the greatest cavalry charges and the greatest military blunders.⁴¹