Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Most Important Battles in History

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

History is shaped by many things. Political and religious leaders, diseases, and technologies.  But perhaps the thing which has resulted in the most poignant inflection points in history has been the results of great battles.  Battles where if things had gone another way, the entire world we live in would look totally different.  Learn more about the most important battles in world history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History is shaped by many things. Political and religious leaders, diseases and technologies are just a few. But perhaps a thing which has resulted in the most poignant inflection points in history have been the results of great battles. Battles where if things had gone another way, the entire world we live in would look totally different. Learn more about the most important battles in world history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode, I freely admit up front, is rather subjective. What is, quote, important, unquote, is a matter of opinion. And someone else could come up with a very different list that would be just as valid. Moreover, because of time constraints, there were many important battles that I had to leave out. I tried to focus on battles that I thought were civilizational battles, battles between East and West, battles between major religious groups, or battles that were foundational for great empires. As such, I've left off battles primarily between different European armies,

and likewise, I haven't listed battles between various Chinese factions who fought against or four particular dynasties. So the Battle of Red Cliffs and the Battle of Yaman will not be on the list, but will be addressed in future episodes, as will the Battle of Panapat, which took place in India in 1526. The following is a list of battles that I think a reasonably knowledgeable person should know. You don't need to know the details of each battle, but basically who was fighting, who won, when it roughly took place, and why it was so important. So, with those caveats aside, the first great battle on the list is the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. With respect to the more famous Battle of Thermopyla, which was the basis of the movie 300,

the Battle of Marathon was arguably more important. The battle saved the Greeks from being conquered by Darius I, the leader of the Persian Empire. It was fought primarily by Athenians on the Greek side and its resolution in favor of the Greeks set off a century of Persia wanting to conquer Greece. This battle is famous for the story of the runner, who went from Marathon to Athens to announce news of the victory, and the battle is still remembered today in the race in which it is named after. The next battle is also Greeks versus Persians, the Battle of Galgamela in 331 BC. The Battle of Galgamela makes a list because it was the battle that once and for all ended the Persian Empire, or to be more specific, the Akimedan Empire.

It was the last great battle between Alexander the Great and the Persian King Darius III. Alexander, despite being outnumbered and quite possibly vastly outnumbered, won by making an attack straight at Darius. When Darius fled, everything fell apart for the Persians. Arius was later killed, his family was captured by Alexander, and all of Persia came under his control. The next great civilizational battle would be the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. The Battle of Zama took place outside of Carthage and ended the second Punic War. While it wasn't the destruction of Carthage, which I talked about in another episode, it was the de facto end of them as a serious power who could compete with Rome in the Mediterranean, and as such it also marked the end of the

Phoenicians as a major civilization. Despite greater battles that Carthage won during the war under the leadership of their general Hannibal, it was Zama and Scipio-Africanus that ended the war in favor of Rome. There are two important battles that were foundational for the establishment of the Roman Empire. Both of these battles ended the civil wars which they took place in. In the Battle of Farsalis in 48 BC, the forces of Julius Caesar defeated the forces of Pompey in the Roman Senate. The battle took place in Greece and Caesar's excellent generalship overcame a numerically superior force. With the defeat of the

senatorial forces, Rome was basically finished as a republic. The other great battle, which can be considered the bookend of this one, took place just 17 years later in 31 BC, the Battle of Actium. Actium was actually a naval battle between the forces of Octavian, the great

nephew of Julius Caesar, and the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. This also took place in Greece, and the decisive leader here was Octavian's number 2 man, Marcus Agrippa. Mark Anthony's decision to fight at sea has been questioned for over 2,000 years as he was not an experienced naval commander. And after the Battle of Actium, Octavian became the first Roman emperor, known as Augustus, and set the stage for the next 500 years of Roman history. The next battle is another Roman civil war that took place 300 years later,

the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. I covered this in a previous episode, but this battle established Constantine as emperor, who subsequently legalized Christianity and Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over a thousand years. The last Roman battle on this list, or at least the last Western Roman battle, is the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The battle took place in what is today European Turkey near the Greek and Bulgarian borders. This was a major defeat of the Romans at the hands of the Goths. It marked the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire, and the battle is probably most famous for the fact that the emperor at the time, Valens, died in combat.

The last battle which has anything to do with Rome is the Battle of Yarmuk in 636. As I'd also discussed in a previous episode, it was here where the Islamic Caliphate defeated the Byzantine forces, rendering the Byzantines, aka the Eastern Roman Empire, a small regional power for the next several centuries until the fall of Constantinople. It was also the point where Islam took its place on the world stage, having defeated one of the world's great powers. As Islam spread through the Middle East and North Africa, it eventually established a foothold down the Iberian Peninsula,

and many European leaders were concerned that they would eventually conquer the entire continent. These fears were put to rest in the year 732, at the Battle of Tours. The Iberian Moors crossed the Pyrenees and marched deep into France before being stopped outside the city of Tours by Charles the Hammer Martel, the grandfather of the Emperor Charlemagne. Next would be the battle that established England and subsequently the United Kingdom, the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Battle of Hastings was the definitive battle in which the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, claimed the throne of England.

It was the last successful foreign invasion of the island of Great Britain, and the Norman influence over England had profound impact on the English language. The Golden Age of Islam came to an end with the siege of Baghdad in 1258. The Mongols had made it all the way to the Middle East, and the Caliph were fulfilled. to surrender Baghdad to them. The end result was one of the greatest bloodbaths in world history. The siege only lasted 13 days, but the slaughter afterwards was calculated by Arab sources to be as high as 2 million civilians. In 1532, we have the first important battle to take place in the new world, the Battle of Cajamarka. This has been called, with pretty good justification, the massacre of Cajamauga. It took place in what is today Peru, when the Spanish forces under the command of Francisco

Pizarro wiped out almost the entire ruling class of the Incan Empire and captured their leader who they later executed. The Spanish did this through duplicity, surprise, and superior firepower, and it also helped that their victims were totally unarmed. The battle of Carhamarca resulted in the effectual end of the Incan Empire, the greatest in South America at the time, and the dominance of Spain on the continent for centuries to come. The next battle is another sea battle. It was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. As previously mentioned in my episode on Philip II, Catholic Spain tried to end the Protestant rule of England via direct invasion of the island. The failure of the Armada ensured that Protestantism would remain a force not only in Britain,

but in the rest of Europe. The next battle was also a battle of religions, and it can be considered a bookend to the Battle of Tours, the Battle of Vienna in 1683. This was the last great Ottoman attempt to try to conquer Vienna and to drive deep into the heart of Christian Europe. The war resulted in the loss of most Ottoman lands in Central Europe, including all of Hungary, and after this point, the Ottoman Empire began a long decline until its eventual dissolution in 1920. The next great battle was another New World Battle, the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. In terms of the total number of soldiers involved, this might be one of the smallest battles on the list. However, it resulted in the end of the American Revolution and the establishment of the first independent

country in the Western Hemisphere. The American Revolution set the stage for other revolutions against established European powers in France and Latin America and other countries. Amazingly, approximately only one century after the battle, the United States would have the largest economy in the world. The French Revolution and subsequent establishment of the French Empire under Napoleon threw Europe into turmoil. Despite several significant battles, such as the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's rule eventually came to an end in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. After Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to a remote island of St. Helena and was never a force to be reckoned with again. The only other 19th century battle all put on the list is the Battle of Gittiesburg in 1863. This was the largest battle of the American Civil War and marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.

While it wasn't the end of the war, afterwards, everyone pretty much knew the writing was on the wall, as the Confederate advance into Pennsylvania was their last hope at some sort of compromise victory. Going into the 20th century, the scale of the war has changed due to industrialization and technology. It's difficult to pick just one battle from the First World War as so many of them involved massive bloodlettings that achieved absolutely nothing. After some thought, I'm going to go with the first Battle of the Marne, which took place in the opening weeks of war in 1914. The Battle of the Marne stopped the initial German invasion of France and put them on the defensive. It was this action early in the war, which could be viewed as the reason, why the war devolved into defensive trench warfare, which was the signature of World War I.

And I'll end with what I think are the three most important battles of the Second World War, one from the Eastern Front, one from the Western Front, and one from the Pacific. The first is the turning point in the war in the Pacific, which took place in June of 1942, the Battle of Midway. The Battle of Midway was a naval battle that was named after Midway Island, the closest land to the site of the battle. It was the largest battle between aircraft carriers, in world history. Japan lost all four of its aircraft carriers in the battle, whereas the Americans had one that was damaged and then later sunk after the battle. It marked the beginning of the end of the Japanese Empire and turned the tide of the Pacific War. The next battle was one of the

largest battles in history. The battle wasn't a demonstration of great tactics or leadership, rather it was a raw struggle to survive on both sides. This was the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. From August 1942 to February 1943, the Soviets and Germans fought tooth and nail for the tiniest pieces of land. The Germans eventually surrendered in the winter, and the stubbornness

of Hitler in refusing to fall back marked the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. And the last battle on my list is the greatest amphibious landing in history. Unlike the Battle of Stalingrad, which was a war of attrition, this was probably the greatest feat of military logistics of all time,

the invasion of Normandy in of 1944. Millions of people were involved in the planning, preparation, and eventual invasion of Europe by the Allies. The process took years, and when it finally took place, within a matter of weeks, they had hundreds of thousands of personnel and a logistical chain to supply all of them. So as I mentioned before, this list should not be considered to be exhaustive. There are many more important battles that I've left off, but I do think that most historians would look at this list and agree with the majority of it. Some of these you might be familiar with, and some of these you may have never heard of before. Either way, these events, some of which took place

thousands of years ago, were pivotal moments that shaped the history of the world that we live in today. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener John Hingham over on the Facebook group. He writes, I was initially pulled into Gary's orbit by the Smurgish Board of Cool Topics. However, it's slowly dawned on me that Gary has visited far more places than I have. And as someone who's traveled around the world, albeit for a measly year, I wasn't sure how I felt about that. At first, it was a twinge of jealousy, but slowly devolved into mild irritation. Was I continuing to binge episodes so I could become conversant

on the history of the chicken? Or was my motivation simply to see if I could grow my list of places I had been and Gary had not from two to three? And then it hit me. At the end of an episode I recently listened to, Gary confessed that everything everywhere is classified as a class one addictive substance. Are there nanobots mixed in my kachava that compels me to obey Gary's every command? Is there really a completionist club with three sodas in the fridge? P.S. Seriously Groovy Podcast. Nine and three-quarter stars. You won my loyalty with the Universe 25 episode when you explained it's just cool data

and in so many words that anyone who says differently has an agenda. It may be think that you need an episode on confirmation bias and the Dunning Kruger effect. And B's. Sorry about docking you a quarter star, so you didn't get a perfect 10 out of 10. but you failed to mention my favorite data point about potatoes. One in four people would not exist today if it had not been for the existence of the potato. Well, thanks, John. All those episode suggestions are good ones, and I've added them to the great list of future episodes.

And I'm really sorry about the potato thing. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.