• Salamis 480 BC: Themistocles' trick ends Xerxes' dream of world conquest.
• Gaugamela 331 BC: Alexander's greatest victory gives him a world empire, and leaves Darius' and Persia's dreams of empire forever dead.
• Zama 202 BC: Scipio Africanus shatters the army of Hannibal, and teaches Rome the lesson of conquest.
• Ain Jalut 1260 AD: One that most people don't know about. Baybars and his Mamluks become the only power to defeat a mongol army, putting a stop to their westward expansion forever.
• Trafalgar 1805 AD: Nelson's victory over the Franc-spanish fleet of Villeneuve ends any hope of Napoleon ever defeating Britian, and thus of ever dominating the world.
• The Kaiser's battle 1918 AD: Imperial Germany comes withen a wisker of breaking the allies, and thus winning the first world war.
• Kursk 1943 AD: Hitler's last great offensive in Russia ends in disaster as Stalin knows when and were the Nazis will strike.

(in chronological order)

1. Guadalete or La Janda (711). The battle that allowed the Moors to enter Iberia. Some historians doubt that this battle really took place.

2. Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). The Christian kingdoms of Spain unite to defeat the infidel. This battle opened the roads to the richest cities of Al-Andalus.

3. Aljubarrota (1385). The battle that secured Portuguese independence from Castile. Still today, the main reason for the existence of two separate states within the Iberian peninsula.

4. Lepanto (1571). The naval battle that ended Turkish threats on the Mediterranean sea.

5. Rocroi (1643). The battle that... snif... put an end to 150 years of Spanish supremacy on the battlefield.

6. Trafalgar (1805) or this is what happens when you let the French command...

1) Battle of Saratoga. A sorely needed win for the American Rebels. Gave Franklin the edge he needed to convince France to help the American upstarts. England still grew to dominance in the 19th century but she may have become invincible if she was also able to control most of the vast American continent.

2) Battle of Britain. Permanently stalls Hitler's westward expansion. Forces him to fight a two-front war and allows America, Britain and Canada the time to build up a massive invasion army.

3) Agincourt. Lords and Knights vs mere peasants with longbows. The end of the unbeatable man in armor.

4) Monitor vs Merrimac. Suddenly, every naval vessel in the entire world became obsolete. Started great nations down the path that eventually led to huge battleships.

5) Battle of Midway. The end of the battleship era. A much larger Japanese fleet is defeated almost soley by air power.

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 01-25-2001 09:33 AM Sieve, why are you able to distinguish between ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ when it comes to WWII but not in the American War of Independence? I have no pride in the British Empire, but really.

Never thought I'd see a Scotsman come defend the English!

In the US, we tend to equivocate "Britain", "England" and "The UK", although they are/were all separate entities. It's the same laziness that we use when we refer to citizens of the United States as "Americans" - not strictly true and in fact can be a source of insult to Mexicans, South Americans, etc.

I stand to be corrected but I believe that it is said in France to be a part of the reason that there was no great enthusiasm for the second world war there because of the effect the senseless slaughter at Verdun had on the psyche of the nation.

Some of the early WW1 battles gain yet greater poignancy in the UK because the men who fought were volunteers. The men from many of the northern towns all joined up together and went into the same regiment. They then all went into battle together and such was the carnage in the early trench warfare battles that a number of towns lost all but a handful of its young men on a single day.

Hard to imagine being in Huddersfield or Warrington on the day when telegrams announcing the death of so many were all arriving at once.

I saw a last remnant of the consequence of the carnage in my early years in practice in Canterbury. I noticed that I had quite a few elderly female clients all of whom were genteel, in slightly straitened circumstances, and all of whom were spinsters.

quote: For shame, Jay Bee. Trafalgar was fought in october of 1805! Who said: The French adrmiral does not know his bussiness. The fleet is lost.

Aaargh....! I corrected it at almost the same time you posted this! You beat me to the punch for a few seconds

------------------
"Our community extends beyond national frontiers. Whether it is an Argentinian or a Spaniard, a Chilean or a Mexican, we all know as children that our national language is the language of many nations, and that it was born in Spain many centuries ago... without it, our people would not exist"

31BC, Actium: Octavianīs admiral Agrippa destroys the fleets of Kleopatra and M.Antonius, and secures the power for caesarīs successor

732AD, Karl Martellīs victory against the Arabs at Tours and Portiers saves the Christian Europe

1789, Storm on the Bastille (ok, this was no real battle )

And Iīm surprised that nobody has mentioned Stalingrad here...

quote: Originally posted by cpoulos on 01-25-2001 05:48 PM [QUOTE]Originally posted by BeBro on 01-25-2001 05:12 PM 1789, Storm on the Bastille (ok, this was no real battle )

[/quote]

Oh yeah, and nobody knows the one that moved people to assault Bastille by screaming:"Help, they are going to torture me!!!" was the infamous Marquis de Sade...

For real history, cpoulos, wouldn't you say Stalingrad was more significant than Kursk? Kursk was a pretty much no-win situation for the Nazis anyway, just because the Soviets had the edge in men and materiel by 1943... (my 2 cents worth)

Greatest battle in CivII history has got to be the epic Egyptian invasion of the Sioux empire. Although the Egyptians suffered massive casualties due to Sioux cruise missiles (at sea) and even worse losses (especially among the elite paratroops) on land, the foothold established by the Egyptians allowed them to besiege and capture the Sioux capital. Once Little Bighorn fell, the Sioux resistance crumbled, and the gains made by the Egyptians were enough to put them on a par with the real enemy... the Zulus!

Sure, maybe you've never heard of that battle... but it's the one Civ game I played that really sticks in my memory.

My entries:

1. Stalingrad was the turning point of the War and broke the German's perceived invicibility. Moscow in December 1941 might actually really have been the turning point of WW2 although the Germans expanded their gains on the Southern front in 1942 but they never came closer to Moscow again...

2. How about Gettysburgh? A Union loss there would have split the United States in two permanently and may even have led to its disintegration. Certainly the United States power and impact in the 20th Century would have been greatly limited.

3. 1066 Hastings... Beginning of England's greatness? It certainly impacted history and brought in a complete new leadership to the Country, leadership that shaped England's world impact for Centuries to come.

quote: Greatest battle in CivII history has got to be the epic Egyptian invasion of the Sioux empire. Although the Egyptians suffered massive casualties due to Sioux cruise missiles (at sea) and even worse losses (especially among the elite paratroops) on land, the foothold established by the Egyptians allowed them to besiege and capture the Sioux capital. Once Little Bighorn fell, the Sioux resistance crumbled, and the gains made by the Egyptians were enough to put them on a par with the real enemy... the Zulus! Sure, maybe you've never heard of that battle... but it's the one Civ game I played that really sticks in my memory.

I think we all have one game that we can't stop thinking about, I know I do

And the Turkish defeat at Wien (Vienna), in the 17th century (donīt know exactly when, 1638???)