The World’s Most Epic Battles

By Angus Watson

Nothing is more stirring than an epic battle. Not so good if you’re in one, of course. Then they’re a confusion of noise, pain, panic and horror. But viewed on the cinema screen, or, better, conjured up in the imagination, they are magnificent and terrible spectacles that combine man’s greatest attributes - courage, intelligence, and heroism – with his worst – cruelty, violence, and greed. Here we look at six of the greatest battles ever, three from the ancient world, three from the modern.

Troy

1250 BC. 144,000 Achaeans vs 150,000 Trojans. Annihilation of a City

In early proof that women are trouble and men are idiots, Queen Helen of Sparta eloped with Prince Paris of Troy. An immense army, the Achaeans, crossed the Aegean Sea in 1,000 boats to get her back.

The two sides fought battle after battle on the plain outside the city. Each kicked off with single combat between two great heroes in shining bronze armour, followed by a clash between the massive armies in chariots and on foot, fighting with bows, spears and swords. After ten years of bashing each other into a stalemate, the Achaeans left a giant wooden horse stuffed with troops outside Troy’s gates, then hid. The Trojans pulled the horse into their city. That night the horse-borne troops crept out, let the rest of the army in, and massacred almost the entire city.

Gaugamela

331 BC. 47,000 Macedonians vs. 250,000 Persians. Alexander the Great conquers Asia.

25 year-old King Alexander III of Macedon had humiliated the gigantic Persian Empire at every battle. Determined to stop this upstart, Persian King Darius III assembled the greatest army ever seen. He had at least 230,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry including blade-wheeled chariots, and 50 war elephants. He flattened a battle site and waited, trusting that Alexander’s arrogance would force him to attack a vastly superior force, on a field that massively favoured the foe.

Alexander did attack. His left flank buckled but held under Persian onslaught. Alexander struck with his right flank, drawing Persian troops from the battlefield’s centre, creating a gap in the Persian lines. Cloaked by foot and hoof-kicked dust, Alexander and his cavalry swept through the gap, as planned, to find King Darius. Darius fled. The Persian army, demoralised and outmanoeuvred, was butchered.

Alesia

52 BC. 45,000 Romans vs. 400,000 Gauls. Rome’s disciplined troops against a raging horde.

The young hothead rebel Vercingetorix had united Gallic tribes against Roman invaders, and dealt Julius Caesar his first defeat. In 52 BC, however, he was on the retreat, blockaded into the impregnable hillfort of Alesia.

Determined to crush the rebellion, Caesar built a ten mile wall and ditch around Alesia, dotted with 23 forts, and 14 mile redoubt around that to defend against reinforcements.

Reinforcements came. Caesar said there were 250,000 infantry and 80,000 cavalry. They attacked in a screaming swarm of wild tribesmen with crazy hair and fearsome weapons. Vercingetorix’s men piled out of Alesia in support.

Trapped between two armies and hugely outnumbered, the Romans should have been crushed. However, their well-ordered ranks held until Roman cavalry broke out, wheeled back and slaughtered the Gauls. Vercingetorix surrendered and Gaul was in Roman hands again.

Waterloo

1815. 67,000 Anglo-Dutch and 53,000 Prussian vs. 74,000 French. Europe is saved.

In 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba. He swept through France, gathering troops. Armies rushed to stop him. In Belgium Napoleon met two armies: allied forces under Wellington, and Prussians. His goal was to keep them apart and destroy them individually.

At Waterloo, Wellington’s men lay down while cannon balls from hundreds of guns screamed overhead, then stood to scythe down great swathes of French cavalry with storms of musket and artillery fire.

Tens of thousands of French attacked again and again. Wellington barely held them. In the late afternoon, when Napoleon had hoped to have Wellington beaten, the Prussian army arrived. The French launched one great last attack, but was obliterated by skilled British musketry. Napoleon was defeated, and Europe saved. But only just - Wellington himself called it “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”.

Gettysburg

1863. 85,000 Unionists vs. 75,000 Confederates. The Civil War is turned.

A great Southern Confederate army was marching towards an even bigger Unionist force. Some Southerners broke off to search for shoes in the town of Gettysburg, where they met some Northerners. The ensuing firefight drew both armies, and the battle was on.

It raged for three days; infantry skirmishes, cavalry charges and full-on clashes combining to make one gigantic battle.

On the third day, 14,000 Confederates marched on Cemetery Ridge, a strong Unionist position. The Northerners unleashed a hellish barrage of musket, rifle and artillery fire. Almost half the advancing Rebels were killed. The ground was a carnage of dead and dying men, slick with blood and guts. The first industrial war was killing on an industrial scale, paving the way for the mass slaughter to come in the twentieth century. Southern General Lee was forced to retreat, and the war was turned.

Battle of Kursk

1943. 900,000 Axis with 2,700 tanks vs. 1,300,000 Soviets with 3,500 tanks. The biggest tank and air battle ever.

Humiliated at Stalingrad, Hitler was desperate for a victory. Soviet forces had pushed out in a huge bulge around the town of Kursk. Seeing an opportunity to crush them in a pincer movement, the Nazis concentrated two thirds of their entire Eastern Front forces in an attack.

Soviet spies discovered the German plan. The Russians concentrated over a million men, thousands of tanks, planes and artillery pieces, and threw up colossal defences. They launched the greatest ever pre-emptive artillery strike at the assembling German forces. Their raids on Luftwaffe bases sparked the biggest air battle of all time.

Herds of German tanks and hundreds of thousands of troops attacked simultaneously in the north and south, but were smashed on the Soviet defences. Soviet tanks poured out in attack, forcing the Germans back, and dealing the Nazi army a pulverising blow from which it never recovered.