Misplaced Pages

#66933

54-418: A battle cry or war cry is a yell or chant taken up in battle , usually by members of the same combatant group. Battle cries are not necessarily articulate (e.g. "Eulaliaaaa!", "Alala"..), although they often aim to invoke patriotic or religious sentiment. Their purpose is a combination of arousing aggression and esprit de corps on one's own side and causing intimidation on the hostile side. Battle cries are

108-486: A permanent installation of a military authority in the occupied area. Military campaigns, inside and outside defined wars, may exceed the original or even revised planning parameters of scope, time and cost. Such stalled campaigns, for example the western front in World War I, were formerly called " stalemates " but in the late 20th century the metaphor of a quagmire was often applied, and " frozen conflict " in

162-624: A decisive battle can cause the losing side to surrender, while a Pyrrhic victory such as the Battle of Asculum can cause the winning side to reconsider its goals. Battles in civil wars have often decided the fate of monarchs or political factions. Famous examples include the Wars of the Roses , as well as the Jacobite risings . Battles affect the commitment of one side or the other to the continuance of

216-534: A level of planning and execution known as operational mobility . German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war" was the essence of strategy . Battle is a loanword from the Old French bataille , first attested in 1297, from Late Latin battualia , meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing", from Late Latin (taken from Germanic) battuere "beat", from which

270-428: A military campaign is to achieve a particular desired resolution of a military conflict as its strategic goal . This is constrained by resources, geography and/or season. A campaign is measured relative to the technology used by the belligerents to achieve goals, and while in the pre-industrial Europe was understood to be that between the planting (late spring) and harvest times (late autumn), it has been shortened during

324-619: A minor raid or a big offensive, nor is it likely that he anticipates the future course of the battle; few of the British infantry who went over the top on the first day on the Somme , 1 July 1916, would have anticipated that the battle would last five months. Some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again

378-495: A new kind of spear, the iklwa . Forces with inferior weapons have still emerged victorious at times, for example in the Wars of Scottish Independence . Disciplined troops are often of greater importance; at the Battle of Alesia , the Romans were greatly outnumbered but won because of superior training. Battles can also be determined by terrain. Capturing high ground has been the main tactic in innumerable battles. An army that holds

432-493: A new type of naval warfare. The ironclad , first used in the American Civil War , resistant to cannons, soon made the wooden ship obsolete. The invention of military submarines , during World War I , brought naval warfare to both above and below the surface. With the development of military aircraft during World War II , battles were fought in the sky as well as below the ocean. Aircraft carriers have since become

486-410: A number of battles over a protracted period of time or a considerable distance, but within a single theatre of operations or delimited area. A campaign may last only a few weeks, but usually lasts several months or even a year". In premodern times, campaigns were usually interrupted during the winter season, during which the soldiers retreated into the winter quarters (or 'cantonments') to get through

540-442: A part of a day. (The Battle of Preston (1648) , the Battle of Nations (1813) and the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) were exceptional in lasting three days.) This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying armies in the field or conducting night operations . The means of prolonging a battle was typically with siege warfare . Improvements in transport and the sudden evolving of trench warfare , with its siege-like nature during

594-498: A place of annual wartime operations by the armies of the Roman Republic . 1. A military campaign denotes the time during which a given military force conducts combat operations in a given area (often referred to as AO, area of operation ). A military campaign may be executed by either a single Armed Service , or as a combined services campaign conducted by land , naval , air , cyber, and space forces. 2. The purpose of

SECTION 10

#1732801512067

648-514: A time ( Battle of Leipzig ) or operations ( Battle of Wuhan ). The space a battle occupies depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. A "battle" in this broader sense may be of long duration and take place over a large area, as in the case of the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic . Until the advent of artillery and aircraft , battles were fought with the two sides within sight, if not reach, of each other. The depth of

702-448: A traditional manner were destroyed by an Anglo-Egyptian force equipped with Maxim machine guns and artillery. On some occasions, simple weapons employed in an unorthodox fashion have proven advantageous; Swiss pikemen gained many victories through their ability to transform a traditionally defensive weapon into an offensive one. Zulus in the early 19th century were victorious in battles against their rivals in part because they adopted

756-645: A universal form of display behaviour (i.e., threat display ) aiming at competitive advantage , ideally by overstating one's own aggressive potential to a point where the enemy prefers to avoid confrontation altogether and opts to flee. In order to overstate one's potential for aggression, battle cries need to be as loud as possible, and have historically often been amplified by acoustic devices such as horns , drums , conches , carnyxes , bagpipes , bugles , etc. (see also martial music ). Battle cries are closely related to other behavioral patterns of human aggression , such as war dances and taunting, performed during

810-467: A war, for example the Battle of Inchon and the Battle of Huế during the Tet Offensive . Military campaign A military campaign is large-scale long-duration significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of interrelated military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war . The term derives from the plain of Campania ,

864-407: Is no longer tied to the navy. A good example of an ancient naval battle is the Battle of Salamis . Most ancient naval battles were fought by fast ships using the battering ram to sink opposing fleets or steer close enough for boarding in hand-to-hand combat. Troops were often used to storm enemy ships as used by Romans and pirates . This tactic was usually used by civilizations that could not beat

918-504: Is used for such campaigns if referring to a protracted combat encounter in which either one or both of the combatants had the same methods, resources, and strategic objectives throughout the encounter. Some prominent examples of this would be the Battle of the Atlantic , Battle of Britain , and the Battle of France , all in World War II. Wars and military campaigns are guided by military strategy , whereas battles take place on

972-722: The Battle of Britain and the Battle of Midway . Another important use of aircraft came with the development of the helicopter , which first became heavily used during the Vietnam War, and still continues to be widely used today to transport and augment ground forces. Today, direct engagements between aircraft are rare – the most modern fighter-interceptors carry much more extensive bombing payloads, and are used to bomb precision land targets, rather than to fight other aircraft. Anti-aircraft batteries are used much more extensively to defend against incoming aircraft than interceptors. Despite this, aircraft today are much more extensively used as

1026-563: The First World War in the 20th century, lengthened the duration of battles to days and weeks. This created the requirement for unit rotation to prevent combat fatigue , with troops preferably not remaining in a combat area of operations for more than a month. The use of the term "battle" in military history has led to its misuse when referring to almost any scale of combat, notably by strategic forces involving hundreds of thousands of troops that may be engaged in either one battle at

1080-541: The Passchendaele , Pearl Harbor , the Alamo , Thermopylae and Waterloo . Military operations , many of which result in battle, are given codenames , which are not necessarily meaningful or indicative of the type or the location of the battle. Operation Market Garden and Operation Rolling Thunder are examples of battles known by their military codenames. When a battleground is the site of more than one battle in

1134-463: The Scottish Gaelic word for "gathering-cry" and in times of war for "battle-cry". The Gaelic word was borrowed into English as slughorn , sluggorne , "slogum", and slogan . Battle The word "battle" can also be used infrequently to refer to an entire operational campaign, although this usage greatly diverges from its conventional or customary meaning. Generally, the word "battle"

SECTION 20

#1732801512067

1188-497: The Spanish Civil War and especially World War II. Aircraft design began specializing, primarily into two types: bombers, which carried explosive payloads to bomb land targets or ships; and fighter-interceptors, which were used to either intercept incoming aircraft or to escort and protect bombers (engagements between fighter aircraft were known as dog fights ). Some of the more notable aerial battles in this period include

1242-458: The battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with inclusion of the supporting units in the rear areas; supply, artillery, medical personnel etc. often outnumber the front-line combat troops. Battles are made up of a multitude of individual combats, skirmishes and small engagements and the combatants will usually only experience a small part of the battle. To the infantryman , there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of

1296-443: The electromagnetic spectrum . Battles are decided by various factors, the number and quality of combatants and equipment, the skill of commanders and terrain are among the most prominent. Weapons and armour can be decisive; on many occasions armies have achieved victory through more advanced weapons than those of their opponents. An extreme example was in the Battle of Omdurman , in which a large army of Sudanese Mahdists armed in

1350-670: The "warming up" phase preceding the escalation of physical violence. From the Middle Ages , many cries appeared on speech scrolls in standards or coat of arms as slogans (see slogan (heraldry) ) and were adopted as mottoes , an example being the motto " Dieu et mon droit " ("God and my right") of the English kings. It is said that this was Edward III 's rallying cry during the Battle of Crécy . The word " slogan " originally derives from sluagh-gairm or sluagh-ghairm ( sluagh = "people", "army", and gairm = "call", "proclamation"),

1404-399: The English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri . The defining characteristic of the fight as a concept in military science has changed with the variations in the organisation, employment and technology of military forces. The English military historian John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to

1458-804: The First World War, the British Battles Nomenclature Committee was formed to decide on standard names for all battles and subsidiary actions. To the soldiers who did the fighting, the distinction was usually academic; a soldier fighting at Beaumont Hamel on November 13, 1916, was probably unaware he was taking part in what the committee named the Battle of the Ancre . Many combats are too small to be battles; terms such as "action", "affair", "skirmish", "firefight", "raid", or "offensive patrol" are used to describe small military encounters. These combats often take place within

1512-535: The Second World War, along with indirect combat through the use of aircraft and missiles which has come to constitute a large portion of wars in place of battles, where battles are now mostly reserved for capturing cities. One significant difference of modern naval battles, as opposed to earlier forms of combat is the use of marines , which introduced amphibious warfare. Today, a marine is actually an infantry regiment that sometimes fights solely on land and

1566-510: The Western World ) and B.H. Liddell Hart ( Decisive Wars of History ), among many others, have written books in the style of Creasy's work. There is an obvious difference in the way battles have been fought. Early battles were probably fought between rival hunting bands as unorganized crowds. During the Battle of Megiddo , the first reliably documented battle in the fifteenth century BC, both armies were organised and disciplined; during

1620-408: The belligerent military forces defeats the opposing military force within the constraints of the planned resource, time and cost allocations. The manner in which a force terminates its operations often influences the public perception of the campaign's success. A campaign may end in conquest, and be followed by the transition of military authority to a civil authority and the redeployment of forces, or

1674-444: The central unit in naval warfare, acting as a mobile base for lethal aircraft. Although the use of aircraft has for the most part always been used as a supplement to land or naval engagements, since their first major military use in World War I aircraft have increasingly taken on larger roles in warfare. During World War I, the primary use was for reconnaissance, and small-scale bombardment. Aircraft began becoming much more prominent in

Battle cry - Misplaced Pages Continue

1728-412: The coldest months with warmth and protection. For example, the ancient Romans had easily movable castra aestiva ('summer quarters', with leather tents) but more stationary castra hibera ('winter quarters', with wooden barracks). In favourable weather and with proper equipment and supplies, however, military campaigns could be extended from the 'campaigning season' into winter in an attempt to catch

1782-429: The commands of their leaders with conviction in its success invariably has a higher morale than an army that doubts its every move. The British in the naval Battle of Trafalgar owed its success to the reputation of Admiral Lord Nelson . Battles can be fought on land, at sea, and in the air. Naval battles have occurred since before the 5th century BC. Air battles have been far less common, due to their late conception,

1836-440: The date on which they took place, such as The Glorious First of June . In the Middle Ages it was considered important to settle on a suitable name for a battle which could be used by the chroniclers . After Henry V of England defeated a French army on October 25, 1415, he met with the senior French herald and they agreed to name the battle after the nearby castle and so it was called the Battle of Agincourt . In other cases,

1890-672: The enemy off-guard. For example, in the Flanders campaign , French general Jean-Charles Pichegru unexpectedly crossed the frozen Great Rivers during the harsh winter of 1794–95, and conquered the Dutch Republic . But ill-prepared winter campaigns often had disastrous consequences due to high mortality amongst the soldiers; the most notorious example of this is the French invasion of Russia by Napoleon (24 June – 14 December 1812). Therefore, army commanders sought to take into account

1944-485: The enemy with ranged weaponry. Another invention in the late Middle Ages was the use of Greek fire by the Byzantines, which was used to set enemy fleets on fire. Empty demolition ships utilized the tactic to crash into opposing ships and set it afire with an explosion. After the invention of cannons, naval warfare became useful as support units for land warfare. During the 19th century, the development of mines led to

1998-589: The high ground forces the enemy to climb and thus wear themselves down. Areas of jungle and forest, with dense vegetation act as force-multipliers, of benefit to inferior armies. Terrain may have lost importance in modern warfare, due to the advent of aircraft, though the terrain is still vital for camouflage, especially for guerrilla warfare . Generals and commanders also play an important role, Hannibal , Julius Caesar , Khalid ibn Walid , Subutai and Napoleon Bonaparte were all skilled generals and their armies were extremely successful at times. An army that can trust

2052-434: The latter, resulting in their deaths or capture. A battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory , which ultimately favors the defeated party. If no resolution is reached in a battle, it can result in a stalemate . A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional warfare often becomes an insurgency . Until the 19th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting

2106-535: The many wars of the Roman Empire , barbarians continued to use mob tactics . As the Age of Enlightenment dawned, armies began to fight in highly disciplined lines. Each would follow the orders from their officers and fight as a unit instead of individuals. Armies were divided into regiments , battalions , companies and platoons . These armies would march, line up and fire in divisions. Native Americans , on

2160-492: The moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them" but the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarized so neatly. Battle in the 20th and 21st centuries is defined as the combat between large components of the forces in a military campaign , used to achieve military objectives . Where the duration of the battle is longer than a week, it is often for reasons of planning called an operation. Battles can be planned, encountered or forced by one side when

2214-400: The most prominent being the Battle of Britain in 1940. Since the Second World War, land or sea battles have come to rely on air support. During the Battle of Midway , five aircraft carriers were sunk without either fleet coming into direct contact. Battles are usually hybrids of different types listed above. A decisive battle is one with political effects, determining the course of

Battle cry - Misplaced Pages Continue

2268-408: The need to return their troops to their winter quarters, or establish new winter quarters in a secure location, well before the winter set in, so as to not leave their soldiers vulnerable to the enemy nor the elements. The success of a military campaign is evaluated based on the degree of achievement of planned goals and objectives through combat and noncombat operations. That is determined when one of

2322-450: The next day (at the Battle of Wavre ). Battlespace is a unified strategic concept to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations , including air , information , land , sea and space . It includes the environment, factors and conditions that must be understood to apply combat power, protect the force or complete the mission, comprising enemy and friendly armed forces ; facilities; weather; terrain; and

2376-487: The other hand, did not fight in lines, using guerrilla tactics. American colonists and European forces continued using disciplined lines into the American Civil War . A new style arose from the 1850s to the First World War, known as trench warfare , which also led to tactical radio . Chemical warfare also began in 1915. By the Second World War, the use of the smaller divisions, platoons and companies became much more important as precise operations became vital. Instead of

2430-410: The other is unable to withdraw from combat. A battle always has as its purpose the reaching of a mission goal by use of military force. A victory in the battle is achieved when one of the opposing sides forces the other to abandon its mission and surrender its forces, routs the other (i.e., forces it to retreat or renders it militarily ineffective for further combat operations ) or annihilates

2484-435: The political actors. Personal effects of battle range from mild psychological issues to permanent and crippling injuries. Some battle-survivors have nightmares about the conditions they encountered or abnormal reactions to certain sights or sounds and some experience flashbacks . Physical effects of battle can include scars, amputations, lesions, loss of bodily functions, blindness, paralysis and death. Battles affect politics ;

2538-418: The post-industrial period to a few weeks. However, due to the nature of campaign goals, usually campaigns last several months, or up to a year as defined by Trevor N. Dupuy . "A campaign is a phase of a war involving a series of operations related in time and space and aimed towards a single, specific, strategic objective or result in the war. A campaign may include a single battle, but more often it comprises

2592-480: The primary tools for both army and navy, as evidenced by the prominent use of helicopters to transport and support troops, the use of aerial bombardment as the "first strike" in many engagements, and the replacement of the battleship with the aircraft carrier as the center of most modern navies. Battles are usually named after some feature of the battlefield geography , such as a town, forest or river, commonly prefixed "Battle of...". Occasionally battles are named after

2646-646: The same battle entered the popular culture, such as the First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run , which are also referred to as the First and Second Battles of Manassas. Sometimes in desert warfare, there is no nearby town name to use; map coordinates gave the name to the Battle of 73 Easting in the First Gulf War . Some place names have become synonymous with battles, such as

2700-466: The same conflict, the instances are distinguished by ordinal number , such as the First and Second Battles of Bull Run. An extreme case are the twelve Battles of the Isonzo — First to Twelfth —between Italy and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Some battles are named for the convenience of military historians so that periods of combat can be neatly distinguished from one another. Following

2754-789: The sides adopted different names for the same battle, such as the Battle of Gallipoli which is known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale . During the American Civil War, the Union tended to name the battles after the nearest watercourse, such as the Battle of Wilsons Creek and the Battle of Stones River, whereas the Confederates favoured the nearby towns, as in the Battles of Chancellorsville and Murfreesboro. Occasionally both names for

SECTION 50

#1732801512067

2808-427: The time and space of a battle and while they may have an objective, they are not necessarily "decisive". Sometimes the soldiers are unable to immediately gauge the significance of the combat; in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo , some British officers were in doubt as to whether the day's events merited the title of "battle" or would be called an "action". Battles affect the individuals who take part, as well as

2862-502: The trench stalemate of 1915–1917, in the Second World War, battles developed where small groups encountered other platoons. As a result, elite squads became much more recognized and distinguishable. Maneuver warfare also returned with an astonishing pace with the advent of the tank , replacing the cannon of the Enlightenment Age. Artillery has since gradually replaced the use of frontal troops. Modern battles resemble those of

2916-491: The war such as the Battle of Smolensk or bringing hostilities to an end, such as the Battle of Hastings or the Battle of Hattin . A decisive battle can change the balance of power or boundaries between countries. The concept of the decisive battle became popular with the publication in 1851 of Edward Creasy 's The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World . British military historians J.F.C. Fuller ( The Decisive Battles of

#66933