Produced by John Campbell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Many minor changes are noted at the end of the book.
BATTLES OF DESTINY
BY SISTER M. FIDES SHEPPERSON, M. A.
AUTHOR OF
“HARP OF MILAN,” “CLOISTER CHORDS,” ETC.
PRICE SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS
FOR SALE AT
MOUNT MERCY CONVENT
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ALSO AT UNIVERSITY BOOK STORE
1 9 1 4
COPYRIGHT 1914 BY
SISTER M. FIDES SHEPPERSON, M. A.
MOUNT MERCY CONVENT
PITTSBURGH, PENNA.
INTRODUCTION
This little volume will prove of interest to the general reader
and of inestimable value to the student or teacher of history. It
contains graphic descriptions of the seventeen great struggles
of the historic past--Marathon, Arbela, Zama, Teutobergerwald,
Adrianople, Chalons, Tours, Senlac-Hastings, Orleans, Lepanto,
Spanish Armada, Naseby, Blenheim, Pultowa, Saratoga, Valmy, and
Waterloo. Dates, figures, facts, estimates and reflections are
presented in attractive form; and the net results of long research
labor are given in a nutshell.
Those terrific conflicts of the past seem strangely fascinating
when looked at in their crucial throes ere yet they are stamped
with the die of destiny. The thoughtful mind asks, “Would our world
of today be just what it is if all or if any one of these battles
had borne results the reverse of what they did bear?”
PRESS OF
THE ALDINE PRINTING COMPANY
1331-1333-1335 FIFTH AVENUE
PITTSBURGH, PENNA.
INDEX TO CHAPTERS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--Marathon 7
CHAPTER II.--Arbela 13
CHAPTER III.--Zama 27
CHAPTER IV.--Teutoberger Wald 33
CHAPTER V.--Adrianople 40
CHAPTER VI.--Chalons 48
CHAPTER VII.--Tours 54
CHAPTER VIII.--Hastings-Senlac 63
CHAPTER IX.--Orleans 81
CHAPTER X.--Lepanto 92
CHAPTER XI.--Spanish Armada 103
CHAPTER XII.--Naseby 114
CHAPTER XIII.--Blenheim 129
CHAPTER XIV.--Pultowa 134
CHAPTER XV.--Saratoga 140
CHAPTER XVI.--Valmy 145
CHAPTER XVII.--Waterloo 150
J. A. KOFFLER, Supervisor
FRANK HAMILTON, Lino Machinist
CHAS. F. MILLER, Compositor
ROBERT E. LEWIS, Pressman
CHAPTER I.
MARATHON
As in the order of time, so likewise in the order of importance,
Marathon stands first among the Battles of Destiny. Without
Marathon there would have been no Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa,
Mycale; no Attic supremacy; no Age of Pericles: and would the world
be just what it is today if these things had not been? Would Attica
as a Persian satrapy ever have become Athens of the Acropolis
crowned with the Propylaea-Erectheum-Parthenon: Athens bright
star-night of the past glittering with deathless names?
Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia had risen and set; Rome
subsequently rose and fell; France, Italy, Spain, England,
Germany, and our own infantine experimental Republic of the West
are advancing fatefully in the old circle: yet not one of these
may boast as many eminent men, stars of first magnitude, glorious
constellations--as little Greece might boast, that brief bright
star-night of the past thick-studded with immortal names.
CALLIMACHUS, WAR RULER.
Of the ten commanders of the ten Athenian tribes who assembled on
the heights overlooking the plain of Marathon, five voted against
battle with the invading Persians, five in favor of battle.
Callimachus the War Ruler, influenced by the enthusiastic eloquence
of Miltiades, gave the casting vote in favor of battle. On this so
seeming slight chance hung Marathon.
Humanly speaking, it was madness for that little handful of Greeks
to rush down upon the countless Persian hosts. The Persians
themselves could not believe their own eyes when they saw the
Greeks running to battle; and half-heartedly, perhaps even
jestingly, they prepared for a brief skirmish with madmen.
The Medes and Persians were at that time deemed invincible.
Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, the isles of the Ægean, the African
Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before
the soldiers of the Great King. The Ægean was a Persian Lake; from
east, from south, from north approached the awful power of imperial
Persia, ready irresistibly to absorb little Greece, to punish and
obliterate Athens. Already the Eretrians, who together with the
Athenians had aided in the Ionian revolt, were overtaken by the
dread vengeance of Darius: their city had fallen and more than a
thousand Eretrians were left bound on the island Egilia awaiting
the return of the victorious Persian fleet from Marathon. Then
together with the captive Athenians, the Eretrians were to be taken
to Susa there to await the pleasure of the Great King, whose wrath
had been new-kindled day by day with memories of burning Sardis
by a court attendant whose sole duty was to repeat to Darius at
each meal, “Sire, remember the Athenians.” Sardis would then be
fearfully avenged.
Sardis was, indeed, avenged but not by Marathon. There is a justice
exact even to the weight of a hair in all things of life; seen or
unseen, known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is
ever at work silently, forcefully, fatefully. Athens burns Sardis
and desecrates the temples of the Persian gods; and some years
later the Persians sack and devastate Athens, razing her temples to
the ground leaving her site in smoking ruins.
“Behold there are Watchers over you, worthy Recorders, knowing
what you do: and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s weight of
good shall behold it; and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s
weight of evil shall behold it.”--_Koran._
History tells us that after the battle of Marathon, six thousand
four hundred Persians lay dead upon the battlefield and only one
hundred and ninety-two Athenians. This seems incredible, yet it
is equally incredible that the Greeks won. Ten thousand Athenians
and one thousand Platæans had fought against one hundred thousand
soldiers of the Great King, and--won. There was something wrong
with that motley army of the Great King; some subtly retributive
force was at work, some balancing Justice.
MILTIADES.
Doubtless to Miltiades more than to any other man Athens and the
world owes Marathon. It was his overpowering eloquence that weighed
heavily in the balance against the honest fears of those who
dreaded the encounter with Persia’s hitherto invincible warriors;
the well founded fears of those who were secretly in sympathy with
Hippias and hoped that a battle might be averted: and the prudent
fears of those who dreaded defeat and the vengeance of the Great
King and thought it wiser to wait until the promised help should
come from Sparta. One man’s eloquent fearlessness outweighed all
those fearful considerations and precipitated the mad descent from
the hill, the onslaught, the unequal fight, the wonder-victory.
Yet had Miltiades rested after the momentous battle all might have
been lost. For the sullen Persian fleet hastening from Marathon
had turned its course towards undefended Athens. And so that very
night, even with the departure of the last Persian ship from the
shore, Miltiades led his battle torn veterans a distance of about
twenty-two miles to Phalerum, the port nearest to Athens. And
early the next morning when, indeed, true to Miltiades’ fears,
the Persian fleet appeared off the coast of Phalerum, the men of
Marathon stood awaiting their landing. They did not land.
Hippias, deposed tyrant of Athens, and guide and leader of the
Persians was killed at Marathon. Callimachus, the polemarch, was
killed, not in the battle proper, but on the shore as the defeated
forces were confusedly seeking safety in escape to their ships, and
the Greeks, following them even to the water’s edge, kept up the
slaughter.
Surely Miltiades remained ever after the best beloved hero of
Athens, and his years passed on amid ever vernal honors down the
easy ways of old age, and the end was in peace!
But, alas! history tells us that Miltiades fell into disgrace, was
banished from Athens, and a few years after Marathon, died of his
wounds in prison.
Too bad that every crest-wave of human achievement hastily tumbles
to a depression correspondingly low as the swell was high.
Scipio, conqueror at Zama, triumph-crowned, and honored with the
appellation _Africanus_, was, on that same day one year later on
trial for his life. What a tumult of conflicting feelings must have
raged in his heart when, disdaining to reply to the accusations
made against him, Scipio said, turning to the fickle populace,
“I would remind the men of Rome that this day one year ago I won
the battle of Zama.” And then the tide turned in his favor and
the young-world children wept because of their ingratitude, and
clamorously acquitted Scipio. But depressive doubt succeeded
crest confidence and Scipio went into exile. _Ingrata Patria!_
(Ungrateful Native Land!) Scipio exclaimed, as death drew near and
his tired eyes turned longingly towards Rome.
Coriolanus, Roman exile, torn to pieces by the Volscians; Hannibal,
lone boast of Carthage, hater of Rome; Themistocles, hero of
Salamis; Aristides the Just; Socrates; Miltiades are among the
tragic figures on the historic stage whose dying heart-throbs may
have reproachfully re-echoed _Ingrata Patria_.
ALL THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE.
From Marathon (490 B. C.) clarion of the birth of Athens, to
Ægospotami (405 B. C.) her knell of death, momentous history was
made.
Ægospotami knelled the fall of Athens; Leuctra, of Sparta;
Mantinea, of Epaminondas-Thebes; and Chæronea, of all Hellas;
but not all of Athens died at Ægospotami. Pericles, Aspasia,
Phidias, Ictinus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Æschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon--have not
died; they are effective forces in the world today.
Spartan military excellence, Spartan hardihood and endurance is a
bubble that burst; it is no more: but Attic excellence of intellect
endures imperishably--with Platonic wonder as freshly fair in
college halls today as in the Academia and Lyceum of the old
Athenian day. Mind is the only Conqueror.
Blue sky of Athens, white cliff Acropolis,--so unchanging amid
change, so laughing fair among the ruins of the glory that was
Greece!
Nature’s ever young irreverence towards the wreck of time is
invigorating. It calls to the heart of man in language the heart
understands, _What’s Time_!
“Men said, ‘But time escapes
Live now or never.’
“He said, ‘What’s time! Leave Now for dogs and apes--
Man has Forever.’”
--_Browning._
SPARTA.
The manner in which the news of the defeat of the Athenians at
Ægospotami affected Athens is in striking contrast with the manner
in which Sparta received word of the disastrous Spartan defeat at
Leuctra. When report of the naval disaster reached the Piræus, it
was quickly communicated to the thronging crowds within the Long
Walls, and thence to the heart of the city. Consternation prevailed
and all Athens mourned. “That night,” says Xenophon, “no one in
Athens slept.”
The news of the defeat at Leuctra reached Sparta in the midst of a
festive celebration. The magistrates heard of the defeat, and the
death of their king, with countenances unmoved; they gave orders
that the festival be uninterrupted; and they urged all who had
lost relatives and friends in the battle of Leuctra to appear at
the festivities in particularly gay attire and with smiling faces,
while those whose relatives were among the survivors were ordered
to put on mourning.
The spirit of Lycurgus, of Draco, and of Leonidas seems to have
fused and chilled into the Laws of Sparta. No surrender; conquer or
die; return with your shield or upon it; wounds all in front and
faces grimly fierce even in death--such was the spirit of Sparta.
Whatever may be our admiration for the Spartan qualities in
general, there can be but lament that they found expression in the
Peloponnesian War. This fratricidal strife brought ruin to Hellas.
Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa, Mycale were all undone by
Syracuse and Ægospotami. Chæronea was made possible and the passing
of the scepter of empire from Greece to Macedonia, from leaderless
Hellas to Alexander the Great.