10 Pivotal Battles That Changed History

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You might not have studied the Battle of Geisha in school, but this dramatic campaign paved the way for the culture that brought the world paper, established the Silk Road, and revolutionized the civil service. Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, and this is The List Show. The Battle of Geisha is just one of many pivotal military engagements we’re discussing today, from the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 to the World War II campaign that transformed the treatment of bacterial infections. Let’s get started.

In 206 BCE, the Qin Dynasty fell, and China was divided into 18 kingdoms. Various groups controlled those kingdoms and had peacefully coexisted for the last 2,000 years. However, soon after the Qin Dynasty fell, the factions were at war, resulting in thousands of deaths and the destruction of large amounts of farmland. This conflict culminated in a battle featuring daring military tactics, adversarial singing, and a notable incident involving the kidnapping of a leader’s wife. The Han, led by Liu Bang, and the Western Chu, led by Xiang Yu, gained more power over the years of fighting. In 203 BCE, the two leaders agreed to divide China between their kingdoms, but Bang quickly went back on that deal and devised a plan to defeat Chu.

According to the most popular version of the story, the Han kidnapped Xiang Yu’s wife and brought her deep within a canyon in preparation for their next move. When two fighters entered the canyon to rescue their leader’s wife, Bang’s forces surrounded and defeated them. Although Yu’s wife was eventually rescued, it was a costly victory. As night fell, Bang ordered his men and the captured Chu soldiers to sing traditional Chu songs to remind the remaining Chu fighters of their homes. This tactic worked to further erode morale, leading to defections among Yu’s fighters.

Bang’s victory allowed him to become emperor, and the Han Dynasty he established has had a lasting impact on Chinese culture and civilization, as well as on the world at large. Innovations such as paper and wheelbarrows were developed during the Han Dynasty, and the powerful culture established the Silk Road, the famous trade routes that linked Asia to Europe.

Jumping forward a couple of millennia, the Battle of Britain was devastating in the United Kingdom but, in a roundabout way, it saved countless lives by instigating improvements in penicillin production. After France fell to the Nazis in June 1940, Hitler set his sights on invading the UK. From July 10th through October 31st, the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe faced off in the world’s first major battle to take place almost entirely in the air. The German air force dropped bombs over England, attempting to destroy the country’s defenses, while the British defended their homeland by shooting down as many Nazi planes as possible. Thousands of civilians died, but the British ultimately held off the Germans, helping to shift international sentiment regarding the war.

The Battle of Britain also marked a key turning point in the development of penicillin as an antibiotic. Alexander Fleming had discovered the mold’s ability to kill bacteria in 1928, but its significance became apparent during World War II. Soldiers were dying not just from gunshots and bombs; small scratches and surface wounds often turned deadly when infected with bacteria. Scientists at Oxford were working on penicillin, knowing it would be invaluable in case of a Nazi invasion. They even devised plans to destroy their work if Britain was invaded, but the invasion never came, allowing their research to continue.

With relentless battles like the Battle of Britain causing thousands of casualties, European scientists knew they needed to ramp up penicillin production. The original process of extracting the active ingredient from the mold was labor-intensive, and at one point, doctors collected the urine of patients treated with penicillin to re-extract the valuable material for other patients. Eventually, scientists sought more efficient production methods, leading them to the United States, where they were assisted by chemist Charles Pfizer, who significantly increased the speed of penicillin production. Thanks to wartime efforts, penicillin became a common and crucial part of modern medicine.

In the early 1050s, William, the Duke of Normandy, supposedly visited his Anglo-Saxon cousin, Edward the Confessor, who was king and had no children. Edward is said to have promised William the throne after his death. When Edward died in 1066, England was left in the hands of Harold Godwinson, also known as Harold II. William did not take the news well and set sail for England with thousands of troops. He and his forces marched from coastal Pevensy to Hastings, where they met Harold’s men at a site now called Battle Hill. On the morning of October 14th, 1066, the fighting commenced. Despite the English forming a shield wall as a defense, the Normans maintained their advances. Eventually, the Normans wore down their opponents and killed Harold. After their victory, William continued his march to London, where he was crowned King of England on December 25th, 1066. He became the country’s first Norman ruler, ushering in a new era for England.

By the mid-1200s CE, the Mongolian Empire had spread throughout Central Asia. Mongke Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, sought to expand into the Middle East. At that time, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, a powerful Muslim dynasty and the center of the Islamic world. It was a hub for scholars and philosophers, fostering advances in mathematics, technology, and the arts. In 1258, Mongke’s brother, Hulagu, sacked the city, an attack that had devastating consequences for the Islamic world. Hulagu’s forces surrounded Baghdad on January 29th, using catapults and siege engines to batter the city’s outer walls. Baghdad surrendered on February 10th, but the surrender did not end the attack gently. The invading army swarmed into Baghdad, murdering hundreds of thousands of people and eventually killing the caliph, the city’s leader and spiritual ruler. The siege is said to mark the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

The Byzantine Empire outlasted the Western Roman Empire by almost a millennium, acting as a stronghold for Christianity and dominating geopolitical events in Europe. However, by the 15th century, the empire was struggling. Crusaders had invaded its capital, Constantinople, in the early 1200s, and the Black Death wiped out a large portion of its population in the 14th century. By the mid-1400s, only around 40,000 to 50,000 people lived within the city’s walls. The Ottoman Turks continued to attack what remained of the empire. On April 6, 1453, an Ottoman army led by Sultan Mehmed II began attacking the city. Mehmed had spent the previous two years strengthening his forces and erected fortresses in strategic locations to surround Constantinople.

On May 29th, Mehmed’s men broke through, sacking the city and destroying its Orthodox churches. The fall of Constantinople marked the end of the last remnants of the once-mighty Roman Empire. Many scholars view this event as the end of Europe’s Middle Ages, although later scholarship has questioned the accuracy of attributing singular importance to any one event in such a seismic shift. Nevertheless, the fall of Constantinople had a massive impact, leading to the spread of the Ottoman Empire into Europe and the migration of scholars educated in Greek and Roman history and philosophy to Italy, sowing the seeds for the Renaissance.

In the mid-1500s, the area representing modern-day Peru was the wealthiest part of South America, attracting Spain’s interest. Leading explorer and conquistador Francisco Pizarro hatched a plot that would hasten the fall of the Inca Empire. Pizarro, along with fewer than 200 men, arrived in the city of Cajamarca to meet Inca King Atahualpa, who had taken the throne after defeating his brother. Atahualpa was unarmed when he entered Cajamarca on November 16th, 1532, and Pizarro’s men ambushed him. They massacred the thousands of Inca soldiers who accompanied Atahualpa into the city. Pizarro succeeded in capturing the Inca king and ransomed him to enrich Spanish coffers. However, instead of freeing Atahualpa once the riches were paid, Pizarro kept him as a prisoner and worked to weaken the empire from within by pitting Inca leaders against each other. Ultimately, Pizarro had Atahualpa executed, leading to the end of the Inca Empire and facilitating Spanish colonialism in South America.

Any fan of the musical “Hamilton” knows that the Battle of Yorktown was a key event in early United States history. In August 1781, Washington learned that 28 French warships carrying 3,200 troops were heading toward Virginia, where British soldiers led by General Cornwallis were stationed. Days later, he sent his forces marching south from New York City to meet those reinforcements. This was the largest troop movement of the war. Washington’s troops, along with the French forces led by Comte de Rochambeau, surrounded the British stronghold of Yorktown. For three weeks, the Continental Army crept closer and weakened the British defenses. After a stealthy attack led by Alexander Hamilton on October 14th, Cornwallis surrendered. The Siege of Yorktown was the last major battle of the Revolutionary War, although the conflict didn’t officially end until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783. The loss effectively drained the British will to fight, allowing the rebels to establish what would become the United States of America.

After Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804, he set his sights on conquering Europe. France was a military superpower, and Napoleon expanded his reign throughout the continent. However, his attempt to invade Russia in 1812 failed, and after retreating to France, he suffered further losses in 1814, leading to his exile. But Napoleon returned to France in 1815 and rallied his supporters. Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and Austria assembled nearly 800,000 troops to confront him. Napoleon invaded Belgium, defeating the Prussian troops gathered there before heading toward Waterloo, where an army led by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, awaited.

When the battle began on June 18, 1815, Napoleon’s army outnumbered the British. However, he made a critical error by delaying his attack to allow the ground to dry after rain the night before. This delay allowed the defeated Prussian troops to reach the British army before the battle ended. The arrival of the second army weakened Napoleon’s defenses, and after Wellington’s forces defeated Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, the French army retreated, chased by the Prussians. Napoleon fled to Paris, where he was once again sent into exile. The First French Empire had fallen, and while wars would continue, continental Europe entered a period of relative peace that lasted until World War I.

On October 25, 1893, forces from the British South Africa Company faced off against a group of Matabele warriors in what is now Zimbabwe during the First Matabele War. Thousands of Matabele fighters attacked the British in the middle of the night. Although the British were initially caught off guard and outnumbered, they had a key advantage: they were armed with five Maxim guns, the world’s first automatic firearms. These guns could fire 500 rounds per minute, and the Matabele never got closer than 100 yards. The Maxim guns exceeded all expectations and mowed down the Matabele fighters. This battle was one of the first instances of Maxim guns being used in warfare, and they were soon employed in other battles as part of Europe’s scramble for Africa, allowing England to gain military victories with disastrous results for many African people. Maxim guns and other automatic weapons were later used in World War I, contributing to its many millions of casualties.

Speaking of World War I, at the end of summer 1914, it appeared that Germany was on its way to seizing control of Paris. German forces had steamrolled across Belgium and northeastern France in the early days of the war, and the French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force were rapidly retreating toward the River Marne while German soldiers pursued them. On September 3rd, the Allied forces decided to stop their retreat and staged an offensive to prevent the Germans from reaching Paris. By this point, the German forces were exhausted and low on supplies. The Allies managed to stop the Germans from advancing toward the French capital, but their efforts did not bring a swift end to the war as they had hoped. Instead, the Germans dug in, literally taking shelter in shallow concealed trenches. The Battle of the Marne marked the start of trench warfare, a defining feature of World War I. The widespread use of trenches along the Western Front led to a long stalemate as both sides hunkered down on their respective sides of the battlefield.

Thanks for watching The List Show! We’ve got an upcoming episode about uncracked codes from history. Drop your favorite mysterious cipher in the comments below for a chance to be featured in that episode. We’ll see you next time!

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