Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World: From Marathon To Waterloo [Paperback]

Sir Edward S. Creasy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 1994

Undoubtedly the most famous work of military history of the nineteenth century, Edward S. Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World has been read and re-read for close to 150 years. It is not only the authoritative account of each battle that makes Creasy’s work such a classic—it is his command of narrative, his interest in human struggle, his profound deductions as to effects of the battles, and his striving after truth. Furthermore, his selections seem as wise and well-considered today as when Fifteen Decisive Battles first appeared in 1851: Nobody since has made better ones, nor given us better accounts. Apart from the scholarship and literary skill of Creasy’s book, there is another reason it has endured: Creasy was essentially fair-minded. He had been a judge, and when he became England’s great military critic and historian, he maintained a thoroughly judicial attitude. He was not a British partisan, nor French, nor German—he was a cosmopolitan observer of great events.Out of 2300 years, Creasy only found fifteen battles which he called decisive in the highest sense. He chose them not for the number of killed and wounded, nor for their status in myth and lore, but because they fundamentally changed the course of world history. In doing so, he made his book a miniature military history of the western world, a classic that will repay continued study for generations to come, as it has for generations.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy(1812–1878) was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and worked as a lawyer and judge until 1840, when he became a professor of history at the University of London. In 1860 he became Chief Justice of Ceylon. After his return to England in 1870, he wrote and published several books, though none received the acclaim of Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (March 22, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306805596
• ISBN-13: 978-0306805592
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,102,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Queasy on Creasy?, July 4, 2003

By 

Nancy R. Fenn "The IntrovertZCoach" (San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World: From Marathon To Waterloo (Paperback)

No less an authority than John Keegan has given this book his blessing, so don't be mislead by negative reviews. This book is a classic in the field of military history. No history is unbiased. History is an art not a science. And it is a great art. It can move and inspire as well as instruct us about human nature. Historical writers who can weave myth and symbolism in to their writing carry forward important ideas and concepts for the collective. This is precisely what Creasy has done in his book, organizing his material around the idea that war is productive of something. He influenced every writer of military history who followed. That in itself is enough to promote the book. "15 Decisive Battles" is an excellent introduction to general military history, a perspective often missing in college history courses. I read it many years ago and have since read many different treatments of these basic 15 battles. Ultimately one picks one's preferred viewpoint. Creasy is a generalist but for that very reason, this a good book to start with. Incidentally, I challenge the reviewer who questions the description of the Battle of Teutoburger Wald. I have read the Latin version in Latin and the German version in German and they are absolutely consistent with this British version. I was quite amazed, so try it and see for yourself. I love this book and I really want to recommend it to you. I give it 5 stars and no, I am not queasy on Creasy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic Book; Insightful Analysis; Revealing Period Study, August 5, 2004

By 

Scott Schiefelbein (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World: From Marathon To Waterloo (Paperback)

Edward Creasy's "Fifteen Decisive Battles" is a win-win for the reader, and should be required reading for military historians as well as students of Western Civ. and the British Empire. Not only does the text offer some lucid and entertaining analysis of key moments in history, it offers an insight into the mind of one of the leading (and representative) thinkers of the British Empire.

The selection of fifteen military conflicts as "decisive" for the course of western civilizataion is a classicly British effort -- many educated "elite" Brits of the mid-19th century considered their empire the axle on which the remainder of the "civilized" world turned. Accordingly, Creasy selected fifteen battles that dicated the course of "civilization" as he saw it, which essentially was Western Europe. By his selection of battles, we learn about how he and other British thinkers viewed their world.

One should always resist the temptation to indict period historians as myopic (or worse) because they view their world through the prism of their times. We view our history through our own prisms, and readers 50 years hence will probably consider us equally limited -- a disservice to our current writers. Creasy, while undoubtedly biased in favor of Occidental cultures over Oriental, nevertheless offers a relatively objective analysis of the events covered in his book. He also provides excellent support for his designation of these battles as "decisive."

All his analysis is expressed in that classic high-brow British style, where sentences are meant to be parsed over, savored, and appreciated as an expression of style as well as historical analysis.

An entertaining, educational read that has been an influential book for over a century . . . what's not to enjoy?

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars At times good, overall so-so history; good historiography, March 25, 2001

By 

Wes Ulm (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World: From Marathon To Waterloo (Paperback)

It's difficult to rate this book, since it depends on one's purposes in reading it. As history, Sir Creasy's book is of uneven quality, with many essays decently crafted and a few basically tripe; but as historiography, it's a rare and fascinating window into the Victorian mindset and worldview. Creasy published his book during the apogee of the British Empire, in the 1850s, when the country's rule over distant lands was both incredibly expansive after nearly a century of settling and warring, and seemingly secure 35 years after Napoleon's ignominious defeat in the fields of Waterloo. He is at his best especially in describing the ancient battles for which it is easier to maintain a scholarly distance; the battles of Marathon and Arbela, for example, are both well-researched and, overall, admirably portrayed. He is a first-rate wordsmith with an extraordinary command of the art of prose, with an evocative ability to build an image of a battle and its belligerents-- it's the kind of heroic fluff that we so often find suffusing the collective memory that Victorian authors put down on paper, only better in its stylistic and rhetorical aspects. One of the book's most useful characteristics, indeed, is the degree and manner in which it utilizes primary sources; it's a bibliographical treasure in this regard. But Creasy makes not even a furtive attempt to hide his biases and inclinations, especially in regard to events perceived to be antecedent to the British Empire that he so lauds at every turn. To be fair, he's not a blind nationalist. He does, for example, provide one of the most measured and detailed evocations of the extraordinary changes wrought by Peter the Great and the resultant rise of Russia in his description of the Battle of Poltava. He acknowledges the unparalleled contribution of Britain's erstwhile rival, the French, to civilization in his essay on Joan of Arc and the Battle of Orleans.

But in many essays the book comes off as basically a panegyric that extols the Anglo-Saxon nation, freely interpolating editorial comments and boasting an unabashed triumphalism, at times even gleefully twisting facts and analysis to suit the proto-Kiplingesque notions of the empire on which no one believed the sun would ever set. The essay on the Teutoberger Wald battle of 9 A.D. frankly made me cringe. Not only are their numerous omissions, tenuous stretches of logic and dubious, clearly biased interpretations (for which an objective analysis would cast serious doubt over his choice of this battle at all in terms of actual significance)-Creasy displays a distressingly outspoken nationalism that seems overwrought even by the standards of his own time. His essay on the Spanish Armada is similar in its chest-thumping, to the extent it entirely neglects to mention the 16-year naval war (and the Spanish victories therein) that transpired after the 1588 battle; the essays on Blenheim and Valmy suffer from the same ailment. The essay on the Battle of Poitiers pitting the Franks against the Moslem forces in 732 comes off as an encomium to the Frankish leader rather than a historical examination, though admittedly Creasy's use of various primary sources and his consideration of some of the battle's details are exemplary. His study of Hastings is even-handed and remarkably detailed. Possibly the most fascinating composition concerns the Battle of Saratoga in the American Revolution, glimpsed through British eyes; one gets a sense of the bitterness and despair that the British defeat induced for the nation that could have so easily possessed quite a jewel in her empire! Basically, as history, Creasy's book is somewhat spotty-it doesn't even pretend to be objective, and there are more than a few oversights and misconstruances. But many of the essays are of high quality from any standpoint, and you can't fault Creasy for the detail, writing style, and especially the lucid use of primary sources that he brings to his book; if a reader is careful to document sources and check facts, it's possible to learn a good deal. The book's greatest value, however, lies in the fact that it enables a reader to peer into the thought processes that drove a Victorian writer upon rising in the morning; it's rare to have such an opportunity to actually gauge how people of a previous era *thought* as well as acted, and undoubtedly for this the book is quite useful.