The most decisive battles of world history

[Mott the Hoople]

Not likely as Maryland was basically a southern state under occupation anyway. His only shot would have been to hold DC under siege.





Lack of supply lines, fresh troops, etc. Besides, Lee wasn't super keen on this northern invasion to begin with after the Antietam Campaign

But Lee didn't have the resources to do that. Lee's Army had taken staggering loses at Gettysburg and used up most of its supplies and ammunition. They simply didn't have the material resources to attack DC and it would have only taken a few days for the Union to have brought the neccessary troops from the west in by railroad to repel Lee, . As for Lee not being keen on the Northern invasion...meh...it was still his idea and his strategy that he sold Davis on.

Up to that point the war, even if the odds were against the Confederacy, was still possible for the them to win. After the double calamity of Gettysburg and Vicksburg it wasn't. The collapse of the Confederate armies in the west was a death knell to the Confederacy.

 

[Irish Exit]

But Lee didn't have the resources to do that. Lee's Army had taken staggering loses at Gettysburg and used up most of its supplies and ammunition. They simply didn't have the material resources to attack DC and it would have only taken a few days for the Union to have brought the neccessary troops from the west in by railroad to repel Lee, . As for Lee not being keen on the Northern invasion...meh...it was still his idea and his strategy that he sold Davis on.

Up to that point the war, even if the odds were against the Confederacy, was still possible for the them to win. After the double calamity of Gettysburg and Vicksburg it wasn't. The collapse of the Confederate armies in the west was a death knell to the Confederacy.

The whole thing about both northern campaigns were highly dependent on resources. He would have an easier time holding DC than Philly as he could bring supplies up from coastal Virginia. Northern VA was pretty leveled, but not most of the state. It would have been a symbolic victory at least as Lincoln would have fled to Philly or NYC just as Davis moved the CSA capitol south after Richmond fell albeit just a technicality before they attempted to high tail it to Cuba.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

The whole thing about both northern campaigns were highly dependent on resources. He would have an easier time holding DC than Philly as he could bring supplies up from coastal Virginia. Northern VA was pretty leveled, but not most of the state. It would have been a symbolic victory at least as Lincoln would have fled to Philly or NYC just as Davis moved the CSA capitol south after Richmond fell albeit just a technicality before they attempted to high tail it to Cuba.

Lincoln wouldn't have gone no where. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia simply didn't have the numbers or materials to take on the circle of fortifications surrounding DC. It would have been Fredricksburg all over again. As for Philly that would have been like a dog chasing a car...what's he going to do when he catches it? LOL I don't think your considering that the Civil War was not the Napoleonic Wars. They could deploy troops quite rapidly across large distances of real estate via the rail roads. Lee having defeated the Army of the Potomac was in and of itself highly improbable and even had that happen the odds of Lee being able to take advantage of it were also highly improbable.

 

[Cypress]

I just recall some encounter where they though Napolean had rebounded after Leipzig, too lazy to google it, I'll take your interpretation, never liked Napolean anyways, suffered from the short guy syndrome

So what about Saratoga rather than Trenton?

I am no expert in the Revolutionary War, and would be willing to entertain a case about the strategic importance of the Battle of Saratoga.

Dr. Aldrete picked Trenton, because it was the make-or-break moment of the American Revolution. The Revolution would have either failed and withered away at Trenton -- or it would live on to fight another day. That obviously makes it of paramount historical importance, vastly exceeding what must have appeared at the time to simply be an insignificant tactical battlefield victory for the Continental Army.

 

[Adolf_Twitler]

The Trojan Horse is still my favorite story of innovation in Battle.

Tokyo Rose was probably my 2nd choice, not for decisiveness, but for silliness on the battlefield!

 

[Mott the Hoople]

I am no expert in the Revolutionary War, and would be willing to entertain a case about the strategic importance of the Battle of Saratoga.

Dr. Aldrete picked Trenton, because it was the make-or-break moment of the American Revolution. The Revolution would have either failed and withered away at Trenton -- or it would live on to fight another day. That obviously makes it of paramount historical importance, vastly exceeding what must have appeared at the time to simply be an insignificant tactical battlefield victory for the Continental Army.

Saratoga was huge. It cut British access to the Finger Lake country in New York off to approach from Canada and prevented the British from invading the foundling US from Canada. That was one less front the Continental Army had to deal with and allowed Gen. Sullivan (under Gen Washington's orders) to isolate the Iroquois from the British and make mince meat out of the Iroquois league in the Mohawk River Valley. Between that and the Great Chain at West Point that limited access to the Hudson River the British were cutoff from the interior of pretty much all of New England with the exception of Boston and New York Harbors.

 

[Cypress]

Saratoga was huge. It cut British access to the Finger Lake country in New York off to approach from Canada and prevented the British from invading the foundling US from Canada. That was one less front the Continental Army had to deal with and allowed Gen. Sullivan (under Gen Washington's orders) to isolate the Iroquois from the British and make mince meat out of the Iroquois league in the Mohawk River Valley. Between that and the Great Chain at West Point that limited access to the Hudson River the British were cutoff from the interior of pretty much all of New England with the exception of Boston and New York Harbors.

Certainly meets the criteria of a strategic victory.
On a sidebar, my Canadian relative take pride in their successful defense against the American invasion of upper Canada.

Another tangent - I believe the case can be made that one oversight in the list in Post #1 is the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.

It seems to me, that was not only a strategic outcome, but a historic one. One that we can still feel the effects of five centuries later. It was the ending of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it created a permanent division at the Bosporus between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia; a geographic, cultural, and political division we are still feeling today.

 

[Irish Exit]

Lincoln wouldn't have gone no where. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia simply didn't have the numbers or materials to take on the circle of fortifications surrounding DC. It would have been Fredricksburg all over again. As for Philly that would have been like a dog chasing a car...what's he going to do when he catches it? LOL I don't think your considering that the Civil War was not the Napoleonic Wars. They could deploy troops quite rapidly across large distances of real estate via the rail roads. Lee having defeated the Army of the Potomac was in and of itself highly improbable and even had that happen the odds of Lee being able to take advantage of it were also highly improbable.

Lincoln would have fled and trains only work when the tracks haven't been torn up. DC then wasn't DC today. Jubal Early got within 6 miles of the Capitol and chose to withdraw thinking DC was more heavily defended than it was.

 

[archives]

No he wouldn't have. Lee made exactly that assumption when he invaded Maryland and it simply didn't happen. Maryland stayed loyal to the Union. In fact invading Maryland cause many fence sitters in that State to turn their allegiance in favor of the Union.

As for the other "what if?" The previous battles of the Army of the Potomac vs The Army of Northern Virginia in Virginia were never decisive and by that I mean they never resulted in the destruction of either Army as an effective fighting force. There is little evidence to believe that would have happened at Gettysburg cause, as we know, it didn't but for the sake of argument lets say it did. After the Battle of Gettysburg Lee's numerically inferior army suffered over 25,000 casualties. It also consumed most of the ammunition and material supplies and food that the Army of Northern Virginia had. So even if they had won a decisive victory against the Army of The Potomac (which was very unlikely to begin with) the Army of Northern Virginia was still a spent force
that lacked the military force needed to break the encircling fortifications surrounding DC. Also keep in mind the superior lines of communication and transportation that the Union had and that Union forces in the west were the Confederacy was losing badly could have transported large numbers of troops and materials in a short period of time, via the rail roads, as they did during the Chattanooga campaign. That, again, would have inevitably forced the Army of Northern Virginia back into Virginia.

So there is not really a whole lot of basis in fact that this could have happened. The reality is that Lee took an incredibly audacious gamble in invading Pennsylvania, took much needed resources from the Confederate western Armies, and the western theater of the Civil War is where the war was really won, and failed on an epic scale that contributed hugely to the Confederacy losing the war.

The "What if?" I would give you to consider is what if Davis had refused to provide Lee's request for more troops and supplies, ordered him to stay in northern Virginia on the defensive and had provided those recources to Johnston and Pemberton in the west to fight Grants invading army which had taken the extraordinary risk of invading Mississippi while cutting both his lines of supply and communications? What if Davis had ordered Lee to give up additional troops and resources to the Chattanooga campaign which would have at worst delayed the taking of Atlanta to after the 1864 election? Then a negotiated peace would have been far more probable.

With that you can begin to see what I mean about Lee being a very poor strategist.

Yes, informative, you must have a Civil War interest

 

[archives]

Saratoga was huge. It cut British access to the Finger Lake country in New York off to approach from Canada and prevented the British from invading the foundling US from Canada. That was one less front the Continental Army had to deal with and allowed Gen. Sullivan (under Gen Washington's orders) to isolate the Iroquois from the British and make mince meat out of the Iroquois league in the Mohawk River Valley. Between that and the Great Chain at West Point that limited access to the Hudson River the British were cutoff from the interior of pretty much all of New England with the exception of Boston and New York Harbors.

Are you one of those kids who's pop planned vacations around battle sites?

 

[archives]

Certainly meets the criteria of a strategic victory.
On a sidebar, my Canadian relative take pride in their successful defense against the American invasion of upper Canada.

Another tangent - I believe the case can be made that one oversight in the list in Post #1 is the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.

It seems to me, that was not only a strategic outcome, but a historic one. One that we can still feel the effects of five centuries later. It was the ending of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it created a permanent division at the Bosporus between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia; a geographic, cultural, and political division we are still feeling today.

The topic is endless, what about the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Bosworth Field, the more you think about it, the more one can come up with, if your professor's aim was to get individuals thinking he accomplished his goal

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Lincoln would have fled and trains only work when the tracks haven't been torn up. DC then wasn't DC today. Jubal Early got within 6 miles of the Capitol and chose to withdraw thinking DC was more heavily defended than it was.

Yea and you can what if forever...it didn't happen. What did happen was Lee made catastrophically bad strategic decisions and lost the war for the Confederacy. The scenario that I speculated on, what if Joe Johnston had not been wounded at second Mannassas? Is a far more plausible scenario as his strategy has a far greater probability of suceeding than Lee's. However one of Johnston's serious failure as a command general, one shared by far to many command generals of the Civil War was he was lousy at the political aspects of war. This was a major reason why he was subordinated Robert E. Lee after he recovered from his wounds. He simply could not bring himself to get along with his political superiors. It's interesting to note that Jeff Davis had as much a problem with that as Lincoln did.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Certainly meets the criteria of a strategic victory.
On a sidebar, my Canadian relative take pride in their successful defense against the American invasion of upper Canada.

Another tangent - I believe the case can be made that one oversight in the list in Post #1 is the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.

It seems to me, that was not only a strategic outcome, but a historic one. One that we can still feel the effects of five centuries later. It was the ending of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it created a permanent division at the Bosporus between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia; a geographic, cultural, and political division we are still feeling today.

LOL I can't give an informed opinion. Military History is a vast topic and my area of study has been mostly on The World Wars, The Wars of the Roman Republic, The American Civil War, The American Revolutionary War, The Mongol Wars and The American Frontier Wars. Of those I'm the most well read on the American Frontier Wars and the Wars of the Roman Republic.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Yes, informative, you must have a Civil War interest

I love studying history. Next to the life sciences it's my favorite academic subject. The American Civil War is fascinating to me as an American because you really can't understand what it means to be an American without studying that dreadful war.

 

[Mason Michaels]

The Michigan vs Ohio war for Toledo

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Are you one of those kids who's pop planned vacations around battle sites?

No, but I do know people who are far more learned than I am in history and political science than I am who have turned me on to a lot of great books over the years. The only Battlefield Site I've been to is Gettysburg and though I am probably the lest superstitious person you'd ever meet...I'm convinced that the place is indeed haunted. I can't put a finger on it other than during my entire visit I had this incredibly erie feeling that I wasn't alone and there was another person within site of me.

 

[Irish Exit]

Yea and you can what if forever...it didn't happen. What did happen was Lee made catastrophically bad strategic decisions and lost the war for the Confederacy. The scenario that I speculated on, what if Joe Johnston had not been wounded at second Mannassas? Is a far more plausible scenario as his strategy has a far greater probability of suceeding than Lee's. However one of Johnston's serious failure as a command general, one shared by far to many command generals of the Civil War was he was lousy at the political aspects of war. This was a major reason why he was subordinated Robert E. Lee after he recovered from his wounds. He simply could not bring himself to get along with his political superiors. It's interesting to note that Jeff Davis had as much a problem with that as Lincoln did.

Ha you just contradicted your whole position. Now you blame it on Lee when earlier you blamed it on losses in the west. Make up your mind instead of making it up as you go along.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

The Michigan vs Ohio war for Toledo

Yea...Ohio definitely lost that one....we got to keep Toledo.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Ha you just contradicted your whole position. Now you blame it on Lee when earlier you blamed it on losses in the west. Make up your mind instead of making it up as you go along.

It's not a contradiction. Lee's draining the Confederate Armies in the west of men and material played a major role in the Confederate Western theater crumbling.

 

[Mason Michaels]

Yea...Ohio definitely lost that one....we got to keep Toledo.

Hey I'm from Toledo!