Battle

Generally, a battle is an instance of combat in warfare between two or more parties wherein each group will seek to defeat the others. Battles are most often fought during wars or military campaigns and can usually be well defined in time, space and action. Wars and campaigns are guided by strategy whereas battles are the stage on which tactics are employed. German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles to gain the end of war" was the essence of strategy.

Characteristics of battle

British military historian Sir John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them" though the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarised so neatly.

Related Topics:
British - Military historian - Sir John Keegan - Armies

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The "action" of battle is to reach a decision — the ideal decision is victory but strategy and circumstances often require a compromise. One party is deemed to have achieved victory when its opponent has surrendered, been dispersed, forced to retreat or been rendered militarily ineffective for further combat operations. However, a battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory which ultimately favours the defeated party. If no decision is reached in battle, the result is a stalemate. A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision in battle often becomes an insurgency.

Related Topics:
Surrender - Pyrrhic victory - Stalemate - Insurgency

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Up until the 20th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting a day or less — the Battle of Gettysburg was exceptional for lasting three days. This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying an army in the field. Typically the means of prolonging a battle was by siege warfare. Improvements in transportation and the onset of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature, saw the duration of battles increase to weeks and months, peaking during the First World War. Nevertheless, in a long battle the regular rotation of units meant that the periods of intensive combat to which an individual soldier was subjected tended to remain brief.

Related Topics:
20th century - Battle of Gettysburg - Siege warfare - Transport - Trench warfare - First World War

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Battles may be small scale, only involving a handful of individuals, perhaps two squads, up to battles on army levels where hundreds of thousands may be engaged in a single battle at one time. The space a battle occupies depends on the range of the weapons of the combatants. Until the advent of artillery and aircraft, battles were fought with the two sides in sight, if not reach, of each other. The depth of the battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with supporting units in the rear areas — supply, artillery, medical, etc. — now outnumbering the front-line combat troops.

Related Topics:
Squad - Army - Weapon - Artillery - Aircraft - Modern warfare

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Battles are, on the whole, made up of a multitude of individual combats and the individual will usually only experience a small part of the events. To the infantryman, there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of a minor raid or a major offensive, nor is it likely that they anticipate 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 they would be fighting the same battle in five months time. Conversely, 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 the next day.

Related Topics:
Infantry - First day on the Somme - 1 July - 1916 - French - Battle of Waterloo

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