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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Many minor changes are noted at the end of the book.

BATTLES OF DESTINY

BY SISTER M. FIDES SHEPPERSON, M. A.

"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

J. A. KOFFLER, Supervisor FRANK HAMILTON, Lino Machinist CHAS. F. MILLER, Compositor ROBERT E. LEWIS, Pressman

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 Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, 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 AEgean, the African Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before the soldiers of the Great King. The AEgean 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.

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 Plataeans 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.

ALL THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE.

From Marathon clarion of the birth of Athens, to AEgospotami her knell of death, momentous history was made.

AEgospotami knelled the fall of Athens; Leuctra, of Sparta; Mantinea, of Epaminondas-Thebes; and Chaeronea, of all Hellas; but not all of Athens died at AEgospotami. Pericles, Aspasia, Phidias, Ictinus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, AEschylus, 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!

SPARTA.

The manner in which the news of the defeat of the Athenians at AEgospotami 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 Piraeus, 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, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, Mycale were all undone by Syracuse and AEgospotami. Chaeronea was made possible and the passing of the scepter of empire from Greece to Macedonia, from leaderless Hellas to Alexander the Great.

ARBELA

The life of Alexander the Great is of perennial interest, for it holds in epitome the life of the world when the world was young. Plutarch tells with quaint truthfulness what cannot now be told without a smile of wondering incredulity.

"Alexander," says Napoleon, "deserves the glory which he has enjoyed for so many centuries and among all nations; but what if he had been beaten at Arbela, having the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the deserts in his rear, without any strong places of refuge, nine hundred leagues from Macedonia!"

After the sacrifice to the god Fear, as Plutarch gravely assures us, Alexander seemed jubilant in spirit, and returning to his tent, made ready to take his rest. Parmenio, his oldest and ablest general, sought him there and suggested that a night attack be made, urging that their army would grow faint at heart could they see as in broad daylight the countless hosts arrayed against them. In conclusion Parmenio respectfully said, "And if I were Alexander I would attack the Persians tonight."

To this Alexander ironically replied "And so would I if I were Parmenio." On further remonstrance being made Alexander curtly replied, "I will not steal a victory." At this Parmenio withdrew and Alexander lay down to rest.

A profound and most refreshing sleep came to Alexander. Morning dawned and it seemed proper to rouse the men to breakfast and to preparation for battle, but Alexander still slept. In the words of Plutarch: "But at last, time not giving them leave to wait any longer, Parmenio went to his bedside and called him twice or thrice by his name, till he waked him, and then asked how it was possible, when he was to fight the most important battle of all, he could sleep so soundly as if he were already victorious. 'And are we not so, indeed,' replied Alexander smiling, 'since we are at last relieved from the trouble of wandering in pursuit of Darius thro' a wide and wasted country, hoping in vain, that he would fight us?' And not only before the battle, but in the height of the danger, he showed himself great, and manifested the self-possession of a just foresight and confidence."

Alexander's full front battle line was not so long as Darius' center. And this so seeming fatal arrangement yet turned out to be most favorable for Alexander. For instead of attacking the Persian center where Darius commanded in person and where the ground in front had been smoothed and prepared for the rush of the three hundred scythe-chariots, Alexander attacked vigorously the left wing, driving them in front of and towards the center. The onslaught of the Macedonian phalanx was irresistible and the Persian army, dominated by the god Fear, was in panic rout before Darius could get his unwieldy forces full into action or send forth the chariots upon which he so much relied.

Alexander pursued the fleeing enemy until urged back by messengers from Parmenio saying his wing was surrounded by the Persians. Alexander reluctantly returned and full victory for the Macedonian army was soon proclaimed upon the field.

Darius, seeing that all was lost and that his chariot, wedged in among dead bodies high as the shoulders of the horses, was unable either to advance or to turn back, hastily leaped from his seat and seizing a riderless mare, he galloped as best he could over the bodies of the dying and the dead and thus escaped from the battlefield.

The break in the friendship between Alexander and his ablest general, Parmenio, began with the battle of Arbela. Was there jealousy, cruel as the grave, in the heart of the older man as he saw success after success crown the brow of the young commander? Granicus, Issus, Arbela--Europe, Asia, Africa, the world--had gone down successively under the Conqueror. Jealously is incipient hate.

HUMAN, TOO HUMAN.

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