Excerpt: Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago, a council of Athenian Officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica.
The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they
should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath
them; but on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the
fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.
Excerpt: ... the ancient Persian empire, which once subjugated all the nations of the earth, was defeated when Alexander had won his victory at Arbela.
Excerpt: That battle was the determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage, but between the two great families of the world...
Excerpt: ..no one who appreciates the influence of England and
her empire upon the destinies of the world will ever rank that victory
as one of secondary importance.
Excerpt: ..the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of
France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country
from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English.
Excerpt: The England of our own days is so strong, and the Spain
of our own days is so feeble, that it is not easy, without some
reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which
England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to
appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world.
Excerpt: Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this
day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of
Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.
Excerpt: The decisive triumph of Russia over Sweden at Pultowa
was therefore all-important to the world, on account of what it
overthrew as well as for what it established
Excerpt: The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of
Rome from humble beginnings to the greatest magnitude which the world
had then ever witnessed. But the citizen of the United States is still
more justly entitled to claim this praise.
Excerpt: The exertions which the allied powers made at this
crisis to grapple promptly with the French emperor have truly been
termed gigantic, and never were Napoleon's
genius and activity more signally displayed than in the celerity and
skill by which he brought forward all the military resources of
France...
Excerpt: “If there’s one moment in history – other than the defeat
of Hitler – that every citizen of Europe should be encouraged to
commemorate, it’s the day the Battle of Waterloo decided the shape of
our continent for a hundred years. It was the final climax in the
titanic struggle between the French Emperor Napoleon and the rest of
Europe. Waterloo was one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles
ever. It was the last great conflict of the age of the sword, cannon and
musket in Western Europe. And it was one of the first battles to be
widely reported in detail by hundreds of those who fought in it on all
sides. They provide us with an unprecedented commentary on the human
face of battle 200 years ago. Waterloo 200′s marking of this bicentenary
gives us a unique opportunity to study one of the most seismic events
in world military history. ” -Peter Snow
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