Plans of battles

1. 1 October 331 BCE · Wars of Alexander the Great

   Battle of Gaugamela

   Darius III chose a wide plain east of the Tigris, levelled it for his scythed chariots, and drew up an army that overlapped the Macedonian line by more than a mile. Alexander answered with an oblique march to his right that dragged the Persian left wing after him, beat off the chariots with javelin-men and open files, and waited for a gap to open in the Persian line. When it did, he led his Companion cavalry and the guard infantry into it in a wedge aimed at Darius himself. The king fled, his centre collapsed, and Alexander turned back to rescue Parmenion's hard-pressed left. The victory gave him Babylon and the heart of the Achaemenid empire.

   Decisive Macedonian victory

   Strength

   47,000 v 90,000

   Phases

   11 phases

   Replay it

   • Macedon
   • Persia
2. 2 August 216 BCE · Second Punic War

   Battle of Cannae

   Hannibal met a Roman army almost twice the size of his own on the plain of the Aufidus. He set his weakest infantry in a forward-bowed crescent, kept his veteran Africans back on its ends, and gave his cavalry the task of clearing the Roman horse from both wings. As the deep Roman centre pushed the crescent back, it marched into a pocket: the Africans turned inwards on its flanks and Hasdrubal's horsemen closed the rear. Encircled and too packed to fight, most of the Roman army was cut down before nightfall.

   Decisive Carthaginian victory

   Strength

   86,400 v 50,000

   Phases

   10 phases

   Replay it

   • Rome
   • Carthage
3. 14 October 1066 · Norman Conquest of England

   Battle of Hastings

   Three weeks after destroying a Norwegian army at Stamford Bridge, King Harold II met William of Normandy on a ridge seven miles north of Hastings. The English, all on foot, locked shields across the top of the slope; the Normans attacked uphill with archers, spearmen and mounted knights. For most of the day the shield wall held. A Breton rout and a rumour of William's death nearly ended the battle in the morning, but William rallied his men and cut down the English who had broken ranks to pursue. Feigned flights thinned the line through the afternoon, and late in the day Harold was killed. Leaderless, the English broke at dusk; only his household fought on around his body.

   Decisive Norman victory

   Strength

   10,000 v 7,500

   Phases

   15 phases

   Replay it

   • Normans
   • English
4. 25 October 1415 · Hundred Years' War

   Battle of Agincourt

   Henry V's army, sick, hungry and marching for Calais, found its way blocked by a French army two or three times its size. On a narrow field of fresh-ploughed mud between two woods, Henry advanced to within long bowshot, replanted the stakes that sheltered his archers, and provoked the French to attack. Their mounted charge broke on the stakes and the arrows; their dismounted men-at-arms waded through the mud under an arrow storm, crowded into the English centre and were cut down, smothered or taken in heaps. Fearing a fresh attack, Henry ordered most of the prisoners killed. The flower of the French nobility died on the field, for the loss of a few hundred English.

   Decisive English victory

   Strength

   8,700 v 21,000

   Phases

   12 phases

   Replay it

   • English
   • French
5. 21 October 1600 · Sengoku period

   Battle of Sekigahara

   Two years after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the regents who ruled for his young son split into two camps: an Eastern Army under Tokugawa Ieyasu and a Western Army gathered by Ishida Mitsunari. They met in fog in the narrow Sekigahara basin, where Mitsunari had drawn his army in an arc on the hills, apparently with the Tokugawa trapped inside it. But several of his allies had already come to terms with Ieyasu. After a hard fight in the centre, Kobayakawa Hideaki led 15,600 men down Mount Matsuo against his own side, four more commanders followed him, and the 30,000 Mōri troops on Mount Nangu never moved. The Western Army collapsed within hours, and the Tokugawa ruled Japan for the next two and a half centuries.

   Decisive Eastern Army victory

   Strength

   81,890 v 88,888

   Phases

   10 phases

   Replay it

   • Western Army
   • Eastern Army
6. 18 June 1815 · Hundred Days (War of the Seventh Coalition)

   Battle of Waterloo

   Napoleon, back from exile, struck at the two armies guarding Belgium before they could join. Two days after beating the Prussians at Ligny he found Wellington's Anglo-allied army drawn up behind a low ridge south of Waterloo, with the farms of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte held as bastions in front. Delayed by the sodden ground, the French attacked from late morning: a day-long fight for Hougoumont, a great infantry assault broken by British heavy cavalry, hours of massed cavalry charges against squares, and at last the fall of La Haye Sainte. But Blücher's Prussians were marching to Wellington, and from late afternoon they fought their way into Plancenoit, behind the French right. At about half past seven Napoleon sent in the Imperial Guard. Its repulse, as Zieten's corps broke the French right, turned the battle into a rout, and ended the Napoleonic Wars.

   Decisive Coalition victory

   Strength

   73,000 v 68,000 v 50,000

   Phases

   16 phases

   Replay it

   • French
   • Wellington
   • Prussians

623 engagements from 1600 to 1973, generated from the CAA Database of Battles: each side's strength, losses and front, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome as recorded, on an open field. They show the shape of a battle, not its ground. Battles the database records as several engagements are listed once and open onto their engagements.

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.