Battle (Fr. bataille, akin to battre, 'to beat'), a hostile encounter on land or sea, which will fall to be discussed under TACTICS and WAR. In 1851—the year that was to inaugurate a universal peace—Sir Edward Creasy published The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, a title from which the emphatic 'The' might have well been omitted. His list is as follows: Marathon (490 B.C.), Syracuse (413 B.C.), Arbela (331 B.C.), Metaurus (207 B.C.), defeat of Varus (9 A.D.), Chalons (451), Tours (732), Hastings (1066), Orleans (1429), defeat of
Spanish Armada (1588), Blenheim (1704), Pultowa (1709), Saratoga (1777), Valmy (1792), and Waterloo (1815). Actium (31 B.C.), Lepanto (1571), and Trafalgar (1805) might fairly have been included in the list, to which should now be added Königgrätz or Sadowa (1866), and Sedan (1870).