Wars & Battles — Europe, Ancient Greece to Waterloo flashcards
10 of 80 cards free to study here · 7 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys
The famous battles of European history from Marathon to Waterloo: who fought, when, what happened on the field and why it mattered, with look-alike pairs such as Issus vs Gaugamela and the two battles of Poitiers.
Learn deck · part of Wars and famous battles · written against: Conventional dates and outcomes from ancient Greece to 1945; contested figures given as ranges or left out. Updated 2026-10-10.
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In 490 BCE an Athenian army, joined only by the Plataeans, beat a Persian landing force on a coastal plain north-east of Athens. Which battle was this, and which general is credited with the plan?The Battle of Marathon, usually credited to the Athenian general Miltiades. The Athenians charged across the plain and routed the Persians, whose survivors re-embarked on their ships.Greece & Persia
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Is the story of a runner carrying news of Marathon to Athens and dropping dead on arrival from Herodotus?No.Greece & Persia
Herodotus tells of Pheidippides running to Sparta before the battle to ask for help; the dramatic run from Marathon to Athens appears only in much later writers.
Watch out: the modern marathon race is inspired by the later legend, not by Herodotus's account. -
In 338 BCE Philip II of Macedon defeated Athens and Thebes, with the 18-year-old Alexander commanding one wing. Which battle?The Battle of Chaeronea. It ended the independence of the major Greek city-states in practice and let Philip organise them under Macedonian leadership in the League of Corinth.Alexander the Great
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What weapon made the Macedonian phalanx built by Philip II different from an older Greek hoplite line?The sarissa, a two-handed pike far longer than a hoplite's spear, which let several ranks present their points at once. The phalanx pinned the enemy while cavalry delivered the decisive blow.Alexander the Great
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Over which island did the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) begin?Sicily, after a quarrel over the city of Messana drew in both Rome and Carthage. Rome won and took Sicily as its first overseas province.Rome & Carthage
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Rome entered the First Punic War with little naval experience. What device helped it beat Carthage at sea?The corvus, a spiked boarding bridge dropped onto an enemy ship so Roman soldiers could fight a sea battle almost like a land battle.Rome & Carthage
Why: it played to Rome's strength in infantry against Carthage's skill in seamanship. -
Which 312 CE battle outside Rome made Constantine master of the West, after he reportedly had a vision of a Christian sign?The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, where Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius, who drowned in the Tiber.Late Antiquity & Early Middle Ages
Why it matters: Constantine credited the Christian God with the victory and went on to favour Christianity across the empire. -
Why was Harold Godwinson's army tired and depleted when it faced William of Normandy in October 1066?Less than three weeks earlier it had marched north and beaten a Norwegian invasion under Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge, then hurried back south to meet William's landing.High & Late Middle Ages
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Which 1571 naval battle off western Greece saw a Holy League fleet destroy an Ottoman fleet?The Battle of Lepanto, won by a coalition of Spain, Venice and the Papacy commanded by Don John of Austria. It ended the idea that the Ottoman navy could not be beaten, though the Ottomans soon rebuilt their fleet.Early Modern Wars
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What did Nelson's 1798 victory at the Battle of the Nile do to Napoleon's Egyptian expedition?It destroyed the French fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt without a way home or reliable supply. Napoleon slipped back to France in 1799 and seized power.Napoleonic Wars
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Checked against Encyclopaedia Britannica and edited reference works (Gale's Encyclopedia of World History: War, Encyclopedia of Modern Europe, Encyclopedia of Russian History and Renaissance: An Encyclopedia for Students; Europe, 1450 to 1789; the Oxford Companion to British History; the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; the Columbia Encyclopedia; the New Catholic Encyclopedia; the Encyclopedia of World Biography; World Encyclopedia; the Neue Deutsche Biographie) on the battles and wars covered, with disputed dates and figures (e.g. Tours 732/733, army sizes) left out or flagged; also against scholarly books (Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law; Ian Worthington's and Richard Stoneman's lives of Alexander; Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom; Lynn White Jr, Medieval Technology and Social Change; Hertslet's Map of Europe by Treaty), Frederick the Great's Politische Correspondenz, the Pleiades gazetteer (ISAW, NYU), the Polish History Museum, Blenheim Palace's official site and Merriam-Webster (reference only; no text copied). All wording original.
- World History Encyclopedia (worldhistory.org), consulted, not copied.
- Also checked against primary texts in published English translations (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Hellenica, Arrian's Anabasis, Polybius, Diodorus, Plutarch, Velleius Paterculus, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Lactantius, Eusebius, Augustine, Jordanes, Froissart, the Tours (732), crusade and 1453 accounts in the Internet Medieval Sourcebook and De Re Militari, the Berlin Decree, Cervantes, and the Treaty of Münster of 24 October 1648 from the Avalon Project), Shakespeare's Henry V, Southey's Life of Nelson, and the battle and history pages of the National Army Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, English Heritage and the Fondation Napoléon (reference only; no text copied).
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