standard of seeing what the circumstances and the probabilities
were that surrounded a statesman or a general at the time when he
decided on his plan: we value him not by his fortune, but by his
PROAIRESIZ, to adopt the expressive Greek word, for which our
language gives no equivalent.

The reasons why each of the following Fifteen Battles has been
selected will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may
be well to premise a few remarks on the negative tests which have
led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in
magnitude and importance to the chosen Fifteen.

I need hardly remark that it is not the number of killed and
wounded in a battle that determines its general historical
importance. It is not because only a few hundreds fell in the
battle by which Joan of Arc captured the Tourelles and raised the
siege of Orleans, that the effect of that crisis is to be judged:
nor would a full belief in the largest number which Eastern
historians state to have been slaughtered in any of the numerous
conflicts between Asiatic rulers, make me regard the engagement
in which they fell as one of paramount importance to mankind.
But, besides battles of this kind, there are many of great
consequence, and attended with circumstances which powerfully
excite our feelings, and rivet our attention, and yet which
appear to me of mere secondary rank, inasmuch as either their
effects were limited in area, or they themselves merely confirmed
some great tendency or bias which an earlier battle had
originated. For example, the encounters between the Greeks and
Persians, which followed Marathon, seem to me not to have been
phenomena of primary impulse. Greek superiority had been already