Battle of Leuctra

“ Athens declares in favor of Thebes against Sparta.
376. Cleombrotus leads the Spartans into Boeotia; the Spartan fleet, under Pollis, is overwhelmed off Maxos, by Chabrias.
371. Congress of Sparta, Thebes being excluded from the treaty of peace; Pelopidas and Epaminondas gain the great victory of Leuctra, in which Cleombrotus, King of Sparta, is slain. Thebes becomes the dominant power in Greece.
The Arcadian union formed. One of the first effects of the battle of Leuctra was to emancipate the Arcadians, and a plan was formed to raise them in the political affairs of Greece. ”

“ It was Epaminondas who, when his enemies sought to disgrace and annoy him by electing him "public scavenger," made, in accepting the office, the memorable utterance, "If the office will not reflect honor upon me, I will reflect honor upon it."
At Leuctra (371 B.C.) the Thebans earned the renown of being the most invincible soldiers in the world by completely overthrowing, with a force of six thousand men, the Spartan army of twice that number. This is said to have been the first time that the Spartans were ever fairly defeated in open battle. ”

“ Comp. Hesychius and other grammarians, Manso, vol. I. 2. p. 228.1173.Ἦν δὲ Ἀρκαδικὸς, Hesychius.1174.Λογάδες τῶν περιοίκων, Herod. IX. 11.1175.At the battle of Leuctra there were only 700 Spartans present, according to Xenoph. Hell. VI. 4. 15; but he must use the word in a very limited sense; for there were four moras (μόραι πολιτικαὶ) of men less than thirty-five years (ἀφ ̓ ἥβης) , which could not have contained less than 2000 men. The whole army was however much more numerous; at Corinth it had contained 6000 hoplitæ, IV. 2. ”

“ The order of battle is deepened, with the idea of giving greater impetus to a charge, from the weight of men behind backing up the front ranks. Epaminondas, using this device unexpectedly at Leuctra, defeated the Spartans, whose superior discipline and physique made them invincible so long as both sides used the same formation. His success led to the adoption of the Macedonian phalanx, and the abandonment of the line for the time being, until the Romans reverted successfully to the natural order. The order of march, for a real journey, cannot well be modified, because roads do not allow it. ”

“ The more he is acquitted of bias in his selection of events and in his omissions, the more clearly does he stand convicted of lacking all sense of the proportion of things. Down to Leuctra (371 B.C.) Sparta is the centre of interest, and it is of the Spartan state alone that a complete or continuous history is given. After Leuctra, if the point of view is no longer exclusively Spartan, the narrative of events is hardly less incomplete. ”

“ On Nissr, metal plates rang with the impact of the slugs, or glass crashed. The gigantic Eagle of the Sky, helpless, received this riddling volley as she sagged ashore, now almost in the grip of the famished surf.
"Yes, the ball is opening!" repeated Leclair, with an eager laugh. His finger itched on the trigger of his weapon; but no target was visible. Why waste ammunition on empty sand-dunes?
"Let it open!" returned the chief. "We'll not refuse battle, no, by Allah! Our first encounter with Islam shall not be a surrender! ”

“ This great soldier originated what all skilful generals have used frequently and to effect, and what Frederick the Great showed in its highest perfection at Leuthen. As already observed, armies up to that time had with rare exceptions attacked9 in parallel order and fought until one or other gave way. At Leuctra (B.C. 371) , Epaminondas had six thousand men, against eleven thousand of the invincible Spartans. The Thebans were dispirited by many failures, the Lacedemonians in good heart. The Spartan king was on the right of his army. Epaminondas tried a daring innovation. ”

“ At this mention of his most cruel enemy, Lecoq bounded from the ground like a wounded bull. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Gevrol has not won the battle yet. We have lost May; it is a great misfortune; but his accomplice remains in our hands. We hold the crafty man who has hitherto defeated all our plans, no matter how carefully arranged. He is certainly shrewd and devoted to his friend ”

“ He thought the present juncture of affairs very advantageous for their revenge, the rest of Greece being wholly free, and the Thebans excluded from the peace. But that this war was undertaken more upon passion than judgment, the event may prove; for the treaty was finished but the fourteenth of Scirophorion, and the Lacedaemonians received their great overthrow at Leuctra, on the fifth of Hecatombaeon, within twenty days. There fell at that time a thousand, Spartans, and Cleombrotus their king, and around him the bravest men of the nation ”

“ It was the coming of the cannon that inaugurated the modern period. But before telling of battles in which artillery played the chief part, we must tell of a decisive battle that was a link between old and new. Lepanto—the battle that broke the Turkish power in the Mediterranean—saw, like the sea-fights of later days, artillery in action, and at the same time oar-driven galleys fighting with the tactics that had been employed at Salamis and Actium, and knights in armour storming the enemy's ships like Erik Jarl at Svold and King Edward at Sluys. ”

“ Only one speech is now extant, the impeachment of Leocrates.
Leocrates, an Athenian, during the panic which succeeded the battle of Chaeronea, fled from Athens to Rhodes, and thence migrated to Megara, where he engaged in trade for five years. About 332 B.C. he returned to Athens, thinking that his desertion would have been forgotten; but Lycurgus prosecuted him as a traitor.
Only a small part of the speech is really devoted to proving the charge. By § 36 Lycurgus regards it as generally admitted. ”

“ Near the Gymnase I meet a friend whom I thought was at Versailles. We shake hands sadly. “When did you come back?” I ask.—“To-day; I followed the troops.”—Then turning back with me he tells me what he has seen. He had a pass, and walked into Paris behind the artillery and the line, as far as the Trocadéro, where the soldiers halted to take up their line of battle. Not a single man was visible along the whole length of the quays. At the Champ de Mars he did not see any insurgents. The musketry seemed very violent near Vaugirard on the Pont Royal and around the Palais de l’Industrie. ”

“ And my name’s Daubrecq. My whole life has been one desperate battle, one long series of catastrophes and routs in which I spent all my energies until victory came: complete, decisive, crushing, irrevocable victory. I have against me the police, the government, France, the world. What difference do you expect it to make to me if I have M. Arsène Lupin against me into the bargain? I will go further: the more numerous and skilful my enemies, the more cautiously I am obliged to play. ”

“ The Spanish prisoners, in their indignation at this brutality, asked their English captors to permit them to man their guns against the retreating French; and such was the earnestness of their entreaty, and the confidence of Englishmen in the honour of Spaniards, that these men actually were permitted to do as they had requested. A mutual interchange of good offices ensued. In the evening after the battle a gale sprung up, and some of the captured vessels drifting on shore, a number of British seamen fell into the hands of the garrison of Cadiz. ”

“ The fighting did not end till evening. By that time the Christians had taken 117 galleys and 20 galliots, and sunk or burnt some fifty other ships of various sorts. Ten thousand Turks were captured and many thousands of Christian slaves rescued. The Christians lost 7500 men; the Turks, about 30,000. It was an overwhelming victory.
As far as the tactics go, Lepanto was, like Salamis, an infantry battle on floating platforms. It was fought and won by the picked infantrymen of Spain and Italy ”

“ In the end, under pressure from Paris, it was Masséna who resumed active movements. Towards the middle of August, Lecourbe, who formed a loose right wing of the French army in the Reuss valley, was reinforced to a strength of 25,000 men, and pounced upon the extended left wing of the enemy, which had stretched itself, to keep pace with Suvárov, as far westward as the St Gothard. The movement began on the 14th, and in two days the Austrians were driven back from the St Gothard and the Furka to the line of the Linth, with the loss of 8000 men and many guns. ”

“ On one occasion we were at our quarters, exercising in the various evolutions of war; now at our guns, and then going through the forms of boarding an enemy; now running aloft, as if in the act of cutting down our enemy’s rigging, and then rushing below, as if to board her, firing our pistols, stabbing with our boarding-pikes, and cutting on all sides with our cutlasses. In the midst of this excitement, the movements of one of the men not happening to please the captain, he seized a cutlass and struck him a tremendous blow with its flat side ”

“ Meanwhile Drake and Howard had reached out to the Eddystone, and at dawn on the 21st they bore boldly down to attack the Armada, which was formed in the squadronal order of battle already described. The English fleet, coming from seaward in a long line ahead, passed Leyva’s division, and developed a fierce attack upon Recalde. The Vizcayan squadron was panic-stricken, Recalde’s flagship completely disabled, and not for two hours did Sidonia and Leyva succeed in supporting him. ”

“ Arms and ammunition had often to be taken from the enemy. The tatterdemalions who made up his army soon commanded the respect of the haughty Frenchmen whom they were defeating at every turn. In facing death the blacks were decidedly not inferior in courage to the whites.
Leclerc was greatly surprised to see those whom he still affected to despise, to see those whom he still considered like "serpents and tigers to be destroyed," fast becoming lions bent on devouring his army. He was soon compelled to center his forces at Cap-Français. ”

“ At one time there had been 9000 citizens, subsequently they are said to have amounted to 8000, but at this time there cannot have been 1000 real citizens, and at a still later time there were only 700. At Leuctra several hundreds of them fell. The ancient Spartan citizens were certainly not more numerous than the nobili of Venice. They now had to feel the consequences of their wretched selfish policy, which had been so jealous in granting the franchise to the periœci, as to exclude a great many excellent men as unfit and unworthy, and had cut them off from every prospect of obtaining it. ”

“ The major set him up against a wall, and blew his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested, made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. ”

“ What are they shelling, now that the enemy's no longer replying? Dead bodies and demolished houses! . . ."
"What about the rearguard covering the German retreat?"
"Well, aren't we here, the infantry? This is our job. All we have to do is to send out our sharpshooters and follow up with a good bayonet-charge. . . ."
At last the section set out again, reinforced by the remainder of the ninth company and under the command of the captain. A detachment of hussars galloped by, pricking towards the village to cut off the fugitives. The company swerved towards the château. ”

“ Yet two battalions of National Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and were fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred and fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles, the explosion of shells, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air. The smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor wounded wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the air above in their fiery course. ”

“ The loss of life in the battle was enormous, being put at 20,000 for the Turks and 8000 for the Christians. The battle of Lepanto was of immense political importance. It gave the naval power of the Turks a blow from which it never recovered, and put a stop to their aggression in the Eastern Mediterranean. Historically the battle is interesting because it was the last example of an encounter on a great scale between fleets of galleys and also because it was the last crusade. The Christian powers of the Mediterranean did really combine to avert the ruin of Christendom. ”

“ The Hannibal and Northumberland, both seventy-four gun ships, the Cæsar of eighty guns, called by the sailors the Old Bull-dog, a gun brig, and some others, I forget the names, and the Macedonian, were ordered to sail in pursuit of the French. This formidable force dropped down the river, every man composing it eagerly desiring to meet the enemy. The enterprise however, was unsuccessful; after cruising in vain for several days, the admiral signalled the fleet to return. Before reaching port we fell in with a Scotch ship from Greenock, in a most perilous condition ”

“ On the other hand, Colonel Leckie had to consider the fact that an encounter with a patrol or a listening post of the enemy would give away the secret of an attack the prospect of which had, so far, been sedulously guarded from reaching the ears of the enemy. A premature brush on the part of a company with even a small section of the enemy would have meant flares and infantry firing along the whole line and the plan would have stood disclosed. ”