Isabel Shepperson - Battles of Destiny

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by Sister M. Fides Shepperson, M. A.

AUTHOR OF

HARP OF MILAN, CLOISTER CHORDS, Etc.

PRICE SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS

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MOUNT MERCY CONVENT

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1 9 1 4

COPYRIGHT 1914 BY
SISTER M. FIDES SHEPPERSON, M. A.
MOUNT MERCY CONVENT
PITTSBURGH, PENNA.

This little volume will prove of interest to the general reader and of inestimable value to the student or teacher of history. It contains graphic descriptions of the seventeen great struggles of the historic pastMarathon, Arbela, Zama, Teutobergerwald, Adrianople, Chalons, Tours, Senlac-Hastings, Orleans, Lepanto, Spanish Armada, Naseby, Blenheim, Pultowa, Saratoga, Valmy, and Waterloo. Dates, figures, facts, estimates and reflections are presented in attractive form; and the net results of long research labor are given in a nutshell.

Those terrific conflicts of the past seem strangely fascinating when looked at in their crucial throes ere yet they are stamped with the die of destiny. The thoughtful mind asks, Would our world of today be just what it is if all or if any one of these battles had borne results the reverse of what they did bear?

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As in the order of time, so likewise in the order of importance, Marathon stands first among the Battles of Destiny. Without Marathon there would have been no Thermopyl, Salamis, Plata, Mycale; no Attic supremacy; no Age of Pericles: and would the world be just what it is today if these things had not been? Would Attica as a Persian satrapy ever have become Athens of the Acropolis crowned with the Propylaea-Erectheum-Parthenon: Athens bright star-night of the past glittering with deathless names?

Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia had risen and set; Rome subsequently rose and fell; France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, and our own infantine experimental Republic of the West are advancing fatefully in the old circle: yet not one of these may boast as many eminent men, stars of first magnitude, glorious constellationsas little Greece might boast, that brief bright star-night of the past thick-studded with immortal names.

Of the ten commanders of the ten Athenian tribes who assembled on the heights overlooking the plain of Marathon, five voted against battle with the invading Persians, five in favor of battle. Callimachus the War Ruler, influenced by the enthusiastic eloquence of Miltiades, gave the casting vote in favor of battle. On this so seeming slight chance hung Marathon.

Humanly speaking, it was madness for that little handful of Greeks to rush down upon the countless Persian hosts. The Persians themselves could not believe their own eyes when they saw the Greeks running to battle; and half-heartedly, perhaps even jestingly, they prepared for a brief skirmish with madmen.

The Medes and Persians were at that time deemed invincible. Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, the isles of the gean, the African Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before the soldiers of the Great King. The gean was a Persian Lake; from east, from south, from north approached the awful power of imperial Persia, ready irresistibly to absorb little Greece, to punish and obliterate Athens. Already the Eretrians, who together with the Athenians had aided in the Ionian revolt, were overtaken by the dread vengeance of Darius: their city had fallen and more than a thousand Eretrians were left bound on the island Egilia awaiting the return of the victorious Persian fleet from Marathon. Then together with the captive Athenians, the Eretrians were to be taken to Susa there to await the pleasure of the Great King, whose wrath had been new-kindled day by day with memories of burning Sardis by a court attendant whose sole duty was to repeat to Darius at each meal, Sire, remember the Athenians. Sardis would then be fearfully avenged.

Sardis was, indeed, avenged but not by Marathon. There is a justice exact even to the weight of a hair in all things of life; seen or unseen, known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is ever at work silently, forcefully, fatefully. Athens burns Sardis and desecrates the temples of the Persian gods; and some years later the Persians sack and devastate Athens, razing her temples to the ground leaving her site in smoking ruins.

Behold there are Watchers over you, worthy Recorders, knowing what you do: and whosoever shall have wrought an ants weight of good shall behold it; and whosoever shall have wrought an ants weight of evil shall behold it.Koran.

History tells us that after the battle of Marathon, six thousand four hundred Persians lay dead upon the battlefield and only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians. This seems incredible, yet it is equally incredible that the Greeks won. Ten thousand Athenians and one thousand Platans had fought against one hundred thousand soldiers of the Great King, andwon. There was something wrong with that motley army of the Great King; some subtly retributive force was at work, some balancing Justice.

Doubtless to Miltiades more than to any other man Athens and the world owes Marathon. It was his overpowering eloquence that weighed heavily in the balance against the honest fears of those who dreaded the encounter with Persias hitherto invincible warriors; the well founded fears of those who were secretly in sympathy with Hippias and hoped that a battle might be averted: and the prudent fears of those who dreaded defeat and the vengeance of the Great King and thought it wiser to wait until the promised help should come from Sparta. One mans eloquent fearlessness outweighed all those fearful considerations and precipitated the mad descent from the hill, the onslaught, the unequal fight, the wonder-victory.

Yet had Miltiades rested after the momentous battle all might have been lost. For the sullen Persian fleet hastening from Marathon had turned its course towards undefended Athens. And so that very night, even with the departure of the last Persian ship from the shore, Miltiades led his battle torn veterans a distance of about twenty-two miles to Phalerum, the port nearest to Athens. And early the next morning when, indeed, true to Miltiades fears, the Persian fleet appeared off the coast of Phalerum, the men of Marathon stood awaiting their landing. They did not land.