Battle

The word "battle" can also be used infrequently to refer to an entire operational campaign, although this usage greatly diverges from its conventional or customary meaning.

[2] German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war"[3] was the essence of strategy.

Battle is a loanword from the Old French bataille, first attested in 1297, from Late Latin battualia, meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing", from Late Latin (taken from Germanic) battuere "beat", from which the English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri.

A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional warfare often becomes an insurgency.

Improvements in transport and the sudden evolving of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature during the First World War in the 20th century, lengthened the duration of battles to days and weeks.

The depth of the battlefield has also increased in modern warfare with inclusion of the supporting units in the rear areas; supply, artillery, medical personnel etc.

Battlespace is a unified strategic concept to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea and space.

Battles are decided by various factors, the number and quality of combatants and equipment, the skill of commanders and terrain are among the most prominent.

An extreme example was in the Battle of Omdurman, in which a large army of Sudanese Mahdists armed in a traditional manner were destroyed by an Anglo-Egyptian force equipped with Maxim machine guns and artillery.

Zulus in the early 19th century were victorious in battles against their rivals in part because they adopted a new kind of spear, the iklwa.

Forces with inferior weapons have still emerged victorious at times, for example in the Wars of Scottish Independence.

Disciplined troops are often of greater importance; at the Battle of Alesia, the Romans were greatly outnumbered but won because of superior training.

Areas of jungle and forest, with dense vegetation act as force-multipliers, of benefit to inferior armies.

The British in the naval Battle of Trafalgar owed its success to the reputation of Admiral Lord Nelson.

By the Second World War, the use of the smaller divisions, platoons and companies became much more important as precise operations became vital.

Instead of the trench stalemate of 1915–1917, in the Second World War, battles developed where small groups encountered other platoons.

Maneuver warfare also returned with an astonishing pace with the advent of the tank, replacing the cannon of the Enlightenment Age.

[citation needed] One significant difference of modern naval battles, as opposed to earlier forms of combat is the use of marines, which introduced amphibious warfare.

Today, a marine is actually an infantry regiment that sometimes fights solely on land and is no longer tied to the navy.

Most ancient naval battles were fought by fast ships using the battering ram to sink opposing fleets or steer close enough for boarding in hand-to-hand combat.

With the development of military aircraft during World War II, battles were fought in the sky as well as below the ocean.

Another important use of aircraft came with the development of the helicopter, which first became heavily used during the Vietnam War, and still continues to be widely used today to transport and augment ground forces.

Some place names have become synonymous with battles, such as the Passchendaele, Pearl Harbor, the Alamo, Thermopylae and Waterloo.

Personal effects of battle range from mild psychological issues to permanent and crippling injuries.

Some battle-survivors have nightmares about the conditions they encountered or abnormal reactions to certain sights or sounds and some experience flashbacks.

Physical effects of battle can include scars, amputations, lesions, loss of bodily functions, blindness, paralysis and death.