What might have happened had these fights gone differently?
Key Point: Old empires often rose or fell over the course of only a few battles. Here is how these epic clashes changed the course of entire civilizations.
Battles can make or break states and change the destiny of nations forever. As such, they represent some of humanity’s most important events. While there have been dozens of important, interesting battles over the past five thousand years of recorded warfare, here are five that changed history forever, though by no means is this list exhaustive. Instead, I have selected a wide range of battles from across different regions and times and have specifically avoided focusing on more well-known modern battles, many of which will be covered by The National Interest soon to mark the end of the Napoleonic Wars and World War II.