What single battle most affected the outcome of history?

Operation Cottage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cottage

The Battle of Adrianople, which both signified the beginning of the end for the authority of the Roman Empire, as well as heralding in the significance of cavalry in Europe.

Trafalgar. Woops there goes our navy. Time to invade Russia and lose 90% of our army followed by Leipzig.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_War

Britain's impact on the napoleonic empire was minimal. Although the continential system was a bit of fail there wasn't much London could do to weaken France's empire in continential Europe. Napoleon's invasion of Russia would've probably been as much as a disaster as it was.

this post is wrong in so many ways

britain funded nearly every colaition war, napoleon invaded russia because they refused to adopt the continental system, and the peninsular war sucked up a huge amount of resources.

The peninsular war and the continential system would've not been able to bring down the French empire without the invasion of Russia. And the war with the Russians would've been triggered by another way without the continential system, it was simply of case of them being a major power that refused to seriously conform to napoleon's rules.
And every coalition war that Britain funded was a failure until the invasion of Russia

Austerlitz

>The peninsular war and the continential system would've not been able to bring down the French empire without the invasion of Russia
Agreed

Why would the continental system bring down the French though?

>And the war with the Russians would've been triggered by another way without the continential system

Speculation, we're discussing what actually happened.

>And every coalition war that Britain funded was a failure until the invasion of Russia

Had Napoleon not made his country near broke through endless coalition wars and guerilla fighting, Prussia and Austria wouldn't have attempted a new campaign against him after the retreat from Russia. He couldn't afford to finance another Grande Armee by that point.

In short, Napoleon was defeated militarily by Russia, but economically by the UK.

They picked the fight where they knew the big persian fleet couldn't do jack.

Battle of Vienna when Christians fought off a massive invasion of mudslimes into Europe

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

in b4 someone busts a nut over tours and charlemagne single handedly crushing 2,000,000 arabs

Its Charles Martel you dumb nig

>why would the continental system bring down the French?
Did I ever say it would? Might be my wording, I was saying it didn't directly bring down the French. It did help set up the war with Russia. But even then the war with Russia would've probably gone ahead anyway.

>Speculation, looks like I win again haha
It's entirely relevant, because if it is true, it makes the continential system redundant in being the only possible trigger for the invasion of Russia, which was what destroyed the French empire, not Britain's success in the economic war.

>Prussia and Austria wouldn't have attempted a new campaign after the retreat from Russia
Napoleon winning those coalition wars was what set the whole Russian war up. It was the reason France and Russia were a game of power struggles, because Napoleon ruled Europe from Nantes to Warsaw. If he had lost the first coalition war, the french king would've been reinstalled and France would've never gotten into a conflict with Russia, and Austria and Prussia wouldn't have gone to war again.
Also I think the fact that he marched into Russia with 600,000 men and came out with 20,000 is what resulted in him not being able to make another grande army.

Also I think you're really overstating the impact that the economic war had on France.
The military defeat by Russia would've brought down napoleon, regardless of how stocked France's coffers were at the time.

>Poltards harrases a retreating ottoman army
>Some of the turks gets killed in raids
>Few centuries later
"Haha guys polacks are so awesome, dumb turkroaches xddd"

>Implying they were already retreating

Fuck off turkroach revisionist.

Butthurt turk detected

Cain vs Abel

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours
This desu senpai

goku vs vegeta was quite a nice one too

I think it's an Austrian instead, since they refuse to acknowledge that the Poles and the rest of the Holy League came to bail them out.

First post best pick. Entente loses on the Marne, Germany wins WWI early, much less loss of life, way stranger balance of power.

Not the battle itself but the spanish losing a good portion of their fleet to storms allowed the eternal anglo to come into existance.

Battle of Khalkhin Gol. Russia fighting a two-front war would have been catastrophic.

This

as far as what we've recorded in history probably some ancient mesopotamian battle that we only have mentions of.

otherwise likely prehistoric battles surrounding cro-magnids near the eastern mediterranean as they would move on to populate the entirety of the world save for most of sub-saharan africa and scraps of australasia, which they had a significant impact on the history of anyway.

but in 50000 BC there were no battles
unless you count 4 apes throwing rocks at each other a battle

The battle of Marne is so underrated in terms of importance in not just ww1 but also ww2. Storm fags don't understand that the German command stop to resupply before Dunkirk because they feared the same thing would happen and bring about a re run of ww1 which the Nazis would loose even quicker than before. Instead they claim that Hitler wanted to spare the BEF and sue for peace despite bombing them.
In terms of OP's question though without a doubt Salamis like said.
>Turn tied of second Persian invasion
>Cripple Persian fleet
>Establish Athenian dominance in Greece
This then leads to Greece victory, the Athenian Golden age and Pericles which is where most of our modern ideas about democracy and being western come from, the Peloponnesian war and setting the stage for Alexander ect.
For such a meme war the this is Sparta extravaganza of a war that is the Greco-Persian Wars is pretty high stakes in hind sight. Where as other seemingly more important wars pale in comparison.
Also Battle of Bouvines because it leads to magana carta which is like the basis of Common law, parliament, the English civil war, liberalism, the US and its Constitution, and modern limited governance, although I'd probably put this battle as the biggest bang for your buck as it is relatively small but has huge implications (though less than salamis)

Nothing beats Manzikert in terms of macrohistorical importance.

Could you expand as to why was it so important?

if the last 4 apes that were to lead to the evolution of mankind were to lose to some other dumb kind of monkey then that would be important
but those are speculations done or already hypotetic bases so kinda useless
i agree that the more you go back the more you can change. if you somehow make roman empire (random ex) disappear before it started the story would be totally different

This guy knows

Eh, there were humans around, maybe not quite behaviorally modern, but genetically.

Go back about 70,000 years and you hit the genetic bottleneck when there were only maybe ~10-20K humans around, all isolated and inbreeding like mad. Any battle that happened there would have had rather drastic effects on human social evolution.

Or, if you're of the other persuasion: Cane and Able.

>into Europe
M8 they were already far into Europe lmao

Imagine a world in which the Turks have never settled in Asia Minor. The consequences would be enormous.

No crusades, no Ottomans, no need for Europeans to search for alternative trade routes, no migration of Byzantine scholars, no Khalifate in Turkish hands and consequently no butthurt among Arabs which resulted in moments like Wahhabism. And so on. We could continue for hours.

Manzikert is THE battle that changed history.

>as well as heralding in the significance of cavalry in Europe.
This is a meme. The battle is massively important, yes, but cavalry had been massively important for a long time.

The important part is that it resulted in the Goths maintaining a separate identity rather than integrating and becoming Romans like other barbarians. The inability to do this resulted Goths thinking of themselves as Goths, affecting how they dealt with other Goths outside the empire, and also eventually resulted in the various parts of the western half spinning off into separate states. Imagine how much easier it would have been to deal with the Vandals or Huns had the Romans not also needed to negotiate with Goths as a separate entity.

>a few thousand hunters on horseback run into the back of exhausted Romans already shaken and they run away
>this means cavalry is now the sole measure of a successful army!

>The important part is that it resulted in the Goths maintaining a separate identity rather than integrating and becoming Romans like other barbarians.

This is also a meme desu. Up until the Constitution of Caracalla of 212, Rome had a plethora of nominally independent entities within its bordered.

The uniqueness of Adrianople is that it Rome recognised that it is unable to contain a barbarian threat.

>This is also a meme desu

Not that guy, but no it's not.

There is a difference between vassal kingdoms of foederati perched on the edge of the desert like the Ghassanids in the East and fully fledged quasi-independent tribes in the wealthy western provinces. The citizenship reform had nothing to do with any of this.

Waterloo sealed Napoleons' empire's coffin but all of this, the entire Napoleonic wars, the alliances, the rise of republics, and the enlghtment all rose from the rebellion in the north american continent.

I believe the Battle of Germantown to be one of the most influencial (if not concord)

>oversretched Turkish forces would've totally held Vienna doooood, like this battle saved Europe and shit, based poles :)

Maybe a little too stressed on Western European history but here goes:

>Catallaunian fields
...being the battle which seals Western Europe's fate under the effigy of trying to mimick Roman-style government (Merovingians, Charlemagne, HRE), by making out the decaying Roman empire to be better than the invading Huns.

>battle Toulouse
...being the battle that puts Al-Andalus expansion to a standstill, and not Poitiers like many believe, which was a half-hearted repeat of what happened at Tours.

>battle of Bouvines
...being the battle that solidifies the Germany-French divide, and makes the HRE spiral into rampant decentralization while Phillip Augustus' strong willed policies as king are complimented by the battle.

>battle of Orléans/battle of Agincourt
Forges French/British nationality.

>battle of Blenheim
...being the battle that ends the French advance in its tracks, while it was marching on to Vienna to end Habsburg power for once and for all, pretty much leading to the AWoS and then the 7WY, at which point Britain becomes equals with France.

>battle of Valmy
...being that it re-ignites moral in the Revolutionary French army, and kickstarts French resistance to the first coalition. (bonus; battle of Zurich, where the victory for the French means they don't get screwed with by Surovov).

>battle of Jena/Auersdest
...where the Prussians get fucked so hard anti-French sentiment is what becomes tneir culture.

>battle of the Marne
...self-explanatory.

fucking Zama

Imagine if rome loses the second punic war and collapses, imagine the future of the world without Rome; you can't.

Rome influenced literally everyone, and anyone who wasn't was eventually influenced by somebody who was

Are you seriously implying that if the Carthaginians had won Zama, the Romans would have lost the 2nd Punic War? I mean fuck, even if they don't send another force to stamp Carthage into a mud puddle, they've already overrun all of Carthage's possessions in what's now Spain, which is a pretty major, if costly victory for the Romans.

I agree with this user. Even if Hannibal won Zama the most he would have gotten was a peace that included all of Spain going to Rome. Then Carthage would have probably tried to start a new war after getting god knows what else (Egypt?). The Roman Senate wasn't actually keen on invading Carthage, it was Scipio that wanted it.

Anyway, I'll throw the Siege of Constantinople in 717-718. Unlike Tours this battle was a real invasion which if won by the Caliphate, would have more than likely replaced Christianity as the dominant religion in Europe.

Maybe not the most decisive battle exactly, but, I would say the most decisive war might be the last Roman-Persian War. If that hadn't happened, or hadn't gone as it had, then the Muslim Conquests would likely have been impossible.

What about Midway? Essentially secured American hegemony almost worldwide.

The problem is that Midway didn't reverse a trend; Japan really had no chance against the U.S., and even if America loses badly, they can still shit out another dozen Essex class carriers and overrun the Pacific any time they want.

Germany winning at the Marne would lead directly into an existing alt-history universe, Kiaserreich

Long term, you're right of course, but carriers take years to build, a Japanese victory there would have had to force some US concessions in the Pacific.

They take about 18-24 months to build. Considering that you had almost a dozen CV come out in the middle of the war already, it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

>a Japanese victory there would have had to force some US concessions in the Pacific.
How do you figure that? They can't assault U.S. held islands in any force as long as there's a land based air garrison, and they can't sit around and wait as U.S. war production dwarfs theirs by about 8:1 historically, and that's with spending most of their effort on Europe. Once Germany goes down, if it takes that long, the problem gets even worse.