In the Greek-Persian Wars of the fifth century BC, the Persian Empire was always several times more numerous than the Greek army, but the goddess of victory always seemed to be on the side of the Greeks. In 480 BC, the Greek navy won a decisive victory in the Naval Battle of Salamis, and then with the success of several ground battles, the Persian Empire, which had begun to decline, was completely destroyed.
The victory in this battle secured the independence of the Greek city-states and provided the political and military conditions for Alexander the Great to establish a vast empire a century later, which guaranteed the leadership of Greek philosophical thought in Western civilization for many centuries to come.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, the resurgent Persian emperor</h1>
Despite the Persian Empire's crushing defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the Persians maintained great military power, especially the navy, which allowed the Persians to control the major transportation routes on the sea. Darius I, who lost to Marathon, planned to launch another war against Greece, but he had to resolve the rebellion within Egypt first, but before all this could be realized, Darius I left the world in 486 BC.
Later, his son Xerxes succeeded to the throne, and immediately after succeeding him, he demonstrated his extraordinary military command skills in the military campaign to suppress the Egyptian rebellion, after which Xerxes turned the spearhead of the attack to Greece, first to avenge his father's fiasco, and second, to continue to expand the border line of the Persian Empire to the west.
After the victory at the Battle of Marathon, Greece experienced decades of internal strife, but when it was learned that the Persian king Xerxes was leading more than 1 million soldiers and 1200 warships to its homeland, the Athenians, Spartans, and Cyclades of the southern Greek city-state united to resist this formidable enemy.
The Persian army set the first target for the northern Greek provinces, where the military force was relatively weak, and more importantly, they had been hesitant to join the alliance, in order to win military support in the northern region, the southern coalition sent a small Spartan army to the northern battlefield to participate in the battle against the Persian invasion of Shermoupli Pass.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, hot spring pass blood battle</h1>
At the beginning of the battle, most of the Spartan soldiers were repelled, leaving only 300 Spartan soldiers and 1100 Borotan soldiers on the battlefield, who fought in blood and finally all died heroically. Although these soldiers left the world with the myth of heroic fighting, after all, the results of this battle had little effect, so they did not bring decisive influence to subsequent battles.
After the Battle of Shermauri, the Persians marched south to Athens, driving the army to the shoreline, and the Persian fleet full of military supplies supplied the ground troops along the coast.
There are some historical sources, especially later from Greece, in order to emphasize the huge size of the Persians, the number of Persian soldiers who participated in this battle was recorded as more than 2 million, and even some sources say that it was 5 million, and some were added together among the non-combatants and civilians who moved with the army, and the number became even greater. However, at that time, neither Persia nor any military supply system would be able to meet the supply of such a large army, in fact, the number of Persian ground troops at that time was probably only about 200,000.
No matter how many troops persia sent, the Greeks had realized that they would not be able to resist such a large army. Their military commander, Timistocles from Athens, decided to pin all his hopes on naval warfare, and if they could defeat the Persian navy, the Persian army would have to retreat due to a lack of supplies.
Although some of his subordinate generals expressed concern about the plan, Timistocles was confident of his battle plan and decided to withdraw the Allied forces from mainland Greece and retreat to the nearby island of Salamis, where he would gather his naval forces to fight the Persian fleet to the death.
Xerxes quickly defeated the small force left behind to defend the Acropolis after entering Athens. While the Persians were raping and plundering in the Acropolis, Timistockli let loose and let the fugitives who betrayed Greece spread rumors that Greece had been torn apart by internal strife and was preparing to retreat by boat.
Sure enough, the Persian commanders were immediately convinced of the rumor, and they planned to attack and destroy the Greek warships before the Greeks fled.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > third, the emperor personally marched</h1>
Xerxes carefully arranged a barracks with iron walls and built a pure gold throne on the edge of Mount Egaros, which overlooked the entire sea of Salamis, where he intended to witness the imminent victory of the Persians. In the early morning of September 23, 480 BC, Xerxes ascended to the throne and ordered the Persian warships to attack with full force.
Previously, the Persian navy had lost thousands of warships due to a storm, but now the number of warships is still 3 times that of Greek warships, but the 370 battleships of Greece are all three-layer oared warships, each with three-layer oars, so it exceeds the Persian sea combat force in terms of speed and volume; in addition, the Greeks also know the terrain of the Ramis Sea very well, and more importantly, every Greek crew and soldier understands that behind them and their comrades is their hometown, and in front of them is the Persian army. The survival of Greece is entirely in its own hands.
The Persian navy gradually moved closer to the Greek allied fleet in the typical crescent-shaped combat formation of the time, and the Greek warships attacked from the front, bringing together the fighting soldiers to make it easier to board the enemy ships and slaughter the sailors on the enemy ships. A Greek fleet of 30 large ships watched the battle and preserved its strength until the Greek warships gradually gained superiority on the sea before launching an attack to take the flank of the Persian navy.
The battle lasted nearly 8 hours, and Xerxes, sitting on a hillside observing the battle, found that nearly half of his warships had sunk to the bottom of the sea, while Greece had lost only 40 ships. For the first time in history, a naval battle was used to determine the outcome of an entire war, with Xerxes' ships destroyed and supplies to the Army under threat, and he had no choice but to retreat to Asia Minor.
Xerxes left 100,000 troops in the Greek mainland, and fled in a hurry under the cover of soldiers, but the 100,000 soldiers surrendered to the Greeks in August of the same year.
Despite the heavy losses suffered at the Battle of Salamis, the Persian navy maintained a strong naval combat power, but naval supremacy in the Mediterranean seas had been transferred to the Greeks. A century later, Alexander the Great finally unified Greece and defeated the Persian Empire after many internal disputes, but all these victories benefited from the Battle of Salamis. The battle guaranteed the lasting independence of Greece in the future, and provided the conditions for the further development of Greek culture and philosophical thought, which could affect the entire European continent and eventually spread to North America.
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If Xerxes was the one who won the Battle of Salamis, would Greece, then be able to expel the Persians again, which was already fragmented at the time? Once this battle is another outcome, then Persia will undoubtedly replace Greece as the main force influencing Europe and the West.
References: History of Greece, Secrets of the Persian War, Tales of the Greeks