x The turning point of the battle came when Tegetthoff used his
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Affondatore. The attack ripped a huge hole in the side of the Italian
vessel and, within minutes, the stricken ship rolled over and went to
the bottom.x Yet today, the Battle of Lissa is hardly remembered. Why? First,
its strategic importance as an Austrian victory was eclipsed when,
in the same month, the Battle of Könnigrätz delivered a crushing
defeat at the hands of the Prussians, resulting in the fall of the
Austrian Empire. Second, the conclusions that naval strategists
drew from Lissa were completely wrong.
o The battle was interpreted as establishing the dominance of
ramming as a tactic in future naval warfare, with the effect that
all major warships for the next 40 years were built with rams.
In reality, the utility of ramming was an anomaly.o For several generations, huge battleships still sported
ludicrous and useless rams, even though naval battles of the
next half century would be fought at increasingly long ranges
by massive cannons.Features of Decisive Battles
x In this course, we will examine famous and not-so-famous battles,
generals, tactics, strategies, weapons, and wars. Yet it is also a
course about historical causation: why things turned out the way
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or were determined by, the very smallest of acts or chances.
x If we look at the entire span of human warfare, twists of fate at
pivotal moments turn out to be common. Consider:
o In the 17thFHQWXU\GLGWKHWKHIWRIDQRI¿FHU¶VKRUVHZKLFK
caused him to fail to make his customary nightly patrol,
allow a successful surprise attack, with the effect that most of
North America became British territory rather than a colony
of France?