Battle of Averasborough

The Battle of Averasborough or The Battle of Averasboro, fought March 16, 1865, in Harnett and Cumberland counties, North Carolina, as part of the Carolinas Campaign of the American Civil War, was a prelude to the climactic Battle of Bentonville, which began three days later.

Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was moving his army north towards Goldsboro in two columns. The right column (Army of the Tennessee) was under the command of Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard and the left column (Army of Georgia) was under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum.

Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston sent Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee's corps to attack Slocum's left wing while it was separated from the rest of Sherman's forces. Slocum's troops had crossed the Cape Fear River at Fayetteville and were marching up the Raleigh plank road. Near Averasborough, they encountered Hardee's corps. On the morning of the March 16, troops of the Union XX Corps under Maj. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams were driven back by a Confederate assault. When reinforcements arrived, the Union forces counterattacked and drove back two lines of Confederates, but were stopped by a third line. By this time, units from Maj. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis's XIV Corps began to arrive on the field. Outnumbered and in danger of being flanked, Hardee's troops withdrew.

Battle

Generally, a battle "is a conceptual component in the hierarchy of combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, or combatants. A war sometimes consists of many battles. Battles generally are well defined in duration, area, and force commitment.

Wars and military campaigns are guided by strategy, whereas battles take place on a level of planning and execution known as operational mobility. German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that "the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war" was the essence of strategy.

Etymology

The definition of a battle cannot be arrived at solely through the names of historical battles, many of which are misnomers. The word battle is a loanword in English 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, and comes from the staged battles in the Colosseum in Rome that may have numbered 10,000 individuals.

Battle (UK band)

Battle were a UK indie rock band. They came to some prominence with a sound consisting largely of post-punk, spacious guitar hooks and dance-orientated beats, and have been compared to The Cure, and New Order/Joy Division. Later recordings have grown increasingly organic and atmospheric and reveal a kinship with The Smiths, Remain in Light era Talking Heads and Arcade Fire. The name Battle can be seen as an incitement for the individual to fight for their passions. Many of the band's lyrics revolve around this central theme. However, the band were actually named after the small Sussex town of Battle, where they formed. The band broke up around October 2007.

Band members

History

Formation

Singer Jason Bavanandan and guitarist Jamie Ellis met at school in Lewisham, South East London in the mid-nineties. Having completed school, they both enrolled at the University of Kent at Canterbury, with the intention of forming a band. The resulting band was Casper Jack. The music of Casper Jack was heavily informed by artists such as Oasis and the Small Faces. When the group's original bassist left, Ellis was introduced to Tim Scudder, at which point the band's sound began to change. Influences such as The Strokes, Joy Division and Pixies began to inform the songwriting process. During this period, the band's keyboardist was dismissed, and the drummer left. The next academic year saw drummer, Oliver Davies join the band. The band changed their name first to Morphic Fields, and later to Killing Moon, the opening song in the film Donnie Darko. The band later dropped the moniker when people increasingly (and mistakenly) assumed the influence of Echo & the Bunnymen.

Battle (formation)

A battle or battaile was a medieval military formation, analogous and ancestral to the modern term battalion. In late medieval warfare, field armies were often drawn up into three main battles, also called guards: the vanguard, the middle guard, and the rearguard, often abbreviated to simply the van, middle, and rear. These terms imply, correctly, that the van preceded the middle, which in turn preceded the rear, into battle if the battles were arranged sequentially as a column. If arranged abreast, the van was on the right and the rear the left.