Generally, a battle is a conceptual component in the hierarchy of combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, wherein each group will seek to defeat the others within the scope of a military campaign, and 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 warfare. 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 can not be arrived only through the names of historical battles, many of which are a misnomer.
The word battle is a loanword in English from the Old French bataille first attested in 1297, and is itself a borowing from Late Latin battualia, meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing," from Latin battuere "beat", from which the English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri. and comes from the staged battles in the Colloseum in Rome that may have numbered 10,000 individuals.

Characteristics of battle

The defining characteristics of the battle as a concept in the Theory of combat has been a dynamic one through the course of military history, changing with the changes in the organisation, employment and technology of military forces.

While the British military historian Sir John Keegan suggested an ideal definition of battle as "something which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical disintegration of one or the other of them" the origins and outcomes of battles can rarely be summarized so neatly.

In general a battle during the 20th century was, and continues to be defined by the combat between opposing forces representing major components of total forces committed to the military campaign, used to achieve a specific military objectives, within a time-frame of less than a month. Where the duration of the battle is longer then a week, they are often for reasons of staff operational planning called operations. Battles can be planned, encountered, or forced by one force on the other when it is unable to withdraw from combat.

The a battle always has as its purpose the reaching of a mission goal by use of military force.p.67, Dupuy A victory in the battle is achieved when one of the opposing sides forces the other to abandon its mission, or is forced to surrender its forces, have its forces rout, forced to retreat or rendered militarily ineffective for further combat operations. However, a battle may end in a Pyrrhic victory which ultimately favors the defeated party. If no resolution is reached in battle, it can result is a stalemate. A conflict in which one side is unwilling to reach a decision by a direct battle using conventional military forces often becomes an insurgency.