 Y studio arunol o'r Gymru yn ymgyrch i'r mynd i'r byw, ac mae cyfrifio ar gyfer gwybodol a'r ysgawr yw'r seisien ac ymgyrch i'r cyfrifio cyrraedd Cymru a'r gyfrifio cymrydau ac yn ymgyrch o'r cyfrifio cymrydau. Mae'r cyfrifio cyfrifio cyrraedd o'r cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio ac yn ymgyrch o'r cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio cyfrifio. Roedd yn ystod yn amlwgach o'r amlwgag rhoi gweld i gweithio sy'n dweud sut rydyn ni'n dod o'r disbyn o'r syniad ar y bwysig. Mae'r cyflawn fod yn gweithio y ffordd yn ogyr grid yn iar, masr bwrdd yn defnylchio'r cyfrifedig ac mae'r llunio arlineg rydw i'n gwyburnu cael hwnnw. Mae hynny yn wirdd o unrhyw ddiweddol ar wrth i'n gweithgwr yn blaenwyr wediodol yn cyflawn o beth y bwysig, ond y cwestiwn i'r cwestiwn i'r dweud o'r ddechrau, mae'n cael ei wneud o'r eistedd o'r a'r anodd o'r Llywodraeth Oedol, ac, ddyn nhw, yn ym mwy, ddyn nhw'n cael ei wneud. Yn 480 BC, y ddweud hynny'n 100 o hollwch o'r Llywodraeth Gweithgwyr Cymru, yn gyfynu'r dweud o'r dweud, a'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n dweud o'r Llywodraeth Oedol, i'w ddau'r llwyddiadau i'w ddau'r allai i'w ddweud. Mae'r enthysau, yn ymgyrchu dechrau, a'r ddau'r 300 Spartans, ond 700 o'r ddweud o'r ddweud i'r Fespiaid yn ystod o'r ddweud, ac yn ymddir i'r 1,000 o'r ddweud o'r llwyddiadau o'r Pass. Yn 1944, ymdir i'r 100 o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r drwng across the river Rhine at Arnham in the Netherlands, against several thousand crack troops of the German Wehrmacht as the culmination of an abortive allied operation to bring World War II to a successful and quick conclusion. The fighting around and for the bridge isn't considered a battle in its own right, and the event is generally remembered as part of that wider operation, Operation Market Garden or the Battle of Arnham, despite its closed parallels with the Greek event of 2500 years earlier, and there's a list of the things that they share. Despite their separation by nearly two and a half thousand years and some other evident differences, these fights at Thermopylau and Arnham Bridge share some key characteristics. Among these are the number of troops involved, although not exactly identical with some 1,000 at Thermopylau against 20,000 and some 800 at Arnham Bridge against about 15,000. The odds are roughly comparable and the outcome similar, although all the defenders died at Thermopylau and some managed to survive at Arnham. They also differ in terms of the technologies involved. Weaponry at Thermopylau was limited to spears, swords and archery, transport was on foot, on horseback or with some horse-drawn chariots. At Arnham, firearms dominated the fighting, including light artillery on the scene, plus some long-range bombardment on both sides, and individual soldiers carried rifles, machine guns and various anti-tank weapons. Transport included armoured and unarmoured petrol-driven vehicles such as trucks, armoured cars, jeeps, motorcycles and tanks. The context of Thermopylau was the invasion of Greece by Persia in revenge for a defeat at Arnham ten years earlier and in response to ongoing interference by Greek city-states in the affairs of Greek settlements in Asia Minor. Disagreements among the Greek states about an appropriate response resulted in a relatively small force only being sent to confront the invaders north of the Isthmus of Corinth, and it was these who stood at Thermopylau, including the small contingent of Spartans who represented minority opinion among the cities of the Peloponnes. The context of Operation Market Garden was the aftermath of the successful invasion of Europe by Allied troops and concerned efforts to bring World War II to a fast and successful conclusion by the defeat of Germany. It comprised drops of British, American and Polish paratroops in three areas with the intention of capturing a series of bridges along a singletrack road along which an armoured column would travel to enter Germany and thereby trapping German forces. The Battle of Arnham itself comprised two elements, the seizure and subsequent fight for the road bridge across the Rhine and, some kilometres away, the attempts by a larger contingent of paratroops to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed by much stronger German forces. Despite these clear differences of context, the stories of the fighting at the two sites are otherwise remarkably similar. Both relatively small numbers were charged with retaining control over a determinate and relatively small area of ground against much superior forces. Both fights lasted a matter of days. Eight at Thermopylau, although not all these were spent in actual fighting, and three at Arnham in which actual combat lasted nearly 24 hours each day. Both fights resulted in a final overwhelming assault. At Thermopylau, by greater numbers, able to bypass the position held by the Greeks at Arnham by bringing to bear heavy firepower which destroyed the buildings in which the paratroops were hiding. The defending commanders at both fights, and indeed their troops, dismayed a disdain for surrender and a capacity for albeit dark wit if the stories are to be believed. The Spartan leader was threatened by a Persian that Persian arrows would darken the skies and blot out the sun, to which he replied, then, good, we will be fighting in the shade. On another occasion, he responded to the offer of surrender on good terms if the Spartans handed over their weapons. And he replied that if the Persians were so keen on Spartan weapons, they should come and take them. The paratroop commander at Arnham responded to the offer of terms for surrender by apologising for his inability to accept large number of prisoners at that time, much to the discomfort of the offering German messenger. And later on, a German officer congratulated the paratroops for their skill in urban fighting which they said showed how much experience they had to which the British commander replied that actually it was their first time and if they had another chance they'd do it much better then. The only area in which they're significantly different is in terms of immediately subsequent events. The Mopoli can be considered to have positive outcomes simply because there were some. The victorious Persians were able to occupy northern Greece, but the Athenian navy was intact and able to defeat the Persians at Salamis, which encouraged the Greek city states to further resist culminating Greek victory at Plataea and expulsion of the Persians from Greece. By contrast, Arnham can be said to have had negative results in that nothing particularly followed that changed the situation. The Allies retained the ground that they had gained through in the market garden operation, but subsequent British action concentrated on opening Antwerp as a port and the Rhine wouldn't be crossed and Germany invaded until March 1945. The German Arden offensive of late 1944 disrupted Allied action but ultimately achieved nothing except to weaken German capacity. The overall result is that the two events are in most important respects identical in form, but are treated and considered as different kinds of thing. One is a singular battle in its own right, the other a simply part of a larger battle. As indicated, the only major difference is in immediate outcomes, and this may perhaps provide the answer to the question as to why one is treated as an event in its own right that the other and the other is not, that we expect battles to deliver some kind of outcome. This is similar to the idea underpinning notions of decisiveness, which has been critiqued by Keegan among others. The idea that as Keegan rather unkindly puts it, leads whole squads of modern military historians to justify their description to strategically piffling pointless bloodbaths that cache a decisive on the grounds that they must have decided something. While Keegan's statement may be an overstatement, nonetheless the comparison made here between Thermopylai and Arnham Bridge does seem to suggest that it's the subsequent outcomes of the fight that play an important part in determining its status as seen in retrospect. The question as to why one action is accorded the status of battle in its own right, and the other not, is difficult to answer except in the arbitrary description of status based not upon the characteristics of the event itself, but upon events afterwards. If we try and make attribution a more systematic matter, then we need to ask what are the key attributes we apply without deep thought. As indicated here, other kinds of military activity are recorded lower status and lower significance. The Spartans and thespians who died at Thermopylai ranked high among the heroes of ancient Greece, and as a number of writers have been at pains to explain, contemporary and near contemporary literary descriptions of the fight employed tropes that recall Homeric epic. It's therefore paradoxical that those involved in the fight for Arnham Bridge can also be considered as heroes despite the fact that their action is not in itself a battle. The status we accord fighters is therefore not one of the criteria we unwittingly apply. But neither are the size of forces involved. The Custer battle, for example, involved fewer than either Arnham or Thermopylai, or other shared characteristics of the two fights considered here. The only identifiable difference is that of outcome, and that may be the criteria on which such descriptions are ultimately based. Thermopylai, as pointed out above, resulted in clear and immediate consequences for the Greek city states and the Persian invaders, leading to further military action and the ultimate conclusion of the war. By contrast, the fighter Arnham led to no more action in that sector, continued occupation of the town by German forces, no further movement by the Allies in that sector, and the focus of the war moved elsewhere. They contrasted a set of positive, Thermopylai, and negative for Arnham outcomes, not as determined in relation to the interests of participants, but in terms of what happens next. Such a criterion could be dismissed as merely another way of discussing decisiveness, something we refer to elsewhere, or historical significance in terms of impact of the outcome, but it's really something different. Our designation of positive or negative outcomes do not attempt to assess the importance of outcomes, but to count simply whether there were any at all. In the case of Thermopylai, there are a whole series of outcomes that affected future conditions. In the case of Arnham, none. The question we're left with is, does any of this matter? If it doesn't matter, it may have consequences for the status of battlefield archaeology, reducing it to a helpful but unimportant aspect of wider military history. If it does matter, then we need to establish criteria for identifying the objects of our enquiry. Thank you.