Generally, a battle is a conceptual component in the hierarchy of combat in warfare between two or more armed forces, or combatants. In a battle, each combatant will seek to defeat the others, with defeat determined by the conditions of a military campaign. 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.

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.

A wagon ('waggon' in British and Commonwealth English) is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals; it was formerly often called a wain, and if low and sideless may be called a dray, trolley or float. Wagons are used for transporting goods, agricultural materials or sometimes people.

Wagons are pulled by animals such as horses, mules or oxen. They may be pulled by one animal or by several, often in pairs.

Wagons are distinguished from carts, which have two wheels, and from lighter four-wheeled vehicles for carrying people, such as carriages.

To enable the wagon to turn in as little space as possible, the front pair of wheels are often made smaller than the rear pair to allow them to turn close under the vehicle sides, and to allow them to turn still further the wagon body may be waisted. The front wheels of trolleys and floats are small enough to turn under the vehicle's body.