Surveys the evolution of continental conflict through professional and socio-national lenses from the medieval ages to the Cold War, observing the extent of 20th-century warfare (if not the moral conditions) had returned to that of the Dark Ages. Howard is often interested to demonstrate an equilibrium between political events and military technology, or more broadly between offense and defense. Not only the proverbial generals but indeed modern societies misjudge the wars of the future: conflict, being pervasive, tends to overwhelm military doctrine with new challenges.
The waves of Saracen, Magyar, and above all Norse attacks had prompted the rise of local strongmen; the Norman conquest created Christian Europe’s most complement implementation of feudalism. By the 14th century laws and limitations of knightly warfare and service obligations were fairly uniform. A century later, after the French taille became permanent, her kings maintained standing armies which replaced knightly warlords. Swiss pikemen were the elite infantry, by dint of technical structure and sociopolitical organization; the cavalry comprised aristocrats; and improving artillery could reduce fortified castles – conditions recognizable in the Napoleonic era.
Infantry fighting in the 16th century was shaped by the tercios of Spain, where the cavalry were less prestigious (but indeed nobles in the ranks). Holland was the century’s outlier, her armies regularly paid and drilled, producing a previously unknown discipline in the ranks. In the era of exploration, ships had to be able to cargo and to fight; privateers were the equivalent of condottiere. The profit of the West Indies was in smuggling and piracy. But on land, contrary to the prior ages of mercenaries pillaging of peasant countrysides, rival dynasties were increasingly able to tap the ‘national’ creation of wealth, such as by chartered companies, and trade was seen as a form of war, for example by Colbert. By result, they could operate bureaucracies to run armed forces.
In the 18th century, the proto-nation-state took full control of warfare, including at seas. War became the province of professional soldiers, especially the officer class. Again the Dutch were tactical leaders in defensive fortification (digging) as well as drilling. The stoicism required by rank formation sat well with the Protestant ethic of self-discipline.
Well-qualified generals had begun to appear in the second half of the prior century, the greatest being the Duke of Marlborough. The notable administrators were Michel Le Tellier and his son the Marquis de Louvois, serving Louis XIV, which helped the French army to become the most efficient instrument of state power yet seen. Meanwhile the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg traded his notables recognition of existing privileges for a small grant of funds to raise a stranding army. In effect they conceded their right to tax themselves. Consequently royal officials were sent to assess land values, which produced further monies for additional personnel and hence further tax. The Prussian officer ranks became a social elite. Armies, being expensive, were concerned to avoid battle and potential loss. Campaigns were inconclusive, over short four-to-five month windows. Strategy focused on siege, fortification, supply and logistics.
The Enlightenment saw war as unreasonable, the economist as destroying wealth. But professionalization and theory would be supplanted by nationalism, beginning with Napoleonic France. The resulting enlargement reintroduced speed of movement and scale of attack, while requiring coordination of deployment (but not always supply). The entire populace was involved in production, coordinated by government, so the whole of the enemy nation had to be reduced.
Napoleon sought to concentrate fire against a single point made vulnerable by the division of forces, often that point being the communications linchpin. When neutralized, the enemy was forced either to capitulate or to fight in smaller (inferior) units. He introduced broad dispersion coupled with rapid reassembly. All European forces would adopt his organization of forces, divided and subdivided among corps, divisions, brigades, and so on.
The British navy exploited new signaling systems allowing for more elaborate use of improved battle tactics. In the Napoleonic wars, its role was not to stop trade with Europe, but to blockade so as to force commerce through Britain, to complement attritional strategy. Consequently Napoleon was forced to install the hated Continental system to requisition needed military supplied. Russia, in part for lack of English timber and grains, responded by changing sides in 1812. Winter in Russia as well as Wellington in Spain then denied the French the decisive battle of concentrated forces.
Afterward Europe’s sought to contain ‘liberal’ / national sentiments, for example in the Habsburg empire. Later in the 19th century, Moltke converted Germany’s staff officers to an elite which rotated in and out of command posts. 1870 was as much a systemic as a military victory, the romantic heroism of independent command falling to wayside. Britain and the US later joined suit, following poor performance in the Boer and Spanish wars (in Cuba).
Prior to the Great War, it was assumed population for the army’s ranks, economic production, and railroad capacity would determine military capability, in contrast to the 18th century’s preference for caliber of professional forces. Between 1815 and 1914 communications capabilities transformed strategy, and newly destructive technology changed tactics. The impetus was attack – despite evident of growing defensive advantage – in order to make the enemy use finite resources. Howard dismisses the idea that elites promoted the national fervor of 1914-15; they distrusted nationalism. Enthusiasm belonged more to democratic views promoted by Hegel, Mazzini, etc. By the end of World War I, the artillery took ground, the infantry held it, and ground itself was important for observing and siting artillery. Simultaneously gaps between professional soldiery and democratic politicians were emerging.
Technology not only increase the destructiveness of weapons but also the care of troops. In the 18th century, casualty by injury and disease outnumbered battlefield deaths by 5:1; now the ratio reversed. The popular understanding of World War I’s ‘alienation’ is far from wholly true: the interwar years evidence nostalgia for clear purpose, especially in MittelEuropa (i.e., fascism).
Naval defeats of Spain (by the USA in1898) and Russia (by Japan in 1904) foretold the changing naval balance of power, while making clear technology (not popular participation) dominated war as sea. Submarines were the primary example. Though the cult of the mass army had passed by the end of World War II, latter-day societies were more thoroughly subsumed in economic production or exposure to mass bombing, taking them back beyond the early modern era.