European Armies and the Conduct of War

232 Pages·1988·2.84 MB·English

by  Hew Strachan

European Armies and the Conduct of War
European Armies and the
Conduct of War
HEW STRACHAN
London and New York
First published in 1983 by the Academic Division of
Unwin Hyman Ltd
Seventh impression 1988
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© Hew Strachan 1983
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Strachan, Hew
European armies and the conduct of war.
1. Military art and science—Europe—History
2. Military history. Modern
3. Europe—History, Military
I. Title
355′.02′094 D215
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Strachan, Hew
European armies and the conduct of war.
Bibliography: p.
1. Military art and science—Europe—History.
2. War. 3. Military history. Modern. I. Title.
U43.E95S76 1983 355′.0094 83–8787
ISBN 0-203-99558-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-07863-6 (Print Edition)
Contents
page
List of Maps and Figures v
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction viii
1 The Study of War 1
2 The Age of Marlborough and Frederick 9
3 The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Tactics 23
4 Napoleonic Warfare 39
5 Jomini and the Napoleonic Tradition 59
6 Colonial Warfare, and its Contribution to the Art of War in Europe 75
7 Clausewitz and the Rise of Prussian Military Hegemony 89
8 Technology and its Impact on Tactics 107
9 First World War 129
10 Blitzkrieg 149
11 Total War 167
12 The Revolution in Strategy 185
Epilogue 199
Select Bibliography 203
Supplementary Bibliography 211
Index 213
List of Maps and Figures
page
1 The Blenheim campaign, 1704 14
2 The battle of Ramillies, 1706 20
3 The battle of Leuthen, 1757 22
4 Bourcet’s plan of campaign, 1744 36
5 The Lodi campaign, 1796 46
6 The Marengo campaign, 1800 48
7 The Ulm and Austerlitz campaigns, 1805 49
8 The Jena campaign, 1806 50
9 The battle of Austerlitz, 1805 52
10 Sherman’s Georgia campaign, 1864 72
11 The campaign of 1866 99
12 The campaign of 1870 100
13 The German advance in the West, 1914 131
14 The battle of the Marne, 1914 133
15 The eastern front, 1914 135
16 The battle of France, 1940 164
17 The eastern front, 1941 169
Figure 1. Guibert’s system of deployment 26
Figure 2. Jomini’s diagram to illustrate the Jena campaign 62
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the following publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the
maps which appear in this volume: Batsford (BT) Ltd., for Map 1 from Marlborough as
Military Commander by David Chandler; Map 6 from The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon
by Gunther E. Rothenberg and Map 8 from Napoleon by James Marshall-Cornwall. Arms
and Armour Press for Map 2 from Atlas of Military Strategy by David Chandler. David &
Charles Ltd., and Christopher Duffy for Map 3 from The Army of Frederick the Great by
Christopher Duffy. Oxford University Press for Map 4 from The Defence of Piedmont by
Spenser Wilkinson. Faber & Faber Ltd., for Map 14 from A History of the World War, 1914–
18 by B.H.Liddell Hart. Eyre Methuen Ltd. (London), for Map 10 from The American Civil
War by Peter J.Parish. Cambridge University Press for Maps 7 and 13 from Supplying War
by Martin Van Creveld. Davis-Poynter Ltd., for Map 16 from France and Belgium 1939–
1940 by Brian Bond. Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., for Maps 5 and 9 from The Campaigns
of Napoleon by David Chandler; Map 11 from The Art of War by William McElwee;
Map 15 from Recent History Atlas, 1860–1960 by Martin Gilbert and Map 17 from The
German Army 1933–1945 by Albert Seaton.
For C.B.R.
‘Quiconque aujourd’hui réfléchit sur les guerres
et sur la stratégie, élève une barrière entre
son intelligence et son humanité’
Raymond Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, vol. 2, p. 267.
Introduction
This is a book about the theory and practice of war. It is not primarily an account of the
campaigns fought in the last two or three hundred years; it is more an attempt to consider
how European armies rationalised their experience of those campaigns and so prepared
their plans and doctrines for the next. It is also a book about social and technological
change. Therefore, it begins with the eighteenth century, and thus aims to set its subject
matter in the context both of the Industrial and of the French Revolutions.
Geographically, it takes a broad swathe through Central and Western Europe. It tends to
neglect the Scandinavian and Mediterranean peripheries, and at points it focuses
exclusively on the leading and most innovative nation of the day. The attention given to
the military experience of the United States, and the consideration of airpower, may both
seem extraneous elements. By the end of the book, I hope it will be clear why they have
been included. A chapter has been devoted to colonial warfare, but guerrilla and counter-
insurgency operations have not been treated.
A book like this is a work of synthesis. I have leant heavily on the research and writing
of others, and in particular—like many other military historians—have been inspired by
the work of Michael Howard and Peter Paret. The Guides to Further Reading at the end
of each chapter (while not revealing the full range of my obligations) are intended to
suggest a number of reasonably available works, preferably in English, with which to begin
further study. They refer to books by the author’s name (and, if necessary, by the date of
publication): the full bibliographical details of each are contained in the Select
Bibliography at the end. Bibliographical comments of a general nature are to be found in
the Guide to Further Reading at the end of chapter 1.
The bulk of this book first took shape in lectures and seminars at Cambridge and
Sandhurst. I am therefore indebted to my colleagues and pupils in both places. Over the
years I have learnt much from Clive Trebilcock, Brian Bond and Dr Christopher Andrew.
More specifically, Dr T.C.W.Blanning, Dr C.A.Bayly and Dr D.Stevenson have read and
commented on portions (or, in the latter case, all) of the work. Their advice was
invaluable. Professor Paul Kennedy has played a vital, if fortuitous, role. Finally I must
thank the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for a number of
research grants and for providing such a congenial environment in which to work.
HEW STRACHAN
Chapter 1
The Study of War
The moderns, who have undertaken to write the history of different wars, or of some
renowned Commanders, being chiefly men of learning only, and utterly unacquainted
with the nature of military operations, have given us indeed agreeable, but useless
productions.’ Thus did Henry Lloyd, a Welshman who had achieved general’s rank in
Russian service, commence his History of the Late War in Germany, published in 1766. What
Lloyd was anxious to do was to point to the distinction between the didactic function of
the study of warfare and the purely historical. For him the pre-eminent examples of the
first category were the ancients, Xenophon and Caesar, but it has remained the dominant
trait in military historical writing up until our own times. In 1925 another major-general,
J.F.C.Fuller, concluded from his study of light infantry in the eighteenth century that
‘Unless history can teach us how to look at the future, the history of war is but a bloody
romance.’
The argument for the didactic use of military history does not therefore simply spring
from a liberal horror of a subject outwardly so obscene. It is also profoundly utilitarian.
The permutations of war are infinite, but each soldier’s personal experience of combat is
likely to be very limited. For every grognard who marched from Rivoli to Waterloo, for
every Thomas Atkins who fought from Dunkirk to Berlin, there have been many more
whose military service has coincided with long periods of peace or with little more than a
brief period of bush-fighting. Real soldiering for some professionals in the Second World
War was the return to coping with the boredom of cantonment life in India. So, if the
potential warriors of the future are to gain any knowledge of war before they encounter
the reality or if they are to enlarge on their limited stock of actual experience, the only
means available for them to do so is vicarious. They must perforce read military history.
The profession to which they belong is not, however, primarily a literate or an
academic one. Its attraction to a young man is the challenge of outdoor life not that of
desk-bound theory. Thus wide reading must be replaced by succinct and readily
assimilable analysis. To this end the didactic tradition in military history has endeavoured
to establish a number of immutable principles of war. They serve as a check-list for a
subaltern suddenly faced with the command of a company or as a vade-mecum for the staf
f college candidate battling his way through seemingly irrelevant detail in campaign
histories. A rough check-list would include the following:
1The object, the need to select the primary target and not to be deflected from that
aim.