Battle: A History of Combat and Culture by John A Lynn

Battle: A History of Combat and Culture by John A Lynn

Author:John A Lynn [Lynn, John A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0813333725
Amazon: B009SAUZQC
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2009-04-24T00:00:00+00:00


READINGS OF ON WAR

During the fifty years following the publication of On War, history reinforced Military Romanticism, as peoples’ wars culminated in battles that produced rapid decisions out of bloody fury in Napoleonic fashion. The 1859 war that pitted Piedmont and France against Austria climaxed at the battle of Solferino and was over in four months, playing a vital role in Italian unification. The Austro-Prussian War, with its decisive battle at Königgrätz, consumed only seven weeks in 1866. Although fighting during the Franco-Prussian War extended from July 1870 to February 1871, the battles that sealed the fate of France, Gravelotte-St. Privat and Sedan, occurred in the first seven weeks of the war. Conflicts with indigenous colonial peoples also promised quick results, in which European advantages in the tools of war sped the process. At the same time, Europeans dismissed long and brutal struggles, such as the Crimean War and the American Civil War, as the products of bumbling.

In the decades following its publication in Clausewitz’s posthumous works, On War appeared in new German editions and reached audiences outside Germany, with the first Dutch edition in 1846, the first French in 1849, and the first English in 1874.102 Prussian victory over Austria and France seemed to endorse On War, and it acquired a great reputation.103 Max Jähns, the German military intellectual, commented in 1891, “There is something strange about Clausewitz’s influence,” for even though his “almost mystical” works were not as widely read as believed, Clausewitz’s “opinions have spread throughout the entire army and have proven immeasurably fruitful.”104 On War had become an important element in the European professional discourse on war.

But even as Prussian victories justified Military Romanticism and On War, factors emerged that Clausewitz could not have foreseen. On the one hand, the Industrial Revolution created new technologies of transportation, communication, and, eventually, weaponry that impacted war profoundly. And on the other hand, population growth, mobilized by new political/military systems in Europe, created huge armies. By the late nineteenth century, regular armies metamorphosed into training establishments that processed recruits during a few—usually two or three—years of full-time service and then turned them out into reserve units that outnumbered the full-time army. When armies mobilized now, reserves multiplied the number of troops to be put into campaign several times over. This “mass reserve” style of army, pioneered by Prussia/Germany, replaced the older popular conscript forces.105 In order to manage these gargantuan, railroad-based armies, another Prussian innovation of the early nineteenth century, the general staff, proved essential. After the Franco-Prussian War demonstrated the worth of the German General Staff, all major European powers adopted this institution for centralized planning and control.

Prussian victory depended on the mastery of new technologies and the creation of new institutions, and initially these could be exploited in a way that was consistent with On War. The great virtuoso of mid-nineteenth-century warfare Helmuth von Moltke the elder, renowned chief of the Prussian/German General Staff, 1857–1887, called himself a disciple of Clausewitz.106 Gerhard Ritter described Moltke as “not



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