Age of Battles The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo

"One of the most interesting, important, and ambitious books about the conduct, and perhaps the ultimate futility, of war." --Gunther E. Rothenberg

"[A] highly scholarly and wonderfully absorbing study." --John Bayley, The London Review of Books

"What Russell F. Weigley writes, the rest of us read. The Age of Battles is a persuasive reminder that even in the age of 'rational' warfare, one can honestly wonder why war seemed an unavoidable policy choice." --Allan R. Millett, The Journal of American History

"What Russell F. Weigley writes, the rest of us read. The Age of Battles is a persuasive reminder that even in the age of 'rational' warfare, one can honestly wonder why war seemed an unavoidable policy choice."

Introduction

Note on Dates

Part One. The Profession of Officership and the Birth of Modern War

1. The Return of the Legions: Gustavus Adolphus and Breitenfeld

2. The Limits of the New Legions: Lützen and After

3. Under the Lily Banners: Rocroi

4. The Army of the Sun King

5. Marlborough's Battles: Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet

6. The Emergence of the Great Powers of Eastern Europe

7. The Rise of Naval Power

Part Two. The EIghteenth Century: The Classical Epoch of Modern War

8. The Battles of Frederick the Great

9. The French and British Armed Forces from the Rhine to the St. Lawrence

10. Toward Wars of Nations: The War of American Independence

11. Prelude to Revolution

Part Three. Thunderstrokes of Battle: The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

12. The French Revolution: Transformation and Continuity in War

13. Sea Power and Empire

14. The Climax of Napoleonic War: To Austerlitz and Jena-Auerstädt

15. The Gradual Eclipse of the Battle of Annihilation; The Rise of the War of Attrition

16. Campaigns of Exhaustion and Attrition

17. The Resurgence of Military Professionalism

18. The Downfall of Genius

19. The End of an