Synopses & Reviews
"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
Review
"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."
Table of Contents
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