The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century / Edition 2

by Larry H. Addington

Overview

"This important work . . . synthesizes the evolution of warfare from 1775 to the present." —Military Review

A thorough revision of a highly successful text, this new edition provides a comprehensive picture of the evolution of modern warfare.

From reviews of the first edition:

"There is nothing else in print that tells so much so concisely about how war has been conducted since the days of Gen. George Washington." —Russell F. Weigley

"A superior synthesis. Well written, nicely organized, remarkably comprehensive, and laced with facts." —Military Affairs

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253208606
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	10/22/1994
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

LARRY H. ADDINGTON is Professor of History at The Citadel and has taught military history for more than twenty-five years. His previous books include The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff and The Patterns of War through the Eighteenth Century.

Read an Excerpt

The Patterns of War since the Eighteenth Century

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By Larry H. Addington

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 1994 Larry H. Addington
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-20860-6

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CHAPTER 1

From Dynastic to National Warfare, 1775–1815

In the forty years between 1775 and 1815 there occurred a revolution in Western warfare that coincided with the coming of the American and French revolutions and the Age of Napoleon. This revolution swept away the traditional forms of dynastic warfare that had evolved in the European world during the previous three hundred years, and began an era of national warfare that persists in the late twentieth century. This study of the patterns of war since the late eighteenth century begins, therefore, with an examination of the process of change in armies between 1775 and 1815, a starting point that allows the setting of a benchmark from which all further changes in warfare may be measured. Although navies were less affected than armies by change in this period, they too will be examined in order to establish the background for understanding the tremendous impact of technological changes on navies over the course of the nineteenth century. Still, the central theme of this chapter is how warfare on land was transformed from conflicts between monarchs to great struggles between peoples—the essence of national warfare.

I. Dynastic Warfare

A. Armies. Between the close of the Middle Ages and the last quarter of the eighteenth century, royal dynastic identification predominated over national identity in European armies. These armies had developed coeval with the rise of centralized monarchies in the Western world; originally, they were temporary combinations of feudal and mercenary forces assembled on the eve of war and were often composed of a variety of nationalities. As royal finances improved, the permanently assembled or standing army became the rule, but even then the early modern army was still multinational in composition. Dynastic armies reached the peak of their development in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, by the end of which time the great military states of the age were Bourbon France, Habsburg Austria, Hohenzollern Prussia, and Romanov Russia. Prussia and Russia were the most lately arrived: Prussia in the reign of Frederick II (the Great), with the outcomes of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) and the Seven Years' War (1756–63), and Russia in the reign of Peter I (the Great) at the close of the Great Northern War (1700–21).

Except for Prussia, which never had more than about six million people in this period, the great military powers of Europe had populations varying from twenty to thirty million each. Prussia was something of a marvel. This relatively small German state counted so much in the European balance of power because it maintained a standing army equal to as much as 3 percent of its population, or, in proportion, three times as many as the other great military powers. In absolute numbers, the largest royal army in Europe before the Wars of the French Revolution was that of France under Louis XIV; it reached a peak strength of about 400,000 troops during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). Only the army of Revolutionary France exceeded that figure in the eighteenth century and then not before 1794. At the other end of the military scale among the great powers of Europe was Britain. Though Britain's population in the home islands was about nine million on the eve of the American Revolution, the British royal army numbered only about 50,000 troops.

Royal dynastic armies were much alike in their social composition, except, to a degree, the British and Russian armies. In most European armies, the hereditary nobility held most of the commissioned officer positions, and the officer without noble patent might face arbitrary limits on his promotions and branch assignments. The officer corps of the British army was dominated by the country gentry, and, in addition, infantry and cavalry officers bought and sold their commissions from lieutenant through the rank of colonel. Few officers ever reached high rank without private means or a wealthy patron. When officers retired, the more impecunious among them had to live off the proceeds of the sale of their commissions. This so-called Purchase System was disappearing on the continent even before the French Revolution, but it survived in the British army until well past the middle of the nineteenth century. In contrast, Peter the Great commissioned so many foreign officers in the Russian army, and so many of them founded aristocratic military families, that as late as the eve of World War I the officer list of the Russian army was still studded with foreign, and especially German, names. In still another practice, the Hohenzollern monarchs of Prussia held the Junker nobility to commissioned service in the army as a compulsory duty as well as a noble privilege.

While commissioned officers of royal armies were drawn mostly from the upper classes of society, enlisted men came from the lowest orders. Serfs, landless peasants, the unemployed of the cities, vagabonds and drifters were either voluntarily recruited or impressed, some of them by that peculiar institution of eighteenth-century conscription, the press gang. Sergeants and corporals (i.e., the noncommissioned officers chosen from the ranks of the veteran soldiers) disciplined and trained the new recruits with close-order drill, the manual of arms, and physical punishments as necessary. The aim of such training was to make the private soldier into a "walking musket" who would perform his duties without question and with the mechanical precision bred of long practice. Desertion in peacetime was discouraged by housing troops in barracks and, in wartime, by close supervision of camps in the field.

Most soldiers in the royal armies of the eighteenth century served in the infantry, and the infantry battalion was the royal army's basic tactical unit, usually two battalions to a regiment. On the continent, a battalion had a typical strength of eight hundred officers and men, and was usually divided into six "companies of the line" and two specialist "flank companies," so called for their positions when the battalion was drawn up on parade. Infantry of the line normally fought in three close-packed ranks, their smoothbore, muzzle-loading flintlock muskets capable of being fired and reloaded at the rate of about two rounds per minute. Firing was done in volleys by platoon, each platoon being a section of a company. One flank company was usually composed of light infantry, soldiers trained to fight in extended order as skirmishers and sometimes armed with the rifle. The grenadier company, the other flank company, was drawn from the largest men in the battalion and was often used to lead charges with the bayonet, the infantry's principal shock weapon in the eighteenth century.

The rifled muskets (or rifles) with which some light infantry companies were equipped were distinguished by spiral grooves in the bore, giving the lead ball a spin that insured greater range and accuracy than the ball fired from the smoothbore musket. Whereas volleys fired by smoothbores had an effective range not exceeding a hundred yards, aimed rifle fire could be dangerous to twice that distance. But the rifled musket took about twice as long to load as a smoothbore musket because the ball had to be introduced at the muzzle and worked down the barrel against the resistance of the rifling, and it was about twice as expensive to make. Until the problems of rapid loading and the added costs of manufacture were solved in the mid-nineteenth century, the rifle remained a specialist's weapon.

In European armies of the late eighteenth century, two or more regiments of infantry composed a brigade, the latter being the largest standard unit found in armies before the Wars of the French Revolution. When deployed on the battlefield, the infantry battalions were supported by batteries of artillery (a battery was composed of two to six guns) and squadrons of cavalry (in size, each squadron was roughly equivalent to a small infantry battalion). A squadron was subdivided into "troops," each "troop" being the counterpart of an infantry company. When the infantry, cavalry, and artillery were combined with siege and supply trains for mobile warfare, the force was designated a field army. In the Seven Years' War, the last great conflict in the Western world before the American Revolution, the average size of a European field army was 47,000 men, and the largest field army slightly exceeded 100,000 men.

Unless it was the monarch himself, the commander-in-chief of a field army bore the rank of marshal, field marshal, colonel general, or lieutenant general, the practice varying from army to army. Whatever his rank, the commanding general was assisted in his staff work by an adjutant general and a quartermaster general, and in command of his forces by one or more major generals. A brigadier general commanded a brigade; a colonel commanded a regiment, a lieutenant colonel or a major commanded a battalion, a captain commanded a company, and a lieutenant, the lowest-ranking of the commissioned officers, commanded a platoon.

Since the uniforms of the eighteenth century were gaudy by today's standards, an army deployed on the battlefield presented a colorful spectacle. Cover and concealment played no significant role in combat for troops drawn up in large formations in which, as a practical matter, the infantry had to stand in order to load and fire their muskets. Artillery pieces were dragged into position before battle by draft animals driven by civilian teamsters who, once the guns were placed, retired with their animals to the safety of the wagon trains in the rear. Consequently, all guns, save those light enough to be wheeled by hand, had to remain stationary throughout the battle. When forming for battle, each infantry battalion approached at right angles the space in the army's line assigned to it, then wheeled to march across the space until it was occupied. By making a half-turn to left or right, it faced the enemy line, usually about 300–400 yards away. (See Diagram 1.) All this marching and wheeling about took time and required careful judgment on the part of the officers. The cavalry guarded the flanks of the deployed line of infantry and artillery, or remained in the rear until needed. Cavalry were rarely committed to battle except against other cavalry unless the enemy's infantry formations were in disorder. In order to repel the attack of cavalry, an infantry battalion usually formed a hollow "square" (actually a diamond-shaped formation), six ranks to a side and with two or more guns at the corners.

The biggest tactical problems facing infantry in the eighteenth century were the time-consuming delay in forming into line before battle and the inflexibility of the line once formed. With each battalion having a frontage of 150–200 yards, an advancing line tended to weave and to develop gaps, and required frequent halts in order for the officers to redress its ranks. Until about the middle of the eighteenth century the common wisdom was that troops could not keep good order if they were marched faster than ninety paces per minute; when the Prussian infantry introduced the Quick Step (120 paces a minute) without jumbling up the ranks, they were judged the wonder of the age. Eventually, other armies mastered the Quick Step, today's standard marching cadence, but the Quick Step did not solve the basic problem of rapid and flexible tactical maneuver. The slow, parade ground–like movements of armies on the battlefield survived down to the eve of the Wars of the French Revolution.

Once the companies were in line and allowing 3 yards between companies, the battalion frontage would be 221 yards, or more than two modern football fields laid end-to-end. Battalions with fewer men and tighter intervals might reduce the length of the line to about 150 yards. In some armies, No. 1 Company would be composed of grenadiers and No. 8 Company composed of light infantry.

The strategic movement of royal armies was as slow and deliberate as their tactical movements on the battlefield. In Europe, operations were mounted from large fortresses on the frontiers, i.e., fortified cities where supplies had been accumulated in magazines beforehand. Horse-drawn wagons hauled ammunition and food for the troops and fodder for the animals, but since hay and oats are especially bulky items and a horse eats at least twenty pounds of fodder per day, a supply train could not usually meet the needs of a field army further than seventy miles (or a five-day march) from its base. Food and fodder had to be replenished by staging supplies from the magazine in the rear or, more commonly, by drawing them from the local countryside. Relying on local resources necessitated long delays at intervals to enable contractors to make arrangements to buy and collect supplies, or, if in enemy territory, have the troops seize them by force. For logistical reasons, therefore, the mark of good generalship in the royal dynastic age was a careful regard for supply and the conservation of human and material resources.

One of the greatest practitioners of dynastic warfare was Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. Even before Frederick reached the throne, his father, Frederick William II, was responsible for creating the fourth largest army in Europe when the Prussian population was thirteenth in size. Frederick William II made the Junker nobility serve as officers in the army and compelled large landowners to allow their serfs to undergo short-term military training so as to form a kind of trained reserve. His emphasis on rigorous drill and discipline resulted in an army especially strong in infantry of the line, his chief military legacy, but he recruited so many foreigners to keep up his army's strength that as many as a quarter of his soldiers were drawn from outside Prussia. His heir, Frederick II, discovered early in the War of the Austrian Succession that the Prussian army was deficient in both artillery and cavalry and that he must improve both branches as the war went along. Still, Frederick emerged from the war with the province of Silesia and enough resources to expand his army to 163,000 troops by 1756. He had also gained a practical fund of experience that served him well in the Seven Years' War, a conflict in which Prussia's very survival was at stake and in which the Prussian army, aided by generous financial subsidies from Britain and some assistance from foreign troops, managed to fend off invasions of the French, Russian, and Austrian armies.

In the late eighteenth century, Britain's royal army was small by continental European standards; in addition, it was scattered over an extensive overseas empire. After the English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century and a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, Parliament shared power over the army with the restored Stuart monarchy. Parliament remained suspicious of large standing armies, which might be converted into engines of internal tyranny, and it preferred to rely on the navy and the militia for defense of the home islands as much as possible. The Duke of Marlborough was one of Europe's most outstanding soldiers on the continent during the War of the Spanish Succession, but his army was more multinational than it was British. After the Hanoverian dynasty reached the British throne early in the eighteenth century, George II was the last British monarch to command an army in the field, narrowly winning the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the British East India Trading Company organized a private army to protect its holdings on the subcontinent of India from French and native rivals, and by the final decade of the century the company army numbered 150,000 troops, a larger force than the British royal army at the time. The company commissioned its own officers, promoting them on the basis of seniority through the rank of colonel, the highest rank held. The company army was divided among European regiments and native regiments officered by Europeans, the native soldiers being known as sepoys. The company army lasted down to the Great Mutiny of 1857, the subsequent abolition of the company, and the conversion of India to the status of a British crown colony.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Patterns of War since the Eighteenth Century by Larry H. Addington. Copyright © 1994 Larry H. Addington. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents

Contents

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION,
PREFACE,
1. FROM DYNASTIC TO NATIONAL WARFARE, 1775–1815,
2. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 1815–71,
3. THE MARCH TOWARD WORLD WAR, 1871–1914,
4. THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1914–18,
5. BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS, 1919–39,
6. THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939–45,
7. THE PATTERNS OF THE COLD WAR, 1945–89, AND THEIR AFTERMATH,
EPILOGUE,
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY,
INDEX,