for just six) were not victories. By any standard, that is a remarkable military record. So
formidable was revolutionary and then Napoleonic France that it took seven coalitions
twenty-three years to bring it down.
Here we should look back, briefly, to note the contrasts as well as the continuities
with the warfare of the preceding century. The contexts of war are vitally important,
although they cannot be all-important, because the mystery of combat performance is
by no means entirely the product of contextual factors but rather is driven in part by
influences integral to warfare itself. In other words, ultimately soldiers need to perform
in battle. Nevertheless, the political and socio-cultural contexts play a determinative role
in defining the character of war in a particular period. It is a general truth that societies
wage war according to their natures and for the kinds of political goal that express their
views of the world.
Dynastic Europe in the eighteenth century inhabited an ‘Age of Reason’, the era of
the Enlightenment, when rationality and reform were intellectually fashionable. Such a
Europe by and large waged its wars in what contemporaries regarded as a reasonable
manner. At least, such was the broad intention. There were exceptions, but then there
always are and always will be. It can be tempting – following Clausewitz, one must add
- to exaggerate the limited character of eighteenth-century warfare. Some historians have
suggested or implied that European wars in that period tended to take the form of an
elaborate and sedately paced game of move and counter-move, with little effort expended
to seek decisive victory. This is one of those frequent cases of a sound argument becom-
ing unsound through exaggeration. The sound argument holds that after 1792 there was
indeed a transformation in the purposes for which wars were waged, and in the ways in
which they were conducted. The unsound argument proceeds to present a substantially
fictitious picture of eighteenth-century warfare. That warfare was exceedingly bloody,
with battlefield death rates entirely compatible with Napoleonic practice. That point
scarcely requires much explanation. Little imagination is needed to grasp the character
of the sharp end of war in the eighteenth century, when well-drilled ranks of professional
soldiers exchanged volleys from smooth-bore muskets at close or even point-blank range
(from 200 down to 8 0 yards or so). Such warfare was no game to the soldiers who had
to do it. However, provided one is alert to the errors of exaggeration, it is not difficult to
present a fair characterization of the warfare of the era which highlights its differences
from what was to follow in the 1790s and, for a while, thereafter.
As a general rule, wars were waged for reasons of state and they did not impact heavily
upon civil society. Enemy society certainly was not generally regarded as a legitimate
target. Needless to say, though, there was no shortage of exceptions. To cite but two,
the British Army treated Scottish Highland clan society as a foe, and it found itself
obliged to regard a sizable percentage of the populace in the American colonies – perhaps
one-third – as more or less actively hostile. Warfare against irregular enemies was not
unknown in the eighteenth century, especially to those who had soldiered in the Americas
or the Balkans, but, by and large, belligerents waged war against foes of broadly like
character to themselves. In the language of today they waged symmetrical warfare. In
this period armies were professional, expensive to train and maintain, and therefore
modest in size. Politics, strategy and the army are interdependent. States generally
did not wage their frequent wars in a half-hearted fashion, as sometimes seemed to be
the case, but rather as vigorously as their military instrument and the contemporary
From limited war to national war 35