‘grammar’ of war permitted (Clausewitz, 1976: 605). The enterprise was governed by
the crucial political context.
To curb desertion, soldiers were required to move together under tight control. They
could not be trusted to forage for themselves, a practice which was generally forbidden
anyway because of its potential to harm civilians. It followed that the movement of armies
was tied to magazines, supply depots, and as a consequence tended to be ponderous.
A slow tempo of military movement, one driven by logistic realities, translated as an
opportunity for the enemy to evade battle, should it so choose. Eighteenth-century armies
were not instruments of swift decision. They could not move rapidly. Moreover, they
certainly could not turn a battlefield success into a decisive victory, because they lacked
the ability to rout and destroy a beaten enemy. In general, with soldiers relatively scarce,
expensive and hard to replace, and with political goals generally modest, commanders,
while not necessarily battle-shy, assuredly were inclined to regard battle as a last resort
and not as their dominant operational intention. Warfare was characterized more by
siege and manoeuvre than by a ruthless quest for decision by blood. Again, one must cite
an exception. Because of a geopolitical vulnerability unique among the greater powers,
Prussia was obliged to seek decisive battle. The relatively weak Prussia of Frederick the
Great (1712– 8 6; reigned 1740– 8 6) could not afford lengthy, indecisive campaigns. Its
central European geographical position and lack of natural frontiers meant that it lacked
the depth of territory to withstand and recover from severe military misfortune.
Warfare was not waged in the winter, it had little impact upon civilian society, and
its recruited soldiers were all ‘volunteers’ who were motivated by almost everything
except for any approximation to patriotic sentiment. Soldiers joined up because of
poverty, for drink, to escape the noose, because they were stupid and, in a few cases,
because they were romantically attracted to the lies they had heard about the soldierly
life. That said, from such unpromising human material every European army managed
to drill its volunteers into a coherent body of semi-automatons who would, and did, stand
heroically to face massed musket-fire at point-blank range. Warfare was extensive,
frequent and indeed a normal activity of state, but rarely was it other than behaviour
conducted for limited political goals. The reason was the eminently practical one that was
noted above: eighteenth-century armies were not capable of being wielded as instruments
of rapid decision. Strategy reflected the reasonable ambitions of the political context
of the century as well as the character of the military agent. Strategy is nothing if not
pragmatic.
The eighteenth century had an intellectual and cultural climate that favoured reason,
proportion and rationality. States accepted each other’s political legitimacy – albeit with
the notable exception of Poland, which suffered three, ultimately terminal, partitions
(1772, 1793, 1795) – and they knew that no gains or losses were likely to be final. The
outcome of warfare today would be contested again in warfare’s inevitable next round.
An important, even critical, factor to add to those already cited in explanation of the
limited character of eighteenth-century warfare was the fundamental matter of cost.
States in that period, with the lonely exception of Britain, simply lacked the ability to pay
for long, expensive wars. State financial institutions were rudimentary, or altogether
absent. Officials lacked the authority or the means to collect taxes reliably and in great
amounts. States that cannot tax effectively cannot raise credit. This is an appropriate point
at which to shift focus from pre-Revolutionary Europe to the new age that was triggered
36 War, peace and international relations