Pick Your Battles

Franco-Prussian War: Sedan

2009-06-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

While the French army was now hanging out in Metz doing nothing, Gen, MacMahon had a brand-new army in Chalons and was thinking of marching it to Paris. But then a message arrived from Bazaine, saying he was breaking out of Metz and going northwest. So MacMahon said okay, let's go northeast and help him. And off he went.

Now Motlke had two jobs: keep Bazaine's army in Metz and destroy MacMahon's. So he divided his armies into two equal halves and demoted Steinmetz.

Frederick Charles got to deal with Bazaine and the other Germans went off to find MacMahon. They found evidence that MacMahon had marched northeast from Rheims, so the Germans quick marched it through the Argonne forest. It was a hard march for the Germans, but totally worth it when their cavalry found MacMahon's army on August 26. (1)

When MacMahon had decided to march off to help Bazaine rather than go to Paris he was already toast. His only chance now was speed and his army couldn't do that. The Battle of Beaumont began on Aug. 30 and was a total party for the Germans. MacMahon ordered his corps commanders to fall back on the fortress of Sedan.

At this interesting point, a new French character arrives — the unfortunately named General de Wimpffen. He was originally in Africa, but was ordered to Sedan via Paris. In his pocket was a message that if anything happened to MacMahon, Wimpffen was in charge.

He came to Sedan just as the German armies started surrounding them, sealing the French army against the Belgian border. This prompted Gen. Ducrot the say the following "deathless sentence": "Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre et nous y serons emmerdes."

I didn't get the joke right away. (We're not all fluent in French here, Howard.) But this sentence really is deathless, because Google found the translation in half a second: "We’re in the toilet bowl, about to be shit on.”

And Ducrot was right. MacMahon was hit in the leg by a shell fragment and Ducrot tried to organize a retreat before they were totally surrounded.

But then Wimpffen showed up. Despite his name, he was no wimp, although a little wimpiness would have helped the situation. He insisted on staying, repeatedly shouting "We need a victory!" while the Germans pulled the noose tight. The French had to surrender and Napoleon III was captured.

Sounds like it's all over, right? Guess again.

__________________

1) Happy Birthday Ron!

Franco-Prussian War: Marching in and out of Metz

2009-06-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Meet General Carl Blumenthal. He was with the Prussian's 3rd Army on the left, separated from the rest of the armies by 50 miles of mountains. On Aug. 4, Blumenthal crossed into the Alsatian frontier. The French under General MacMahon decided not to defend this frontier, but led his 48,000 soldiers to a good position at Froeschwiller. (1)

So Blumenthal fell like a ton of bricks on a town called Wissembourg: 50,000 Germans against 8,600 French troops. The French division's commander was killed, the town fell, the French ran and the whole battle lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Then Blumenthal went and found MacMahon, who was still sitting on his ridge at Froeschwiller.

By 3 p.m., MacMahon was in serious trouble. He tried to send out the cavalry -- but the attack was hopeless. Cavalry couldn't charge against infantry with breech-loading rifles, a lesson, Howard says, that was to be forgotten long before 1914. The German guns were pulverizing the French. By 4:30 p.m. it was all over. The Germans paid heavily, but MacMahon lost half his strength.

It would take the armies of Europe 50 years to learn the significance of Aug. 6, 1870, said Howard: "The collapse of the cavalry, the transformation of the infantry and the triumph of the gun."

The defeats also left the French terribly depressed. Possible allies like the Austrians and Italians just sneaked away. Paris was outraged. But the French managed to regroup and assemble nearly 180,000 men at Metz. Napoleon III planned to go to Chalons and raise a new army, so he appointed a new commander-in-chief named Francois Achille Bazaine.

Apparently Bazaine has a very bad reputation in military history, but Howard begs us to ignore that and judge him fairly. (Easy for me to do — I'd never heard of the guy.) We're also told to overlook the fact that Bazaine was a weird-looking dude with "tiny, malevolent eyes set in a suety, undistinguished face." (2)

On Aug. 13, Bazaine started pulling everyone out of Metz at 4:30 a.m. It was a mess. Heavy rains had swept away or damaged all the extra bridges the French had built across the Moselle river nearby. Baggage trains blocked the streets of Metz. Twelve hours later., the troops were finally starting to cross the Moselle when they heard Prussian cannons.

The Germans were pretty surprised to see the French still around, but that didn't stop them from attacking. It was unclear on the morning of Aug. 15 what the battle achieved. Both sides claimed victory and "Bazaine lost 12 vital hours making his escape from Metz."

Bazaine went to bed early after the battle and about 10 a.m. the next morning, he sent off his 160,000-man army along one steep road west to Verdun. This guaranteed that the Germans would reach the Meuse river — the next river on the way to Paris — long before the French.

For the Germans were still lurking around out there. When the French realized that, they stopped moving again. Great, said Moltke, and he told Frederick Charles to advance straight north and attack them on the road to Verdun. But Fred couldn't believe the French would dink around like that ("Surely they must be close to the Meuse by now!") and he marched northwest to head Bazaine off. Only Fred's extreme right wing was heading north the way Moltke wanted.

The result? Fred's two right flank corps had to fight the entire French army on the 16th. By 11:30 a.m. the German position looked desperate, and at 2 p.m. they sent out the cavalry. "It was, perhaps, the last successful cavalry charge in Western European warfare," Howard said. Military historians pointed to it for the next 40 years that sending out cavalry against guns was just dandy. By the time the fighting died down at night, both sides, once again, felt they were the victors.

Bazaine had no such illusion. Since the Germans had cut the road to Verdun, he had to return to Metz to reorganize.

Understandably, this put a a little hitch in the French victory party. It took the French eight hours to cover 3-4 miles on the road back to Metz and form a single line north to south. Moltke saw new possibilities in this. Forget the Meuse, he said, let's push the French army away from Paris.

On Aug. 18 the two armies clashed. This time both full armies were engaged (the Germans had 188,000 men and the French had 112,000) and this battle was actually on purpose. Things came to a head at 7 p.m. when the Germans sent in the last reserves. It was routed and the Germans panicked, but the French didn't follow up. They saw no need to pursue their enemy.

"Such an army does not deserve victory," said Howard, disgusted.

This time, neither side felt victorious. The Germans had lost too many men and the French just ended up in Metz again.

________________________

1) I can't wait till this war gets further into France and I can pronounce these names.

2) Howard really isn't helping Bazaine's cause with comments like this.

The Franco Prussian War: Plans? What Plans?

2009-06-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

So there we have the Germans, expecting an invasion from France any minute. Moltke started positioning his three armies according to his detailed plan.

The King’s nephew Frederick Charles (“Mr. Cautious”) was marching south from the Rhine to Saarbrucken through the mountains. Steinmetz (“Mr. Crazy”) was marching to Saarbrucken from the west. Separated from these two armies by 50 miles of mountains we had the Crown Prince (“Mr. Crabby”) out in the East.

Moltke wanted to attack the French army right away, but Mr. Crabby said he wasn’t ready. So Moltke told Mr. Crazy (Steinmetz) to move a little southeast. Steinmetz refused; instead he took his army straight into the path of the 2nd Army, led by Mr. Cautious (Frederick Charles).

OK, that didn’t go well, obviously. “It was becoming clear,” said Howard a little grumpily, “that Moltke’s plans were more likely to be disrupted by his own subordinates than by the French.”

Moltke’s original plan to encircle the French was now in the trash can, but he still had a chance to try again if only Steinmetz did as he was told this time.

So now two overlapping German armies were marching on Saarbrucken. They get to the Saarbrucken heights — no French. They march a mile south and there the enemy is, based at the Spicheren high ground and strung out to hell and back.

The French must be retreating, the Germans decided, and they tossed aside Moltke’s detailed plans. The first German general on the scene attacked the French at Spicheren.

At first that was okay with the French general Frossard. He had a nice ridge to sit on. But then the day wore on, and nobody came to help him, and every German within earshot was marching to the sound of the guns. By 7:30 p.m., Frossard realized he had to get out and retreat south through the night.

Obviously, the French didn't feel good about this. And the Germans now camped on the battlelfield felt like the victors. But Howard points out that it wasn't the 4,500 Prussians who died in front of the ridge who chased Frossard off ; it was a half-hearted attack on the rear. The Prussians could have driven the French back without shedding much blood at all.

"But the Prussian generals were true disciples of Clausewitz," Howard said sadly. "For them, battle was its own justification."

I don't necessarily agree with this. I don't think the Prussians were all that dumb. I say they really were the victors even though Moltke's grand strategy was screwed up. This battle totally rattled the French commanders and they never really recovered. And really, isn't that what the Prussians wanted? I mean, they weren't dying for a ridge and some trees.

Maybe throwing a wrench into the French command was worth the cost. Clause himself said that armies weren't made to march around the countryside avoiding battle — they were there to force some decisive action.

Sorry, Howard. I gotta go wth Clause with this one

The Franco-Prussian War: If you blink, you’ll miss it

2009-06-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

I guess I should’ve noticed this sooner, but the Franco-Prussian War was not what you’d call a long conflict. It lasted from July 19, 1870 to May 10, 1871. That’s less than a year. I’ve got stuff in my freezer that’s been there longer.

Generally I read about long wars with multiple campaigns and a revolving cast of characters spread out over long distances, even between continents. Such books include pages of maps and jarring, six-month leaps in time. (“The following winter, General Robert E. Lee was still …”)

So this book moves at a pretty slow pace, which is to be expected if you’re spending 456 pages on a 9-month war. That’s like one and a half pages per day, although of course it doesn’t work out that way with all the analyses of forces and such.

This means I’m occasionally looking up and saying things like: “Aren’t we done mobilizing yet?” and “When does the first general get fired?” and finally: “My God, I’ve read 80 pages and it’s not even August yet — when is somebody going to start shooting?”

But enough with the complaining. It’s time to present the crucial element that begins any bloody conflict between two proud and battle-hungry combatants: The Trivial Incident.

As such Incidents go, the one that sparked the Franco-Prussian War was one of the weird ones. It was called “The Hohenzollern Candidature.” (1)

Spain in 1780 didn’t have a king. I don’t know why, or why they couldn’t pick a nice Spaniard to do the job, but they asked a German named Leopold.

This was OK with Leo and Prussia’s King William I, but when the French found out, they went absolutely bananas. Leo withdrew his bid for the throne, but that wasn’t good enough for France. They wanted Prussia humiliated. Some cranky comments by King William about the whole affair get leaked to the press, and the next thing you know, everyone’s declaring war over an unstable throne that nobody really wanted anyway.

Prussia lost no time lining up its three armies as planned. King William’s nephew Frederick Charles — Howard called Fred “cautious to the point of timidity” — would lead the 2nd Army. The Crown Prince drew the 3rd Army, which was full of unenthusiastic southern Germans. The 1st Army went to a man called Steinmetz, who Howard called “willful, obstinate and impatient of control.”

France had planned for three armies as well, but at the last minute Napoleon III threw out that plan in favor of one big army under his personal command. The mobilization of the French troops was total chaos and soldiers were gravely short of both food and discipline.

Everyone assumed the France would attack Germany right away – nobody considered an invasion of France. Helmuth von Moltke, chief of staff of the Prussian army, knew that every day that went by without a French attack tilted the balance in his favor. But France was too screwed up to attack. “By the beginning of August, as trains from all over Germany poured uninterruptedly into the Rhine, Moltke could scarcely believe his fortune.”

Meanwhile, Lebouf, France’s minister of war, felt pretty good about his own country’s mobilization until he came to Metz and looked things over. Supplies were piled up everywhere. Not enough men were gathering to invade Germany. There were barely enough around to defend Metz.

Napoleon III turned up on July 28, but he was little help. “The campaign of 1859 had shown his total incapacity for generalship even when in good health,” Howard said. “Now he was suffering agonizingly from the stone and in constant pain.”

On Jul y 31, the French army started a series of confused marches in the rain, then performed the easy task of taking Saarbrucken with great style. And so hostilities began.

___________________

(1) Soon to be a Hollywood thriller starring Matt Damon as Jason Hohenzollern.

Franco-Prussian War: Revenge of the Paper-Pushers

2009-06-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

“The Franco-Prussian War” by Michael Howard

I’ll confess that when I opened this book, I knew very little about the Franco-Prussian War. I didn’t even know who won until I read the front flap. (“Darn, now I know the ending!”

The author, Michael Howard, would be appalled by this, of course. He wrote this book for serious history students who know all the players, read French and German fluently (1), and can find Staarbrucker on a map.

But despite the language barriers, the Franco-Prussian War fills a vital gap in history for me. I’ve spent some time with Napoleon I and Clausewitz and the Civil War generals, but then it’s a long dark night until Franz Ferdinand gets shot in Sarajevo in 1914.

So it’s time for the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, between a barely united north Germany under Prince William and France under Napoleon III.

SPOILER ALERT: The Germans win.

In the 40 years following the Napoleonic Wars, Howard says, big armies supported by mobilized nations went right out of style. European governments were back to running little armies as a side hobby. The emerging middle class was more interested in making money than going to war.

“Everywhere armies languished in unpopular and impoverished isolation,’ Howard said.

Well, isn't that so sad. Poor, peaceful Europe.

That changed when Prince William took the Prussian throne in 1858. In a few short years he and his buddy Roon remodeled the army, created a North German Confederation and won some victories. The French also reformed their own military somewhat, creating a bigger army, but they didn’t account for the changes science and industry had made to war.

The Germans did. They realized that army commanders needed a good general staff now so they could split up their big armies and move them around. “The Prussian general staff acted as a nervous system animating the lumbering body of the army,” Howard said.

The French, on the other hand, “huddled together in masses without the technical ability to disperse.” They had a good breech-loading system, but terrible artillery. (2)

In effect, the Franco-Prussian conflict was the first Paper-Pushing War. Its outcome would depend on organization, not skill in leadership or courage in battle. Armies had to be in the right place, on time and in adequate strength. That certainly didn’t bode well for the French.

But in 1870, France felt fairly good about their reforms. They had nearly 500,000 soldiers available and could scrape up 300,000 more. They had tons of supplies.

“By the standards of its last campaigns, the French Army was ready,” said Howard. “It was the tragedy of the French Army, and of the French nation, that they did not realize in time that military organization had entered into an entirely new age.”

____________________________________________________

(1) The book's footnotes are filled with long quotes in French or German that probably begin “Ha ha, you monolingual Americans have no clue what’s going on here! Ha ha!” Not that I’m paranoid.

(2) Howard makes a little side joke about the artillery in French here. Apparently France’s minister of war just filed away reports about some great steel guns with the comment “Rien a fair.” I think that means “Nothing to do.”

Don't Forget Your Chainmail Hoodie

2009-05-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

"The Face of Battle" by John Keegan.

This book is one of my favorites on this list and not just because it's one of the shortest at 342 pages. It's a nice little paperback with a cheery picture of the skull of a Swedish soldier at the Battle of Visby in 1561.

The publishers obviously chose the skull for its dashing, cocky air (complete with chainmail hoodie) since the book doesn't discuss the Battle of Visby. (That's a good thing, too, because I looked it up, and I'm not in the mood to hear about Danish troops battling peasant farmers. Guess who won.)

Instead, "The Face of Battle" analyzes three battles: Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815 and The Somme in 1916. All great battles and surely worth 342 pages and a grinning skull for that alone, but Keegan writes so creatively and eloquently that I'm ready to look up his stuff on the Battle of Visby. He begins with one of my favorite history book openers (edited for length):

"I have not been in a battle; not near one, nor heard one from afar, nor seen the aftermath. I have questioned people who have been in battle ... have walked over battlefields ... have often turned up small relics of the fighting. I have read about battles, of course, have talked about battles ... but I have never been in a battle. And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what a battle can be like."

This resonates with me, because I also have never been in battle (just some really mean editorial meetings). And it prompts me to consider why a 40-year-old wife and mother feels compelled to study military history. I have no military background, no ties except a brother in the Army. My paternal grandfather landed on the Normandy beaches as a combat photographer, my maternal grandfather and my father collected military history books. So there's some family precedent for this interest in battle.

Keegan says that some people read military history with the subjunctive question "How would I behave in battle?" I personally don't need a 100-book reading list to answer that question. I know exactly how I would behave in battle. It's like reading an airline pamphlet while flying over the Atlantic, the type of pamphlet titled "Your Role in a Water Landing." As author Jean Kerr wrote: "I know my role in a water landing. I'm going to splash around and sob."

So you see, I have no illusions here. At Agincourt, I'd be in the baggage park. At Waterloo, I'd be napping with the English 4th Regiment. (Where I wouldn't be at Waterloo is near Wellington, who apparently liked to be where the fighting was hottest.) At the Somme, I'd be the one wearing his gas mask in pouring rain. ("You never know!")

It's clear, then, that I don't read military history to learn about myself. I've done enough self-introspection and the results are rarely pleasant. Why then?

Well, reading military history helps me understand the world and how it came to be this way. Identifying patterns of human behavior is interesting. Most of all, I study the conflict and suffering of the past so it is not forgotten. My father and grandfather passed this interest on to me. Perhaps, by example, I will pass it on to Benny and the soldiers at Agincourt in 1415 live on nearly 600 years later.

The Campaign Continues

2009-05-05T18:26:00.001-07:00

I just finished "The Face of Battle" by John Keegan. Review to come!

It will be my first military history review in a year and a half. I've been at this since 2005 and read six of the OSU reading list's 100 titles. At this rate, in 40 years I'll be sitting in whatever nursing home Benny can afford, reading No. 32, "War and Imperialism in Republican Rome" by William Harris.

Here Come the Cannons

2007-10-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Makers of Modern Strategy
From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
Edited by Peter Paret

These days I'm endangering my spine by carrying around "Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age," edited by Peter Paret. It's a weighty collection of essays by about 30 historians and
experts. I knew I was in for it when I opened to the introduction, which began: "Carl von Clausewitz defined strategy as …"

Crap, I thought. I've already done this. I've read Clause's "On War." Don't make me go back!

But the book is actually pretty valuable. Step by step, essay by essay, "Makers" leads us from medieval Europe to the Cold War. I'd just finished two Civil War books (the novel "The Killer Angels" and the nonfiction "Battle Cry of Freedom") and I was looking for someone to explain to me why these Civil War generals did so many crazy
things. If that meant going back to Machiavelli rubbing his greedy little hands together in 16th-century Italy, so be it.

In Mach's time, warfare moved away from knights and castles to guns and armies. The development of gunpowder rendered the knight's armor useless. The new money economy made raising armies much easier. Everyone went on the offensive.

This prompted Mach to write his book, "The Art of War," which harkened back to Roman times, because back then, if anything was Classical, then it must be great. Mach wasn't promoting chariots and bronze swords, but he did like ancient Rome's discipline and use of a citizen militia.

So I'm reading along, and Mach is this great genius, busy "transcending his time" or whatever, and then the essayist Felix Gilbert throws a wrench into the whole thing on page 28.

"However," Felix tells us sternly, "Machiavelli misjudged what was possible and feasible in his own day."

So instead of Mach's notion of a citizen militia, Europe's rulers went on using paid mercenaries for the next two centuries. Mach also didn't consider the rising costs of warfare, since somebody had to pay for those shiny
new cannons. But Felix insists that all subsequent military thought proceeded on the foundations that Mach laid.

And therefore (insert drumbeats here) warfare Enters A New Age. It's always nerve-wracking when that happens. Somebody is bound to get pounded, and probably more efficiently than ever. Mighty thinkers declaim grand ideas; then narrow-minded pinheads do everything totally wrong. Nobody can think clearly about what they're doing, and the next thing you know, some crazed Civil War general is leading an infantry charge up Cemetery Ridge,

But I'm getting ahead of myself, of course. It's time to leave Mach behind and march into the seventeenth century.

Eagle Against the Sun

2007-04-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, Christine’s military history seminar returns once again, with a brief detour into World War II. This shoots Ohio State University’s reading list all to hell, of course.

OSU’s list ordered me to read eight general works before going on to European and American military history. I read three before hopping to the end of the list. When I checked the World War II book out of the library, I imagined a room full of militant academics, all wearing those Prussian helmets with the spikes, shouting “Nein! Nein! You must follow the plan!”

My latest book is Eagle Against the Sun by Ronald H. Spector, which deals with the American war with Japan.

I took this bold step after seeing the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima,” directed by Clint Eastwood and shot from the Japanese point of view. (1) The main character was very engaging. We meet him digging trenches on the island’s volcanic, ashy beach, preparing for the American invasion. “Why do the Americans want this little shit island?” he asks his friend as he digs. “As far as I’m concerned, they can have it.”

I didn’t know squat about Iwo Jima when I saw the movie. I didn’t even know that famous picture of the Marines raising the flag was taken there. Naval histories bored me to death; I always skipped the Pacific theater in World War II books. But the Japanese in the Iwo Jima movie intrigued me. They had a brilliant commander and a harsh but admirable philosophy. What was the war against them like? So I hauled out Ohio State’s reading list and found “Eagle Against the Sun.”

I tell you, after three books describing military strategy and philosophy, “Eagle” read like a dime-store novel. I could actually concentrate on one war in one century in one area of the world. No more time traveling between Thermopolaye, Waterloo and the Franco-Prussian War within one paragraph. No more treatises on the development of spears and tercios and matchlock rifles. (2) Instead, “Eagle” had the American and the Japanese fleets and a ton of dinky islands and that was it. Excellent.

But now that I’ve finished “Eagle,” I find it a difficult book to summarize and review. Clausewitz and Kennedy and MacNeill spoke from the sunny heights of military theory and philosophy. They invited you to join the command centers of battle, where maps and strategies and civilized discussions reigned.

“Eagle Against the Sun” was very different. The reader did spend the first few chapters snug in his armchair, discussing the American state of mind (complacent, isolationist and ill prepared) and the Japanese state of mind (militant and bragging, but also ill prepared). The navies of both countries were enamored by a troublemaker named Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval historian whose book “The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783” (thankfully not on the reading list), influenced naval strategy in WWII.

Mahan imagined big fleets of battleships that would fight one decisive battle and win “command of the sea.” It all sounded very dramatic and fun, so everyone went around dreaming of big guns, big ships and big battles, and practically ignoring torpedos and aircraft. The American navy endlessly replayed Trafalgar (1805) and the Battle of Jutland (1916) up to World War II. (3)

But reading Mahan wasn’t a great idea. As Spector put it, “Japanese naval officers , too, had inhaled deeply the heady, if somewhat musty, fumes of Mahan’s classic brew of imperialism and salt water.” Many historians believe that Japan’s fanatical efforts to bring about Mahan’s “decisive battle” contributed to its defeat.

So in the first few chapters of “Eagle Against the Sun” I was in familiar territory, reading about strategy and snickering at clueless, if influential, historians (remember Clause making fun of Jomini?). Pearl Harbor was described with drama and emotion – you could almost hear the dramatic music swelling in the background.

But then Ronald Spector turned to the actual war and the party was over. Before I knew it, I was thrown into the battles: the Philippines, Midway, Massacre Valley, Guadalcanal, the Gilberts, Kwajalein, the Marianas, all the way to Leyte and Luzon. I started carrying around a world atlas so I could figure out where all the teeny islands were. I didn’t know the outcome of most of the battles, so I followed the war’s twists and turns with wide eyes, elated by the victories, but most of the time just angry and sad.

But all in all, I’m glad I broke ranks and skipped to the end of the reading list. When I go back to reading general strategy (Peter Paret’s giant tome, “Makers of Modern Strategy” is glowering at me from the bookshelf), I won’t forget the suffering that all those abstract discussions ultimately lead to.

FOOTNOTES

1) I liked it much better than “Flags of our Fathers,” which I rented later and found disjointed and occasionally dull.

2) The third book, “Pursuit of Power” started with 1000 AD and devoted pages to the development of iron weapons. It was enough to make a grown woman cry.

3) I will never cease to goggle at that. Trafalgar was um, against Napolean, you know. The ships had sails and were made of WOOD, guys.

Pursuit of Power III: The Cure is Worse than the Disease

2006-08-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

When we last chatted with William H. McNeill, author of “Pursuit of Power,” old military patterns were busy withering and dying in the 17th century. You could almost hear him cackling and rubbing his hands, crying “Now I can prove my thesis! Hahahahaha!”

Maurice of Nassau and his buds had developed new methods of army organization, and their ideas spread through the world like a virus. McNeill triumphantly returned to his big medical analogy, reminding us how military changes resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.

So now warmakers had the fancy weapons, the new drills, the bitty regiments. The developments kindled in Holland in the 16th century spread like wildfire. In the 17th century the new methods hit western Europe; in the 18th, they transformed Russia under Peter the Great. Then the methods spread to the New World and India during colonial expansion and infected even the Ottoman Empire.

Hoo boy. But these new methods weren’t all-powerful. Generals still had problems controlling armies of more than 50,000 men. They needed better ways to communicate. They needed some decent topographical maps. Supply was a big problem. (Isn’t it always?) Personnel administration was still all screwy, with meatheads with money and connections beating out professional officers for advancement. (That’s changed?) But most of all, war was still a sport of kings. Civilians were left alone.

But not for long. The French Revolution broke social barriers, and then the Industrial Revolution solved communication and supply problems and brought in more nifty new weapons. War became industrialized, Germany was united, everyone in Europe was squabbling, and the next thing you knew, you had World War I.

Talk about breaking old limits. As long as all military movement except for trains depended on horses or humans, the limit of muscles were the limits of armies. But the internal combustion engine changed all that, McNeill said, beginning with the taxicabs that carried French soldiers from Paris for the first Battle of the Marne in 1914.

Even a serious dude like McNeill admitted that World War I was bizarre. Germany, Britain and France were willing to fight despite massive deaths and military stalemate. McNeill tried to explain it, but gave up after a rambling page or two.

You could almost feel his relief as he turned to armaments, treating us to pages of tank photos. Tanks were first developed in 1916, and two years later they were all along the front line.

The British high command even came out with this amazing plan, called Plan 1919. I’d never heard of this plan. Apparently it laid out the blitzkrieg tactics the Germans used 20 years later in Poland. But the war ended a year early, and the Brits never used it.

But it’s still intriguing. Military eggheads before then tended to draw plans based on weapons that, um, actually existed. The British planners, on the other hand, tried to shape the future by deliberately altering the development of weapons to fit the needs of the plan. I can just see them sketching out Plan 1919 to their subordinates, airily saying, “Now if we can just put some big guns on treads, old boy …”

Except for this interesting aside, McNeill used the rest of this book to launch a broad, sociopolitical discussion of the two world wars. I plowed through some of it, but it made my head hurt. So I gave “Pursuit of Power” a respectful farewell salute and toddled off to watch “Supernanny.”

So did McNeill prove his thesis? I don’t feel qualified to judge. I mean, when you think about it, it’s a weird little thesis. So the advanced armies are the deadly viruses, and the backward natives are the once-healthy cells, falling by the millions to the scythe of progress. Does that make my new buddy Maurice a genetic mutation? Oooh, my head hurts.

I think McNeill successfully showed how technological advances in weapons break previous limits, allowing armies to run amok until they hit new limits. Seventeenth-century armies became unwieldy at 50,000 because communication broke down. Then came telegraphs and phones and armies grew larger.

Now we have the Internet and satellites, and the sizes of future armies seem almost infinite. Perhaps if we refrain from blowing ourselves up long enough to develop space travel, we’ll see history repeat itself over planets and systems instead of countries and continents.

And perhaps that’s one of the book’s points. In mankind’s pursuit of power, our ambition will always outstrip our capabilities. Yet while our reach exceeds our grasp, we struggle to handle the technology we hold now, today. We’re like greedy toddlers, unable to eat the candy in our hands, yet always crying for more.

Pursuit of Power II: Christine Meets a New Guy

2006-07-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

Despite my best intentions, I abandoned McNeill’s “Pursuit of Power” after the first chapter and spent two evenings watching TV instead.

But Monday night, which offered a choice between reruns of "Hell's Kitchen," "Project Runway" and "Wife Swap," drove me back to reading. So I gave Chapter Two a try.

McNeill was yakking about the years 1000-1500, when Chinese advancements in industry and armaments anticipated European achievements by several centuries.

So why didn’t a Chinese Columbus discover America? China had the iron and the coal industries and the powerful sailing ships. They had paper money and crossbows and guns and gunpowder and Confucious knew what else.

The book’s answer was that to exploit such advancements, a society had to support lots of merchants and manufacturers. But China didn't want to do this. Their society had different values. Chinese merchants and manufacturers couldn't flourish. Instead of passing their crafts to their sons, merchants and manufacturers put their limited profits into education and land for their boys. The Chinese government controlled everything through Confucianism, and Confucianism didn't like the marketplace.

Europe could have gone the same way in those years, McNeill said. Christianity didn't think much of the marketplace either. If the Popes Innocent III and Boniface VIII had succeeded in uniting western Europe under a papal government (a true Holy Roman Empire), Europe might’ve been like China.

But the popes couldn't pull it off. Apparently God wanted Europeans to buy light artillery on a large scale. So Europe remained a puzzle of states and markets could flourish in the cracks, building increasingly powerful weapons. Gee, what a relief. Cuz the world really needed those cannons and muskets.

Meanwhile, back to Chapter Four. Military history books often remind me of small-town newspapers: the same people keep popping up again and again. If you’re studying the 12th century, you get Ghengis Khan; if you’re in the 1500s, you find Elizabeth of England and Philip of Spain.

Now McNeill was discussing the Thirty Year’s War in the 1600s, and the Swedish king Gustav Adolf promptly floated up like Banquo’s ghost. Oh, hi there, Gustav, how ya doing – still fighting the Battle of Breitenfeld? Go get ‘em, man.

But then a new guy marched onto page 126: Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, captain-general of Holland and Zeeland in the 1500s. How come nobody told me about this dude? I thought Zeeland was a boring town in west Michigan. (1)

Maurice was a drill sergeant – literally. Confronted by the Spaniards and their weird little tercios (2), he dreamed up the idea of systematic drilling to make his soldiers more efficient. He analyzed the complicated motions needed to load and fire a matchlock rifle and came up with the number 42. (3) He taught his soldiers to make each movement in unison, responding to a shouted command.

That’s where the guy on the cover of this book, the soldier in the red poofy pants, came in. Drillmasters used pictures showing each of the 42 motions, all displaying the same funny guy: he fired his musket, took down the musket, uncocked the match, blew on the pan, charged the musket, etc. They’re lovely pictures, made from engravings, although stick figures probably would have done just as well.

But Maurice did more than hand out pictures. He introduced regular marching and smaller tactical units and made his guys dig entrenchments with spades.

“Powess and physical courage all but disappeared under an ironclad routine,” McNeill said. “The old heroic patterns of military behavior withered and died.”

_________________________________

(1) The real Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands. Dutch settlers brought the names to Michigan, so now we have the thrilling locales of Holland and Zeeland, 5 miles apart on the highway to Grand Rapids. Yippee.

(2) The tercios were a formidable force in the 1500s: a crowd of pikemen (guys carrying long wooden poles) protecting a fringe of musketeers posted around a central square of more pikemen. The Spaniards loved their tercios and insisted on sending them out long after their usefulness had ended.

(3) The answer to life, the universe and Everything.

Pursuit of Power I: Deadly Germs in Poofy Pants

2006-07-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

"The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces and Society since A.D. 1000" by William H. McNeill.

I’ll admit, I picked up my library copy of William H. McNeill’s “Pursuit of Power” with some trepidation. The book was yellowed and waterstained and the cover showed some weird guy in a teeny feathered hat and poofy red pants.

As usual, I skipped the preface. I can’t stand prefaces, where an author describes the epiphany that led to the book (“… and so I wondered, why hasn’t a thorough discussion of nickel-iron octahedrites been attempted?”). Then the author spends two pages thanking everyone but their dry cleaner. (“… To my Uncle Mervin, who offered many helpful suggestions when he wasn’t drunk.”)

So I turned to chapter one: “Arms and Society of Antiquity.”

And stopped dead.

I didn’t understand a word of it. What’s all this about the “industrialization of war”? Why is he talking about bronze? Who cares where tin was mined? This is ridiculous, I thought, I could be watching “America’s Got Talent.”

I sighed. Perhaps I should read the preface after all. It was only two pages, not counting the acknowledgements (“Thank you Hugh, for piloting me through the intricacies of Chinese historiography.”)

Thank heavens I read it. This book had a point, and McNeill wasn’t afraid to clearly lay it out in the preface. He’d published a book a few years before called “Plagues and Peoples,” dealing with the interactions between people and microparasites. A creepy topic really. I dislike reading plague books, which leave me twitchy and prone to examining my tongue in the mirror.

In “Plagues and Peoples,” McNeill addressed the abrupt changes that occur in organisms due to a mutation or a change in environment, changes that briefly allow them to escape previous limits. The most important microparasites affecting people were disease germs, so he wrote about those.

In “Pursuit of Power,” McNeill turned his attention to macroparasites. The most important macroparasites affecting people were other people, violent conquerors who snatched all the good food, shelter and pretty girls without contributing anything.

Therefore, macroparasitism among people turns into a study of the armed forces, with special attention to war equipment. Changes in armaments resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.

To take this analogy further (and McNeill stretched it to the limit), well-equipped and organized armies meeting a more backward society act like deadly germs attacking a patient. The advanced guy almost always wins.

And where does this leave us? In real trouble, according to McNeill. As war became more advanced, increasingly dependent on industrial might, muscles and courage became less important. But our “ancient, inherited psychic aptitudes” remain the same. We still want to beat our breastplates and rattle our spears, but now our spears are rockets and nuclear missiles.

Now, isn’t that just jolly. Aren’t you glad I read the preface? Well, it had to be done. I returned to that first paragraph in chapter one, “Arms and Society in Antiquity,” and it made a little better sense now. A little.

“The industrialization of war is almost as old as civilization,” McNeill said. Privileged fighting men used bronze weapons and armor made by specialists. This wasn’t really industrialization, though, because it was so small-scale. It took a ton of painstaking work to make a warrior’s full panopoly and the stuff lasted forever.

But things change. McNeill says. “One can detect in the historic record a series of important changes in weapons systems resulting from sporadic technical discoveries and inventions that sufficed to change preexisting conditions of warfare and army organization.”

In other words, as germs mutated to cause ever more dangerous diseases, new weapons were invented to cause more destructive wars. In both cases, the old limits no longer held, and wholesale craziness broke out for a while until an equilibrium was established.

And what were these changes? The first was our old buddy bronze, not because it made pretty armor, but because it led to improved designs for war chariots. The new designs meant lots of guys could have chariots now, not just the rich ones. Whole armies could roll around the battlefield, shooting arrows. That meant populations with lots of horses could kick some serious butt.

The next change was iron, which meant every guy could get his own armor and wreak a little havoc. Then came what McNeill called “the cavalry revolution.” Guys learned to ride and shoot their bows at the same time. The steppe nomads loved this, and the next thing you knew, you had Genghis Khan in your backyard.

For the last big change in antiquity, we can thank the Iranians, who bred bigger horses, horses big enough to carry a guy in full metal armor. Armored horsemen cared less about arrows and could wave their maces and swords around. With that discovery, the age of antiquity was over and we could get into all that fun medieval stuff.

By the end of chapter one, I was OK with the book. McNeill’s writing was a little involved (I mean, look at the quote about weapons, and that was one of the simpler sentences). But he had a nice, organized mind and could reduce an insanely complicated topic into something I could wrap my head around. I was prepared to read on. Maybe I’d learn something about the weird guy in the red poofy pants.

The Rise and Fall of a Really Long Book

2005-10-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I just closed up Book No. 2, written by military history writer Paul “I wish I was Gibbon” Kennedy. Paul Kennedy wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” and “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery”, among others. (1)

Described as “a work of almost Toynbeean sweep,” the Great Powers book purports to describe economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Well, jolly. Apparently just reading a military history book isn’t tough enough, Let’s throw in some economics for fun. (2)

Kennedy is definitely an economist -- never met a list he didn’t like. When discussing 15th-century China, a lesser historian would refer to “the formidable Ming navy.” Not Kennedy – he’ll list how many combat vessels, how many floating fortresses, how many cruisers, how many private ships, etc., along with a list of the countries the private ships traded with. Bleah. Remember Clause’s “dreary pedantry?”

Kennedy lists the world’s most “broad and fertile river zones,” to no real purpose (his point was that Europe didn’t have any), just to show off. He lists North America’s biggest exports, Europe’s busiest ports and types of missile-throwing instruments. (What the hell is a trebuchet? Who cares?) (3)

Then he goes on to the Hapsburgs and turns slightly less boring, happily listing the reasons the empire failed. (sounded a little smug, too; after all, the empire survived in some form for 400 years. The U.S. should be so lucky.)

I liked some of the economic backdrop, how sheep grazing willy-nilly all over 16th-century Spain hurt that country’s ability to fight in the Netherlands. (4) He made a nice point that Wellington’s army in 1815 wasn’t much different than Lord Marlborough’s a century before. Nelson’s fleet wasn’t much more advanced technologically than Louis XIV’s. It was the military organization that changed.

But Kennedy would constantly undermine his own writing. He wanted to be both Good Cop and Bad Cop whenever he analyzed a country. Which is fine, you want to know both the positives and negatives.

However, it’s pretty discouraging to sit through tiny-type pages filled with long lists, praising the Power to the skies (such wonderful diplomacy, arms production, railroads, military development!), only to read that actually, the country has no money and a crazy leader and won’t amount to anything.

This isn’t Good Cop/Bad Cop, it’s Good Cop/Bad Sargeant, where a cop lists 43 reasons why you aren’t really in trouble and then Sarge strides in and barks, “Lock ‘im up!”

After a while, you conclude that nobody’s any good, everyone’s riddled with tragic weaknesses, and we should all go back to pounding rocks with sticks. Kennedy turned much more confident and readable with World War II, but after that I kind of gave up and watched “Hot Properties” on ABC.

________________________

FOOTNOTES

1) Gibbon wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I know, it was a cheap history joke. Sue me.

2) And no, I don’t know who Toynbee was. The line’s funnier if you don’t know. I see great possibilities for intellectual references. “How was that parenting article on the dangers of stickers?” a playgroup mother might ask me. “Ah,” I’ll say in awed tones, “It was a work of almost Toynbeean sweep.”

And yes, I really did read an article last week warning parents about stickers. We are a nation at risk, surely.

3) It’s some sort of medieval catapult. You can buy a desktop model at trebuchet.com for 30 bucks. Yawn. God, footnotes are boring.

4) Don’t ask me how. Read it yourself. I’m not going back in there.

On War: The Thrill of Victory

2005-10-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

Barney Brodie, author of the reading guide to Clausewitz’s “On War,” said it best: “With Book Eight we are back in the realm of pure gold.”

“Book Seven was not exactly wandering in the wilderness,” he continued, “but ... Clausewitz himself seemed to be eager to hurry through it.”

I agree, except I thought all three middle chapters were wandering in the wilderness, and I nearly didn’t make it.

Clause pounds home a familiar maxim: “Destruction of the enemy is what always matters most.” If he repeats this, it’s because war leaders get distracted so much. They want to strut around, or scare the enemy or capture some sexy fortress – none of which destroys the enemy.

With “War Plans,” Clause says, we will put all the influential factors in war in a nice tidy, order. (Insert maniac Prussian cackle here.)

But Clause knows we’re scared, so he says: “When we contemplate all this, we are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pendantry, and grub around the underworld of ponderous concepts.” (Exactly, Clause, where the hell was this fear in Book Six?)

In the end, he says, theory isn’t a bunch of formulas for solving problems, “nor can it mark a narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side.”

And so we begin the last sprint to the finish line. Clause talks about the gap between “absolute war” where people go to war for sound, logical reasons and conduct the war in a focused, efficient manner; and “real war” where everything goes weird and incoherent and nobody knows what’s going on.

He tries to explain why this happens, generally because people love to take the easy way out when they can. He crabs sniffily about the wimpy wars before Napoleon, where nobody went and laid waste to the enemy’s land.

War back then was instead conducted by separate, clearly defined forces and nobody was hurt too much, least of all the people in the countries engaged. It was easy to figure out what the enemy had, so a general knew exactly how many guys to send to tussle over a useless supply depot.

But once Europe became a happy land of plunder and carnage, generals could identify the enemy’s center of gravity (the army, or the capitol, or both) and destroy it.

And don’t divide your main force, for god’s sake. Clause just won’t let that go. When a “trained” general staff scatter their forces like chess pieces, when the leaders use “self-styled” expertise to get all devious for no reason, when armies separate to show “consummate skill” by reuniting two weeks later at utmost risk, well, Clause says, that’s just “idiocy.”

Clause wraps things up with one of his favorite examples, Napoleon’s doomed advance into Russia in 1812. Napoleon entered Russia with half a million men and returned to France with about 50,000. Most people think he just advanced too quickly and too far, that he took Moscow and found himself over his head. Clause doesn’t think so. He thinks Napoleon basically did things well (although he definitely could have started sooner and saved more men). Napolean thought taking Moscow would topple Russia, but he miscalculated. Czar Alexander and his people were tougher than that. So it was the PLAN that was wrong, not the execution.

And on that happy note, I closed “On War,” the first book on my terrifying military history reading list, adopted simply to get me through an awful TV season. I finished it (more or less), but it still scares me. The benefits remain to be seen.

So what’s up for book two? Nothing less than the “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy, which I borrowed from Andy. I really have no choice, you know. Anything’s better than Kelly Ripa in “Hope & Faith.”

On War: Rationing the Horse Fodder

2005-10-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

I just wasn’t prepared.

The author of the “On War” reading guide, Bernard Brodie, was a cheery companion for the first three sections. But even Barney couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for Book Four. He called various chapters “rather less consequential” or “not particularly memorable.” I can think of some stronger language, like “fairly gruesome,” “droolingly dull” and “coma-inducing.”

I did like one chapter on the use of the battle, where Clause gets all indignant about silly folks who don’t like to fight. They get nervous when it’s time to roll the dice. “The human spirit recoils from the decision brought about by a single blow,” he says.

So governments and commanders sought out other means of avoiding a decisive battle, finding other ways to meet their goal or abandoning it altogether. All this, Clause says, turned a battle into a kind of evil, something that a properly managed war could avoid.

“Recent history has scattered such nonsense to the winds,” Clause snaps. Warriors must not fall into the same stupid thinking again.

“We are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed,” he goes on. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”

Ah, good old bloodthirsty Clause.

He makes another important point: that now victory is effective without pursuit. Troops on both sides are exhausted and disorganized after a battle. But this isn’t the time for the victor to pause. Any time lost after the battle is in the loser’s favor. He’ll get a nice rest and maybe some gruel or something. Then the victor has to go beat him all over again.

Clause constantly repeats this point throughout the book, but it’s worth hounding us about. Apparently he didn’t go far enough anyway, since I remember some Civil War generals who’d beat the enemy, then sit around and let him go.

So okay, not bad. But then I hit Book Five (“Military Forces”). Barney called the early chapters “somewhat dated.” I call them “thoroughly useless.”

Modern armies are huge, Clause writes breathlessly. Why Napolean had 200,000 men! And then he tells us in detail how to go into winter quarters.

But I’d rather read about marches, billets and horse fodder all day then deal with Book Six (“Defense”) again. Defense is the stronger form of waging war, Clause tells us, an idea that World War I generals took a little too much to heart.

Clause tells us how to defend fortresses, set up fortified positions and establish entrenched camps. We defend ourselves in the mountains, by the rivers, in the swamps, in the forests and along a cordon. Even Barney admits tiredly that in the last chapter, “Clausewitz is not at his inspired best.”

I myself skimmed much of Book Six, eager to get on to the more interesting problem of attack. Oh God, what a mistake that was. What I got is how to ATTACK a force on the river, attack an entrenched camp, attack a mountainous area, attack the enemy in swamps, forests and cordons. Barney was bored too: “This book is but the obverse of the preceding book,” he grumbled.

I liked the part about the “culminating point of victory,” which says the attacker can overshoot the point at which, if he stopped and assumed the defensive, he might still succeed. The trick is, of course, knowing when to quit.

I nearly quit myself halfway through Book Six, and again early in Book Seven. I was very discouraged, given to snapping at slow ATM machines and griping about long traffic lights. Perhaps this was a stupid idea. I’m a 21st-century housewife with a toddler to raise, not a Napoleanic general with cavalry forces to manage. Maybe I should acknowledge my culminating point and go watch “So You Think You Can Dance?”

But I slogged on, and was rewarded by Book Eight: “War Plans.”

On War: Don't Skip Lunch at A&W

2005-10-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

There’s a reason why people read Clausewitz in the abridged version. Anybody tempted to read the middle sections of his book “On War” should lie down until the feeling goes away.

I felt rather smug as I marched steadily through Book One, nodding sagely at Clause’s big concept, “Friction in War.” “Everything in war is very simple,” Clause said, “but the simplest thing is difficult.”

Nice work, Clause. You’re a regular Oscar Wilde. (1)

But I did like that basic idea, how difficulties accumulate in war until they make victory nearly impossible. Let’s say you’re driving to Kalamazoo on Interstate 94 and decide not to stop for lunch at the Albion A&W, although you love A&Ws. You’ll be in Kazoo in an hour, you’ve got a Snickers bar under the passenger seat, you’ll make it. Easy.

But then you hit some road construction, and then traffic slows down for an accident, and then you’re stuck behind two halves of a modular home that blocks both lanes. A funny light starts blinking on your dashboard, and you instinctively slow some more. Finally, after two hours and many difficulties, you arrive in Kalamazoo and scarf down two scary hot dogs at a 7-Eleven. Austria’s defeat at Austerlitz couldn’t be more tragic.

Or, to illustrate this idea more poetically (Clause is the genius after all, not me):

“Each war is an uncharted sea, full of reefs. The commander may suspect the reefs’ existence without ever having seen them; now he has to steer past them in the dark.”

Nice. Then I strode confidently into Book Two (“The Theory of War”), full of dishy stuff about tactics and strategies and sniggering comments about geniuses. (2)

Book Three (“Strategy in General”), while not a rollicking good time, had neat stuff about boldness, perseverance, surprise, cunning and the science-fiction-sounding “Unification of Forces in Time.”

In his chapter on the strategic reserve, Clause talked about a reserve’s two purposes: to prolong and renew the action and to counter unforeseen threats. What he didn’t like was maintaining a strategic reserve for the hell of it. He mentions the Prussian loss at Jena in 1806, where the Prussians had 20,000-man reserve just over the river, but couldn’t get it to the battle in time. Meanwhile, another 25,000 men were in east and south Prussia, just sitting around, acting as another reserve. Stuff like that makes Clause crazy.

All good stuff. But then I turned to Book Four (“The Engagement”) and began an unhappy relationship that sapped my confidence and broke my heart.

_________________________________________

(1) That’s no compliment really, since I dislike the playwright Oscar Wilde. His stuff sounds witty on the surface:

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. “

“I can resist anything but temptation.”

But Oscar’s a big phony; anybody can write like that. Just take an idea and turn it upside down. Here’s two from me:

“My faults are my only virtues.”

“Nothing is cleaner than a dirty mind.”

Go on. Try it.

(2) Here’s a real footnote with a nice Clause quote. He was sneering at his fellow military theorists. If something couldn’t be addressed by their fancy rules, his fellows said the issue was the stuff of genius and defied all rules. Here’s Clause’s response:

“Pity the soldier who is supposed to crawl among these scraps of rules, not good enough for genius, which genius can ignore or laugh at.”

Go get ‘em, Clause.

On War: Napolean was God in Funny Pants

2005-09-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

[Keep in mind, this post has footnotes on the bottom. Every military treatise has footnotes.]

Oooh, what a big book. Hefty. Almost as big as the last Harry Potter novel. It’s the unabridged text of Carl von Clausewitz’s “On War.”

Damn thing scares me half to death. It’s been edited, translated and indexed, and includes a commentary, a preface, introductory essays and a reading guide.

Published in 1832, its lessons have guided Karl Marx, Otto von Bismark and French political theorist Raymond Aron. (I didn’t know who Aron was either; I had to look him up. His most popular picture shows him with a pipe and a big nose.)

I skipped the editor’s note (who reads those anyway) and headed straight to the first introductory essay. I plowed through Clause’s Prussian military career, yawning mightily. But then I hit a section about his contemporary theorists – generally, why Clause was right and they were idiots.

The biggest idiot, apparently, was a Swiss-French staff officer named Antoine Jomini. According to Tony Jomini, Napoleon was God in funny pants, and he set the standard for all future conflicts. Clause thought that was ridiculous.

The interesting thing was Jomini’s obsession with Napoleon, and his remark, “Methods change, but principles remain the same.” (1) Jomini was followed by both sides during the American civil war. I liked that. I liked that these military writings could influence events far into the future, although Jomini’s principles didn’t help the Civil War much.

So I turned to the first chapter, which asked “What is War?” That reminded me of my old geology textbooks: “The scientist must first consider, what is erosion?” I liked the chapter. It was filled with nice, simple paragraphs headed by titles in all caps.

Clause liked to talk about the element of chance: “Guesswork and luck play a great part in war.” He thought strict formulas were nutty because you never knew what was going to happen when you marched your little army over the ridge. Commanders rolled the dice on everything, including the weather, although Clause didn’t care much about weather. (2)

He also emphasized that war isn’t just a bunch of battles, but an instrument of policy. You can kill a bunch of guys, capture their hill and blow up their supply dump, but unless all this actually advanced the policy, or purpose of the war, it was all for nothing. Too bad that great military minds forgot this simple fact during the Civil War and World War I.

So basically, although this book still freaks me out, Clause is a guy I can do business with. He doesn’t read like a typical military historian – he actually sounds like a lawyer. He’s the kind of guy that if you asked him, “Is it raining outside?” He wouldn’t answer. He’d run to his pen (or quill, or whatever) and write this:

ON RAIN By Clause

Before we answer the query “Is it raining,” we must ask ourselves, “What is rain?” One might assert that rain is liquid precipitation from the clouds, but things are rarely so simple. The careless observer might spy water on the windowpane and thus answer the query. But such an action is little more than rank folly; it fails to take into account that someone may be dumping bathwater from the second story, or the moisture may stem from the wild and reckless use of a watering can, or finally, although unlikely, that an elephant may be standing in the daffodils and spraying from its tusk. Therefore …

Well, you see what I’m up against here. Perhaps I should just give up and watch “The Apprentice.”

________________

FOOTNOTES

(1) The snooty historian called this remark “endlessly quoted.” I agree. Why just the other day, when I was pushing Benny through Meijer, I heard a cashier refer to the phrase.

CASHIER: You gotta make sure they swipe the card right on the new machines. You remember what military historian Antoine Jomini always said.

TRAINEE: Oh yes. It’s endlessly quoted.

(2) Except fog, Clause had this weird obsession with fog. To hear him tell it, there’s a 19th century army still wandering around some foggy lowlands, wondering where Boney is.

The Campaign Begins

2005-09-27T18:52:00.001-07:00

I’m reading Clausewitz these days and I’ll tell you whose fault it is: TV network execs.

I had high hopes for this year’s TV season. Disgusted by last year's tripe, I’ve been watching movie and TV discs from Netflix, emerging only for “West Wing” and the occasional “Supernanny”.

But it’s a real drag, all that DVD renting, just so I could relax after Benny went to bed. (This wasn’t an issue in Benny’s first year. I was too busy washing 300 bottles and folding 600 burp cloths every night to watch anything.)

This year’s season, I thought, had to be better.

It wasn’t.

The Fonz stages a comeback on CBS. Martha launches hers on NBC. William Shatner sports awful ties on ABC. “Law & Order” spawns more shows (“Law & Order: Petty Theft and Parking Meter Vandalism Unit” and “CSI: Vicksburg, Mich.”)

This unholy crew only edges me closer to 18th-century Prussian military officer Carl von Clausewitz (really).

I thought, maybe I could read at night instead. But two hours of reading a night – that’s two books a week. That’s 100 books necessary to get me through one TV season.

Obviously, I needed a reading list, preferably one packed with weighty tomes. What about military history? Nobody blathers in tiny, dense text like a military historian.

So I turned to some very nice folks at Ohio State University, which has a boffo military history department. They’ve posted online a terrifying list: 100 books on European and American military history. Caesar. Engels. Thucydides. McPherson. And at the top of the list, categorized under General Works: Carl von Clausewitz’s “On War.”

Hey, don’t blame me. Blame the TV execs.