Customer Reviews

The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Russell Weigley, long established as the premier American military historian, has written a work that illustrates the necessity for the field commander to pursue complete victory over an adversary. This has long been a dream of military commanders, yet not until Gustavus Adolphus and his attempt to destroy his opponents at Breitenfeld, and his failure to move forward to Vienna, has the proverbial defeat been snatched from the jaws of victory. Weigley analyzes the failures, successes, and overall planning that became an essential part of post medieval warfare. His choice of particular battles and campaigns were carefully chosen to offer the greatest examples of military leaders opting for total, in lieu of negotiated partial victory. It is a necessary book for any student of military or political history, and it offers insights which may be compared to recent conflicts such as the Gulf War.

This book explores several themes. First, it speaks in generalities to the rise of the Profession of Arms and talks about the development of professional officers. The second major theme is that it dicusses command and control and the execution and management of violence. the thesis is that decision making, technology and professionalism are essential tools that now become part of the overall thought, deliberate strategy planning and development process of the military. Thirdly, it speaks to and explores tactical decisiveness and lastly, it speaks to international law and custom.

All in all this is a great book, but dont expect that the conclusions or answers to these themes will always jump out at you. You will need to read with intention to discern these 4 themes, and some others, and how they may or may not apply to your contemporary comparisons of Modern war, that is from roughly WW II to the Gulf War of 90-91 and Post-Modern War, that is, current warfare post 9-11.

This two hundred year work of analysis ends where it begins. With the analysis of a decisive battle. The last 8 pages sum up a few of the auhtors conclusions; one that comes to mind is the political-military-business training and role that officers must have in order to perform there military roles effectively.

The greatest benefit of this book will be derived when one compares post modern war with the tactical lessons of the battlefield.

The academic debate rages, and will continue to rage over whether or not there is such a thing as the decisive battle. You will need to discern for yourself if the principles of war have changed and if the tactical execution of the battle has a direct correlation to the operational, strategic and or political aspects of war.

ps. read this book slowly and with intention, there is much to absorb here.

Terry Tucker, Prof Military Studies/History

Senior Doctrine Developer SANGMP

This is an excellent book providing an interesting alternative viewpoint of historical events that have been reviewed extensively. The author writes with an engaging style which maintains the readers interest throughout the text. The only fault in this excellent book is the number of typographical errors in the text in one case leading to a small factual error. The Dauphine Estates General met at the town of Vizille not Virille as shown in the text.

But still a very enjoyable book!

Kudos to the seller for shipping an accurately described book very quickly. Kudos too, perhaps, to Amazon for finally fixing their seller feedback function! After a months of disappointing emails and delayed responses, it looks like they might have gotten done. I'll know after I hit submit.

I once accused Amazon of providing customer service that was all smiles and courtesy but of no real substance. How ironic it would be if they had in fact fixed this part of their site during our exchanges but failed to tell me about it, for then their news would have provided a resolution instead of no-resolution-or-timetable-for-resolution + smile. They could have even said "Ha, fixed it you jerk!" and still left me happy.

Go figure that left hand not knowing the right hand thing...

Weigley's The Age of Battles covers the era of European warfare starting with the emergence of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years War and ending with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The author's main theme is that although this age of battles offered more hope for decisive outcomes as a result of a single battle, with expenditures in lives and resources commensurate with the intended goals, than any other era, the battles of this era nevertheless failed to deliver this decisiveness.

Weigley also states these lesser themes: 1) The rise of military professionalism: talent vs. birth 2) The limitation that technology of the time placed on command and control 3) The necessity of a mobile arm (cavalry) for any hope of decision, and 4) Growing restrictions during the age of battles upon making war against non-combatants.

As another reviewer has stated, the reader should judge for himself to what extent Weigley demonstrates his various themes. For my own purposes, as a military history enthusiast without military training or academic credentials, I found Age of Battles most valuable simply because it is a concise but elucidating history of this most colorful era of warfare. This period of gunpowder weapons, with combined cavalry and infantry, but before the appearance of rifled weapons, brought the art of war to its zenith after its rebirth in the seventeenth century. Although lagging the official renaissance by a couple of centuries, this renaissance had its own set of masters starting with Adolphus, then the Sun King's generals, Marlborough, Eugen, Frederick the Great, and finally culminating with Napoleon. Although clearly writing for academics and professionals, Weigley's engaging writing style nevertheless makes accessible to the general reader this most creative epoch of warfare in Europe.

This book is an excellent reference book for people who have an eclectic interest in European as well as military history. If one has a specialized interest in any of the wars Weigley chronicles this book places them in a larger diplomatic and techinal context. Besides the book's practicality it is also engagingly written and cogently argued. One more note, Weigley includes an admirable mission statement for military historians that their ultimate goal should be to chronicle war so as to promote peace.

Surveys the history of European wars from 1631 to 1815, looking at two overarching themes: the quest for the tantalizingly elusive Decisive Battle, and the rise of a professional approach to military command. Reads very much like a cross between Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and Fletcher Pratt's "Battles That Changed History." (Weigley cites Kennedy in his bibliography; his patronizing tone is a little ironic, since in his conclusion he seems to end up agreeing with just that part of Kennedy's thesis that he dismisses in the bibliographic notes.)

Observations: Weigley tries for a level of comprehensive detail perhaps more befitting a reference book, giving every date in both Gregorian/Julian formats, or later, Gregorian/French Revolutionary; all distances in miles *and* kilometers; every commander's name and rank in full at first mention (and some of those 18th-c. names are pretty full); and narrating the course of every individual battle, regardless of whether it's relevant to either of his main themes. Add to that the way his Decisive Battle theme seems to keep contradicting itself, and the Rise of Military Professionalism theme becomes a faint motif so drowned out it can scarcely be followed.

Better as a reference book than as a sit-down read-through. I admit I may be hyper-sensitized to bad proofreading: typos in the names of the months of the Revolutionary calendar I can (grudgingly) accept, but shouldn't "Prince Eugøne" have caught someone's eye? Also, "cavalry" is a perfectly acceptable word, you don't have to replace it with "the mobile arm of decision" every other time it comes up.