Customer Reviews

The Wars of Louis Xiv, 1667-1714 (Modern Wars in Perspective Series)

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Since the wars of Louis XIV have not been covered comprehensively in English, this volume by a renowned historian is particularly welcome. In this work, John Lynn combines a succinct, but thorough blow-by-blow narrative account of the wars fought by Louis XIV with a cogent historical analysis that places these conflicts in their proper perspective. Lynn's main hypothesis differs from some other historians who view Louis XIV as a would-be European conqueror intent on endless wars of conquest. Rather, Lynn regards Louis' wars as essentially defensive after achieving limited territorial gains in Holland after 1675. Lynn explains these conflicts as wars-as-process that rather than seeking to annihilate enemy armies or achieve decisive victories, sought lesser objectives like extorting taxes from occupied lands, deciding dynastic issues or achieving defensible borders for France. Inevitably Louis XIV sought short wars against isolated opponents, but the indecisive nature of 18th Century conflict led to protracted, attritional struggles against coalitions.

The Wars of Louis XIV consists of eight chapters, beginning with a background chapter on European conflict in 1495-1661. Two other excellent opening chapters cover French strategic concepts in this period as well as the strength and methods of the French army and navy. The next two chapters cover the relatively painless War of Devolution and the Dutch War, which were fought to achieve martial Gloire for Louis after he came to the throne. At relatively low cost, Louis added to his territory and seemed to confirm the use of violence as a useful tool of statecraft. The fifth chapter covers violence and state policy, specifically the so-called "reunions" which were coercive annexations of adjacent territory similar to Hitler's "Anschluss" with Austria, and violent suppression of the Protestant minority in France. The sixth and seventh chapters - which comprise nearly half the book - cover the fateful Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession. Although France did well militarily in the first conflict, it was financially exhausting to fight protracted attritional struggles against coalitions. In the last war, fought for dynastic reasons, the French did fairly well until Marlborough showed up in 1704. Marlborough changed the slow operational tempo - typically one big siege attempted per season - and sought to fight big battles. He smashed the French at Blenheim and Ramillies, and succeeded in rolling back most of Louis' gains over the past 20 years. Nevertheless, Louis outlasted his enemies and eventually managed to achieve a favorable peace. The final chapter consists of an analysis of all of Louis' wars and attempts to place them in proper historical perspective.

Overall, this work is excellent - it is well-written, well-researched and provides fresh insight into a long-neglected subject. Students of Napoleonic warfare would be well-advised to read this book as background on the development of French doctrine (particularly a preference for fortifications) and strategy in pre-Revolutionary France. The chapters that cover the wars are sub-divided into sections on each year, which are cover the different fronts sequentially. The only flaw is this volume is the lack of decent maps; many important towns mentioned in the text are not depicted in the simple sketch maps nor are the movement of armies depicted. Nor is there a map of the Spanish theater of war, which was particularly important in the last two wars. It is particularly difficult to follow gains and losses of towns in the main battle front of Flanders, and the author should have provided at least a summary map to depict major territorial changes in each war. Readers should keep a good atlas handy in order to follow the campaigns.

Although France was able to achieve some strategic gains in these wars of Louis XIV, the main military legacy of the Sun King was near financial bankruptcy. John Lynn concludes, "for fifty years, French armies had been strong enough to stand against coalitions of all the other great powers. But the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden marked a watershed in international relations. No longer could France maintain its former dominance. This reality reflected not only the relative decline of France, but the increased power of other European states."

Louis XIV engaged in nearly constant warfare from 1664 to 1714. His wars covered the face of Europe from Ireland to Italy. The great commanders of the Age, Marlborough, Vauban, Turenne, Conde, Luxembourg and Eugene all crossed the stage of Louis' many wars. This is a lot of history to compress into one volume.

John Lynn does an admirable job of surveying the different wars and keeping track of all the campaigns that shaped these wars. He writes clearly and economically. One finishes the book having a better understanding of Louis' grand strategic vision.
This is not a book for someone wanting to learn more about the great commanders of the Age or the details of specific campaigns or battles. This is a book about war, writ large.

In my opinion, the value of this book for the general reading public of military history is that it places the accomplishments of Frederick the Great and later Napoleon into a better context. To understand why they were such revolutionaries, it is important to place them in contrast to an era where war was seen as process and the decisive moment did not exist.

This useful and concise book is a nice overview of the wars of Louis XIV. Lynn provides the basic narrative and quite a bit of astute analysis. As Lynn points out, there is not a lot of English language literature on this topic and much of it is dominated by what might be termed Marlborougholatry. In a series of well written chapters, Lynn provides the basic background in French and general European history, the fundamentally personal-dynastic considerations underlying much of these conflicts, an excellent overview of the structure of the French war efforts, a set of narrative chapters on the wars themselves, and a well considered concluding overview attempting to place Louis' wars in larger context.

Lynn emphasizes Louis' psychology as a monarch dedicated to maintaining and expanding royal authority, and Louis' attachment to the idea of divinely sanctioned legitimate succession. The essentially dynastic motivations of much of his policy are discussed very well. The section on the organization of the French war effort, stressing the expansion of royal power and administration is a digest of one of Lynn's prior books and is simply excellent. This shows both the great expansion and vigor of Louis' rule, and in the discussion of its financial limitations, its marked weakness. Lynn's discussion of the structure of the French Army and Navy, and the nature of warfare in this period is similarly excellent.

The narrative chapters are solid, concise overviews of Louis' major wars. These are generally well done but rather dense because of the necessity of packing so much into a series of relatively short chapters. More maps and exposition would have improved these chapters. Lynn has a basic distinction between Louis' early wars which were devoted to establishing France as a particularly powerful state within the European state system, and his later wars, which Lynn argues were largely efforts to consolidate and defend the results of the earlier wars. In a modest bit of revision, Lynn argues that the later wars - The War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession - were essentially defensive on Louis' part, though Louis' arrogance and miscalculations led to protracted, general European wars. Lynn is essentially trying to correct a view that sees Louis as some precursor version of Napoleon, which is probably correct, but he probably goes too far in defending Louis. The cumulative effect of narrative chapters provides an excellent illustration of the relatively inconclusive nature of war per se in this period and leads Lynn to finish with some interesting analysis of war as a general phenomenon in modern European history.

I echo most other reviewers here in stating that this book succeeds on almost all levels. I learned about Louis XIV as a commander and sovereign; the nation's grand strategy; war finance; supply; armament; recruitment and training; and tactical theory and practice. (For the most part, he eschews descriptions of the tactics of individual battles, except for the most prominent ones, such as Ramilles.)

It is less succesful as a guide to the campaigns, due almost entirely to the lack of adequate maps. Most of Louis's wars were affairs of frontiers, where the competing armies sought to conquer strategic towns and fortresses to create or penetrate defensible lines. In this way, his wars were not unlike those of WWI, which, in the case of Flanders, was fought on the very same ground. Hence, a good understanding of the geographical relationship of the various pressure points is essential to understanding the campaigns. The book really needs five or six good maps showing, for example, the phases of control over the various areas of the embattled Flanders and Italian theaters.

All in all, I really felt this book advanced my understanding of war in the Grand Siecle. With the one stated reservation, I heartily recommend it.

John Lynn here attempts to attack a subject long ignored by the military historians of today. The book covers close to fifty years of warfare and does so increadably well. Each war is covered in detail as well as the manner in which they were fought. The entire first part of the book goes over the manner warfare was fought in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Lynn often writes with a dramatic style, keeping me on edge dealing with the time period after Malplaquet even though I knew what was going to happen. He describes Louis as trying to make France greater, but not as a Napoleon figure of continental conquest, but rather of limited conquest. The wars, especially the latter two, are described as "war of process" without decisive outcomes and limited goals. This is not to say that the wars themselves are limited.

Lynn describes the wars as similar to the First World War. France is a great power and over extends itself against a massive European coalition. The armies do not have much movement despite decisive victories by both parties and involve horrific losses. Lynn challenges the idea that the wars were the beginning of the "civilized" warfare age by stating that the wars were just as destructive as anything else European history has to offer. Rather he claims that because of the destruction of these wars the idea of limited war came about. He says that not until the French Revolution would "total" war come about again or ironically the next time war was fought on French soil. (At least the commonly accepted stereotype of limited war)

In terms of strategy the book is execellent. He describes the methods of Vauban and the great marshals. Overall this is the best book you can find out there on this subject. The only negative is that it were not longer and more in depth. If Lynn wanted to he could make books twice this large for every war described in this one book. My hope is that he does so.

This is an incredible book for those willing to tackle the subject. Granted, there aren't too many people interested in the matter, but for those doing serious research or just filling in the blank spots in one's understanding of history this book will be the Quran and the Bible.

No doubt a work in English on the wars of Louis XIV from the point of view of the French is a good thing. And no doubt something to correct the Marlborough-and-Eugene worship evident in previous accounts is called for. But it does no good simply to assert that Louis' victories were greater, and defeats lesser, than others have said. Some standard of comparison is necessary for consistent judgement, and is missing here. The exposition is generally competent, though unexciting; insights are not very deep. The period still awaits a good treatment.