The Decline of the Decisive Battle: Changes in the Conduct of Wars Between the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War
Abstract
The U.S. Civil War is generally accepted to be the first modern war; that is, a conflict that has more in common with the wars that followed it than those that preceded. There is no shortage of scholarly work that examines the many reasons why this is true, particularly within American scholarship. The sheer number of dead and wounded suffered by both sides, and the decision to continue the conflict in the face of these stunning losses, is arguably the greatest evidence of the revolutionary nature of this conflict. While most European leaders failed to study the conflict to determine any changes to the character and conduct of war (a phenomenon explained by Von Moltke the elder's statement that there was little to be learned from the Civil War because it was fought with ill-disciplined armed mobs herded about by incompetents or romantic fools), they succeeded only in delaying the appearance of these changes in the European theater. One of the salient features of this conflict is that the changes to the conduct of war led to the conclusion that seeking and winning the decisive battle was no longer sufficient to win the war. The disappearance of the decisive battle was a function of many factors, one of which was the widespread use of rifled firearms and subsequent battlefield preeminence of the defense.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA441609
Entities
People
- Matthew L. Brand
Organizations
- National War College