The Dawn of Modern Warfare: History of the Art of War, Volume IV by Hans Delbrück (PDF)

Description

By the fifteenth century the Swiss method of warfare, in which disciplined foot soldiers fought in tightly formed units, was being imitated. The Germans and Spanish took notice when in 1479 Archduke Maximilian and his victorious Flemish infantrymen used their long pikes to prevent the mounted French knights from charging. The era of modern warmaking was at hand. In this last volume of his classic history of the art of war, Hans Delbrück considers new developments: the use of gunpowder, the invention of firearms, and the employment of noisy large cannon that shot stone and, later, iron balls. After reviewing the establishment of a European infantry, Delbrück discusses the transformation of loose confederations of knights into cavalry (well developed by the last Huguenot wars), the organization of fighting mercenaries (followed by wives and prostitutes), and the changing of mercenary bands into standing armies.The Dawn of Modern Warfare is colored by larger-than-life personalities: Niccolo Machiavelli, the theoretician of the new art of war; Maurice of Orange, renovator of the art of drill and father of military discipline; Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, perfecter of infantry tactics; Oliver Cromwell of England, reorganizer of a citizen militia into a professional army; and Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, military strategists par excellence.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From the Back Cover From the eighth century through the Middle Ages feudalism determined the nature of European warfare. Medieval Warfare begins in the time of Charlemagne, who maintained a military system of freemen and of vassals bound to him in service for lands granted in fief. These pages are crowded with re-creations of famous events like the Battle of Hastings and movements like the Crusades; with the brightest flowers of knighthood, and with the mercenary grandeur of Byzantium. About the Author As he did in the previous three volumes, all available as Bison Books, Hans Delbrück analyzes many famous battles. Walter J. Renfroe Jr. has translated into English a work that set a standard for scholarship when it was first published in 1920.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Dr Delbruck has offered a valuable assessment of warfare in the modern age from the Renaissance period to Napoleonic warfare. This is the fourth of I believe a set of seven books published under the title ‘History of the Art of War’, the first four of which were written by Dr Delbruck and have been translated into English by Walter J Renfroe Jr.Delbruck investigates two strategic approaches to war through his work, that of annihilation of the opposing army and that of economic starvation or the indirect approach. His work investigates the use of these approaches throughout the history of warfare and provides ample examples to prove his point.

⭐My son had requested this for Christmas. He was pleased!

⭐good transaction A+

⭐For the serious historian.

⭐Delbruk, as a one time tutor to Kaiser Frederick’s youngest son, had a unique opportunity to observe the high water mark of Prussian military achievement and also to witness its collapse in World War I. He published this last volume of his masterwork in 1919, but he ended his study of “modern” war with the wars of Napoleon and the scholarship of Clausewitz. “What followed,” he wrote, “included in the phenomenal rise of Prussia and its final collapse will have to be undertaken later by others.” Perhaps it was too painful, or perhaps he realized that he was too close to the events to be able to give an unbiased analysis. Whatever the reason, had he undertaken to write he would surely have made a valuable contribution to the military scholarship of World War I.As he had done in his three previous volumes, Delbruk again gives a fresh, insightful analysis of the dawn of modern war, but in this volume he also gives good studies of some of the early practitioners and theorists of the the early modern era. (E.g., Gustavus Adolphus, Cromwell, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz).Delbruk, having proclaimed in Volume III that cavalry didn’t exist during the Middle Ages, gives a lucid account of how cavalry came to replace chivalry. Delbruk adds an interesting commentary on the matter of cavalryman versus knight when he describes knightly encounters with cavalry during the Huguenot wars. The French knights hated discipline and pistols, considering both things unchivalrous. Their enemies’ lowborn cavalrymen disdained neither, and consequently the French knights repeatedly experienced the agony of defeat.

⭐Delbruck’s conclusion, though weak, is excellent. No one has ever done a better analysis of Renaissance warfare. On the other hand, though, his treatment of the Thirty Years War was appalling. Had he gone back to the basics and dealt with this war in the same manner he did the Punic Wars in Volume One, this could have been the best volume. Additionally, he failed to do any real analysis of the Napoleonic wars. No contemporary history of early modern warfare would completely ignore the Peninsular Wars.Delbruck’s narrow focus is offset, though, by his snubbing of both Napoleon and Wellington.His conclusion is weak, but it should be kept in mind that, due to his interruption by WWI, he was not able to take it as far as he wanted. It is easy to sense that the German failure in WWI changed some of his views on nineteenth-century warfare, and he could not write about it.

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