Raimondo
Montecuccoli was an Italian who served the Habsburgs during the Thrity Years
War an until his death in 1680. His most impressive work was the “Treatise
on War” written 1639-43 when he was a prisoner of the Swedes. As a
predecessor of the enlightenment, his purpose with his work was to investigate
every part of the art of war from observation to experience. He also drew
up rules and joined them into a system which would be subject to reason.
In his treaty he discusses.
Part 1 preparations for war and political ones (alliances, supplies etc)
Part 2 training, discipline, logistics and intelligence. (this part also
discusses fortification, marches and difficulties in combining cavalry with
artillery and infantry, muskets with pikes.
Part 3 deals with termination of war (Creveld. M, The Art of War, 2002,
pg 75).
What
distinguishes Montecuccoli from previous writers is that he considers war
as something made by states and not by peoples. But like his predecessors
he failed to make a difference between strategy and tactics. But during
much of its history, war consisted in plunder and pillaging. Bad communications
made it difficult to bring all parts of an army together. It was only in
rare occasions that a real battles were fought. During the rest of the 18th
century, warthinkers continued to write as if strategy and tactics were
one. But they all agreed to that was must be fought by reason.
When Montecuccli had pointed out the things which military theory ought
to aim at, the first part of the art of war to be reduced to a mere system
was “siege warfare”. But the development of siege warfare and
fortifications is such a broad and deep subject which should be discussed
as an individual part.
Another
enlightenment writer was Jacques Francois de Chastenet, Marquis de Paysegur
(1655-1743), who spent most of his life fighting for Louis XIV. His “L’Art
de la guerre par des princioes et des régles” (The Art of War
by principles and rules) was produced in 1720s. He was much inspired by
Vauban. What the latter had done for fortification, Paysegur now tried to
do with the entire theory of war. He wanted to prove that war could be fought
without war, troops, army and without leaving once home, simply by means
of study geometry and geography. He explains that the art of war is about
forming good orders de bataille and make them move and operate perfectly
like a machine. Every officer must know the principles of geometry (Creveld.
M, The Art of War, 2002, pg 81-82).
Marshal
de Saxe (1696.1750), was a natural son of the Elector of Saxony. He became
a professional soldier and rose through the ranks to become commander in
chief of the French army during the war of the Austrian Succession (1740-48).
His work “Reveries” (Dreams) was produced 1732 during an illness.
One part of the book is a reaction against Paysegur where he complains on
the absence of non-mechanical aspects. There are separate chapters about
field warfare, mountain warfare, siege warfare, how to build fortifications
and to lay siege on them. As a former soldier, de Saxe has knowledge about
soldiers and their daily life. But still like his predecessor he did not
separate strategy and tactics from eachother (Creveld. M, The Art of War,
2002, pg 82-84).
Frederick
the Great produced a number of military works over a thirty year period.
- Principes generaux 1746
- Testament politique 1761
- Eléments de castametrique et de tactique 1771
These works does not deal much with the art of war, but rather in which
way it should be practised by Preussia. The army commander must be the king
alone, and the officers be drawn from the nobility. The only factor which
made men fight bravely is “honour” and honour can only be found
among nobles. Frederick wrote that the men “need to fear their officers
more than the enemy”.
Many enlightenment military writers lamented that unlike other sciences,
that of war did not have any clear and universally applicable rates. All
attempts to do so were seldom successful. With the enlightenment the age
of the self-taught officer was replaced by that of the soldier who was commissioned
after passing through a military academy. In the future it was the students
and graduates of these institutions who above all wrote treatises on military
theory (Creveld. M, The Art of War, 2002, pg 87).