Military Experience in the Age of Reason

What was war like in the Age of Reason, for those who fought in it? Duffy answers this question using research from archives, notebooks, letters, diaries and memoirs.

First published in 1987. War in the 18th century was a bloody business. A line of infantry would slowly march, to the beat of a drum, into a hail of enemy fire. Whole ranks would be wiped out by cannon fire and musketry. Christopher Duffy's investigates the brutalities of the battlefield and also traces the lives of the officer to the soldier from the formative conditions of their earliest years to their violent deaths or retirement, and shows that, below their well-ordered exteriors, the armies of the Age of Reason underwent a revolutionary change from medieval to modern structures and ways of thinking.

It is very much the sort of thing that one hoped someone would write about armies in the Age of Reason; and now it is a matter of great pleasure that it has not only been done, but also done so superlatively well.' - Army Historical Research SocietyChristopher Duffy is a wonderful writer who combines scholarship, depth and polish. The Social detail is astonishing, and his stiffly titled Military Experience in the Age of Reason will have a wide readership outside the regimental library. No one involved with the period, whether novelist, film maker, politician, or indeed psychologist, should fail to consult it ' - Country Life

Autorentext

Christopher Duffy

Inhalt
Part 1 The armies of the Enlightenment 1 Military Europe 2 The officer class 3 The private soldier 4 Generals and armies Part II War II, 5 The campaign 6 The battle 7 On the wilder fringes 8 The march of the siege Part III The military experience in context and perspective 9 Land war and the experience of civilian society 10 The death of a memory 11 Summary and conclusions, Appendix Principal wars and campaigns