''Battle Studies'' is a book by
Ardant du Picq
Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq (19 October 1821 – 18 August 1870) was a French Army officer and military theorist of the mid-nineteenth century whose writings, as they were later interpreted by other theorists, had a great effect ...
, a colonel in the French Army who was killed in 1870 in the
Franco-Prussian War. The work was never completed, but Du Picq had written many chapters completely and left sufficient notes behind to complete the book.
Themes of the book
The theme of the book, according to
Marshal of France
Marshal of France (french: Maréchal de France, plural ') is a French military distinction, rather than a military rank, that is awarded to generals for exceptional achievements. The title has been awarded since 1185, though briefly abolished (1 ...
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch ( , ; 2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Art ...
, is that "moral force" is the most powerful element in the strength of armies and the preponderating influence in the outcome of battles. In general form, he states:
The goal of the army
Combat is the object, the cause of being, and the supreme manifestation of an army. Every measure that does not keep combat as the object of the army is fatal. All the resources accumulated in time of peace, all the training, and all the strategic calculations must have the goal of combat.
Man in combat
*The human element is more important than theories. War is still more of an art than a science. One popular quote demonstrating this conclusion drawn from numerous battle studies states, "Nothing can wisely be prescribed in any army... without exact knowledge of the fundamental instrument, man, and his state of mind, his morale, at the instant of combat."
[Du Picq, Ardant, Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle. In Roots of Strategy, Book 2. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1987. pg 65.]
*Great strategists and leaders of men are marked by inspiration. "Generals of genius draw from the human heart ability to execute a surprising variety of movements which vary the routine; the mediocre ones, who have no eyes to read readily, are doomed to the worst errors.”
Du Picq's work attempts to deal with the
principles of warfare as an empirical study, based on case studies of battles.
''Battle Studies'' became a key textbook in the French Army's
École de Guerre
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Sav ...
in the years leading to
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
See also
*Battle Studies World Tour
References
External links
Battle Studies Ardant du Picq's book about soldiers reaction during battle. Free version on Project Gutenberg, translation by John N. Greely and Robert C. Cotton.
19th-century books
Military strategy books
Unfinished books
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