In the late seventeenth century, the French army of Louis XIV fought in relatively dense infantry formations that were difficult to move, maneuver, or integrate with the other arms. A century later, the French armies of the Revolutionary Wars fought in a variety of combined-arms formations and displayed an incredible speed, agility, and ability to overcome their many enemies. This dramatic change was the result of the Military Enlightenment, a complicated process that involved the wholesale revision of the French armyâs âconstitution,â or as modern military theorists would term it, its doctrine.
Recognition of the need for reform after 1700 proved to be universal throughout the eighteenth-century French army, reflecting the calls for systemic reform in every area of French society and politics from the philosophes of the larger Enlightenment. The glory years of the Sun King were in the distant past, and many wondered if France could retain its position as Europeâs hegemon in the face of opposition from the Habsburgs, the British, Prussia, and other states. The Enlightenment also brought calls for more equitable systems in society and politics, which threatened to undermine the traditions that edified the French state at a crucial moment of weakness.
Despite widespread acknowledgement of its necessity, the process of doctrine reform was complicated in every regard by the dysfunction of the French state during the last decades of the Old Regime. France possessed immense resources, but it often struggled to efficiently make use of them, particularly into war. The monarchs of the period, Louis XV, who reigned from 1715 to 1774, and Louis XVI, who reigned from 1774 to 1792, relied on powerful ministers to leverage their client networks to affect reform and administer the state. These ministers were always opposed by at least one major cabal at court, which usually adopted the opposite ideas of proposed reforms, if only to spite the reigning minister. Success was judged not by the efficacy of reforms but rather by the currency the minister retained at court. Especially after 1765, ministers rose and fell quickly, often within two or three years. This had the effect of bouncing French policy between opposing ideas on a regular basis, all but eliminating the possibility of the kind of long-term reform that the state required.
As a result this turmoil, the French army of the eighteenth century faced an array of problems in reforming itself. The Military Enlightenment demanded officers of both skill and education, which necessitated reforms of the appointment and promotion system; this would stir dangerous social currents among the rising bourgeois, anoblis, and noble classes. The system of maneuvers and tactics that had served France for decades no longer did so in the age of thinner formations and the growing dominance of the battlefield by fire. The challenges posed by the rise of Prussia and the failure of French arms in the mid-century wars needed answering. Finally, the financial crisis loomed over any proposed reform, both robbing it of necessary funding and requiring that it include significant cost-cutting measures.
French theorists, practitioners, and bureaucrats met these challenges with a wide array of proposed solutions, usually in books that were printed and distributed throughout France and the neighboring states. As with the larger issues faced by the state and society, the need for change went unquestioned, but few agreed on the nature or direction of any specific measures. Some, led by Jean-Charles, chevalier Folard, advocated for the deep order, which had the dual benefits of relying on historical examples and appealing to the French ânational character.â Others, led by Johan Ernst, baron Pirch, pushed for the French army to adopt Prussian doctrine wholesale, shifting to fire-based formations and strict discipline. Several theorists published lengthy and detailed works that they expected to become doctrine in their own right; these âmakers of systemsâ included Folard; François-Jean de Graindorge dâOrgeville, baron de Mesnil-Durand; Pirch, and several others. Some rejected the concept of system, instead adapting their elements into existing doctrine or selecting the best elements of various systems and amalgamating them into a hybrid doctrine. Finally, a school of âmilitary philosophesâ developed that examined war beyond the level of tactics, inaugurating the operational level of war and laying the foundation for future explorations of strategy and the philosophy of war.
The central work in this process was the General Essay on Tactics, written by Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, and published in the early 1770s. It drew the best elements of the various schools and amalgamated them not into a rote system, but rather a philosophy that called for dynamic leadership, flexible tactics, and attention to all aspects of war, not just a single arm or service.
The General Essay on Tactics announced Guibert as the foremost military theorist of eighteenth-century France. He quickly became one of the leading reformers in the army, advocating for the adoption of his doctrine. He also worked for the Ministry of War from the early 1760s until the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, allowing him the opportunity to implement elements of his system. While the process took most of the second half of the century, Guibertâs proposals eventually became the foundation of the French army doctrine that led French armies to victory in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
The death of Louis XIV in 1715 ended one of the most important periods in French history, including for its military. The Sun King and his ministers had modernized the army by bureaucratizing it, greatly increasing its size and ability to draw on the stateâs resources and wage war. However, this did not bring the hegemony Louis sought, as it occasioned the formation of ever-larger coalitions opposed to France. This culminated in the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1713, which succeeded in placing a Bourbon on the Spanish throne but at the cost of most of Spainâs European possessions and the ruin of the French stateâs budget, army, and popular support. While Louis was later recognized as one of the great kings of France, he was remembered in the years after his death as a warmonger who nearly destroyed the state in pursuit of his goals.1
The first decades of the reign of his successor, Louis XV, were relatively peaceful. France engaged in the minor War of the Quadruple Alliance at the end of the 1710s and the larger War of the Polish Succession in the mid-1730s, but its ministers dedicated themselves to rebuilding the state and expanding its power. They undertook modernization programs across the kingdom, exemplified by the explosion in construction of canals and highways throughout the kingdom.2
By 1740, France was prepared to assert its authority in continental affairs once again, but not in the manner of Louis XIV. As a result, France fought in two major wars in the mid-eighteenth century: the War of Austrian Succession, from 1740 to 1748, and the Seven Years War, from 1756 to 1763. The first brought victory and honor while the second produced only defeat and humiliation. In between, a diplomatic realignment took place, which allied France with its âhereditary enemy,â Habsburg Austria. Worse yet, the French army lost its status as the premier institution in Europe, replaced by the disciplined soldiers of Friedrich II of Prussia.
Much like the Second World War, the War of the Austrian Succession took the form of two wars that occurred simultaneously and only occasionally interacted with each other. The larger conflict, which gave the war its name, took place on the accession of Archduchess Maria Theresa to the various Habsburg thrones in 1740. As she could not be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, France and Spain supported Elector Karl of Bavaria for the position, interrupting centuries of Habsburg possession of the throne. Britain and Austria, with later Russian support, fought to place Maria Theresaâs husband François on the throne in Karlâs stead. The second conflict concerned the seizure of the Habsburg province of Silesia by Friedrich II of Prussia, who was newly-enthroned himself and sought to take advantage of the succession war. Friedrich allied himself with France, although that did not stop him from twice departing the war after securing an armistice with the Habsburgs. Finally, the Bourbon kings of Spain and France continued to contest colonial spaces with Britain and the Dutch.
The resulting conflict became the first general war since the Spanish Succession a generation prior. Franco- Bavarian forces fought in the Low Countries, Bavaria, and on the Rhine; Franco-Spanish armies contended with Habsburg armies in Italy; Prussian troops occupied Silesia and defeated the Habsburgs in four battles; and land and naval units of all countries fought in colonial theaters from Columbia to India. By 1745, Prussia had secured its peace and left the war, and Karl VII died, ceding the Imperial throne back to the Habsburgs. Its Imperial ambitions stymied, France unleashed Maurice de Saxe, the greatest general of the period, in the Low Countries. Saxe overran Habsburg positions throughout the Austrian Netherlands, winning signal victories in each year from 1745 to 1748. He rescued the French position in the war and secured the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle, which ended the conflict favorably for France and Spain.3
The interwar years proved to be a period of intense upheaval many European courts. Despite his victory over the Habsburgs in the war, Louis XV opted not to take territory for France, as would have been traditional. Instead, spurred by his chief mistress and de facto first minister Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, Louis sought entente with the hated Habsburgs. At the same time, Protestant Prussia and Great Britain reached their own agreement. The resulting shift in alliances has become known as the Diplomatic Revolution, pitting Britain and Prussia against the superpowers France, Russia, and the Habsburgs.4
The Seven Years War was the result of these various realignments of the interwar years; it may be loosely portrayed, akin to the World Wars, as the second half of a conflict begun in 1740. Fighting raged throughout Europe and the European colonies, including the Americas, India, and various naval engagements across the world. The result would be transformative for its participants, whether positively or negatively.
The conflict was a disaster for France. Initial success outside of Europe quickly turned to defeat, as British forces took Quebec and Montreal, and the British navy defeated Franco-Spanish fleets in a series of engagements. In Europe, despite overwhelming superiority, the allied forces could not defeat Prussia. French armies remained mired in Hanover, unable to overcome the second-rate army of Ferdinand of Brunswick, much less come to grips with Friedrich himself. Only once did the Prussian king face the French: in the Battle of Rossbach in late 1757, Friedrich crushed the Franco-Imperial army, inflicting over 10,000 casualties while suffering only around 1,000 of his own. Subsequent inability to defeat the Hanoverian army in several campaigns completed the humiliation of the French army. The death of Tsarina Elizaveta in early 1762 confounded the alliance, removing Russia from the war and leading the Austrians and French to seek peace after two more failed campaigns.5
The resulting treaties laid bare the failings of Franceâs military and state. It lost most of its possessions in continental North America, ceding western Louisiana to Spain and all territory east of the Mississippi to Britain. The two mid-century wars plunged France into massive debt, which occasioned a financial crisis that would plague it for the remainder of the Old Regime. Failure to defeat the Hanoverians also embarrassed the French army. This catalyzed the push for reform, and each of the next three decades would see major changes within the institution as it struggled to regain its position and honor.
Throughout this period of French history, the army faced a number of significant challenges. The evolution of warfare at the tactical level rendered French doctrine obsolete, but no solution seemed apparent to the technical issues that arose as a result. Foreign-policy concerns during and after the mid-century wars necessitated an army prepared to fight and win the kingdomâs wars. Social upheaval, particularly related to questions of nobility, directly affected the army, as the vast majority of its officers were nobles. The Enlightenment called many aspects of contemporary life into question, including those that girded the armyâs traditions and mores. Finally, the mounting financial crisis into which France fell as a result of its wars and mismanagement threatened to rob the army of needed funding to enact any reforms.
The era began with two major changes that took place in the French army around 1700, one doctrinal and one technological. The first was the culmination of the gradual thinning of infantry formations that had occurred throughout the century as more effective fire wreaked havoc on deep deployments. The second was the adoption of the fusil with socket bayonet, which eliminated the need for pikes and gave all general line infantry (fusiliers, or fantassins) the same weapon. The result of these changes was to produce an army that deployed on four or five ranks and preferred to fight using fire rather than shock. This was the army that fought the War of the Spanish Succession, with mixed results.6
This lack of success in the Spanish Succession illuminated the growing crisis within the French army, one that affected every level of it: by a modern standard, the French army possessed little doctrine, especially at the level above drill and the handling of arms. Individual regimental colonels were responsible for training and drilling their regiments as they saw fit, and few specific doctrinal norms existed for them to follow. Prior to 1700, armies could manage with individual regiments with differing doctrine by having each one form an attack column or columns for offense and use its pike-and-shot structure to resist enemy attacks, perhaps only loosely coordinating with neighboring units.7
As weapons technology improved and soldiers increasingly used fire over shock, this system became obsolete, both in its failure to respond to evolving tactics and in the degradation of the effectiveness of offensive actions. Fire-based formations required several regiments to act in formation with each other. This would only be possible if the regiments were trained and drilled to the same standard, which they were not. New technology and tactics required new doctrine, but none was forthcoming, and France possessed no great captain to mold such a force into an effective army over the winter like it had in the prior century. Additionally, thin lines of infantry engaging in fire could perform excellently when on the defensive, but their offensive potential essentially did not exist. Cavalry might still perform this function, but increasingly deadly fire from enemy infantry, light forces, and artillery also reduced its effectiveness. Collectively, these changes rankled both the offensive ânational characterâ of the French, as contemporaries termed it, and the needs of commanders to have a dynamic force in order to win battles.8
The result was an army that recognized the need for change but did not possess the doctrine to undertake it.9 While it may seem obvious in hindsight that the solution was for the Department of War to begin issuing army-wide tactical doctrine, matters were far more complex. That doctrine had to take into account the incredible difficulties of maneuvering blocks of men within the larger construct of the field army, which could number as many as 80,000. No one in France knew how to solve all of the issues inherent in the activity. Strategic- and operational-level problems thus could not be addressed until issues of tactics, many arcane and even pedantic, were solved.
At the root of these tactical issues was the very simple question of spacing. The contemporary manual of arms required that soldiers be spaced relatively far from each other, which was diametrically opposed to the unity required to maneuver units on the operational level. As a result, units maneuvered in open formations, meaning with significant spaces between men, ranks, files, and units. Open formations all but eliminated the ability of officers to maneuver units in any way but the very basic. Evolutions (changes of formation) would usually involve many halts as officers redressed the units, returning men to their proper places. No matter how often units drilled and how much discipline they developed, they could not overcome this basic tactical deficiency.10
The results of open formations reverberated up through the echelons. Because precise maneuvers were not possible and no tactical uniformity existed, operational-level warfare was severely constrained. Separate formations existed for march and for battle, requiring complex transitions between the two in order to fight and all but eliminating the possibility of rapid maneuver. In a typical campaign, the armyâs officers generally arranged the infantry battalions in loose columns for march, with cavalry, artillery, and light forces in supporting positions. To enter a battle, the officers were required to form two march columns that would become the two battle lines. This formation would slowly march onto the battlefieldâs extreme right and left, execute a great wheel, march across the battlefield into position, and then wheel to face the enemy. This process took hours and included many pauses to redress faults. Within the battle itself, units moved at the same ponderous rate, severely limiting the potential for rapid offensive maneuvers. Cavalry was still capable of such blows, but increased rates of fire made even the cavalry charge a dubious proposition against formed line infantry supported by artillery and light forces.11
As a result of this system, which was shared by most contemporary European armies, generals could not force an opponent into a battle or win one decisively in ordinary circumstances. Campaign years could pass without a battle, especially if the army encountered a fortress that required it to open a siege, as armies often did. Warfare took on an almost ritualistic rhythm, with armies maneuvering against each other with no result and at great expense. War seemed to have been robbed of both its decisiveness and, perhaps most critically for the French nobility who commanded it, its romance.12 Fire-based defensive warfare was the province of the English and Germans, whose âphlegmatic national characterâ lent itself to more staid practices.13
As complex as these technical issues were, they were only one element of a larger spectrum of problems, which began with the financial crisis. For generations, France had struggled with inefficient taxation, out-of-control spending, and anachronistic financial policies and measures. The result was a state heavily dependent on borrowing at increasingly onerous rates. Various ministers from the 1710s on implemented programs intended to alleviate the financial crisis, but none of them persisted for long enough to affect change. By modern definitions, France was probably bankrupt after the Seven Years War.14
The financial crisis directly impacted the French army. It was probably the single largest consumer of state revenue, particularly in wartime. Each of Franceâs conflicts during the period significantly increased state debt, especially the Seven Years War. These facts produced an omnipresent need among army reformers to reduce the costs of their institution, as would be evident throughout the century. This forced them to economize with their proposals and reforms, robbing many of them of the resources necessary to be enacted properly.15
In addition to financial issues, foreign affairs greatly influenced the French army of the late Old Regime. For over a century, France had been the major guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia, allowing it to intervene in German affairs and contest the power of the Habsburgs. However, after the Seven Years War, many within France saw Britain as Franceâs true enemy. While this sentiment was present within the army, it mostly remained the province of the Marine. The armyâs officers largely focused on Prussia, which they saw as both the architect of Franceâs defeat in the Seven Years War and a threat to its position as the hegemonic power in Europe. Any move made by either state, or any one of the dozens of others in which France had an interest, could occasion a war or mobilization, which would both threaten any ongoing reform and require an army prepared to fight on short notice.16
Unlike the financial crisis or foreign affairs, the Enlightenment was a much more diffuse influence on Old-Regime France, one that defies specificity even in modern historiography. In a very general sense, the core of the Enlightenment was the application of reason to solve problems with the goal of creating a better world. Reason was the method of application, reason that allowed philosophes to sort through vast amounts of information by categorizing it in relation to other information. This gave them a greater measure of control over it, the natural world, and human affairs.17
The Enlightenment and military affairs had a natural affinity, as militaries both desired to control their armies through doctrine based on reason and provided an excellent test subject for Enlightenment principles. Armstrong Starkey first proposed the term âMilitary Enlightenmentâ to encompass this affinity, and Christy Pichichero greatly expanded its study. The eighteenth-century writers of the Military Enlightenment crafted programs to apply Enlightenment principles to the military, seeking to both ameliorate the financial crisis and improve the efficacy of its institutions. Pichichero, borrowing contemporary terminology, groups these reformers into two categories: the âmakers of systemsâ and the military philosophes. The former were prescriptive theorists who applied Enlightenment control measures to extremes, creating elaborate and complicated systems. Most of them focused on the details of tactics, manipulating the hours-long deployment process in subtle ways designed as much to produce geometric figures on the parade ground as to increase proficiency in battle. Almost all of them insisted that their proposals had to be rigidly implemented and followed. The leading âmakers of systemsâ were Folard, Mesnil-Durand, and Pirch. In contrast, the military philosophes were descriptive writers, addressing issues and proposing reforms; confusingly, they often produced tactical systems of their own, but they did not insist on their being followed verbatim. This group included a wide range of writers like Pierre-Joseph Bourcet and Henry Lloyd.18
The writers of the Military Enlightenment were not engaged in idle philosophizing or speculations about the nature of their work and institution. Their publications were intended to bring about change in French doctrine, as rapidly and efficiently as possible. This reflected the wider purpose of the Enlightenment: to improve the conditions of the world and the people in it through the systematic application of reason.19
In a similar vein, another important aspect of the late Old Regime was the issue of nobility and its role in the state, society, and the army. Nobles traditionally led the French army, believing the skill of command was genetic. Some, chiefly traditionalists, eschewed education, especially technical training. Others embraced the Enlightenment and its call for rationality, often landing them in the technical arms like the artillery and the engineers (génie). Still others, particularly among the rising anoblis, had a general education but no specialist knowledge of or training in military affairs. Further complicating matters was the fact that there were far too many officers in the army. Many units had dozens of supernumerary officers in order to provide prestigious positions for nobles, especially the recently ennobled, rather than for any military purpose. The sum of these issues was a debate over the roles of education, experience, and noble extraction in the French command structure, with camps that were not altogether easily sorted or categorized.
Untangling the various groups and their positions vis-Ã -vis these problems is nearly impossible, but the gist of the debate was over who should command Franceâs military, from the top to the bottom, and what qualifications they should have, if any. Some fought for the wholesale admission of nobles of any form to any position, per tradition, while others sought to provide training to future officers, including via a proposed military academy (the Ecole royale militaire) that had first been approved in the 1750s but had yet to achieve a stable structure. Another debate revolved around the Maison militaire du roi, the traditional household units that the crown maintained and that provided many supernumerary berths in the army for nobles but rarely performed on the battlefield after 1748. Reformers frequently targeted the Maison militaire du roi for reduction or elimination, including casting it as the microcosm of the French armyâs and societyâs ills. Nobles resisted all of these efforts, not just out of class solidarity, but because many truly believed in the innate leadership abilities of the older nobility, especially when compared to the parvenus of the anoblis that increasingly populated the officer corps. Clean lines are impossible to draw along class, education, or other boundaries. Some nobles called for education for all officers, while others railed against it. Some commoners fought for noble rights and vice-versa. Regardless of particularist interests, any effort to reform the army would necessarily intrude on noble privileges, especially the upper nobility, which made it a fraught exercise.20
The writers of the Military Enlightenment rose to meet these challenges. Whether they served in the army, worked directly for the Ministry of War, or simply published treatises, thousands of men focused their considerable intellects and energies on untangling the vexed problems facing the French army in search of solutions. The result was a gradual process of reform that evolved throughout the century, synthesizing the best elements from various proposals and systems to produce the doctrine that would ultimately guide French armies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
The first significant proposal to redress these issues came from Folard, who inaugurated a major school of French military theory called âthe deep orderâ (lâordre profond) in the 1720s. Folard served in Louis XIVâs wars and had significant experiences of the armyâs deficiencies. He suggested that the army reach back to Classical examples, particularly the Greek phalanx, to create dense attack columns, or even a single attack column composed of many battalions. Such columns would be impervious to enemy fire, he said, as they charged home against thin enemy formations. To accomplish this, some soldiers would have to be armed with pikes alongside the fusiliers, like the old pike-and-shot formations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.21
Folardâs system was both recidivist and manifestly impossible in the age of massed fire. It would require the army to convert to it wholly, dispensing with traditions and practices, and follow it precisely. However, it won over many within the French army establishment. This was primarily because it proposed to solve the tactical issue of open formations. Folardâs columns were closed formations, which reduced the issues of maneuver by eliminating most of the space between men and units. The system also appealed to the French ânational character,â which contemporaries reckoned was based on élan and the offensive spirit. Because of this, Folardâs deep order would remain a major school in doctrinal debates that followed.22
By the next decade, another potential solution had emerged: the Prussian model. The âarmy with a stateâ provided a new paradigm of military organization, both philosophically and doctrinally, for the French to imitate. For generations, the rulers of Brandenburg/Prussia had developed systematic doctrine based on discipline, fire, and maneuver. Prussian officers dedicated themselves to learning their profession and imparting iron discipline in their men, and the result was that Prussian forces acquired a reputation for prowess in battle. As early as the 1730s, the Prussian army began to issue doctrinal publications that regularized aspects of its organization, drill, and maneuver. When Friedrich II deployed that army in 1740, the first war in which Prussia was a major belligerent, his forces quickly were both admired and imitated.23
For the French army, the Prussian army was an object of both fascination and apprehension. In the early part of the century, French theorists noted the skill of Prussian maneuver and envied its precision in drill. They also found the army-wide regulations issued by the king to be effective at crafting a uniform and highly effective army. This produced a gnawing fear that France was losing its position as the paradigm army in Europe, which it had held since at least the mid-seventeenth century. This fear was confirmed during the Seven Years War, as the Prussian army outperformed the French, most notably and disastrously at Rossbach. Therefore, in the latter half of the century, French theorists increasingly posited the Prussian army as the new paradigm: disciplined infantry ranks maneuvering quickly and firing rapid volleys from thin formations and supported by the other arms. France would either have to counter the new paradigm by developing its own or by copying elements of the Prussian, wholly or in part.24
After the Austrian Succession, reform proposals exploded in number and volume, likely catalyzed by the emergence of Prussia and the wider Enlightenment market of ideas. Prior to the 1720s, few writers produced works of military theory, with the market for military literature instead flooded with memoirs and campaign accounts, both spurious and genuine. Only after 1750 did works of military theory become both widely written and popular, an archetypal example of product and market in a mutually-beneficial relationship. Midcentury writers like Guillaume le Blond and Folard wrote lengthy technical treatises that expanded both the reading market and the knowledge of military practitioners. Maurice de Saxeâs posthumous Mes rêveries also proved popular, combining the genres of military memoir and theoretical work.25
Despite these proposals, no clear direction emerged, and doctrine reform splintered into numerous overlapping and particularist interests and factions. Some theorists counseled a wholesale adoption of Prussian methods, while others stoked patriotic sentiment by calling for their complete rejection. Most theorists fell in between these two extremes, even if their critics tarred them with belonging to a radical faction. Very generally, âPrussianâ theorists favored tactics that used thin lines and emphasized firepower, while âFrenchâ theorists favored tactics that used deeper formations and emphasized shock. Proponents of the latter also generally downplayed the importance of artillery in battle and wanted to revive the use of pikes. Theorists of either party could be prescriptive or descriptive, although most fell into the former category at some point in their works. In addition, like the debates on the role of the nobility, many particularist interests and hybrid schools emerged, further confusing efforts at implementing change.26
In the midst of these disagreements, France undertook its first major army reforms in 1750s, between the mid-century wars. The War Department began to issue ordinances that would now be recognized as doctrine. Secretary of State for War Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, comte dâArgenson, promulgated a series of regulations in 1754 that ordained deployment on three ranks and implemented a single cadenced step across the entire army. These reforms were vital in creating institutional doctrine for the French army. They established the precedent that the Ministry of War, not individual colonels, was charged with doctrine, centralizing it, at least in theory. The cadenced step was also a critical addition, as it enabled formations to close more tightly internally and in relation to other formations in battle order. An army in which the soldiers all marched at the same pace was able to perform much more complicated and precise maneuvers than one without, and every reform after 1754 rested on that simple but vital change.27
This was the army and reform to which Guibert would dedicate his life and career. The foundation of systematic doctrine was laid in the 1750s, particularly with the introduction of the cadenced step. He came of age during this period and quickly joined the debates, writing it for the first time in his early twenties and continuing until his death. His contributions built on the preceding changes and would become the most important of any during the period.
Guibert was born in the city of Montauban in southern France in 1743.28 Montauban was a smaller and relatively new provincial town north of Toulouse, famous for its staunch Protestantism during the Wars of Religion that spanned the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Despite having a population of only a few tens of thousands, it hosted an abbey, an episcopal see as a suffragan of the Archbishop of Toulouse, a customs court (cour des aides), and a provincial capital (généralité).29 If Montauban were a modern American state, it would perhaps be Missouri or Kansas: not the oldest province but not the newest, lightly populated, and site of previous national trauma.
Guibertâs family had been in the city for several generations, probably having been ennobled in the previous century. His grandfather Jean, born in 1666, purchased the titles of Kingâs Councilor (consellier du Roi) and Guardian of the Seals (garde des sceaux) in 1707 and married into an established family in the local nobility. The marriage included the estate of Fonneuve north of town, which would be the new family home.30
Jean probably belonged to the anoblis, a diffuse group of people on the border between the bourgeoisie and the lower nobility. French society did not automatically accept noble status simply because a person held a title, estate, or noble patent. Instead, those who had been ennobled, especially those who had purchased ennobling offices or patents, were expected to slowly transition into the nobility over two or three generations; they would probably not be accepted as noble per se, but their children or grandchildren might be. Anoblis status usually indicated both wealth and social climbing. Guibertâs family seems to fit this pattern, as both he and his fatherâs nobility appeared not to have been questioned. Interestingly, Guibert seems to have been the first in his family to have been regularly called âcountâ (comte), likely owing to his being awarded the Cross of Saint-Louis in 1770.31
Regardless of the propriety of its nobility, Guibertâs family was still near the bottom of the noble classes, being of both recent extraction and hailing from the provinces. Many of Guibertâs contemporaries in the provincial nobility were poor, and some lived lives nearly indistinguishable from peasants. Indeed, Guibert would be plagued by money problems for much of his adult life, even after marrying into wealth.32 In addition, the provincial nobility rarely attended court, generally staying in their bailiwicks. However, regardless of its financial state, the provincial nobility was the bedrock of the Second Estate, and it increasingly represented a kind of idealized, pastoral past to many in the noble classes; its plight was a major argument in the many debates over the role of the nobility in French society.33
Guibertâs father, Charles-Benoît Guibert, was born in 1715 and spent his life in the military. While the term is anachronistic, Charles-Benoît can best be described as having been a staff officer for most of his career. He fought in the Polish and Austrian Succession Wars, advancing from lieutenant in 1732 to lieutenant-colonel by 1747, largely in planning roles. He was noted for bravery in several battles, including at Rocoux while serving under Maurice de Saxe. He also married Suzanne-Thérèse de Rivail in 1742, who gave him both a 40,000 livre dowry and five children. In the interwar years, he returned to civilian life, dedicating himself to raising his only son to follow him into the military. He sent Guibert to school for basic education and training in military-focused subjects like mathematics. Charles-Benoît Guibert also took it upon himself to tutor his son in military affairs. When the Seven Years War broke out in 1756, he resumed his rank and was present at the crushing French defeat at the Rossbach, becoming one of the many thousands of French soldiers and officers taken prisoner; he spent around eighteen months in Prussia before being released in 1759. After his release, he was promoted chef dâétat-major and worked under a variety of French commanders throughout the war.34
Like his father, Guibert went to war at the traditional age of thirteen as a junior officer. That year coincided with the outbreak of the Seven Years War, which would be his inauguration to military affairs. Guibert alternated between continuing his education and serving as his fatherâs aide-de-camp. He managed to avoid capture after Rossbach for reasons that remain obscure; either he was not with the army at the time, or he remained with either the baggage or with the unengaged portion of the army under Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain. As he aged, Guibert was given more responsibility, chiefly as a runner of messages, which was typical of teenage junior officers. He fought in the campaigns against Ferdinand in western Germany under Victor-François, duc de Broglie. This brought him his first crowning martial glory: at the Battle of Vellinghausen in 1761, he altered an order that proved out of date given the situation he saw unfolding, which won him praise for his coup-dâÅil and initiative.35
The end of the Seven Years War brought changes for both Guiberts. Charles-Benoît entered the War Ministry, continuing his career as a planner and army bureaucrat. Guibert followed his father, assisting him formally in his work and informally finishing his education. Together, they helped to shape the next period of reforms that took place throughout the 1760s.
Etienne-François, duc de Choiseul, was the author of these reforms. Choiseul became the first official First Minister in nearly two decades, uniting a portfolio that included the Marine and the War Departments. He had near-carte blanche to implement reforms in the wake of the disastrous war, especially in the army. Throughout the 1760s, he issued a flurry of ordinances that curtailed pensions, eliminated most venality, regularized the size of most army units, and ensure that non-commissioned officers and officers had the requisite knowledge and skills to command.36 These reforms angered many, and Choiseul was dismissed in 1770 following a backlash against them, along with other issues with his ministry.37
Charles-Benoît Guibert worked alongside Choiseul, becoming one of his many clients as well as attaching himself to the powerful Broglie family. After Choiseulâs fall, Charles-Benoît moved to become governor of the Invalides, which managed both invalid veterans and regiments assigned to garrison duties along the kingdomâs frontiers. He appears not to have participated in the Republic of Letters or French public society for the most part; given that he once castigated his son for his outsized public persona, the likelihood is that he was content serving as a military bureaucrat, allowing his son to carry the family honor in the public sphere.38
Guibert thus came of age in a great public debate over the future of the French army and its doctrine, which gained a great deal of urgency after Franceâs defeat in the Seven Years War. He had witnessed the inefficacy of the French army himself, and he was eager to join the debate. He continued to work for his father, including collaborating on several War Department publications, culminating in the Instructions for Light Troops, issued in 1769. The gist of these documents is to eschew the large march columns of contemporary practice and instead break movement and maneuver formations into small closed columns that would move independently of each other into position from march to battle order. These became known as âGuibert columnsâ and were the single most important technical reform post-1760. They would become the basis for Guibertâs future writings, including in the General Essay on Tactics.39
While his work in the War Ministry was an invaluable experience, Guibert emerged from his fatherâs shadow during the Corsican campaign. In 1768, France purchased the island from the ailing Genoese Republic, hoping to expand its control over Levantine and Black Sea trade. France inherited a simmering rebellion led by Pasquale Paoli, who had established a de facto independent state. Choiseul determined to pacify the island, but the first efforts were defeated by Corsican guerillas. Guibert joined the follow-up expedition under the command of family friend Noël-Jourda, comte de Vaux. In bloody fighting, the French suppressed the rebellion and chased Paoli from the island.40 The Corsican rebels would remain a favorite example of Guibertâs, representing individual freedom fighters motivated by love of their homeland.41
Corsica afforded Guibert the time to think, and to write. He had likely drafted parts of the General Essay on Tactics before the campaign, perhaps with his fatherâs assistance. However, the period after the fighting allowed him time to complete and edit the manuscript, as clues within it indicate.42 He assumed command of the Corsican Legion, an irregular unit raised on the island destined to become a line regiment within a few years. This gave him practical experience of designing a unit from beginning to end, an invaluable lesson for the General Essay on Tactics. However, as he notes throughout, it was intended only as a précis of a much larger work, a military history of France, which he began but never completed.43
Lacking the longer work, the General Essay on Tactics is thus Guibertâs first and most significant entry into the canon of French military reforms. It was unlike almost every other work in the Military Enlightenment. Its major theme is a call for reform of current doctrine, as almost every treatise of the period did. However, rather than proposing his own rigid system, Guibert instead epitomized the best elements of the various schools, combining them into a dynamic doctrine that did not need to be strictly implemented or followed. The work has two major sections: elementary tactics and grand tactics. These are usually broken into separate volumes, and each generally corresponds to the tactical and operational levels of war.
At the tactical level, the crux of his reform is the adoption of Guibert columns, which Guibert elaborates and expands on. His system of âmarch-maneuversâ illustrate, in great detail, how such nimble formations could be used in exercises and battles. He also desires smaller units with fewer cavalry, light troops, and artillery and the training of infantry in both skirmishing and line combat. He requires that his officers be educated and trained in the handling of their forces as well as across branches and specialties. The result at the tactical level would be highly maneuverable forces that could adapt to circumstance without upsetting their deployment or combat ability.44
Tactical reforms lead directly to his second major theme, laying the foundations for operational-level warfare. Few theorists of the period engaged with levels above tactics. They concerned themselves instead with revising or perfecting tactical systems, making the tactical level of war an end unto itself or the sole key to victory.
Guibert viewed war more holistically than most of his contemporaries. He had been part of the first experiment with the division system in Broglieâs army during the Seven Years War and was undoubtedly influenced by it.45 He recognized the need to transcend mere tactical systems, realizing that an army that could fight well at lower levels was of little use if it were still chained to systems that required it to ponderously march into battle and spend hours arraying itself to fight. Those systems would have to be revised, allowing units to maneuver independently of each other before and into the battle, not just in the battle itself, as Broglie had done in his campaigns.
This led to Guibertâs exploration of the beginnings of operational-level warfare in the second volume of the General Essay on Tactics, on âgrand tactics.â As Claus Telp notes, Guibert âcall[s] for the tactical positioning of divisions on the battlefield to be the consequence of operational design.â46 This manifests itself in Guibertâs refusal to accept the bifurcation between march and battle orders that contemporary tactics required as most of his contemporaries did. Instead, he unites march and battle order, using his all-purpose Guibert column for both. This promised to dispense with the laborious process of transitioning from march to battle order, returning speed and decision to the battlefield and making possible operational-level warfare in the modern sense.47 An army following Guibertâs recommendation could divide itself into sub-units to make its march easier and give itself greater flexibility of organization and tactics when confronted with an enemy or restrictive terrain.48
Guibert also realizes that an army must have an officer corps suited to handling warfare above the tactical level. As such, he advocates for yearly training camps, where large formations would assemble to train men in large-scale maneuvers and officers in the handling of armies. He also provides guidance on how to maneuver such formations, laying the foundation of some of the earliest elements of operational-level warfare.49 In addition, Guibert addresses each of the combat arms throughout the General Essay on Tactics, devoting several chapters to infantry, cavalry, light forces, and artillery. This was relatively rare for the period, where works tended to specialize in one combat arm, usually the infantry. He also provides guidance for command and control and for logistics, particularly in the section on grand tactics. Finally, he devotes a portion of each volume to educating the officer and forming his coup dâÅil.
Guibert did not invent modern operational-level warfare, as is occasionally posited. He still envisioned a unitary army fighting together in battle, even if it could march divided.50 Instead, he helped to lay the foundation for the later development of operational warfare. His approach is bottom-up, grounded in tactical reforms that would free commanders to make use of their own coup dâÅil at the operational level, which differs from modern approaches that tend to view operational warfare as proceeding from strategy and are thus top-down.
Finally, the Preliminary Discourse opens the work. Instead of analyzing military affairs, Guibert instead opts to provide a tableau of contemporary politics and society, moving through Europe and stopping briefly in each significant state. In identifying the deep links between politics, society, and warfare, he anticipated the arguments of Carl von Clausewitz by nearly seventy years. Guibertâs tone in this section is roundly condemnatory: no state measures up to Classical ideals, and no state has the potential to evolve into such a paragon. Perhaps because of this, the Preliminary Discourse received the most attention from his contemporaries and from later historians. David Bell and Beatrice Heuser have both commented on its seeming call for âtotal warâ by enfranchising a stateâs citizens in its war efforts.51 Ultimately, even though Guibert viewed himself as much a political commentator as a military theorist, the Preliminary Discourse does not deter him from his project, which is to provide the best possible doctrine for France, given its situation.
The doctrine proposed in the General Essay on Tactics, while still containing prescriptive elements, rose above similar works due to its clarity, refusal to prescribe a specific tactical system, and its exploration of the higher levels of war. In the Guibert column, he had finally found the solution that had vexed the French army throughout the century, providing a simple method for moving forces in closed columns from march to battle order, line to column, and to meet whatever circumstance battle presented. Unlike his peers, he managed to do so without becoming a âmaker of systems.â At a stroke, the General Essay on Tactics promised to eliminate the processional nature of contemporary practice and demonstrated how replace it with a superior system.52
Few books had the impact of the General Essay on Tactics, both immediately and over time. Within two years of its publication, it had spread across Europe and beyond, including a possibly apocryphal story that George Washington carried a copy in his personal baggage.53 In particular, the Preliminary Discourse, with its fiery condemnation of contemporary politics and societies, drew praise from readers. Its arguments fit seamlessly with the critiques of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Voltaire; and many other philosophes who called for change in French politics and society.54 Readers seemed to have been attracted more to its passion and ideas than its prose per se; Guibert would be criticized throughout his life for the lesser quality of his writing. Regardless, it opened nearly every door he desired in Paris and throughout Europe, vaulting him from anonymous provincial noble to the highest ranks of popular society.
The decade of the 1770s was thus a whirlwind for Guibert. The publication of his first work opened numerous doors for advancement, both professional and personal. He began to attend the leading salons in Paris, where the intellectual elite of Europe gathered to discuss politics, philosophy, and the arts. He began a relationship with leading salonnière Julie de Lespinasse, which provided his surviving correspondence and connected him to a network of leading philosophes. He became a voice for reform in the War Department, serving as a member of the Council of War that oversaw the reforms of the mid-1770s. He wrote several dramatic works, one of which was produced for the queen. Finally, he participated in the great training camp that settled the tactical debate, which led to the publication of his second book, a Defense of the Modern System of War.55
By the early part of the decade, Guibert was attending the major salons in Paris. Salons were rooms opened for discussion and debate, usually on a specific day of the week. The three most important salons of the decade were those run by Marie Geoffrin, Lespinasse, and Suzanne Necker, and Guibert attended them all.56 He was said to have been charming, especially with women. His conversation won him the favor of the salonnières and most of the attendees. He also amazed with his eidetic memory; he was said to have been capable of understanding a book after simply glancing at it.57 He even achieved the ultimate imprimatur: being the subject of a satirical poem of Voltaireâs, called âLa tactique.â58
The salons and the Republic of Letters allowed Guibert to form relationships with the leading members of the Enlightenment and Parisian society. He began a love affair with Lespinasse, which occupies most of their correspondence.59 He became friends with mathematician and Encyclopedist Jean la Rond dâAlembert, who lived with Lespinasse. He may have also carried on a romance with Germaine de Staël, the great writer of the period, who elegized him and noted among his friends âVoltaire, Buffon, Rousseau, Diderot, dâAlembert, and Thomas.â60 Guibert also made enemies in Parisian society. Jean-François de la Harpe, another renowned writer, became his inveterate critic and enemy, as did salonnière Marie-Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand, and those who attended her, especially Horace Walpole and Charles-Jean-François Hénault. American Gouvernor Morris said that Guibert âloves to hear himself talk [and] say a good deal to prove that he knows but little.â61 These relationships, positive and negative, indicate the august company Guibert kept.
In the midst of this meteoric rise, Guibert was afforded an opportunity to travel across Europe and attend Prussian training camps in 1773. He leapt at the chance, spending much of the year on the road. He traveled through the Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, including visiting the Croatian borderland. He attempted to travel to Russia, but illness stymied the effort. Most importantly for him, he was able to meet his idol Friedrich II and attend the famed Potsdam exercises. The former awed him to speechlessness and produced some of Guibertâs most embarrassing prose.62 The latter confirmed one of the major themes of the General Essay on Tactics: his belief that Prussiaâs doctrine was effective but flawed and could not simply be exported to France wholesale, as some of his contemporaries wished. He returned in the fall to legal troubles, as his friend Charles-François Dumouriez, of later Revolutionary infamy, had been arrested as part of a plot to overthrow the Polish-Lithuanian crown. Guibert may have been a member of the shadowy Secret du roi alongside Dumouriez, and his journey may have included espionage, but there is no proof of the allegation. Guibert avoided arrest and returned to Paris, and to his burgeoning public career.63
The next few years were the busiest of Guibertâs life. He began his relationship with Lespinasse in 1774. The following year, he married Alexandrine-Louis Boutinon des Hayes de Courcelles, a wealthy heiress from northern France. He also turned to the theatre, writing a play about the quixotic Charles III, duc de Bourbon, who abandoned France to fight for Emperor Charles V before being murdered by his troops during the 1527 Sack of Rome. Queen Marie Antoinette arranged for the production of the play, the Connêtable de Bourbon, in August and December 1775; both efforts were sharply criticized, even after re-writes between them.64
Most importantly for Guibertâs military career, the decade saw him enter into a position of great influence over French doctrine. In mid-1775, as Guibert struggled with the theatre, Secretary of State for War Louis- Nicolas-Victor de Félix dâOllières, comte de Muy, died unexpectedly. He was replaced by Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain, who applied for the position via a memorandum outlining his proposed reforms that was penned by Guibert. Saint-Germain rewarded Guibert by appointing him Secretary of the War Council, which the minister assembled to advise him on reform and perhaps to become a prototypical general staff.65
For the next eighteen months, Guibert and his fellow councilors, including artillerist Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval and fellow reformers Louis-François, baron Wimpffen-Bornebourg; and Louis-Pierre, comte de Jaucourt, worked to implement reform. These measures generally fell into three categories: finance, nobility, and tactics. The reforms of the 1750s and 1760s had laid the foundation for French army doctrine, but some were reversed, and the remaining measures did not settle any of the outstanding issues in the aforementioned areas. As a result, the Saint-Germain ministry issued almost one-hundred ordinances in less than two years, a far higher rate than the typical ministry of the period, in an effort to address them.66
Foremost remained the financial crisis. Nearly all of the councilâs documents, collated and mostly written by Guibert, present proposed reforms as cost-cutting measures. The ensemble of them is a deep concern with the state of the armyâs finances, which reflected the armyâs concern. In this vein, many proposals included reducing or even eliminating units of the Maison du roi, supposedly elite units that had not participated in a significant battle in decades but still employed many thousands of officers and men. Despite resistance, many of Saint-Germainâs edicts succeeded in shrinking several of its units, with the added goal of saving money in the process.67
Next came the tactical debates, which continued to rage throughout the army, fed by the huge increase in publication of works in the Military Enlightenment after 1750. Mesnil-Durand had rehabilitated the deep order, reducing Folardâs column it in size in response to criticism but still insisting on deploying large columns from the center. Others fell under the sway of the Prussian émigré Pirch, who developed a system based on the Prussian methods used during the Seven Years War. He created an elaborate geometry based on âpoints of view,â which required officers to draw imaginary lines between physical features on the battlefield and maneuver their units precisely on the grid squares created as a result. His system approached the tactical problems from the opposite direction, but it was no less complicated or processional than Folardâs and Mesnil-Durandâs columnar systems. However, like the proponents of the deep order, Pirchâs points of view gained a large and loyal following. Exercises held during the early 1770s won support for both systems, further confusing the issue.
To bring clarity, the War Council issued a bevy of new regulations, including once again standardizing all unit sizes and command structures, incorporating light troops into line units, creating sixteen territorial divisions for manning, handing the artillery to Gribeauval.68 It also eliminated venality of colonelcies, assuming control over regiments as it had over companies in the prior decade. Most importantly for doctrine, the 1776 Regulations eschewed Guibert columns and instead drew heavily on Pirch and enshrined points of view in French doctrine. Finally, the council reformed punishment of soldiers, replacing corporal punishment, seen as anachronistic and cruel, with blows from the flat of an officerâs saber. With the exception of the tactical reforms, which he saw as still being too Prussian, Guibert played a significant role in most of these efforts, although he was not their leader, as a relatively junior member of the council. However, because of his role in the 1776 Regulations and the punishment decrees, he would be grouped with the âPrussian school,â much to the detriment of his later career and his proposed reforms.69
Like almost every reform of the late Old Regime, Saint-Germainâs died before they could be fully implemented. One major reason was the lack of funds; while Saint-Germain promised long-term savings, the officers whose units had been contracted would have to be paid off, requiring a large amount of money up-front, which the state simply did not have. Another was resistance from various groups, whether opposed to the cuts, disagreeing with the tactics proposed, or simply enemies of Saint-Germain and his patrons at court. The result was his dismissal in 1777 and Guibertâs departure from the Council of War.70
Despite the failure of the Saint-Germain reforms, they set the stage for the future of the French army in two important ways. The first unfolded over the next two years and settled the tactical debate, and the second provided the template for future War Ministers, culminating in the Regulations of 1791.71 At the same time, France would fight the last war of the Old Regime, opening the coffers to fund reforms and pushing the state into near-bankruptcy.
Part of the fall of the Saint-Germain ministry was the burgeoning American Independence War, in which France took an increasing interest after mid-1777. The following year, the kingdom formally entered the war and began to fully fund the military again. While the majority of the fighting in the war would be on the side of the Marine, the army was significantly involved as well. In particular, Marshal Broglie was ordered to assemble an army of 40,000 on the Channel coast for an invasion of England.72
Broglie used the opportunity to test the various tactical systems, including inviting Guibert and his rival, Mesnil-Durand, to the camp at Vaussieux. Broglie favored the latterâs deep order, particularly in contrast to the new Regulations based on Pirchâs system. As the camp began maneuvers with large formations, he tested both the Regulations and Mesnil-Durandâs large columns deployed on the center, first in a vacuum, then against opposition. Broglie desired that Mesnil-Durandâs system be better than the Regulations both for reasons of patriotism and because he genuinely believed that the column was the solution to the problem of deployment and maneuvering. However, he grew increasingly frustrated as his army could not maneuver as effectively as the armies set against him commanded by Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, which used a system more like the doctrine adopted in the 1760s. In repeated exercises, Rochambeau used his more maneuverable forces to defeat Broglieâs central columns.73
To observers, Vaussieux settled the most significant tactical debate since the publication of Folardâs first book. The large column deployed on the center simply did not function in circumstances that resembled war. While Mesnil-Durand would continue to write and defend his system, the deep order effectively ceased to exist after 1778. However, the final word on tactics was yet to be written, as many officers expressed frustration with the formalism and complicated nature of the 1776 Regulations.74 The War Department had pushed doctrine away from the deep order but too far in the other direction; a middle ground still waited to be discovered.
The decade after Vaussieux was largely a disappointment to Guibert. He wrote his second book, the Defense of the Modern System of War, detailing the camp and its outcomes and, as Julia Osman has argued, distancing himself from the more incendiary political and social stances in the General Essay on Tactics.75 He would not fight in America, as he had wished, and ended up spending the war in France working for his father as inspector of the kingdomâs garrison units. Lespinasse also died during the period, which seemed to occasion a reduction in his busy social schedule. Nevertheless, he won election to the Académie française in 1785, which gave him great joy. He also attended Neckerâs salon, where he met her daughter Germaine, as mentioned. He continued to write, travel, and spend time on his marital estate in Courcelles.76
This situation reversed itself on the eve of the Revolution, returning Guibert to power with virtual carte blanche to reform the army in 1787. Due to a series of events that became entangled with the coming Revolution, an inexperienced Secretary of State for War took office that year.77 Guibert again ended up on the War Council, but this time as its driving force. The subsequent period would lay the final pieces of foundation for the 1791 Regulations to follow.
The two most significant changes that took place under Guibert were reform of the infantry regulations and the creation of true divisions. The former occurred in stages, including provisional regulations issued in 1788. These were never implemented, but they contained the germ of Guibertâs ideas, dating back to his work with his father in the 1760s. They abandoned much of the formalism of the 1776 Regulations in favor of smaller, dynamic units that resembled Guibert columns. In addition, the War Council of Guibert was the first to address the operational level of war in French history. In early 1788, the War Council issued a decree that established twenty-one divisions. However, unlike the fourteen territorial divisions that remained from the 1770s, these units had permanent commanders, staffs, inspectors, and units attached to them, and almost all of them were combined-arms. They were the first true combined-arms combat divisions in French history, albeit never used in battle.78
Guibertâs work on the War Council laid the foundation for the French army of the future, but he would not live to see it. As the Revolution approached, the War Council dissolved in 1789, leaving Guibert at loose ends. Being a man of the Enlightenment, he was eager to join the Revolution, and he attempted to stand for election to the Estates-General in Berry, where his estate was located. However, he was denied access to the race by locals, who were angered both by his reform efforts and by his status as a relative newcomer to the area. Stymied, he turned to writing, producing several documents in the last year of his life proposing changes in the government, society, and the military. Early the following year, he died of an illness in Paris, supposedly saying âI will be known; I will have justice!â as his dying words.79
It would be difficult to predict how Guibert would have weathered the storm of the Revolution had he survived. His early work could easily have pushed him into the more radical camp, perhaps even as a Jacobin. However, he had supported the Ségur Decree and efforts to retain noble dominance over the military, which may have drawn him to the conservative groups on the right. In all likelihood, he would not have emigrated with ultramontanes like Charles-Philippe, comte dâArtois, the future Charles X, but also would not have become a leftist. He might have remained as a functionary within the Ministry of War like Lazare Carnot, or he may have leveraged a command like his old friend Dumouriez. Ultimately, his outspoken and contentious nature would have led him to speak out, which would likely have resulted in his running afoul of the Reign of Terror in 1793 or 1794.80 Regardless, his early death unfortunately deprived posterity of a meeting with Napoleon, who authorized the publication of Guibertâs work in 1803 by his widow.
Guibertâs influence proved immensely important over the next several decades. The foundations that he laid, first in his writing and then in his work in the Ministry of War, were incorporated into the official Regulations of 1791. These were the French armyâs doctrine until the 1830s, including the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. They closely resembled the philosophy of the General Essay on Tactics: small, nimble units using whatever formations suited circumstance and commanded by skilled and dynamic leaders.81
This doctrine was the product of a century of change, reform, and debate. The adoption of the fusil with socket bayonet around 1700 regularized infantry technology, allowing military theorists and practitioners to largely focus on doctrine for the remainder of the period. They faced the challenge of crafting it to account for the changes in tactics, particularly the problem of open formations and the length of time required to maneuver and use them in battle. Different schools and solutions emerged, which produced a bevy of prescriptive systems promising to solve all problems.
However, these âmakers of systemsâ failed to grasp the proper role of doctrine. Only after the Napoleonic Wars did François Roguet, a veteran of the conflicts, best encapsulate it in modern warfare. He argued that â[doctrine is] perhaps only the grammar of those who must then make combinations dictated to them by the terrain and the enemy, but it is only in the reality of the action, under the sudden and fecund inspirations of the battlefield, and with the troops that one has in hand, that such applications seem possible.â82 The âmakers of systemsâ wanted to dictate both the grammar and the usage of doctrine.
Guibert, virtually alone among his peers in the Military Enlightenment, understood this. He did not craft a prescriptive system and insist that his readers follow it rigidly. Nor did he simply philosophize about war and its meaning without producing any useful doctrine. Instead, he created doctrine and insisted that commanders use it as a foundation rather than a rigid system, especially on the nascent operational level. He placed much importance in the formation of coup dâÅil, the officerâs instinct and adaptability to circumstance. Guibert intended his work, and doctrine in general, to be the beginning of military art and science, not their end. In doing so, he illustrated the bankruptcy of highly prescriptive doctrines, especially at higher levels of war.
The General Essay on Tactics is thus a bridge between the Old Regime and modern warfare. It epitomizes most of the best elements of warfare in the Old Regime and the Military Enlightenment. It provided the basis of French practice during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Guibertâs military thought was at least a generation ahead of time, particularly on the operational level of war. As a result, he has been described as the prophet of the mass armies of the Revolution, of Napoleon and his Grande Armée, and of modern warfare in general.83 The General Essay on Tactics made possible the work of future writers like Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini, and Clausewitz, who drew their inspiration from those conflicts and, consequently, from Guibert. It is the work that links the era of Louis XIV, Condé and Turenne, and Maurice de Saxe to that of Napoleon, and beyond.
John Wolf, Louis XIV: A Profile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), remains the most effective single-volume study of Louis XIV and his reign. John Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 1667â1714 (New York: Longman, 1999), examines his many conflicts, including the Spanish Succession, and Giant of the Grand Siècle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), details his army and its practices. James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), provides a superb overview of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the growth of the bureaucracy and issues with modernization during them, and Guy Rowlands, The Financial Decline of a Great Power: War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIVâs France (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), details the junctions of war and policy during the period. Finally, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Régime: A History of France, 1610â1774 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), gives a summary of the period and its monarchs.
See Collins, The State in Early Modern Europe, 191â290. Unfortunately, despite being the second-longest-reigning king in French history, no modern scholarly biography of Louis XV exists in English; the closest is G.P. Gooch, Louis XV: The Monarchy in Decline (New York: Longmans, 1956).
See M.S. Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740â1748 (New York: Longman, 1995); and Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: St. Martinâs Griffin, 1995).
See Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War 1754â1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest (New York: Routledge, 2011); Mark Danley and Patrick Speelman, eds., The Seven Years War: Global Views (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Patrice Higgonet, âThe Origins of the Seven Years War,â in Journal of Modern History 40, no. 1 (1968): 57â90.
Franz Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756â1763 (New York: Routledge, 2013), is the best summary of the relevant operations, including those that happen away from Friedrichâs armies, on which most surveys focus; see Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (New York: Longman, 1966), 125â320, which is often substituted for a comprehensive account of the war. See also Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years War: A Study in Military Organization and Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967).
Brent Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory: Battle Tactics 1689â1763 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990), 3â141; and Robert Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare: The Theory of Military Tactics in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 7â25. Louis-Hippolyte Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle. Lâorganisation (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907); and Jean Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle. La tactique (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907), remain the best studies of the eighteenth-century French army, but both are unavailable to the Anglophone reader. Fortunately, Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, largely reproduces their arguments and analyses.
Ibid. Venality of captaincies was officially suppressed in the 1650s, but captains were still expected to raise, equip, and train the men in their companies, meaning they occupied a quasi-venal liminal space for much of the century. See Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 1â19; and Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 27â72. See also Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750â1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 12â45.
Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 3â141; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 7â25.
Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73.
Ibid. Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 31â32, posits the interval as the greatest impediment to change before 1770. See also Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 79â86.
Infantry could also deploy from the center, but this was generally avoided if possible, because it more than doubled the work and time required to deploy the army from march to battle order. See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 3â141, especially 65â78; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 7â25.
See M.S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1617â1789 (New York: St. Martinâs Press, 1988); Jeremy Black, Warfare in the Eighteenth Century (London: Cassel, 1999); and Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (New York: Atheneum, 1988).
Guibert addresses national character on 42â45.
Numerous works on French finances during the period exist, particularly closer to 1789 as the financial crisis helped to precipitate the collapse of the state and the beginning of the Revolution. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 239â341, provides an excellent overview. See also The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: France from Old Regime to Revolution, ed. Julian Swann and Joël Félix (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and James Riley, The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
Ibid. In 1758, Secretary of State for War Charles-Louis-Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, bemoaned that âI am incessantly asking for money from the contrôleur-général, who has none to give me, and we must, at least, do our part ⦠in diminishing, and even in cutting off, those [expenditures] that are superfluous.â Belle-Isle to Louis-Georges-Erasme, marquis de Contades, 23 July 1758, The Duke de Belleisleâs Letters to the Maréchal de Contades, Found Among the Papers of Contades after the Battle of Minden (London: Payne, 1759), 105â106. See, for example, Guibertâs argument on 6â8.
Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80â105 and 199â209. Albert Latreille, Lâoeuvre militaire de la révolution: lâarmée et la nation à la fin de lâancien régime; les derniers ministers de la guerre de la monarchie (Paris: Chapelot, 1914), argues that many post-1760 reforms were inspired by âGermanâ influence, meaning Prussian.
The Enlightenment is one of the largest areas of early-modern historiography, and one of the most contentious. For an introduction to the Enlightenment and the field of Enlightenment Studies, see Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019); and Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Christy Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500â1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Armstrong Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1700â1789 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). See also Pierre-Joseph Bourcet, Principes de la guerre de montagne (Paris: Levrault, 1802); Henry Lloyd, War, Society, and Enlightenment: The Works of General Lloyd, ed. Patrick Speelman (Leiden: Brill, 2005); and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26â79.
Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1â32, forcefully makes this argument.
David D. Bien dedicated much of his career to untangling these thorny issues, including refuting the notion of a class-based âAristocratic Reactionâ against rising commoners that was, and continues to be, advanced by historians of Marxist persuasion. See David Bien, et al., Caste, Class, and Profession in Old Regime France: The French Army and the Ségur Reform of 1781 (St. Andrews: Centre for French History and Culture, 2010); David Bien, âMilitary Education in 18th Century France: Technical and Non-Technical Determinants,â in Science, Technology, and Warfare: Proceedings of the Third Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force Academy, 8â9 May 1969, ed. Monte D. Wright and Lawrence J. Paszek (1971): 51â59; and âThe Army in the French Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction, and Revolutionâ in Past & Present 85 (1979): 68â98. See also Blaufarb, The French Army, 12â45; William Doyle, Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); Haroldo GuÃzar, The Ecole Royale Militaire: Noble Education, Institutional Innovation, and Royal Charity, 1750â1788 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Guy Rowlands, âThe Maison militaure du roi and the Disintegration of the Old Regime,â in The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy, 245â274; and Jay Smith, Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600â1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26â40. See also Jean-Charles, chevalier Folard, Nouvelles découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe, où lâon donne une idée plus étendue du commentaire entrepris sur cet auteur, et deux dissertations importantes détaches du corps de lâouvrage (Paris: Jean-François Josse and Claude Labottiere, 1726).
Ibid; and Nosworthy, Anatomy of Victory, 147â162. See also Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 35â46.
Robert Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012); and Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600â1947 (Cambridge: Belknap, 2006), provide an introduction to the rise of Prussia. Christopher Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great (Warwick: Helion, 2018), surveys the Prussian army of the mid-eighteenth century and its methods.
âThe Prussian military ⦠has become the model organization,â declares a War Department study from 1766; see Service Historique â Armée de Terre, Vincennes, France, 1M 1793 28, Militaire prussien. Several other studies of similar language and conclusions are in the archives of the period.
Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80â105. See Guillaume le Blond, The Elements of Fortification (Philadelphia: Wayne, 1801); and A Treatise of the Attack of Fortified Places (London: Cave, 1948); and Maurice de Saxe, Mes rêveries (Amsterdam: Arkstée et Merkus, 1751). See also Robert Darnton, The Business of the Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the âEncyclopédieâ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: from the Enlightenment to the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment, 1â24 and 192â229; and Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1â32.
Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80â105. See also Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 1â72.
Ibid. See also Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73â111, which argues that the Choiseul reforms were the pivotal changes of the century, and Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 1â25, who generally agrees with Bacquet on their importance.
Jonathan Abel, Guibert: Father of Napoleonâs Grande Armée (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), is the only English-language biography of Guibert. Ethel Groffier, Le stratège des lumières: le comte de Guibert (1743â1790) (Paris: Editions Champion, 2005); and Matti Lauerma, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert (1743â1790) (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1989), are the major French-language sources for his life. As with Quimby and Colin, the Anglophone work will be cited in lieu of the Francophone. Some controversy exists over Guibertâs name, which was not uncommon for the period, especially among the provincial nobility. Baptismal certificates exist for âJacques-Antoine-Hippolyte,â âFrançois-Appolini,â and âFrançois-Appoline.â Scholars have attempted to untangle the reason for this, including proposing a sibling who died in infancy or a name change on the part of the parents, but no resolution is likely to be found. As a result, his books can be found published under several names, including the above, and combinations of them. See Abel, Guibert, 34â35. See also Raymond Granier, âOù est né le Maréchal Guibert?â in Actes du congrès des sociétés savantes. Section dâhistoire moderne et contemporaine 77 (Paris, 1952), 29â33.
Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt, âMontauban,â in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (Paris: 1751â1772), X:681.
Abel, Guibert, 34â35.
Ibid. The Cross of Saint-Louis was designed exactly for people like Guibert, to elevate them from the anoblis into a secure position in the nobility.
Abel, Guibert, 77, 93â94.
See Bien, Caste, Class, and Profession in Old Regime France; Blaufarb, The French Army, 12â45; and Doyle, Venality.
Abel, Guibert, 35â37. See also 42 and especially 238â239.
Abel, Guibert, 37â38.
The Choiseul regulations dictated that most infantry battalions be composed of eight fusilier companies and one grenadier company; Broglieâs push for the inclusion of a chasseur company failed. Choiseul also decreed the elimination of the last vestiges of venality within companies, with the stateâs assuming the responsibility for manning, equipment, payment, and oversight from the individual captains. See ibid, 39â45; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 90â105. See also Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73â111; Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73â134; and Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 1â25.
Choiseulâs fall was the result of a confluence of factors, not the least of which was the rise of Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry, Louis XVâs final official mistress. Barry formed a faction opposed to Choiseul and sought to unseat him and replace him with her own minister, imitating her predecessor Pompadour. In addition, religious issues revolving around the Jesuit order and foreign affairs relating to a conflict Choiseul steered France towards that pitted Spain against Great Britain over control of the Malvinas Islands in the South Atlantic contributed to his downfall. See Abel, Guibert, 45â46; and Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 1â25.
Abel, Guibert, 77 and 152â153.
Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, adopts this argument as its thesis, and many works, including Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, follow it.
Abel, Guibert, 46â49.
See 33n3 and 4, 92n8.
See ibid., and 46n27.
See 32â38.
Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 119â134.
In 1760, Broglie organized the major French field army into operational divisions, which remained until his dismissal in late 1762. While these formations were not permanent, they undoubtedly inspired Guibert, and the evolution of operational-level organizations and warfare. See Jonathan Abel, âAn Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France,â in Essays in Honor of Christopher Duffy (working title), ed. Alex Burns; and Steven T. Ross, âThe Development of the Combat Division in Eighteenth-Century French Armies,â French Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (1965): 84â94.
Claus Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740â1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon (New York: Frank Cass, 2005), 22â23.
See 183â184.
Bourcet, Principes de la guerre de montagne, elaborates on how an army might conduct such operational-level warfare. It was not published until late in the nineteenth century, but it was probably circulated among the officer corps of Guibertâs day, and his writing bears the influence of Bourcetâs. See 28n66 and 173n3.
See Jonathan Abel, âThe Prophet Guibert,â in Napoleon and the Operational Art of War: Essays in Honor of Donald Horward, ed. Michael Leggiere (Leiden: Brill, 2021): 8â38. See also Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740â1813, 4â29.
R.R. Palmer, âFrederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow: From Dynastic to National War,â in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 91â122, makes this point forcefully.
David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleonâs Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (New York: Mariner Books, 2008), 79â82; and Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), especially 113â170; and âGuibert: Prophet of Total War?â War in an Age of Revolution, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 49â67. Abel, Guibert, especially 190â191, following Palmer, âFrederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow,â argues against this line of thought, that the ideas in the Preliminary Discourse must be separated from Guibertâs proposed reforms, particularly in light of his later writings.
Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 98â134.
Oliver Spaulding, âThe Military Studies of George Washington,â in The American Historical Review 29, no. 4 (1924): 675â680, finds that the General Essay on Tactics âseems to have been one of the books obtainedâ by Washingtonâs aide.
See Roche, The Enlightenment in France, especially 449â640.
Abel, Guibert, 77â97.
Literature on the salons is extensive. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), provides an effective introduction.
Ibid., 58, 75; and Abel, Guibert, 77â97.
Abel, Guibert, 81.
See Julie de Lespinasse, The Love Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse to and from the Comte de Guibert, ed. Armand Villeneuve-Guibert, trans. E.H.F. Mills (London: Routledge, 1929). See also Abel, Guibert, 77â97.
Anna-Louise-Germaine de Staël-Holstein, âEloge de M. de Guibert,â in Mémoires de Madame de Staël (Paris: Charpentier, 1843), 340. Staël was Neckerâs daughter, allowing Guibert to maintain both social and political contacts throughout the later part of his life. See also Abel, Guibert, 81.
Ibid., and Gouverneur Morris, Diary and Letters, 2 Vols. (New York: C. Scribnerâs Sons, 1888), 254.
The passage begins with âa sort of magic vapor seemed to me to envelop his person; it is, I believe, what one calls the halo of a saint and the glory around a great man,â and continues for several paragraphs. See Abel, Guibert, 87. See also Jacques- Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Journal dâun voyage en Allemagne, 2 Vols. (Paris: Chez Greuttel et Würtz, 1803), I:217â220.
Abel, Guibert, 85â90. See also Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez, Life, 3 Vols. (London: Johnson, 1796), 1:170â189 and 308â433.
Abel, Guibert, 92â96. Guibertâs theatrical works are collected in Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Åuvres dramatiques (Paris: Persan, 1822).
Abel, Guibert, 100â103. See also Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 66â134; and Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain, Mémoires et commentaires, 2 Vols. (London: 1781), especially I:68â104.
Ibid., Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 112â145; and Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 135â184.
Abel, Guibert, 98â117. The records of this work are held in the archives of the Service Historique â Armée de Terre (SHAT), Vincennes, 1 M 1790â1794, which are known as the âGuibert Papers.â They are replete with efforts to economize throughout the reform process.
Throughout the century and mirroring larger disagreements, two factions disputed the proper system of artillery in the French armies. The reigning Vallière System was based on siege weaponry and equipped units with large, heavy guns. Gribeauval, the senior artillerist in the army, created his own system of smaller, lighter, and more mobile field guns to support a more mobile army. While most within the army favored the Gribeauval System, court politics meant that it could not be implemented until the Saint-Germain ministry.
Ibid., and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 199â232. Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 112â145; and Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 135â184, provide the best analysis of the details of each reform. See also Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 66â134. Venality continued to be an issue until the Revolution, as proprietors might refuse to implement doctrine within their units regardless of its official promulgation. See Blaufarb, The French Army, 12â45; and Smith, The Culture of Merit.
Ibid.
Abel, Guibert, 114â117; and Latreille, LâÅuvre militaire de la révolution, 132â134.
Jonathan Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); and The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), provide introductions to the French involvement in the conflict. Orville Murphy, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719â1787 (New York: State University of New York Press, 1982), is a biography of the central figure in French politics during the war and the period, and Louis XVI and the comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, 1774â1787 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998), provides a collection of his correspondence with Louis XVI. See also Julia Osman, Citizen Soldiers and the Key to the Bastille: War, Culture, and Society, 1750â1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 80â107; and âAncient Warriors on Modern Soil: French Military Reform and American Military Images in 18th Century France,â in French History 22 (2008): 175â196; and Samuel Scott, From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an Age of Revolution (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003).
Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 233â248, provides the best overview of the exercises. The campâs official records are in SHAT 1 M 1812, including Broglieâs reports. See also Abel, Guibert, 125â132; and Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 213â245, which argues that Vaussieux convinced Broglie of the utility of Guibert columns.
Ibid.
Julia Osman, âGuibert vs. Guibert: Competing Notions in the Essay général de tactique and the Défense du système de guerre moderne,â in Journal of Military History 83, no. 1 (2019): 43â66. Osman contends that this marks the latter work as the more important of the two, despite the attention the former received, and receives. See also Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Défense du système de guerre moderne, ou réfutation complète du système de M[esnil-]D[urand], in Åuvres militaires, Vols. 3â4.
Abel, Guibert, 132â155.
This period has become known as the âPrerevolutionâ and is now seen as part of the Revolution proper, largely due to Jean Egret, The French Pre-Revolution 1787â1789, trans. Wesley Camp (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); John Hardman, Overture to Revolution: The 1787 Assembly of Notables and the Crisis of Franceâs Old Regime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), further details the events of the year and their significance. The failure of the state to cope with the many crises of the period and a resurgent nobility maneuvered the weak Louis XVI into calling an Assembly of Notables in early 1787. This would be a collection of various ministers, high nobles, and clerics who would take control of the state and ideally place it on the proper path to reform. Like many of the events of the Revolution, several factions hoped to leverage the Assembly to further their own agendas and power, foremost the conservative nobility. Vergennesâ death in February robbed Louis of his first minister and the only man able to exert power over the state, leading to an inauspicious opening for the Assembly. It quickly became intransigent, led by Bishop Etienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, who refused to cooperate with the kingâs economic policies. By May, Louis folded and made Brienne de facto first minister; Brienne saw his brother, the inexperienced Louis-Marie-Athanase de Loménie, comte de Brienne, named Secretary of State for War that September. See also John Hardman, French Politics 1774â1789: From the Accession of Louis XVI to the Fall of the Bastille (New York: Longman, 1995); and Swann and Félix, The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy.
Abel, âAn Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France;â Guibert, 159â166; and âThe Prophet Guibert,â 24â26; Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 269â290; and Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 4â29. See also Bacquet, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 149â165; Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 146â176; and Latreille, Lâoeuvre militaire de la révolution, 236â288.
Abel, Guibert, 167â174.
French Revolutionary historiography is as voluminous as it is contentious. William Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); and François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), provide an overview of the period and analyses of it.
Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 300â344; Paddy Griffith, The Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789â1802 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998); and Jordan Hayworth, âThe French Way of Warâ in Napoleon and the Operational Art of War, 40â87. See also Colin, Lâinfanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 246â276.
François Roguet, âEtude sur lâordre perpendiculaire,â Le spectateur militaire XVIII (Paris: Noirot and Anselin, 1834), 523.
See Colin, Lâeducation militaire du Napoléon (Paris: Chapelot, 1901); Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy; Lucien Poirier, Les voix de la stratégie (Paris: Fayard, 1985); and Palmer, âFrederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow: From Dynastic to National War.â