The use of seemingly inexhaustible mass
armies supported by the full economic power
of increasingly well-organized states moved
war, at least in Europe, from limited conflicts
of dynastic maneuvering to unlimited and
stupendously violent confrontations seeking
the complete subjugation of the enemy. This
raised the stakes of war for the belligerents at
the same time that the increased scope and
dispersion of action reduced the ability to
maintain tight control. Therefore, whereas it
remained a common practice for European
monarchs to accompany their armies into
the field until well into the 19th century, this
no longer ensured that the means committed
to tactical engagements remained yoked to
strategic objectives.
G.S. Isserson describes a typical Napoleonic
campaign as “a great, long approach,
which engendered a long operational line,
and a short final engagement in a single area,
which, with respect to the long operational
line is a single point in space and a single
moment in time.”5 Echoing Carl von
Clausewitz—“The field of battle in the face of
strategy is no more than a point; in precisely
the same way the duration of battle reduces to
a single moment in time”—Isserson describes
Napoleonic war as the era of single-point
strategy since “the entire mission of a military
leader was reduced to concentrating all his
forces at one point and throwing them into
battle as a one act tactical phenomenon.”6
In this context, the closely contemporaneous
Austro-Prussian (1866) and
Franco-Prussian (1870–1871) wars marked a
watershed. The war of 1866 demonstrated the
strategy of a single point—Koniggratz—but,
by 1870, the larger armies and more expansive
theater of operations created new needs. In
1870–1871, there were many battles that influenced
each other and that extended through
time and across space. War had outgrown the
The use of seemingly inexhaustible mass
armies supported by the full economic power
of increasingly well-organized states moved
war, at least in Europe, from limited conflicts
of dynastic maneuvering to unlimited and
stupendously violent confrontations seeking
the complete subjugation of the enemy. This
raised the stakes of war for the belligerents at
the same time that the increased scope and
dispersion of action reduced the ability to
maintain tight control. Therefore, whereas it
remained a common practice for European
monarchs to accompany their armies into
the field until well into the 19th century, this
no longer ensured that the means committed
to tactical engagements remained yoked to
strategic objectives.
G.S. Isserson describes a typical Napoleonic
campaign as “a great, long approach,
which engendered a long operational line,
and a short final engagement in a single area,
which, with respect to the long operational
line is a single point in space and a single
moment in time.”5 Echoing Carl von
Clausewitz—“The field of battle in the face of
strategy is no more than a point; in precisely
the same way the duration of battle reduces to
a single moment in time”—Isserson describes
Napoleonic war as the era of single-point
strategy since “the entire mission of a military
leader was reduced to concentrating all his
forces at one point and throwing them into
battle as a one act tactical phenomenon.”6
In this context, the closely contemporaneous
Austro-Prussian (1866) and
Franco-Prussian (1870–1871) wars marked a
watershed. The war of 1866 demonstrated the
strategy of a single point—Koniggratz—but,
by 1870, the larger armies and more expansive
theater of operations created new needs. In
1870–1871, there were many battles that influenced
each other and that extended through
time and across space. War had outgrown the
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