A History of Strategy by Martin van Creveld Read Free Book Online Page A

operations. Only then, expanding its horizons, it moved towards greater things.
    Montecuccoli having pointed out the things military theory ought to aim at, the first part of the art of war to be reduced to a “system” was, as might be expected, siege warfare. Since the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, a period which saw the introduction of the first effective siege artillery on one hand and of the bastion on the other, both the art of attacking fortresses and defending them had made great strides. By the late seventeenth century the acknowledged master in both fields was a Frenchman, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban. Vauban, who was of bourgeois origins, was a military engineer. He spent his life alternately building fortifications for Louis XIV or conducting sieges in that king’s name. Late in his career he put down his experiences in two slim volumes which dealt with the defense and the attack, respectively. They neither were nor claimed to be a comprehensive treatise on the art of war. On the other hand, and thanks largely to the fact that of all types of military operations siege warfare was the easiest to reduce to rules, they were a model of their kind which others sought to emulate.
    The precise ways in which Vauban recommended that fortresses be attacked or defended do not concern us here. Suffice it to say that, in both respects, he proposed an extremely methodical
modus operandi
designed to achieve the objective step by step and with as few casualties as possible. After all, the king’s professional soldiers were expensive to raise, equip, and maintain. Focusing on the attack, the first step was to concentrate an army as well as sufficient supplies of everything needed, including, the men, their arms, ammunition, powder (for mines as well as firearms), engineering materials, and tools. Then it was necessary to isolate the soon to be taken fortress by isolating it from the outside world, using lines of vallation and counter-vallation for the purpose.
    Next a thorough reconnaissance made by the commander in person was to reveal the fortress’ weak points. The guns were to be brought up, properly situated, and dug in. The bombardment itself was to be carried out in three bounds as each bound brought the attackers closer to the walls. Sallies by the defenders were to be carefully guarded against and, if they took place nevertheless, allowed to run their course and repulsed before siege operations properly speaking resumed. Breaches were to be systematically widened until they were “practicable.” And so on, measure for measure, until the capture—or, even better, the surrender—of the fortress—was obtained.
    As of late, attempts have been made to belittle Vauban’s originality and deny his historical importance both as a builder and as a commander. Be this as it may, the fact remains that his writings have never been surpassed in their own field. As late as 1830 they were still being reprinted as a practical guide. Meanwhile whatever theoretical wisdom was contributed by others who were active in the field had been long forgotten. One and all, the aim of his successors was to extend his approach to warfare in its entirety, a task in which they invariably failed.
    To pass over them rapidly, Jacques Francois de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur (1655–1743) spent most of his life fighting for Louis XIV in whose army he finally rose to the position of quartermaster general. Written in the 1720s, his
Art of War by Principles and Rules
was explicitly modeled on Vauban. What the latter had done for siege warfare Puységur sought to do for “the entire theory of war from the smallest part to the largest.” Seeking to contradict those who claimed that only practice mattered, moreover, he wanted to show that war could be taught “without war, without troops, without an army, without having to leave one’s home, simply by means of study, with a little geometry and