Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle
Harrisburg, PA: The Military Service Publishing Company, 1947. Reprint Edition [Copyright date is 1946.]. Hardcover. xxi, [1], 273,[3] pages. Frontis illustration. Facsimile. Footnotes. Appendices. Preface by Frank H. Simonds. Introduction by Ernest Judet. Some wear to top and bottom edges of spine and boards. This is part of the publisher's Military Classics series. Previous owner's decorative bookplate on fep. This translation is based on the Eighth French edition. This book was originally published in English in 1920. This classic work explains the disasters of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and helps to predict the successes of World War I. Ardant du Picq was a colonel in the French Army who was killed in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War. The work was not completed by him, but Du Picq had written many chapters completely and left sufficient notes behind to complete the book. The theme of the book, according to Marshal Foch, is that "moral force" is the most powerful element in the strength of armies and the preponderating influence in the outcome of battles. Du Picq's work attempts to deal with the principles of warfare as an empirical study, based on case studies of battles. Battle Studies became a key textbook in the French Army's École de Guerre in the years leading to World War I. More