Battle Studies

“The smallest detail caught on the spot and in the heat of action,” Ardant du Picq writes, may teach more than all the great theorists. What can a soldier’s fear, endurance, and resolve reveal that weapons and formations cannot?

Writing in the 1860s, this French officer turns to battles ancient and modern to examine the force at the heart of every army: the people who must stand and fight. Du Picq looks beyond maneuvers and military machines to the pressures of combat—the instinct to survive, the power of discipline, and the courage that can hold a line or break it. His subject is not simply how battles are planned, but what happens to human beings when plans meet the field. If the soldier’s spirit weighs so heavily in victory, how can a commander understand and command it?

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