Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 ‘Then was then and now is now’: an overview of change and continuity in late-medieval and early-modern warfare
- 2 Warfare and the international state system
- 3 War and the emergence of the state: western Europe, 1350–1600
- 4 From military enterprise to standing armies: war, state, and society in western Europe, 1600–1700
- 5 The state and military affairs in east-central Europe, 1380–c. 1520s
- 6 Empires and warfare in east-central Europe, 1550–1750: the Ottoman–Habsburg rivalry and military transformation
- 7 Ottoman military organisation in south-eastern Europe, c. 1420–1720
- 8 The transformation of army organisation in early-modern western Europe, c. 1500–1789
- 9 Aspects of operational art: communications, cannon, and small war
- 10 Tactics and the face of battle
- 11 Naval warfare in Europe, c. 1330–c. 1680
- 12 Legality and legitimacy in war and its conduct, 1350–1650
- 13 Conflict, religion, and ideology
- 14 Warfare, entrepreneurship, and the fiscal-military state
- 15 War and state-building
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Aspects of operational art: communications, cannon, and small war
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- List of abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 ‘Then was then and now is now’: an overview of change and continuity in late-medieval and early-modern warfare
- 2 Warfare and the international state system
- 3 War and the emergence of the state: western Europe, 1350–1600
- 4 From military enterprise to standing armies: war, state, and society in western Europe, 1600–1700
- 5 The state and military affairs in east-central Europe, 1380–c. 1520s
- 6 Empires and warfare in east-central Europe, 1550–1750: the Ottoman–Habsburg rivalry and military transformation
- 7 Ottoman military organisation in south-eastern Europe, c. 1420–1720
- 8 The transformation of army organisation in early-modern western Europe, c. 1500–1789
- 9 Aspects of operational art: communications, cannon, and small war
- 10 Tactics and the face of battle
- 11 Naval warfare in Europe, c. 1330–c. 1680
- 12 Legality and legitimacy in war and its conduct, 1350–1650
- 13 Conflict, religion, and ideology
- 14 Warfare, entrepreneurship, and the fiscal-military state
- 15 War and state-building
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Operational art – as the term is used in this essay – falls somewhere between strategy and tactics, and concerns the business of war-fighting in most of its aspects save the purely political or logistical. The word ‘strategy,’ in the sense of grand strategy, probably did not enter European vocabulary until the end of the eighteenth century. However, as Hew Strachan recently pointed out, even if the practice did not have a label, it certainly existed long before the eighteenth century. The term ‘tactics’ had ancient origins, of course, and was well understood in our period, even if the available weapons and types of soldiers using them were in some areas undergoing radical change. Even excluding grand strategy and the tactical handling of troop formations in combat, operational art is a formidably wide field and this essay's discussion is limited to three inter-related aspects: developments in the nature of military command and its tools of communication, the heavy weapons available to commanders in the field and in siege warfare, and what was known in all of Europe's principal languages as ‘small war’.
Two of these topics relate to significant changes. Mapping techniques and other aspects of post-medieval communications transformed the ability of commanders to envisage the landscape of war. The development of gunpowder artillery produced a weapon that – literally – expanded the tactical landscape.
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- European Warfare, 1350–1750 , pp. 181 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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