ABSTRACT
The eighteenth-century systems of war, wrote Marshal Foch, ‘tried to achieve their objectives by stratagems, threat, negotiation, manoeuvre, partial actions, occupation of hostile territory and the capture of fortified places.’ The marshal accepted the oft-held view that war in the Age of Reason was limited because its exponents wished it to be so, that generals earned their reputations by ponderously moving their armies round the Low Countries, deliberately avoiding battle.
