ABSTRACT
The god of war is about to reveal himself, for one have heard his prophet'. Thus wrote the French strategist Jean Colin in his book on the military education of Napoleon, and the prophet he had in mind was Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Count de Guibert, a prolific writer of the eighteenth century. The influence of Guibert's writings on the warfare of the French Revolution, however, was at best indirect. One believer in Guibert's prophetic gifts was the French anthropologist Roger Callois. Jacques-Antoine de Guibert wrote down his thoughts on the subject of the art of war and society in his two-volume Essai general de Tactique when he was in his early twenties, towards the end of several years of independent study in Paris, who was now employed at the Ministry of War. Creating vast citizen armies, Guibert warned, would not only make warfare more expensive but also make citizens direct participants in warfare and envelop them in all its horrors.
