ABSTRACT
The modernists introduced a debate on Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz into the interpretation of Civil War history. There had long been a need to escape provincialism and set the Civil War against the general backdrop of the history of warfare and the development of military science. The Baron Antoine Henri Jomini, a legend during his lifetime, is the man fallen from historians' grace. The Swiss-born Jomini entered the French army as a private and rose to be brigadier-general and chief of staff to Marshal Ney. Karl von Clausewitz's story is nearly the reverse of Jomini's. He is the prophet not honored in his own lifetime but discovered and canonized by later generations. It is easy to understand why the world at first ignored Clausewitz. His career on the line and later as minor staff officer in the Prussian army during the Napoleonic wars was entirely routine.
