The encyclopedia of nineteenth-century land warfare. An illustrated world view.

Ein gutes und sauberes Exemplar. - ENGLISCH - This is a work designed for both the scholar and the general reader of military history. Its entries include information on wars, revolutions, battles, sieges, spies, soldiers-and some marines and sailors who fought on land-technical military terms, weapons, armies, military awards, camp followers, and other aspects of nineteenth-century wars and military life. As diseases in all armies and in all wars except the Maori Wars and the short-lived Franco-Prussian War accounted for more deaths by far than from all weapons combined, attention has been paid to the most prevalent diseases affecting soldiers, available medicines, and medical arrangements of armies, including the political and military consequences of attempting to reduce the impact of that great filler of military hospitals, venereal disease. In the nineteenth century at least five major developments shaped the nature of armies and the wars they fought: The increased size of the world population permitted larger and larger armies. The population of Europe, in spite of large emigrations to the United States, doubled. Advances in technology, particularly in the last quarter of the century, added greatly to the destructive power of weapons. Largely the result of improved weapons, defensive tactics and strategies more often prevailed over the offensive, although the importance of this change was seldom realized at the time. It took many years for senior soldiers to realize that the breech-loading rifle and rifled cannon put an end to cavalry as an attack weapon and that the introduction of the machine gun at the end of the century put period both to the horse in battle and to massed infantry attacks. War became more of a science in the last half of the century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century few officers received formal military education. Armies throughout the world were largely officered by aristocrats and the gentry. The nineteenth century saw the introduction in Europe and the United States of schools designed to give young men training in the profession of arms and staff colleges that made officers more professional. Finally, there was a dramatic change in the quality of the rank and file. The peasants, serfs, farm boys, slum dwellers, unemployed, and unemployable who served in the armies of the Napoleonic Wars were gradually replaced by better-educated and more competent men. Improved reward systems were developed, somewhat more palatable food was provided, and marginally healthier living conditions. ISBN 9780393047707