Battle Studies
Picq, Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du
English
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Below is a summary of Battle Studies
Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
BATTLE STUDIES
ANCIENT AND MODERN BATTLE
BY COLONEL ARDANT DU PICQ
FRENCH ARMY
TRANSLATED FROM THE EIGHTH EDITION IN THE FRENCH BY
COLONEL JOHN N. GREELY
FIELD ARTILLERY, U.S. ARMY
AND MAJOR ROBERT C. COTTON
GENERAL STAFF (INFANTRY), U.S. ARMY
Joint Author of "Military Field Notebook"
1921
[Transcriber's note: Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ARDANT DU PICQ]
[Illustration:
Letter from Marshal Foch to Major General A. W. Greely
Dated Malsherbe, October 23, 1920]
TRANSLATION OF A LETTER FROM MARSHAL FOCH TO MAJOR GENERAL A. W.
GREELY, DATED MALSHERBE, OCTOBER 23, 1920
MY DEAR GENERAL:
Colonel Ardant du Picq was the exponent of _moral force_, the
most powerful element in the strength of armies. He has shown it to
be the preponderating influence in the outcome of battles.
Your son has accomplished a very valuable work in translating his
writings. One finds his conclusions amply verified in the
experience of the American Army during the last war, notably in the
campaign of 1918.
Accept, my dear General, my best regards.
F. FOCH.
PREFACE
BY FRANK H. SIMONDS
Author of "History of the World War," "'They Shall Not Pass'--Verdun,"
Etc.
In presenting to the American reading public a translation of a volume
written by an obscure French colonel, belonging to a defeated army, who
fell on the eve of a battle which not alone gave France over to the
enemy but disclosed a leadership so inapt as to awaken the suspicion
of treason, one is faced by the inevitable interrogation--"Why?"
Yet the answer is simple. The value of the book of Ardant du Picq lies
precisely in the fact that it contains not alone the unmistakable
forecast of the defeat, itself, but a luminous statement of those
fundamental principles, the neglect of which led to Gravelotte and
Sedan.
Napoleon has said that in war the moral element is to all others as
three is to one. Moreover, as du Picq impressively demonstrates, while
all other circumstances change with time, the human element remains
the same, capable of just so much endurance, sacrifice, effort, and no
more. Thus, from Caesar to Foch, the essential factor in war endures
unmodified.
And it is not the value of du Picq's book, as an explanation of the
disasters of 1870, but of the triumphs of 1914-18, which gives it
present and permanent interest. It is not as the forecast of why
Bazaine, a type of all French commanders of the Franco-Prussian War,
will fail, but why Foch, Joffre, Petain will succeed, that the volume
invites reading to-day.
Beyond all else, the arresting circumstances in the fragmentary pages,
perfect in themselves but incomplete in the conception of their
author, is the intellectual and the moral kinship they reveal between
the soldier who fell just before the crowning humiliation of
Gravelotte and the victor of Fere Champenoise, the Yser and the
colossal conflict of 1918 to which historians have already applied the
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