Morris, William O'Connor
"Great commanders of modern times and The campaign of 1815." by Morris is a collection of military-history essays written in the late 19th century. It surveys the careers and campaigns of Turenne, Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington, and Moltke, then reassesses the 1815 campaign—especially Waterloo—with sharp, source-based judgments on strategy and command.The opening of the work lays out its scope and method in a preface that revises earlier magazine essays, argues for dispassionate criticism, and signals two controversial Waterloo claims (La Haye Sainte taken about mid‑afternoon and only one Guard column reaching the British line). An introduction defends the enduring value of studying “great generals,” names the subjects, and foregrounds Gustavus Adolphus as the father of modern strategy, briskly recounting his Baltic wars and his German campaigns up to Lützen to show how systematic bases, river lines, and winter operations shaped success. Chapter I then explains how seventeenth‑century conditions constrained strategy and tactics before tracing Turenne’s career: steady rise, strategic brilliance in campaigns of manoeuvre (notably 1646 on the Danube and the winter stroke behind the Vosges), firm leadership in the Fronde and against Spain (Arras, the Dunes), reforms that professionalized the French army, and his culminating Rhine campaigns against Montecuculi before his death at Sassbach; the author praises his strategic constancy while noting slower, less…
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