The Halt in the Mud: French Strategic Planning from Waterloo to Sedan (History and Warfare)

The Prussians have usually received the credit for all that is good in modern strategic planning. By contrast, the French have been portrayed as effete martinets or feckless hussars - and in either case as indifferent to the location and timing of an attack. Historians have repeatedly painted a picture of the French Army in the years following Waterloo as an institution bogged down in reactionary politics, a pale shadow of the Napoleonic Grande Armee. This book re-examines the period from 1815 to 1870, and argues that the 19th-century French Army was both dynamic and creative. Supporting his thesis with extensive evidence from the Army's own archives, the author sets out to show that, after defeat at Waterloo, France began to formulate long-term strategic plans which were firmly rooted in the Napoleonic concept of strategy and staff-work - and which influenced French strategy right up to the outbreak of the Great War.