Russell F. Weigley > Quotes

“So we turn to the history of that chapter in the chronicles of war that was quintessentially the age of battles: romantic, even glorious in their spectacles of brightly colored uniforms, glittering sabers and bayonets, blaring musical battle-calls, charging men and horses; inspiring in their instances of courage and devotion to duty; horrible beyond imagination in the wreckage of crushed and mutilated bodies they left behind; futile in their habitual failure to achieve that complete destruction of the enemy army through which they might have justified themselves by bringing quick decisiveness to war. The swift decisions almost never came. if war's one virtue was its capacity to produce decisions at a tolerable cost, it had lost its virtue before the age of battles commenced.”
― Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo

“The grand-scale battle, with tens of thousands of soldiers fighting, cursing, trembling, falling, screaming in agony, dying, all in a spectacle covering an amphitheater-like field -- this dramatic epitome of war is the chief source of the enduring fascination of military history. The thirst to experience vicariously the intense emotions of battle goes far to explain why books of military history are written and read, however much their authors and readers may profess higher concerns about removing or at least palliating the scourge of war.”
― Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo