Behind them, filling the roads that converged on Liège came the infantry of Emmich’s assault force, rank after rank. Only the red regimental number painted on helmet fronts broke the monotony of field...
Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths or almost total elimination in others, the overall estimate of modern demographers has settled—for the are...
Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the F...
Alexander Guchkov, a subsequent Minister of War, testified that he reached the firm conviction that the war was lost after Tannenberg. The defeat gave new vigor to the pro-German groups who began open...
Very devout like his great-grandfather St. Louis, though not his equal in intelligence or will, Philip was fascinated by the all-absorbing question of the Beatific Vision: whether the souls of the ble...
Owing to the high infant mortality of the times, estimated at one or two in three, the investment of love in a young child may have been so unrewarding that by some ruse of nature, as when overcrowded...
One corps had run out of wire altogether and was relying on mounted orderlies. The VIth Corps did not possess the key to the cipher used by the XIIIth. Consequently, Samsonov’s orders were issued by w...
Nevertheless Sir John French next day sent Joffre definitive notice that the British Army would not be in condition to take its place in the line for another ten days. Had he asked for ten days’ time...
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
Each day he grew older and learned something new. Strong
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
After the Marne the war grew and spread until it drew in the nations of both hemispheres and entangled them in a pattern of world conflict no peace treaty could dissolve. The Battle of the Marne was o...
A terrible worm in an iron cocoon, as he was called in an anonymous poem, the knight rode on a saddle rising in a high ridge above the horse’s backbone with his feet resting in very long stirrups so t...
Present-day anthropologists defend the thesis that the American Indians were in fact originally Mongolians who crossed over by the Bering Strait.)
The Naval Minister next challenged the War Minister to a duel, but after fervent efforts by their colleagues to separate and calm the combatants, he embraced Messimy in tears and was persuaded to resi...
On the same day, the British chiefs were hurrying the BEF southward with such urgency that the soldiers were deprived of the rest they needed far more than they needed distance from the enemy. On that...
Officers from St. Cyr went into battle wearing white-plumed shakos and white gloves; it was considered chic to die in white gloves. An unidentified French sergeant kept a diary: the guns recoil at eac...
Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, p...
In the Hundred Years’ War that dragged France and England through the 14th century, both sides would have liked to quit but could not, for fear of losing power and status; hate and mistrust fed by the...