04-07-2007, 08:31 PM
The skill and valor of the Swiss was not a myth.
They were defeated by combined arms armies with arquebuses and artillery, fighting from fortifications. The tactics of pregunpowder warfare were different from gunpowder warfare.
That merely proved that technology changes warfare, which is no surprise. World War I showed the same lesson - that men, no matter how well trained or motivated, or in any numbers, could be broken by superior firepower, trenches, and artillery. This was shown all over the Western Front, and on the Isonzo as well.
Getting back to the title of this thread, the influence of du Picq on WW I was important and in part catastrophic. His emphasis on the importance of superior morale was combined with a long-standing notion that Frenchmen were better in attack than defense, and produced a pre-war doctrine that emphasized offensive tactics, at the same time that the machine gun and rapid-firing breechloading artillery with explosive shells made the battlefield far more dangerous. In the initial Battles of the Frontiers, the French army almost destroyed itself following its Plan 17, hurling men in the open against German technology.
They were defeated by combined arms armies with arquebuses and artillery, fighting from fortifications. The tactics of pregunpowder warfare were different from gunpowder warfare.
That merely proved that technology changes warfare, which is no surprise. World War I showed the same lesson - that men, no matter how well trained or motivated, or in any numbers, could be broken by superior firepower, trenches, and artillery. This was shown all over the Western Front, and on the Isonzo as well.
Getting back to the title of this thread, the influence of du Picq on WW I was important and in part catastrophic. His emphasis on the importance of superior morale was combined with a long-standing notion that Frenchmen were better in attack than defense, and produced a pre-war doctrine that emphasized offensive tactics, at the same time that the machine gun and rapid-firing breechloading artillery with explosive shells made the battlefield far more dangerous. In the initial Battles of the Frontiers, the French army almost destroyed itself following its Plan 17, hurling men in the open against German technology.
Felix Wang
