Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xli:4 (Spring, 2011), 565–590. - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Revista de Historia Interdisciplinaria, xli:4 (Primavera, 2011), 565–590.

MILITARY MORALITY TRANSFORMED

Gervase Phillips
Military Morality Transformed: Weapons and
Soldiers on the Nineteenth-Century Battleªeld In
the dying days of America’s Civil War, Theodore Upson, a vet-
eran Federal soldier, had almost come to the end of his long march
under the command of General William Sherman. Primavera 1865
found him in North Carolina with the desperate shards of the
Confederate army fracturing before him and his comrades. As one
more ragged, “butternut” clad regiment broke, Upson spotted a
rider on a mule in a rebel artillery crew: “Just as I was going to ªre
something seemed to say to me: ‘don’t kill the man; kill the mule.’
So I . . . shot the off mule just behind the front leg. He went down
and that delayed them so much that we got the gun. . . . I am glad
I shot the mule instead of the man.”1

Upson’s choice is testimony to the humanity of the individ-
ual soldier. He is neither the automaton of traditional military
history—retreating, de pie, or advancing by company, regi-
mento, or brigade at the behest of some famous “great captain”—
nor is he simply an obedient, uniformed killer to be ignored by
those who might otherwise describe themselves as “social histori-
ans,” interested in the lives of ordinary people. The nineteenth-
century battleªeld posed unique ethical challenges and demanded
choices of those individuals wreathed in the acrid, thick, negro
smoke of gunpowder volleys. The moral and physical autonomy
of the soldier, sin embargo, was frequently constrained by the tactical
formation in which he was deployed (involving both the close
proximity of his comrades and, crucialmente, his unit leaders) and by
the technological characteristics of his weapons.

formations, armas, and morale During the early years of
the century, most line infantry had fought shoulder-to-shoulder in

Gervase Phillips is Principal Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan University. Él es
the author of The Anglo-Scots Wars, 1513–1550: A Military History (Woodbridge, Suffolk,
1999); “Scapegoat Arm: Twentieth-Century Cavalry in Anglophone Historiography," Diario
of Military History, LXXI (2007), 37–74.

The author thanks anonymous reviewers for advice and encouragement.

1 Theodore Upson (ed. Oscar Winther), With Sherman to the Sea: Civil War Reminiscences of
Theodore F. Upson (Bloomington, 1943), 159–160.

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566 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

close ranks, armed with smoothbore muskets that were inaccurate
más allá de 150 meters. Por eso, most ªre on the battleªeld was deliv-
ered in mass unaimed volleys from clumsy muzzle loaders leveled
in the direction of enemy formations. Good troops were those
who ªred fast, three or four rounds a minute. Later in the century,
veteran ofªcers and military theorists would look back upon the
soldiers of Frederick the Great and the Napoleonic Wars almost as
máquinas, when “men were drilled not trained,” under a system of
frequently brutal physical discipline that taught them to repeat the
actions of loading and ªring as if by reºex, even when gripped by
the acute anxiety of battle. Under the eyes of their comrades, miedo
of shame ªxed them to their ground; if terror overcame honor,
the close proximity of ofªcers, sergeants, and corporals ensured
that they could physically be forced back into their place, by half-
pike or the ºat of a sword.2

The mass of line infantrymen (as opposed to specialist “sharp-
shooters” or riºemen ªghting in open formations and deliberately
choosing their targets) would rarely be confronted directly by the
ethical reality that their own shots were killing and mutilating
other human beings. Not only did they deliver these shots en
masse, thereby diluting any sense of individual responsibility, pero,
in a major engagement, they also were unlikely to see the effects of
their ªre clearly. On a still, windless day in the black-powder era,
soldiers in the line of battle were soon almost blind. After a sharp
engagement outside Charleston, South Carolina, in late 1864,
Colonel George Harrison, 32d Georgia Infantry, recalled “the
dense smoke from the enemy’s ªre, which from the peculiar state
of the atmosphere did not rise, but hid us from the sight of the foe.
It was so thick that in places a man could not be seen [en] ªve
paces.” Similarly, his compatriot Joseph Shelby wrote tellingly of
battle’s “wild powder gloom” that grew darker and darker until
pierced by nothing but the ºashes of musket ªre.3

Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, a nexus of
factors—social, cultural, and technological—would gradually

2 A. F. Becke, An Introduction to the History of Tactics 1740–1905 (Londres, 1909), 37; Rory
Muir, Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon (nuevo refugio, 1998), 68–104.
3 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Ofªcial Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies (Washington, CORRIENTE CONTINUA., 1880–1901) (hereinafter or), Serie 1, Vol.35, punto. 1, Report of
Colonel George P. harrison, of action at Burden’s Causeway, John’s Island, 255; Serie 1,
Vol.22, punto. 1, Report of Col. Joseph O. Shelby, commanding Fourth Missouri Cavalry Bri-
gade, December 7, 1862, 151.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 567

change the physical (and thus also the psychological) ambiente
in which most soldiers fought, loosening the constraints over per-
sonal choice on the battleªeld and restoring considerable agency
to the mass of soldiers in combat. This development is of sig-
niªcance in two related areas. Primero, it confronted the ofªcers of all
Western armies with the novel necessity of having to understand
the psychology of the men that they led in battle. This late Victo-
rian emphasis on the “moral” qualities of ordinary soldiers has
been dismissed by some military historians as an atavistic impulse,
provoked by the emerging dominance in the battleªeld of imper-
sonal modern technology. In fact the psychological and the tech-
nological factors that shaped battle were inextricably intertwined:
Military formations dispersed to avoid the ªrepower of modern
armas; ofªcers sacriªced much immediate control; and isolated
men chose to ªght or not.

Segundo, consideration of soldier agency on the battleªeld il-
luminates the contingent nature of human aggression. A promi-
nent recent trend in the study of mass violence—evident in works
of history, international relations, and genocide studies—which
draws heavily from social and evolutionary psychology, stresses
man’s capacity for violence and the ease with which he kills. Todavía
the nineteenth-century battleªeld was populated not just by killers
but also by “skulkers” and “shirkers,” as well as by otherwise duti-
ful soldiers, like Upson, who declined to kill when circumstances
allowed. Nor was killing the only military obligation of soldiers,
contrary to those modern scholars who view it as “the deªning
characteristic of war.” Indeed, on battleªelds swept by modern
ªrepower, the capacity to endure heavy casualties was identiªed as
a crucial measure of military efªciency. Battleªeld leaders recog-
nized the emerging assertiveness and autonomy of individual sol-
diers as a development equal in signiªcance to the perfection of
weapons technology.

For both contemporaries and later generations of military his-
torians, this development manifested itself primarily in dry, tacti-
cal debates, particularly about the relative merits of close-order
formations—in which soldiers were vulnerable to ªre but amena-
ble to discipline—and dispersed, open-order (or “skirmishing”)
formations—in which they tended to ºee for cover and either
shoot wildly or not at all. For frustrated ofªcers, such behavior was
a consequence of a character deªciency. Puede, a captain in and stu-

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568 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

dent of the 1866 Prussian campaign against Austria, wrote, “If only
all soldiers of their own accord would simply do their duty in bat-
tle, an army would be perfectly invincible. . . . But man has in his
own composition a natural desire of self-preservation, an egotism
and indolence united with many sensual desires. . . . Who would
ever maintain that death was indifferent to him?”4

Conventionally, weapons technology has been seen as central
to this issue. The reªnement of successive generations of “arms of
precision”–from the riºed musket to the breechloader and, por
the 1890s, the magazine-fed bolt-action riºe with its smokeless
powder—placed ever-more lethal arms into the hands of infantry-
hombres. The faster and more accurate ªre prompted troop dispersion,
thereby increasing soldier autonomy. Hamley, author of the stan-
dard text on military theory for Victorian ofªcer candidates at
Sandhurst, described how “since the introduction of riºes and
riºed guns into armies,” formations sought “to offer less mark
both in front and in depth to the projectiles and to take fuller ad-
vantage of the cover which average ground affords.” Yet this stress
upon the growing lethality of infantry weapons as the central dy-
namic of military tactics, privileging technological explanations of
cambiar, obscures soldiers’ humanity and ignores other contempo-
rary debates about the “moral” (or psychological) character of
men in battle.5
En efecto,

showed a
twentieth-century military historians
marked tendency to dismiss those ofªcers who, trained in the age
of Victoria, stressed the continuing signiªcance of the “moral fac-
tor in war” as ideologically reactionary and blind to the new tech-
nological realities of battle. Those who studied World War I, en
which the vulnerability of human ºesh to machine-gun bullets,
shrapnel, and high explosive was all too apparent, often accused its
commanders, in Travers’ words, of excessive concern for “the
morale-orientated battleªeld” at the expense of fully compre-
hending “the technological battleªeld.” Within this historio-
graphical tradition, the tactical debates of the late nineteenth

4 Theodore May quoted in Robert Home and Sisson Pratt, A Précis of Modern Tactics (Lon-
don, 1892), 18.
5 Edward Hamley, The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated (Londres, 1888), 361.
Modern military historians tend to render the noun moral as morale when they encounter it in
works by nineteenth-century theorists. Although this interpretation is often correct, theorists
sometimes intended the term to have a broader psychological meaning than simply attitude or
disposition.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 569

century seem to be particularly sterile exchanges in which frus-
trated reformers largely failed to convince conservative military
establishments—as embodied in socially exclusive, elite corps—
that no amount of human spirit could overcome the deadly new
“arms of precision.”6

Sin embargo, the distinction between a morale-oriented and a
technologically oriented battleªeld is a false dichotomy, y el
contemporary emphasis on the soldier’s state of mind and will to
ªght were neither as ill-founded nor as reactionary as later genera-
tions of historians have claimed. Recent studies focusing on the
history of tactics by Grifªth, Echevarria II, and others maintain
that nineteenth-century military theorists not only fully recog-
nized the challenges posed by new weapons technologies; ellos
also understood that the human element in combat continued to
be a signiªcant, even decisive, factor in combat. Careful reading of
tactical theory reveals a widespread acceptance that infantry for-
mations were liable to break down in combat to some extent; el
problem was to keep this tendency within acceptable limits. En
1873, British ofªcers were warned, “Particular care must be taken
that the frequent dispersion and development of strong lines of
skirmishers, which is demanded by the present mode of warfare,
may not lead to a pernicious loosening of the tactical connection.
This danger can alone be met by great intimacy on the part of
ofªcers with battle formation, and by a high state of discipline in
action and in ªring, combined with a thorough and strict system
of drill. As the Russian General Mikhail Dragomirov suggested,
“Man always man, this is the ªrst of all instruments for battle.”7
The tactical debate between the advocates of dispersed for-
mations and those of closer order should thus be understood not as
an ideological impasse between progressive forces of reform and
blinkered forces of conservatism but as a practical disagreement
between military professionals with equally valid responses to the
changing nature of combat. This is not to deny that cultural and
political factors could shape tactical debates and military regula-

6 Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: El ejército británico, the Western Front and the Emergence of
Modern Warfare 1900–1918 (Londres, 1987), 62–82. For examples of the debates, see Trevor N.
Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (Nueva York, 1984), 212–217; Eric Dorn Brose,
The Kaiser’s Army, (Nueva York, 2001).
7 Paddy Grifªth, Forward into Battle (Novato, 1992); Antulio Echevarria II, After Clausewitz:
German Military Thinkers before the Great War (lorenzo, 2000); Home and Pratt, A Précis of
Modern Tactics, 35, 17 (Dragomirov quoted).

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570 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

ciones. Contemporary notions of “race,” for example, were often
evident in the works of military theorists. On the eve of World
War I, de Pardieu predicted that dispersed tactics would suit
French soldiers more than it would the “physically and morally
heavy” Germans, OMS, although “thoroughly disciplined . . . vig-
orous [y] brave,” lacked the “spirit of initiative,” “quick intelli-
gence,” and “faculty of getting out of difªculty” that were innate
to Frenchmen. German military theorists seem to have harbored
analogous beliefs. Hohenlohe recalled being “taught
that a
Frenchman could by nature beat a German in a bayonet ªght.”
Such cultural context was important in framing contemporary tac-
tical debates, but it did not wholly distort their empirical bases.8

the autonomy and psychology of soldiers on the battle-
field The long-standing, maturing inºuence of social history on
the writing of military history has also promoted interest in the
agency of ordinary soldiers. This trend began in the United States
during the interwar years, when Lonn and Martin tackled the
hitherto taboo subject of desertion during the American Civil
Guerra. Martin’s identiªcation of the complex social, political, y
economic motives that caused men to abandon the army high-
lighted the class rift that alienated many poor white soldiers from
the Confederate cause. Her prescient analysis was one of the earli-
est to stress internal social divisions as a serious factor in the
South’s defeat. En 1943, wiley, also writing about the Civil War,
employed the methodologies of social history to address the entire
experience of being a soldier, from recruitment to the battleªeld,
placing particular emphasis on the material conditions of diet,
camp-life, recreation, and battle. In his 1952 volume on Union
soldiers, he drew from then-recent psychological studies of World
War II veterans to provide powerful insights into the motivation
of individuals in combat, discovering the importance of “primary
group cohesion” (the close comradeship felt between small groups
of soldiers who served together).9

8 For the tactical debate, see Grifªth, Forward into Battle; Echevarria II, After Clausewitz.
Marie Félix de Pardieu (trans. Charles F. Martín), A Critical Study of German Tactics and the
New German Regulations (Fort Leavenworth, 1912), 7–8; Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelºingen
(trans. norte. l. Walford), Letters on Infantry (Londres, 1892), 36.
9 Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (Nueva York, 1928); Bessie Martin, A Rich Man’s
Guerra, A Poor Man’s Fight: Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army (Nueva York,
1932); Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (India-

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 571

Wiley’s use of psychological data added an important interdis-
ciplinary framework to the historians’ conception of men in battle.
Military professionals, sin embargo, had been consulting studies of the
human mind since the mid-nineteenth century. For many years,
the most highly regarded study of human behavior in combat was
Du Picq’s Battle Studies, originally published in 1880, ten years af-
ter the author was killed in action near Metz during the Franco-
Prussian War; new editions were published for the education of
American ofªcer cadets as late as 1946. Even after World War I
had demonstrated the fearsome impact of modern artillery, auto-
matic weapons, aircraft, poison gas, and armored ªghting vehicles,
practical soldiers still retained their interest in the human element
in combat. En efecto, von Schell’s observations about combat leader-
ship centered on his belief that “the psychological reaction of the
individual [to battle] has become increasingly important.” His
trabajar, translated for American readers in 1933, became an impor-
tant inºuence on U.S. tactical doctrine during World War II.10

Psychological studies of combat troops during World War II
resulted in one of the most controversial treatises on the will to
ªght written thus far—Marshall’s Men Against Fire. Marshall’s con-
tention, that no more than one in four infantrymen actually ªred
their weapons in combat, has since been widely disputed. Su
methodology was certainly suspect, and his work was more of
a polemic than a rigorous
the phenomenon to
which Marshall attested would have been wholly familiar to late
nineteenth-century theorists arguing the relative merits of close
order over dispersed tactics, although his manner of explaining it
was strikingly different. Whereas May had cited “egotism” and the
urge for “self-preservation,” Marshall’s analysis and those that fol-
lowed it—by Grossman, for example—suggested that most men,
like Upson, were simply “loath to kill” in battle.11

estudiar. Todavía

napolis, 1943); ídem, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis,
1952). European military historians were slow to follow the American lead, though John
Keegan, Face of Battle (Londres, 1976), was inºuential in raising the proªle of the common sol-
dier in works of British military history.
10 Ardant Du Picq (trans. John N. Greely and Robert C. Cotton), Battle Studies: Ancient and
Modern Battle (Fort Leavenworth, 1946); Adolf von Schell (trans. Edwin Harding), Battle Lead-
ership (Fort Benning, 1933), 9–19; Harding (ed.), Infantry in Battle (Washington, CORRIENTE CONTINUA., 1934).
11
See Russell Glenn’s introduction to Samuel L. A. marshall, Men against Fire: The Problem
of Battle Command (Norman, 2000; origen. pub. without introduction, 1947), 1–8; Dave
Grossman, On Killing (Nueva York, 1995), 28–36.

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572 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

This suggestion, sin embargo, runs counter to an emerging
historiographical trend that stresses the essential willingness of hu-
mans to engage in lethal violence. Stating that “the characteristic
act of men at war is not dying, it is killing,” Bourke argued, con
the weight of considerable evidence from the World Wars and
Vietnam, that many service personnel thrived in combat, ªnding
“excitement, joy and satisfaction” in killing. This willingness to
kill has also ªgured prominently in works by other scholars of mass
violence, and in studies of genocide and international relations. En
attempting to understand the motivations of the “ordinary men,"
middle-aged reservists in the police battalions of Eastern Europe,
who participated in massacres of Jews during 1942, Browning es-
tablished that no more than 20 percent of them refused to become
killers, even though the option was open to them. Todavía, en vez de
“excitement,
joy and satisfaction” in the other 80 por ciento,
Browning detected the pressure to conform and to avoid appear-
ing “weak,” the moral absolution conferred by obedience to au-
autoridad, and the war’s reinforcement of an ongoing struggle be-
tween “races” that placed Jews outside “the community of human
obligation.”12

Although soldiers on a battleªeld and executioners at a massa-
cre face differing ethical situations (notwithstanding their frequent
overlap in war), historical analysis of the behavior of both groups
has increasingly looked to a common thread in social psychol-
ogia. Both Bourke and Browning, Por ejemplo, discussed “agentic
estados,” in which ethical conºict becomes reduced or negated
through the abrogation of individual responsibility to a higher au-
autoridad. Browning, like several other prominent scholars of geno-
cide, refers to the experiments conducted by Milgram at Yale
University from 1960 a 1963, in which volunteers, in response to
instructions from a “scientist,” showed a willingness to inºict
(what they thought to be) electric shocks of escalating intensity to
individuals, ostensibly (though not really) volunteers like them-
selves. Although controversial, Milgram’s work intimated a deeply
ingrained human behavioral inclination to obey. This notion of a
compliant agentic state seems initially to offer a powerful counter-
explanation for the “straggling” soldier, out of sight and out of vo-

12
Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century
Warfare (Londres, 1999), 1; Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion
101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Londres, 2001), 159–190.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 573

cal range of his ofªcer, and thus freed from his compelling author-
idad. Todavía, as Browning notes, the artiªciality of Milgram’s experi-
ments could not possibly reºect
the speciªc and complex
circumstances of historical events: When Wilhelm Trapp, el
commanding ofªcer of Reserve Police Battalion 101, ªrst ordered
his men to murder Jewish civilians, he wept, allowing any of them
to walk away, without fear of punishment. Although immediate
authority in this case was weak, only a small minority of men ac-
cepted Trapp’s offer.13

Ofªcers’ authority over massed soldiers ªghting in close-
order formations was also probably weak, although for different
razones. En 1863, de la Barre Duparcq, “Professor of the Military
Art” at the military college of Saint-Cyr, wrote, “All ªring by
command can continue but a short time in battle and becomes im-
practical in any brisk action; for the orders of the different ofªcers
are confounded together, and the noise of the artillery and even of
musketry, the excitement of the combat, increased by the cries of
the wounded, make it impossible for the soldiers to give the atten-
tion necessary for loading and ªring together.” Thus, the notion
that men ªred (and thus killed) on command was in many ways, a
useful ªction perpetuated by drill books rather than a battleªeld
reality. The decision to use a weapon to its full, lethal effect rested
largely with individual soldiers.14

Gauging the incidence of soldiers who refused to use their
weapons on nineteenth-century battleªelds is problematical; el
evidencia, though suggestive, is also ambiguous. A Dutch cavalry
ofªcer, writing in 1863, hinted that most soldiers were reluctant
killers, at least until hardened by experience: “There are few men
whose nature moves them, by a stoic sense of duty, coolly to slay a
fellow being whom they never saw before; it is only ªerce war
that begets the habit of shedding human blood without repug-
nance.” The debris of battle offers an intriguing, but inconclusive,
testimony. Hohenlohe, who scoured battle scenes in 1866, “found
muzzle-loading riºes loaded with ten successive cartridges, de

13 Browning, Ordinary Men, 55–70, 171–176; James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary
People Commit Genocide and Mass Murder (Nueva York, 2007), 107–115; Donald Dutton, El
Psychology of Genocide, Massacres and Extreme Violence (Londres, 2007), 20, 45, 135; Stanley
Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Nueva York, 1974).
14 Edouard de la Barre Duparcq (trans. George W. Cullum), Elements of Military Art and
Historia (Nueva York, 1863), 70.

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574 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

which the ªrst was put in hind before (a proof that the soldier had
not noticed that the ªrst shot had missed ªre, and had therefore
kept putting in fresh cartridges one over the other).” This phe-
nomenon was either a consequence of the mishandling of the
weapon by a soldier who repeatedly failed to notice that he was
not actually ªring–as Hohenlohe interpreted it—or as a deliberate
strategy by which soldiers could appear to be operating their riºes
without actually ªring.15

evolutionary psychology and human nature Once again,
the complexity of speciªc historical circumstances complicates ex-
planations of behavior based on notions of “agentic states.” In at-
tempting to account for the aggressiveness, or otherwise, of indi-
viduals, scholars of mass violence have increasingly ventured
beyond social psychology to the work of evolutionary psycholo-
gists, daring to revive the concept of “human nature” as a funda-
mental component of the humanities and social sciences. por ejemplo-
amplio, both Gat and Thayer have rooted their understandings of
collective violence and ethnic conºict within Darwinian frame-
obras. Drawing on zoological evidence for intra-species conºict
among social animals (particularly primates), the archaeological
evidence for warfare among the earliest human societies, and an-
thropological studies of violence in hunter-gather communities,
they challenged the once-orthodox position, advanced by Mead
y otros, that war is a comparatively recent “invented” human
activity.16

This view tends to conºate war, a collective activity, y el
individual human capacity for aggression, enlisting the chimpan-
zee, our closest biological relative, to serve as a paradigm for hu-
mans “in a state of nature.” Bands of chimpanzees have been ob-
served aggressively to patrol territory, protect sources of food, y
launch organized raids against rival groups. The mass ambush of a
lone rival is a favorite, and peculiarly brutal, tactic. Scholars have

15
Jean Roemer, Cavalry: Its History, Management and Uses in War (Nueva York, 1863), 144;
Hohenlohe, Letters on Infantry, 34. Ver, Por ejemplo, Grossman, On Killing, 22–25, for a dis-
cussion of soldiers loading without ªring at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
16 Azar Gat, War in Human Civilisation (Nueva York, 2006), 1–333; Bradley Thayer, Darwin
and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conºict (Lexington,
2004), 96–152; Lawrence Keeley, War before Civilisation (Nueva York, 1996); Steven LeBlanc,
Constant Battles: Why We Fight (Nueva York, 2003); Margaret Mead, “‘Warfare Is Only an
Invention—Not a Biological Necessity,” Asia, XV (1940), 402–405.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 575

attributed the violence of the “demonic male” primate in war and
in the maintenance of ªercely hierarchical social structures to an
innate human aggression, putatively providing a model for the du-
tiful soldier, ªnding “excitement, joy and satisfaction” in killing.17
Todavía, the example of Upson, who lowered his sights to spare a
highly vulnerable enemy in battle, is a powerful reminder that hu-
mans can temper whatever “innate aggression” lurks in their evo-
lutionary makeup, by understanding the consequences of their ac-
tions and moderating their behavior accordingly—a process that
captures the idea of human free will. As Marks forcefully argued,
notwithstanding their genetic similarities, humans and chimpan-
zees are adaptively and ecologically distinct, with unshared pat-
terns of gene expression in the brain. Desde, in evolutionary terms,
humans and chimpanzees parted company 4 million years ago,
their capacity for aggression may have little in common. The evi-
dence from archaeology concerning the ubiquity of “warfare”
among early humans (thus implying its roots in human nature) es
similarly problematical. Arrowheads and spear points embedded in
human remains or cave paintings of opposed archers launching ar-
rows at each other may well demonstrate a long pre-history of
intra-group conºict, but the exact nature and context of that vio-
lence remains difªcult to interpret. Was it war, raid, murder, o
massacre? Despite any innate human potential for aggression, cualquier
given instance of violence requires more than a crude assertion of
an evolutionary determinism.18

The attempt to explain the makeup of the human mind
through a psychology informed by evolutionary theory is not to
be confused with the positing of innate, genetically determined vi-
olent behavior, a suspect pursuit that threatens to replicate the fal-
lacies of sociobiologists or even eugenicists. A more responsible
approach would be to emphasize how predatory strategies and
techniques became more complex as universal human cerebral ca-
pabilities evolved. The emergence of more elaborate predatory
strategies and techniques (o, conversely, to alternatives like trade

17 Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Vi-
olence (Bostón, 1996).
18
Jonathan Mack, What It Means To Be 98% Chimpanzee (Berkley, 2003); Barton C.
hacker, “Fortunes of War: From Primitive Warfare to Nuclear Policy in Anthropological
Thought,” in Myrdene Anderson (ed.), Cultural Shaping of Violence: Victimization, Escalation,
Response (West Lafayette, 2004), 151, 153.

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576 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

and exchange and ºight or submission) depended on such envi-
ronmental factors as competition for scarce resources and such cul-
tural factors as the pursuit of wealth and status, revenge, or defense
of honor. The nineteenth-century battleªeld was a peculiarly
complex context in which powerful human instincts for both self-
preservation and aggression vied with the demands of political, entonces-
cial, and religious authorities, personal principle, and obligation to
comrades (“primary group loyalties”) to create ambiguous atti-
tudes toward killing.19

weapon technology and “moral factors” Unsurprisingly,
the battleªeld was populated by both skulkers and killers—the two
options often being a matter of tactical contingency for individual
soldiers. Their experiences advise against Bourke’s easy dichotomy
between dying and killing. Because combat, like any other human
fenómeno,
es
“characteristic acts” may not necessarily be constants. A consider-
ation of the developing relationship between weapon technology
and tactics during the latter half of the nineteenth century should
serve to illustrate the point.

takes place under changing circumstances,

Much of the emphasis placed on “moral factors” at that time
centered not on getting soldiers to kill repeatedly but on getting
them to move forward while under ªre, ignoring casualties and
resisting the urge either to take cover or to stop and return ªre.
These qualities, which were as “characteristic” of battle as killing,
account for the continued utility of apparently anachronistic tech-
nologies of low lethality—the bayonet, the lance, and the sabre.
The term “shock action” referred as much to a psychological
shock as to a physical collision; the speed and momentum of a reg-
iment charging with edged weapons raised could have a powerful
effect on the enemy. The actual number of casualties inºicted was
often irrelevant to the tactical outcome. Considerar, Por ejemplo,
the successful sabre charge launched by the Prussian 10th Magde-
burg Hussars against the 3rd battalion of the 51st (Hungarian)
Regiment at Benetek during the decisive battle of Königgrätz on

19 Ullica Segerstråle, “Evolutionary Explanation: Between Science and Values,” in Jerome
h. Barkow (ed.), Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists (Nueva York, 2006), 121–
147; Jean Guilaine and Jean Zammit (trans. Melanie Hersey), The Origins of War: Violence in
Pre-history (Londres, 2001); Anthony McGinnis, Counting Coup and Cutting Horses: Intertribal
Warfare on the Northern Plains 1738–1889 (Evergreen, Colo., 1990).

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 577

Julio 3, 1866. El 681 Hungarian soldiers, weary and almost out of
ammunition, had just fought their way clear of a wooded area
when the Hussar squadron of about 130 sabres charged them from
a nearby hollow. The startled infantry simply laid down their arms
and surrendered. No-one on either side was killed or injured dur-
ing the charge.20

The bayonet had a similar power to embolden its bearers and
intimidate those on the receiving end. Although it inºicted few
casualties in combat, when carried forward in attack, its “moral ef-
fect” drove defenders from their positions (or caused them to sur-
render). Suggestions that its time had passed were quickly brushed
aside by appeals to psychology: “The bayonet, en efecto, can never
be abolished, for it is the sole and exclusive embodiment of that
mental tension and determination which alone attains its pur-
pose,” wrote one highly regarded German tactician in the closing
years of the nineteenth century. To maintain forward momentum,
and thus give the charge its moral impact, soldiers assaulting a po-
sition in a bayonet charge could not pause to return ªre at the
defenders, though most soldiers felt a strong inclination to do so.
De Forest, an American Civil War veteran, wrote that “to be
boomed and volleyed at without answering is one of the most se-
rious trials of battle,” and to be able to ªre back was “wonderfully
consoling and sustaining.” Yet if men did so, the attack inevitably
broke down.21

At Fredericksburg, on December 13, 1862, the majority of
Union assaults against the entrenched Confederate positions on
the wooded heights above the town failed, but Colonel Adrian
Root achieved a dramatic local success because he kept his regi-
mento, the 94th New York Infantry, moving forward in spite of his
soldiers’ strong instincts to ªre at their enemies:

[t]he ªre of the enemy became so incessant and galling and so
many of my men fell killed or wounded that the front line of the
brigade slackened its pace, and the men, without orders, com-
menced ªring. A halt seemed imminent, and a halt in the face of
the terriªc ªre to which the brigade was exposed would have been

20 Evelyn Wood, Achievements of Cavalry with a Chapter on Mounted Infantry (Londres, 1897),
163–174; Hohenlohe, Letters on Cavalry, 62.
21 Wilhelm Balck (trans. Louis Maxwell), Modern European Tactics (Londres, 1899), I, 277;
John De Forest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Ha-
ven, 1946), 111.

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578 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

death; o peor, a disastrous repulse. . . . Colonel Bates, Twelfth
Massachusetts Volunteers, whose ammunition had been exhausted,
promptly complied with my request that his regiment unite with
my brigade in a bayonet charge. By the strenuous exertions of the
regimental commanders and other ofªcers, the ªring was nearly
discontinued. The brigade resumed its advance, and as the men
recognized the enemy their movement increased in rapidity until,
with a shout and a run, the brigade leaped the ditches, charged
across the railway and occupied the wood beyond, driving the en-
emy from their position, killing a number with the bayonet, y
capturing upwards of 200 prisoners.22

This extract presents a striking example of the battleªeld
nexus of soldier agency, the authority of leadership, and the tactics
associated with a particular weapon—all ultimately governed by a
particular historical context. The American citizen-soldier of 1862
was often described by European commentators as poorly drilled
and lacking in discipline but capable of a high degree of battleªeld
autonomy and initiative. Becke, a Victorian artillery ofªcer, wrote
that the Civil War “waged by volunteer soldiers of superior intelli-
gence,
is characterised by great freedom in formation and in
movement.” This independence manifested itself in the “wonder-
fully consoling and sustaining” practice of halting to ªre at defend-
ers when attacking, often at great cost, until, almost as a last resort,
one side or the other ªnally resorted to bayonet charges, cual
“when made resolutely and without slackening the gait . . . tener
succeeded in nine cases out of ten.” As the example of the 94th
New York at Fredericksburg demonstrates, good ofªcers were
able to exert a countervailing authority over these autonomous
citizen soldiers, because infantry formations were still dense
enough to be controlled by energetic leaders.23

At Fredericksburg, the defending infantry was predominantly
armed with smoothbores and riºe muskets. Este último, a pesar de
traditionally heralded as having ushered in a “revolution” in infan-
try tactics, did not signiªcantly extend the range of effective ªre
on the battleªeld. Because of its low muzzle velocity, the ball trav-
eled in a marked parabolic trajectory toward its target. En el
22 o, report of Col. Adrian Root, December 11–15, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg, Va.,
No.226, Series I, volumen. 21, 486–487.
23 Becke, Introduction to the History of Tactics, 41; Francis J. Lippitt, A Treatise on the Tactical
Use of the Three Arms (Nueva York, 1865), 24–25.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 579

hands of a skilled sharpshooter, with a clear view of his target and a
practiced eye for judging range and adjusting his sights, it could be
a dangerous weapon from distances greater than 600 yardas. En el
hands of excited line infantrymen, deafened by volleys, blinded by
fumar, and poor at estimating distances by sight (as most humans
son), it was generally employed at much closer quarters; at longer
range, soldiers usually shot high. Aware of the weapon’s limita-
ciones, Captain H. METRO. Johnstone concluded that the effective com-
bat range (“the distance where, under ordinary conditions, the en-
emy’s losses are sufªcient to stop his advance”) of the Civil War
vintage Enªeld or Springªeld riºes was, a lo sumo, 250 yardas. Fur-
thermore, the muzzle-loading riºe musket ªred only two or three
rounds a minute. The rapid-ªring breechloader caused the real
tactical revolution.24

The ªrst 60,000 breech-loading Dreyse “needle guns” or-
dered by the Prussian government, en 1840, saw limited use in
combat during the revolutions of 1848. Outside Prussia, sin embargo,
military authorities were initially sceptical. In careless hands, el
needle gun could be fragile. Además, it had relatively poor
ballistic performance, ªred on an irregular trajectory, and had
slightly less range than the riºe musket. Military authorities feared
that its rate of ªre, seven or eight rounds a minute, would lead to
the wasteful expenditure of ammunition. En efecto, some commen-
tators predicted that regiments would expend all of their ammuni-
tion so quickly in battle that they would become defenseless. El
Prussian campaign against Austria in 1866, sin embargo, proved the
value of the breechloader to Europe’s soldiers.25

The breechloader’s rapid rate of ªre, its capacity to load
quickly, and its ability to be ªred from a prone position all inspired
conªdence in soldiers, demonstrating how tightly psychological
and technological factors were bound on the battleªeld. Those
who carried the needle gun proved more aggressive in combat and
more willing to shoot than those armed with muskets. Rapid ªre
at short range inºicted heavy casualties against men advancing in

24 Henry M. Johnstone, A History of Tactics (Londres, 1906), 47. See also Earl Hess, El
Riºe Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth (lorenzo, 2008); Brent Nosworthy, El
Bloody Crucible of Courage (Londres, 2005), 571–593; Grifªth, Rally Once Again: Battle Tactics of
the American Civil War (Ramsbury, REINO UNIDO., 1989), 73–90.
25 Dennis E. Showalter, “Infantry Weapons, Infantry Tactics, and the Armies of Germany,"
European Studies Review, IV (1974), 119–140.

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580 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

formations and men holding a position while struggling to load
and ªre muskets.

Hozier, an English war correspondent, who walked the bat-
tleªeld at Podol after the Prussians forced the passage of the Iser
River commented on the overwhelming preponderance of slain
soldiers wearing the white coats of Austria lying wherever the rival
infantries had exchanged ªre: “On one part of the railway line
three Prussian corpses opposite nineteen Austrian formed a grisly
trophy of the superiority of the needle-gun.” Austrian prisoners
complained of the unnerving situation of standing, exposed to ªre,
as they re-loaded, while their enemy calmly and quickly re-loaded
kneeling or lying in tall grass, hidden from sight. This new
efªciency did not, as traditionalists had feared, lead to wild and
wasteful ªring; it gave Prussian infantrymen a sense of security,
even in combat, regardless of the gun’s ballistic weaknesses. El
Prussians shot more deliberately than the frantic Austrians, OMS
struggled with their muzzle loaders, standing tall and exposed to
the enemy. Hozier described the ªre from the Austrian riºemen as
“whizzing over the heads of the opposite ranks.” All the while,
the soldier armed with a breechloader “[kept] his muzzle down,
and if in haste he [ªred] it off without raising the butt to his shoul-
der, his shot still [took] efecto, though often low, and a proof of
this is that very many of the Austrian prisoners were wounded in
the legs.”26

Even though the new weapon promoted conªdence, tal vez
even aggression, in individual soldiers, it also caused a tactical re-
form that threatened to sever further the bonds of battleªeld lead-
ership by physically dispersing troops. Fighting in open, “skir-
mish” mode had a long history; during the French Revolutionary
Wars and the Napoleonic conºicts, light infantry, riºemen, jägers,
and tirailleurs, fought in ºuid clouds or swarms, taking cover to
aim their shots, and withdrawing or advancing to disrupt enemy
formations. Yet these troops formed a relatively small proportion
of infantrymen, essentially an auxiliary to the ªghting line, care-
fully selected for their personal initiative and trained for their spe-
cialist role. The mass of infantry fought in denser, close-order for-

26 Henry M. Hozier, The Seven Weeks’ War (Londres, 1872), 166–168; George J. R.
Glünicke, 1866: The Campaign in Bohemia (Londres, 1907), 94.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 581

mations (líneas, columnas, and squares), drawing reassurance from
the physical proximity of their comrades and the close supervision
of their ofªcers.27

En 1866, partly because of successful French bayonet charges
in Italy seven years earlier and partly because of a lack of con-
ªdence in the abilities of their heterogeneous, polyglot, y
poorly educated peasant soldiers, the ofªcers of the Hapsburg Em-
pire elected to storm the Prussian battleªeld positions in Bohemia
with dense columns of soldiers (in contrast with the more open
formations that described contemporary American battleªelds,
providing a stark reminder of how social and cultural factors could
shape military tactics). The rapid-ªring needle gun decimated the
dense Hapsburg formations at close range. Understandably, A-
henlohe proclaimed that “shock tactics in mass formation” had
“lost all use and value.” Instead, in the wake of the conºict, él
reasoned, “The essential point of infantry action will always be
the individual action in the ªre-ªght, and that infantry will gain
a decisive superiority which has understood how to train each in-
dividual man so that he can make the best possible use of his
riºe.”28

Ofªcers with combat experience called for an unprecedented
extension of conventional skirmish tactics, transforming open-
orden, dispersed action from a mere supporting tactic to the princi-
pal form of infantry action and demanding that all infantrymen
have the personal qualities of the previously elite skirmisher. En el
Franco-Prussian War, the lesson was reinforced as the bolt-action
French chassepot riºe took a fearful toll of any Prussian unit that
manoeuvred within range in close order. En respuesta, individual
soldiers began to determine their own tactical styles in combat;
“when the Prussian columns were struck by the enemy’s ªre they
instinctively scattered.” In some instances, common soldiers even
took the lead in deciding both the form and timing of an assault.
According to the ofªcial history of the Franco-Prussian War, dur-
ing the closing stages of the battle of St. Privat, “in many instances

27 For the development of skirmish tactics, see Grifªth, The Art of War in Revolutionary
Francia (Londres, 1998), 207–213.
28 Geoffrey Wawro, “An ‘Army of Pigs’: The Technical, Social and Political Basis of Aus-
trian Shock Tactics, 1859–1866,” The Journal of Military History, LIX (1995), 407–434;
Hohenlohe, Letters on Infantry, 47–49.

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582 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

of their own motion, the Prussian and Saxon infantry hurled
ellos mismos, as the sun was setting, on the position which had been
so long and so obstinately defended by the enemy.”29

As Hohenlohe noted, “a combination of discipline and indi-
vidual action” had become necessary to establish battleªeld superi-
ority. Von Scherff, a highly inºuential German tactician, asserted,
“We may afªrm that individual order has actually become the
only battle-formation for infantry.” Across Europe, military au-
thorities were in agreement. In Britain, Mayne’s introduction to
his authoritative textbook on ªre tactics noted the “deadliness of
ªre,” “the consequence of [which was] to replace the shock tactics
of closed bodies by the ªre of extended ones as the ruling principle
on battle.”30

skirmishers, stragglers, and skulkers The proliferation of
skirmishers also led to the proliferation of stragglers who drifted
back from the ªring line and skulkers who played little role in the
ªghting, remaining out of their ofªcer’s sight behind a wall or in a
ditch, as well as those “indolent” men who succumbed to “the
natural desire of self-preservation,” avoiding combat altogether.
In his diary of military service, Nichols, a private in the Union
army during the American Civil War, repeatedly recorded how he
spent days of combat “laid in the woods, while the rest were
ªghting.”31

Many of the line infantrymen struggling to ªnd a personal
strategy to preserve both body and honor could easily have fallen
into the straggler category. As David Thompson, another Union
veteran, put it, “[W.]hen bullets are whacking against tree-trunks
and solid shot are cracking skulls like egg-shells, the consuming
passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way.
Between the physical fear of going forward and the moral fear of
turning back, there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness

29 C. METRO. DeGruyther, Tactics for Beginners (Aldershot, 1904), 127; Balck, Modern European
Tactics, 270–271.
30 Hohenlohe, Letters on Infantry, 49–50; Wilhelm von Scherff (trans. Lumley Graham), El
New Tactics of Infantry (Londres, 1873), 17; Charles B. Mayne, Infantry Fire Tactics (Chatham,
Kent,1888), 1.
31 Norman K. Nichols (ed. t. h. williams), “The Reluctant Warrior: The Diary of N. k.
Nichols,” Civil War History, III (1957), 36.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 583

from which a hidden hole in the ground would be a wonderfully
welcome outlet.”32

The paradox facing military establishments, as the infantry’s
“arms of precision” came into their own during the ªnal decades
of the nineteenth century, was that the emphasis on taking proper
cover while skirmishing actually encouraged soldiers to seek such
“hidden holes in the ground.” In a sense, this kind of training le-
gitimized straggling and skulking. As Hohenlohe put it after ob-
serving troop manoeuvres in 1876, “It was impossible to help the
feeling creeping over one that in this case a general ‘skedaddle’ was
being elevated into a system.” In an inºuential polemic of 1888,
entitled “A Summer Night’s Dream,” Meckel, another German
ofªcer, frankly described his ªrst battle in France in 1870 as a
“ªeld . . . literally strewn with men who had left the ranks, y
were doing nothing. Whole battalions could have been formed
from them. . . . Some were lying down, their riºes pointing to the
frente, as if they were still in the ªring line. . . . These had evidently
remained behind lying down, when the more courageous had ad-
vanced. Others had squatted like hares in the furrow. Wherever a
bush or ditch gave shelter, there were men to be seen, who in
some cases had made themselves very comfortable.”33

Meckel’s tactical theory took the form of a dialogue between
himself and “Colonel Hallen.” In his pamphlet, Meckel reveals
himself to be shocked at ªrst by Hallen’s suggestion that the army
embrace “rejuvenated linear tactics” in which “handy single
ranks” delivered the “regulated mass-ªre of lines in close order.”
Hallen explains that he seeks not to revive the mass close-order
formations of the past but to base his tactics around the “Züg,” a
unit of about sixty men ªghting in a line, like links in a chain, y-
der close supervision of an ofªcer. After a dream about Hallen
storming a stronghold at the head of his regiment of close-order
“Zügs,” dashing past possible cover without pause—the heavy ca-
sualties constantly replaced by fresh reserves—Meckel awoke
“thoroughly convinced of the truth” of Hallen’s words. This fan-

32 David L. Thompson, “With Burnside at Antietam,” in Robert U. Johnson and Clarence
C. Buel (editores.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Nueva York, 1884), II, 662.
33 Hohenlohe quoted in Home and Pratt, A Précis of Modern Tactics, 25; Jacob Meckel
(trans. Captain Gawne), “A Summer Night’s Dream,” United Services Magazine (1890), punto. 2,
No.740, 357.

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584 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

tastical vision led many recent historians, such as Jackman, to dis-
miss Meckel as a reactionary whose commitment to old-fashioned
“shoulder to shoulder tactics” was born of a conservative ideology
eso
the modern battleªeld by
ªrepower.34

ignored the domination of

De hecho, the years immediately following the publication of
Meckel’s work witnessed most European infantries re-equipped
with magazine-fed, bolt-action riºes that would seem to have mil-
itated against the use of any Meckel-style close-order formations,
even handy single ranks of less than 100 hombres. Rapid-ªring and ac-
curate, they were theoretically effective to a distance of 2,000
yardas. The British drill book of 1889 consideró 800 yards to be
the limit of aimed ªre, though fewer than 400 yards was prefera-
ble. El 1896 drill book re-deªned long range to be 1,500 yardas
and “decisive range” to be within 500 yardas. Por 1902, the ªgures
eran 2,000 yards and 600 yardas. Whether such ranges were actu-
ally meaningful under combat conditions (except in remarkably
open country such as the South African veldt) was debatable but,
broadly speaking, the enhanced effectiveness of the modern infan-
try riºe was unquestioned. Además, the introduction of
smokeless powder allowed soldiers to ªre without revealing their
posición. Added to the new weapon’s advantages in ªring rate,
range, exactitud, and penetrative power, this facility of conceal-
ment helped to create what Balck called “the void of the bat-
tleªeld,” as combatants could now ªght, dispersed and hidden.35

The fully automated machine gun was also perfected during
this era, superseding the mechanical, hand-cranked guns, como
the Gatling. The British army adopted the Maxim in 1891 y el
French army, the Hotchkiss in 1897. Attacking troops would now
rostro, as British Lieutenant-Colonel Sisson Pratt put it, “not bullets
but veritable chains of lead,” mowing down men “not before the
sickle, but the scythe.” The most dramatic progress, sin embargo, en-
tended artillery arms. Improvements in metallurgy, munitions, y
powder increased the effective range of ªeld guns twofold—to

34 Meckel, “Summer Night’s Dream,” Pt. 1, No.739, 205–229; punto. 2, No.740, 356–376; punto.
3, No.741, 385–402; Steven D. Jackman, “Shoulder to Shoulder: Close Control and ‘Old
Prussian Drill’ in German Offensive Infantry Tactics, 1871–1914,” Journal of Military History,
LXVIII (2004), 94–95.
35
“Experiments at Spandau to Illustrate the Penetration of German Riºes,” Journal of the
Royal United Services Institute, XXXVI (1892), 925; t. Miller Maguire, The Development of Tac-
tics (Londres, 1904), 94–100. Balck quoted in Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, 70.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 585

más que 7,000 yards—and the development of recoil mecha-
nisms that kept guns in place after ªring signiªcantly increased the
rate of ªre. The French 75mm gun of 1897 could ªre more than
twenty rounds per minute. En 1892, Colonel H. METRO. Bengough
thought that “the importance of artillery in the battleªelds of the
future will . . . be found to have increased in a greater ratio than
that of any of the three arms. So vast indeed is the difference in
training and material between the artillery of to-day . . . y eso
of quarter of a century ago, that it would be impossible to foretell
its effect in the next century.”36

Neither Meckel nor his numerous admirers were blind to
these developments. However unrealistic “the summer night’s
dream” seems, the tactical conundrum of how to ensure that sol-
diers did their duty without exposing them to devastating ªre was
real: “Our desire for discipline and our love of dispersed order pull
us in opposite directions.” This contradiction would bring the
question of “moral factors” to the fore once more, since the
choices made by soldiers on the dispersed battleªeld could often
make the difference between victory and defeat. Far from taking
the obedience of their soldiers for granted, or assuming that battal-
ion ofªcers could maintain discipline in battle, senior ofªcers
viewed knowing the temper of their men as an essential compo-
nent of modern combat leadership.37

A Russian general’s explanation of modern command to an
American military observer during Russia’s war against the Otto-
man Empire in 1877/78 acknowledged the importance of under-
standing the psychology of soldiers in battle:

The only formation in which troops can successfully assault
intrenched [sic] positions is in successive lines of skirmishers. . . .
There are in every command a small percentage of cowards who
will slink away at the ªrst opportunity, a certain number of men of
rash bravery who will go too far forward and get killed, y el
great majority of men of ordinary courage, but liable to waver as
the ªght gets hot. The reserves must be sent in at the moment
when the reasonably brave men have been long enough engaged
and met with resistance to begin to feel nervous, but before they
have actually begun to retreat; and it is in deciding upon the oppor-

Sisson Pratt quoted in Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, 71; Harcourt M. Bengough,

36
“Combined Tactics,” Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, XXXVI (1892), 798.
37 Meckel, “Summer Night’s Dream,” Pt.1, 206.

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586 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

tune moment for sending forward his reserves that the art of a divi-
sional commander consists.38

casualties and military objectives Besides emphasizing the
centrality of moral factors in command decisions, the Russian
general’s lesson in command is a reminder that maintaining the
will to ªght and holding ground or physically advancing was as
signiªcant as inºicting casualties. The recent historiographical
trend that focuses on aggression and the act of killing obscures
what soldiers were expected to do in combat. The emphasis on
killing as the “characteristic” act, and ultimate rationale, for sol-
diers in war owes much to the priority given to body counts and
kill ratios as measures of tactical efªciency during the late twenti-
eth century. Dupuy’s analysis of Germany’s military effectiveness
in the two World Wars was highly instrumental in establishing this
posición. By comparing casualty statistics from selected engage-
mentos (and calculating a scale on the basis of respective army
strengths and battle duration, adjusting for such factors as the
inºuence of ªeld fortiªcations), Dupuy argued that during World
War I, the Germans consistently inºicted losses upon the Western
allies at the favorable ratio of three-to-two, thereby demonstrating
their tactical superiority. Dupuy’s methods reduced military activ-
ity to a simple statistical equation, judging tactical performance
solely by casualty rates while paying no heed to the achievement
of such wider objectives as the seizure of a height, the forcing of a
river line, or the defense of a wood or village.39

For Meckel’s generation, the achievement of ªeld objectives
in spite of casualties was the mark of military efªciency. Under-
standing fully the devastating potential of modern weapons, ellos
expected soldiers, ªrst and foremost, to endure: “Have not Prus-
sian lines . . . held together and closed-up until two-thirds of their
number lay on the ground? A well-seasoned company will cer-
tainly not fall to pieces till its ªghting power is completely shat-

38 Francis V. verde, The Russian Army and Its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877–1878 (Londres,
1879), 450–451.
39 Dupuy, A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff 1807–1945 (Fairfax, 1984),
178, 328–332. In addition to the fundamental dubiousness of reducing history to a simple nu-
meric equation, the other great ºaw in Dupuy’s work was its statistical database. His analysis
of comparative losses on the Western Front made no mention of how reliable the respective
casualty ªgures were; the precise ªgures that Dupuy chose seemed calculated to demonstrate a
casualty ratio favorable to the Germans.

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 587

tered.” By the end of the nineteenth century, conventional mili-
tary wisdom held that an effective ªghting formation would not
consider withdrawal until it had suffered savage losses and that in
an infantry assault, the attacking troops must continue to move
forward while their comrades fell around them. The point applied
equally well to the mounted arm. As Gough wrote to Lord Fred-
erick Roberts, his former commander-in-chief, en 1910, “[dónde]
infantry can run, cavalry can gallop,” so long as they were pre-
pared “to stand a 25% loss quite as much as their comrades of the
other arms.”40

The often scathing criticism of how British troops performed
in South Africa from 1899 to1902 was redolent of this same atti-
tude. The German ofªcial account sneered that after the “fruitless
yet by no means especially costly attacks on Paardeberg” in Febru-
ary 1900, Resultando en 1,300 damnificados, “there began to spread a
nervousness of suffering loss. . . . [oh]ne substantial reason for the
long duration of the war was, undoubtedly, the timorous avoid-
ance of striking any crushing blow at the Boers.” After the maul-
ing that many of their infantry formations had suffered on the
veldt, the British placed their faith in extending battle lines, con
little depth to formation, relying on sudden rushes covered by ªre
to move forward on the battleªeld. Continental European observ-
ers, sin embargo, frequently criticized such casualty-averse tactics as
lacking the necessary weight to carry a position. Denser forma-
tions would have suffered far greater losses, but an efªcient infan-
try would have had the fortitude to continue their advance.41

Strikingly, the new attention that the military establishment
paid to the psychology of soldiers left behind the idea that rigid
discipline and the threat of severe, physical punishment was neces-
sary to keep men in the line of battle while all around them fell.
Meckel, for one, was conªdent that in a maturing, industrial soci-

40 Meckel, “Summer Night’s Dream,” Pt.1, 221; Hubert Gough to Roberts, letter, Febru-
ary 10, 1910, The Papers of Lord Frederick Roberts, EM 7101-23-223-11, National Army Mu-
seum, Londres.
41 German General Staff (trans. W.. h. h. walters), The German Ofªcial Account of the War in
South Africa (Londres, 1907), 226. For immediate British responses to the South African War,
see Arthur W. A. Pollock, Simple Lectures for Company Field Training with An Epitome of Tactics
and Lessons from the Boer War (Londres, 1900), 34–40; Charles E. Callwell, Tactics of To-Day
(Edimburgo, 1903), 52–84. For a useful contemporary summary of French and German cri-
tiques, see Colonel Beca (trans. A. F. Custance), A Study of the Development of Infantry Tactics
(Londres, 1911), 60–70.

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588 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

ety, well-educated conscripts could be conditioned ideologically
to do their duty: “Universal service gives now a better metal than
the iron of which [Frederick the Great’s] warriors were com-
planteado. . . . [C]areful attention to the individual . . . may convert
this metal into the best steel . . . Nowadays a sense of honour no-
bly replaces the stick.”42

Europe’s theoreticians found the perfect model of successful
assault in the Japanese infantry, cual, seemingly heedless of loss,
stormed through Russian entrenchments and fortiªcations at bay-
onet point during the Manchurian conºict of 1904/05. It might be
tempting to dismiss Japan’s achievement in Manchuria as merely
an indication that its commanders were willing to smother the en-
emy in human ºesh (el 50,000 Russian defenders claimed to have
inºicted 60,000 casualties on the besiegers of Port Arthur before
they ªnally surrendered). But contemporaries were well aware of
the advantage that modern technology and tactical sophistication
gave to the Japanese soldiers. European soldiers particularly lauded
how the Japanese used machine guns: “On the battleªeld the guns
were used not only on the defensive but were also boldly pushed
forward with the attacking infantry. Towards the end of the war
there was the disposition to use the guns in masses [y] they were
also used to good effect in securing a captured position from a
counter-attack.”43

Yet commentators were most impressed with the “moral”
qualities that Japanese soldiers displayed—their innate “ªghting
power” and their willingness to endure heavy casualties—often
citing them as the decisive factor in the war. As Becke, late of the
Royal Artillery, put it, “The Japanese success appears to have been
largely due to the excellent quality of their troops, whose training,
courage, intelligence, self-reliance, and patriotism were of a high
orden. . . . [t]he Japanese soldier also had been taught how to die,
and his country expected him to die victorious.”44

Meckel was the man responsible for training this formidable
ejército. The triumph of his methods in that seminal conºict (el
ªrst between two major powers in the twentieth century) serves as
reminder that he, and those of his fellow ofªcers who stressed the

42 Meckel, “Summer Night’s Dream,” Pt.1, 218.
43 A. Hilliard Atteridge and F. V. Longstaff, The Book of the Machine Gun (Londres, 1917),
52–53.
44 Becke, Introduction to the History of Tactics, 95

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MILITARY MORALITY T RAN SFOR MED | 589

continued signiªcance of moral factors in war, were not simply
military conservatives but progressive ªgures whose interest in the
psychology of the soldier was as modern as their appreciation for
the effectiveness of the new weaponry. En efecto, they saw the tech-
nological and the psychological as intertwined: The autonomous
soldier’s state of mind on a battleªeld swept by modern ªrepower
could be the difference between victory or defeat.45

In the ªnal analysis, sin embargo, Japan’s victory in Manchuria
was not a vindication of Meckel’s “rejuvenated” form of close-
el
order tactics. Contemporary propaganda notwithstanding,
bloodied Japanese army was close to breaking point when it ªnally
won in 1905. En 1914, when many European ªeld ofªcers
strangely broke with accepted tactics to employ close-order for-
mations in Lorraine, the Ardennes, and Flanders and on the banks
of the Sambre, the scale of casualties proved prohibitive. As the
war progressed, they returned to dispersed formations, achieving
control of their soldiers on the battleªeld through the radical de-
volution of authority to junior and noncommissioned ofªcers.
The ºexible platoon of sixty soldiers, ªghting in sections of eight
to twelve men, became the basic tactical unit of “ªre and ma-
noeuvre”; soldiers were free to create and exploit battleªeld op-
portunities on their own initiative. The principles of modern tac-
tics took account not only of the lethality of modern weapons but
also of the moral factors that shaped men’s actions in battle.46

The darker legacy of this new psychological and ideological orien-
tation, which was of profound signiªcance in the history of the
twentieth century’s unconstrained and brutal “total wars,” was
the invigorated interest in conditioning a nation’s manhood for
war—to make men of “steel,” in Meckel’s phrase. Although total-

45 Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, 41.
46 For evidence of the gap between tactical doctrine and practice in 1914, see Echevarria II,
After Clausewitz, 213–215; Jonathan M. House, “The Decisive Attack: A New Look at French
Tactics on the Eve of World War I,” Military Affairs, XL (1976), 164–169. For descriptions of
the ºexible platoon, see Ivor Maxe, “The ‘Soft Spot’: An Example of Minor Tactics,” in Hints
on Training and Training Leaºets (Cologne, 1919), 65–73; S.S.143: The Training and Employment
of Platoons, 1918 (1918); A NOSOTROS. Army War College, Instructions on the Offensive Conduct of Small
Units (Washington, CORRIENTE CONTINUA., 1917; origen. pub. in French 1916). For secondary analysis of this tac-
tic, see Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army 1914–1918
(Nueva York, 1989); Grifªth, Tácticas de batalla del frente occidental (nuevo refugio, 1994); Hubert
Johnson, Breakthrough! Tactics, Technology and the Search for Victory on the Western Front in World
War I (Novato, California, 1994).

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590 | GERVASE PHILLIPS

itarian regimes were the major villains in this regard, the wide-
spread propagation of military values into civilian life had become
apparent even in liberal societies by the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The popularity of quasimilitary training
for children, through such organizations as the Boy Scouts, es
one example. The dissemination of a once-elitist “public school
ethos”—stressing muscular Christianity, patriotism, and duty—to
all members of society via juvenile literature, popular songs, o
theatrical productions is another. Yet the ultimate manifestation of
the nineteenth-century military theorists’ emphasis on the “moral
factor” in war was neither the spread of the military ethic into
democratic public life nor the doomed heroism of frontline sol-
diers in World War I. Military morality reached its peak in the in-
doctrination and propaganda of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, ser-
coming most visible in the fanaticism of the Soviet commissar and
the “political soldiers” of the SS and the Einsatzgruppen in World
War II.47

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47 For dissemination of the public-school ethos, see W. j. Reader, At Duty’s Call: A Study
in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester, 1988); Peter Parker, The Old Lie: The Great War and the
Public School Ethos (Londres, 1987). For the ultimate manifestation of the moral factor, ver
Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front 1941–1945: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare
(Basingstoke, 1985); Jürgan Föster, “Ludendorff and Hitler in Perspective: The Battle for the
German Soldier’s Mind, 1917–1944,” War
in History, X (2003), 321–334; Edward B.
Westerrmann, Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (lorenzo, 2005).
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