The August issue of Military History Monthly, the British military history magazine, is on sale today.
In the latest issue we cover:
The War of the Spanish Succession
To mark the third centenary MHM explores the war of the end of this first global war, in its entirety, with a focus on Marlborough’s most bloody battle, Malplaquet, in 1709.
Hunting the Lone Wolf – Battle of the River Plate, 1939
Patrick Boniface charts the struggle of three plucky Royal Navy ships to destroy the German giant, the Admiral Graf Spee.
Planning Armageddon – The 1914 war tactics of the Great Powers
As the tensions grew between the Great Powers of Europe at the start of the 20th century, increasingly elaborate war plans were formulated. David Porter explores them.
Doomed Uprising – Warsaw, 1944
Ian Maycock tells the story of the Polish Resistance and the Warsaw Uprising of 70 years ago.
Also in this issue: Behind the Image, Thinkers at War, War Culture, Book Reviews, War on Film, Museum Reviews, Book of the Month, Competition, and much more.
From the editor
Neil Faulkner, Editor
‘Revolution in war’ is an overused phrase. There are too many ‘revolutions in war’. But if you compare Blenheim (1704) with Naseby (1645) and Waterloo (1815), what do you see? Evidence for a late 17th-century transformation that created a new paradigm of war that would hardly change over the next 150 years.
Naseby seems positively medieval compared with Blenheim. The infantry were virtually static in the centre of the battlefield because the pike-and-matchlock combination was so cumbersome. The role of artillery was minimal. The Royalist cavalry behaved like a feudal retinue. Blenheim was a battle of highly drilled, relatively mobile, all-purpose infantry armed with flintlocks and bayonets. The cavalry also fought in tight, disciplined blocs. The battlefield was raked by round-shot and grape. And this was to be the pattern, with little change, as late as the Crimea.
This ‘revolution in war’ was inextricably linked with the political and religious revolution which triumphed in Britain, Holland, Scandinavia, and northern Germany during the 16th and 17th centuries. A ‘bourgeois revolution’ that prepared the way for commerce, colonies, and capitalism, it also undermined antiquated feudal traditions of warfare.
Our special feature this issue explores the War of the Spanish Succession, which marked the consummation of this new way of war. In addition, Patrick Boniface analyses the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, Ian Maycock recalls the desperate Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, and David Porter continues our First World War coverage with a survey of the rival war plans of 1914.