The printed page

In the year 1702 two books were published, in Oxford and Paris, that can now be seen as defining the presses that produced them. In Paris, the Imprimerie Royale issued the Médailles sur les principaux évènements du règne de Louis le Grand, a large folio of text and plates intended to glorify the regime of Louis XIV. In Oxford, the first, large format volume of Clarendon’s The history of the rebellion appeared; painstakingly edited at Christ Church, it brought prestige and profit to the University. Both were considerable statements of publishing intent in graphic form: both were sumptuous, and both used types and decorations reserved to their respective presses. But the French book points the way to future developments in typography, particularly in the design of type, while the Oxford book is a summation of the past, and its types and page design would be abandoned by the Oxford press in little more than thirty years. Tracing the printed pages of Oxford books from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century shows changes that parallel wider developments in English and European typography, but from a distinctly Oxford perspective.

Denial of change: the 'Military Revolution' as seen by contemporaries

Writers on military matters from the 14th century until the late 18th century either regretted the decadence of their times compared with Antiquity, or they saw no great change in military affairs since Antiquity. Few saw a revolutionary change ushered in by gunpowder, although this number increased since the great "querelle" about the Ancients and the Moderns under Louis XIV. In the early 19th century, the balance tipped, and few would have denied that technology had profoundly changed warfare. All this is a far cry, however, from any contemporary perception of a "Military Revolution" in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The history of the practice of strategy from Antiquity to Napoleon

This chapter outlines the history of the practice of strategy, predating the introduction of the term. It homes in on episodes of European history since Antiquity for which historians claim to have found evidence of the practice of strategy, defined by Kimberly Kagan as ‘the setting of a state’s objectives and of priorities among those objectives’ in order to allocate resources and choose the best means. While focusing only on Europe, this chapter covers case studies over nearly 2500 ranging from the wars of Ancient Greece, of the Romans to Medieval warfare (here with a focus on English history), the warfare of Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Frederick II of Prussia, the French Revolutionaries and Napoleon.