The Age of Battles

In 1631, Gustav Adolphus of Sweden - the creator of the first national army - scored a notable victory at Breitenfeld in the Thirty Years War. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated by Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo. This was the age of battles - romantic, even glorious in their spectacle - a period of nearly 200 years when military endeavour was dominated by the quest for the climactic battle of annihilation in which the fate of continents might be decided in a single afternoon.