The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon, by Christy Pichichero

Courage, Honour, and Phlegm: A Study of Eighteenth‐Century Military Writers' Descriptions of Soldiers' Combat Emotions and Motivation

“…6 Where my work deviates from hers, and similar works by Bien and Bell, is that it is less focused upon a national analysis of French military culture, the literature's role as a process of reform in organization and efficacy, and the search for more egalitarian and humanitarian principles, aiming rather to look in European literature for the definitions of phrases such as courage and honour and the descriptions surrounding these words that motivated soldiers to fight during the eighteenth century. 7 A large part of these military treatises were written by authors who had either been or still were officers or generals in their respective armies and so likely had first-hand knowledge of the psychological conditions of their troops. Most of these works were published by well-known military publishers, such as the Millan's, with several books, such as Humphrey Bland's A Military Treatise (1727) and Maurice de Saxe's Reveries, or Memoirs Upon the Art of War (1757), running into multiple editions.…”