European Military History Term List

The following terms are the pool from which I will draw your identification questions for the exams.

Ancient Warfare

  • Homeric warfare
  • polis
  • hoplites
  • phalanx
  • Battle of Marathon
  • Peloponnesian War
  • peltasts
  • Battle of Leuctra
  • Alexander the Great
  • the Companions
  • Roman legion
  • centuries
  • maniples
  • cohorts
  • auxiliaries
  • pila
  • gladius
  • ballista
  • catapult

Warfare in the Middle Ages
  • militia/fyrd
  • man-at-arms
  • vassalage
  • fiefdoms
  • motte and bailey
  • longbow
  • pike
  • halberd
  • bombards
  • culverins
  • mercenaries
  • gendarmerie

Early Modern Warfare
  • Condotierri
  • Battle of Fornovo
  • Reconquista
  • musket
  • arquebus
  • Hernandez Gonzalo de Cordoba
  • Battle of Cerignola
  • tercio
  • Duke of Alba
  • Niccolo Machiavelli

Early Modern Naval Warfare
  • galley
  • ram
  • Battle of Lepanto
  • galleas
  • windward
  • leeward
  • the "Great Gun"
  • orlop/gun deck
  • galleon
  • John Hawkins
  • Francis Drake
  • Spanish Armada

The Military Revolution
  • Military Revolution
  • trace-Italianized fortresses
  • bastions
  • ravelins
  • Maurice of Nassau
  • battalion
  • caracole
  • Gustavus Adolphus
  • Lennart Tortensson
  • Thirty Years War (1618-1648)
  • Johann Tilly
  • Breitenfeld
  • Pappenheim

The Age of Cromwell
  • Battle of Rocroi (19 May 1643)
  • Melo vs. Condé
  • Hugo Grotius
  • Oliver Cromwell
  • Battle of Marston Moor (1644)
  • New Model Army

Warfare in the Age of Louis XIV
  • Louis XIV (1643-1715; ruled 1661-1715)
  • Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin
  • intendants
  • commissionaires
  • regiments
  • Michel de Tellier
  • Marquis of Louvois
  • Marshal Turenne
  • War Ministry
  • Palatinate Campaign (1688)
  • Sebastian le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707)
  • sappers
  • maneuver warfare

Confronting Louis XIV: Marlborough
  • War of Devolution (1667)
  • Dutch War (1672-1679)
  • William of Orange
  • War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697)
  • flintlock musket
  • socket bayonet
  • John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough
  • War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)
  • Battle of Blenheim (1704)

Life in the Military, 1700-1789
no terms for this lecture

Naval Warfare, 1652-1805
  • ship of the line
  • carronade
  • Anglo-Dutch Wars
  • Permanent Fighting Instructions
  • William Pitt
  • cojunct expeditions
  • Horatio Nelson
  • Battle of Trafalgar
 
18th Century Warfare
  • Age of Limited Warfare
  • line and column tactics
  • light infantry
  • cuirassiers
  • dragoons
  • artillery systems

Frederick the Great
  • Silesian wars
  • Battle of Mollwitz, 1740
  • Seven Years War, 1756-1763
  • Battle of Rossbach, 5 November 1757
  • von Seydlitz
  • Battle of Leuthen, 5 December 1757
  • oblique order

Prelude to Napoleon
  • l'order mixte
  • division
  • Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval
  • Jacques-Antoine de Guibert
  • Battle of Valmy
  • First Coalition
  • Committee of Public Safety
  • levee en masse
  • Lazare Carnot

Napoleonic Warfare
  • maneuver to the rear
  • central position
  • strategic penetration

The Rise and Fall of Napoleon
  • Austerlitz
  • Jena/Auerstadt
  • Friedland
  • guerrilla
  • Landwehr
  • Arakcheev
  • de Tolley

The Fall and Rise of Prussia
  • Gerhardt Scharnhorst
  • Landwehr
  • jaegers
  • Roon reforms
  • General Staff
  • Helmuth von Moltke
  • Karl von Clausewitz
  • friction
  • fog of war

Sea Power and the Machine Age
  • Demologos
  • Henri Paixhans
  • Alfred Thayer Mahan
  • Julian Corbett
  • guerre de course
  • Jeune Ecole

Colonial Warfare
  • machine gun - Hiram Maxim
  • pacification
  • Charles Callwell - Small Wars (1896)
  • Bugeaud
  • Gallieni
  • Lyautey
  • "spot of oil"

Preparing for WWI - Part I
  • Franco-Prussian War (1870)
  • la revanche
  • Conscription Law of 1872
  • Dreyfus Affair
  • Franco-Russian Entente
  • Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies
  • offense a outrance

Preparing for WWI - Part II
  • "bolt from the blue"
  • Boer War (1899-1902)
  • Haldane reforms
  • British Expeditionary Force (BEF)
  • Territorials
  • Kaiser Wilhelm II
  • Schlieffen Plan

World War I: 1914
  • Central Powers vs. Entente
  • I. S. Bloch
  • Schlieffen Plan (1905)
  • Plan 17
  • Battle of the Frontiers
  • Battle of the Marne

World War I on Land
  • Kitchener Army
  • Erich von Falkenhayn
  • Battle of Verdun (1916)
  • Henri Phillipe Petain
  • Somme Offensive (1916)
  • Nivelle Offensives (1917)
  • Third Battle of Ypres (1917)
  • Michael Offensives (March 1918)
  • controlled battlefield
  • defense in depth
  • stormtroopers

World War I: Sea and Air
  • Battle of Coronel
  • Battle of the Falklands
  • Heligoland Bight
  • Dogger Bank
  • Battle of Jutland
  • unrestricted submarine warfare
  • Fokker Eindecker
  • Max Immelman
  • Oswald Boelcke
  • groups de chasse
  • Jagdstaffeln
  • Independent Air Force