Dodge Theodore A. Gustavus Adolphus: A History of the Art of War From Its Revival After the Middle Ages to the End of the Spanish Succession War

Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1895. — 864 p.As its subtitle indicates, this book is a military history of Western Europe at the operational and strategic level through the XVII Century and the first decade of the XVIII Century, including the War of Spanish Succession and Charles XII's Russo-Swedish War. This is a very long book written 130 or so years ago in the language of the time, i.e. lots of long sentences that sometimes require careful reading. Its author was a colonel on the Union side in the Civil War, and subsequently became a professor military history and the author of many books on the subject.
Notwithstanding its breadth, much of the book is about Gustavus Adolphus whom the author regarded as the one of the "greatest captains`' of history, along with Alexander the Great, Napoleon, etc., and he provides cogent arguments to back his view. Certainly, his appearance with initially only a small army turned the course of the Thirty Years' War, and the outcome of this war might have been very different but for his untimely death in battle in 1632. In any case, after 1632, the author turns to the campaigns of other great generals such as Turenne, Conde, Marlborough, Eugene of Savoy. These are covered in detail, and every chapter is concluded with the author's critique and explanation of what they did well or less so.
This is valuable book for readers interested in the military history of Western Europe in the XVII Century, and the language is not so technical as to deter any serious reader. I rated this book at four stars because of the author's pedantic approach, some repetition of points already made, and his view that serious strategy and tactics disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire. The author makes a lengthy case for this, but I found it not entirely convincing on the basis of my knowledge of history (which however is no doubt less that the author's).