Published under a different title or volume number 6

published under a different title or
volume number.
6
During the years he spent postulat
ing his military views, Jomini also
developed a distinct intellectual infex
ibility and an intolerance of criticism.
As a result, the central characteristics
of Jomini’s ideas remained consistent
from the publication of his frst two
volumes in 1804 through the comple
tion in 1838 of his capstone work, the
Art of War , which he continued to
defend until his death in 1869. While
many of Jomini’s works examined re
cent military history, his frst and last
writings in particular focused on his
theory of war. As John Alger puts it,
“Jomini’s writings present a startling
symmetry, for he ended very nearly at
the place where he began.” Jomini even
arranged to promote the immutability
of his principles afer his death, having
his biographer Ferdinand Lecomte
publish an edited version of Jomini’s
Art of War in 1894. Near the end of
his life, Jomini had asked Lecomte to
write a supplement to Jomini’s treatise
to support his view that new technolo
gies would not alter the principles of
war he had ofered many years before. 7
Te intransigence with which Jomini
defended his claims contrasts with de
cades of evidence demonstrating their
variance with reality.
Te second implication of the two
men’s diferent backgrounds is that of
divergent perspectives. Jomini’s early
study of contemporary military theory,
uninformed by any practical experi
ence in war, led to his understanding
of warfare as a fundamentally simple
phenomenon that, like any other sci
ence, conformed to universal principles.
Jomini claimed to have identifed those
principles and found an audience in
early nineteenth-century Europe hungry
for just this kind of formulaic approach
to military theory.
8
Witnessing the
ever-increasing scale and devastation of
war, readers drew comfort in Jomini’s
simple explanations and assurances. By
contrast, Clausewitz’s early experience
of combat and his struggle to identify
the various causes of his beloved Prus
sia’s demise resulted in his view of
war as a complex and unpredictable
phenomenon. Over the following three
decades, Clausewitz grew even more
convinced that the only universal truths
about war lay in its staggering complex
ity. Any principles of war one might
discern served only to identify broad
generalities, none of which consistently
held true in the fog and friction of actual
combat. It is difcult to imagine how
the motivations and perspectives of two
military thinkers could have difered
more fundamentally than did those
of Jomini and Clausewitz. While their
diferent motivations stemmed largely
from their unique personal circum
stances, one must analyze the intellectual
climate within which each man worked
to understand how they developed such
divergent outlooks on war.