Discours sur l'État Actuel de la Politique et de la Science Militaire, en Europe. Avec le plan d’un ouvrage intitulé: La France politique & militaire. Geneva, 1773.
12mo, (167 x 92 mm), pp. x, 179, in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers and edges, pink silk marker, from the library of Claude Lebédel.
A scarce separate edition of Guibert’s celebrated treatise on the art of war, first published as part of his Essai général de tactique, précédé d’un discours sur l’état actuel de la politique et de la science militaire en Europe, avec le plan d’un ouvrage intitulé La France politique et militaire, Londres, 1772.
Guibert’s controversial works on military tactics, despite being initially condemned by the French government, eventually led to many reforms in the French army. He is regarded as one of the leading military tacticians of the pre-revolutionary era and his influence extended within Europe to Frederick II and Napoleon and outside Europe, through von Steuben, to the generals of the American Revolution. Guibert’s works were widely read at the time in France and abroad, and a number of foreign translations were published including those into English, German and even Persian.
‘Of this work [Essai général de tactique] it may be said that it was the best essay on war produced by a soldier during a period in which tactics were discussed even in the salon and military literature was more abundant than at any time up to 1871’ (Encyclopædia Britanicca, 1911).
In addition to his military career and his works on tactics and the art of war, the Comte de Guibert was also a member of the Académie française, published journals of his travels in France and Switzerland, wrote a tragedy, Le Connétable de Bourbon, 1775 and had a love affair with Julie de Lespinasse, whose love letters to him were later published.
‘L'oeuvre de Guibert est neuve en son temps par sa visée totaliste articulée autour de la relation fondamentale entre politique et guerre. Guibert a du cependant courir au plus pressé et rédiger l'Essai. On y trouve une distinction entre deux parties de l'art de la guerre pressentie par d'autres en ce siècle des lumières. Guibert parle de tactique élémentaire et de grande tactique. Dans la défense du système de guerre moderne, il nommera celle-ci la stratégie ou tactique des armées. La redécouverte du concept de stratégie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle tient à une nécessité sémantique. L'articulation des armées fait naître des possibilités nouvelles, à un échelon supérieur par rapport à la tactique des armées-blocs’ (L'Art de la guerre de Machiavel à Clausewitz, 89).
Quérard, La France Littéraire, III, p. 518; Cioranescu 33011 (Geneva 1773, pp. vii, 163).