Training of the Infantry for Offensive Combat (Military Classics)

Available for the first time in English.Staff officer, author, reformer – Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison was one of France’s foremost military thinkers prior to the Great War. Facing him was the ultimate challenge: how to win a war in the 20th Century.A key text in what would become known as the Cult of the Offensive, this is Grandmaison’s attempt to implement the lessons of the Boer and Russo-Japanese wars – to find a way for infantry to survive on a battlefield governed not by rifles and bayonets, but by trenches, barbed wire, and machine guns.

Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison (1861-1915) was a French military theorist and staff officer. One of the key proponents of what would become known as the Cult of the Offensive, his writing and teaching provided part of the groundwork for French military doctrine heading into the Great War. He was killed in 1915 while leading the Fifth Army Reserve Group.

Robert B. Marks holds a Master of Arts degree in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, with a focus on the First World War. He also translated Joffre's Memoirs, Moltke's Memories and Letters, and the French Decrees of 1913.