Guibert, Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de (1743–1790)

AbstractGuibert was a French soldier and one of the most eminent military theoreticians of the eighteenth century. His writings reflected contemporary concerns about France's poor military performance, notably in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), as well as embodying the Enlightenment ideal that all areas of human activity, including warfare, should be subjected to rational scrutiny. Like other lumières, Guibert claimed in his writings that he was articulating fundamental and unchanging principles. While these claims were certainly exaggerated, his ideas did have a lasting significance. Many of his views on tactics would find their way into French military manuals during the Revolutionary Wars; Napoleon declared that only an ass would fail to carry an extract from Guibert's works with him when going into battle; and his later influence can be seen in the theories of T. E. Lawrence, de Gaulle, and Liddell Hart in the twentieth century.