Replicating a European suit of armour from the second half of the 16th century, our "Knight in Shining Armour" is crafted in polished stainless steel, so as to require no maintenance, and is fully articulated. Made to the highest quality standards, this figure is 26� tall (including the base) and will be the focal point of any home decor. The wooden base is finished in black lacquer and the sword is included. A spectacular conversation piece! KEY FEATURES: * High quality * Very decorative conversation piece * Maintenance-free MEASUREMENTS: PRODUCT HEIGHT: 24 inches PRODUCT WIDTH: 7 1/4 inches OVERALL LENGTH: 26 1/4 inches WEIGHT: 9lb 2oz
Price: 318.99
Replicating a European suit of armour from the second half of the 16th century, or two-toned knight is crafted in polished stainless steel, so as to require no maintenance and is fully articulated. This piece differs from the (1021-GT) only in that this model is selectively plated to replicate the gilt decoration popular on the armour of the nobility of the period. Made to the highest quality standards, this figure is 26" tall, including the base, and will be the focal point of any home decor. A spectacular conversation piece! KEY FEATURES: * High quality * Very decorative conversation piece. * Maintenance-free MEASUREMENTS: PRODUCT HEIGHT: 24 inches PRODUCT WIDTH: 7 1/4 inches OVERALL LENGTH: 26 1/4 inches WEIGHT: 9lb 3oz
Price: 327.99
Our popular line of scaled suits of armor now includes the Black Knight, which features a black finish on the solid steel plate. The use of black finishes on suits of armor was relatively common in the days of plate armor, when itinerant knights could avoid the expense of an armor polisher simply by adopting a black coating, which minimized maintenance. This 26 inch high piece, based on a 15th. century Italian suit, is fully articulated and is complete with a scaled hand-and-a-half sword. KEY FEATURES: * Authentic detailing * Fully articulated * Great decorator item MEASUREMENTS: PRODUCT HEIGHT: 26 inches PRODUCT WIDTH: 8 inches OVERALL LENGTH: 26 inches WEIGHT: 9lb 3oz
Price: 290.99
Replicating European suits of armour from the second half of the 16th century, these fully articulated pieces are made to one third scale. All are made to the highest quality standards and will be the focal point of any home decor. Each piece is complete with its own sword. Our �Knight in Shining Armour� (MH1021) is a spectacular conversation piece, crafted in highly polished stainless steel with a black lacquered wood base. The Two-toned armour (MH1022) is identical apart from having certain sections highlighted in gold. The �Black Knight� (MH2028) features a black finish on the steel plate, re-visiting the days when itinerant knights could avoid the cost of an armour polisher by simply adopting a black coating, which minimized maintenance. The �King�s Armour� (MH2136) is a stunning creation in exquisitely embossed stainless steel, requiring many hours of skilled labor. The polished hardwood base and sword are specially made for this suit and finish the piece to perfection. Truly fit for a king�s palace. Key Features: * Beautifully Ornate * Laser-Etched * Moveable Parts Specifications: Overall length: 27 1/4 Weight: 10lbs
Price: 619.99
Rapiers, carried by the gentry of Europe in the 17th century, were used both for personal defense and for settling gentlemanly disagreements. Long extolled as the pinnacle of rapier design, the �Spanish� or �Cup-Hilt� rapier undoubtedly combined style and function very effectively. These letter openers from CAS Hanwei are the perfect functional accent to any home or office decor. Crafted in steel with a distinctive antiqued patina, each piece is a small version of one of our full-sized swords and represents a style unique to its own time in history. Each is provided with its own stand and is packaged with a card detailing its origins. Key Features: * Historically Accurate * Antiqued * Stand Included Specifications: Overall length: 8 3/4
Price: 14.99
The Knight�s sword is probably the most recognizable sword design in history. The simple cross guard and weighted pommel provided an ideal combination of protection and balance that was to serve the knights of Europe admirably for several centuries. These letter openers from CAS Hanwei are the perfect functional accent to any home or office decor. Crafted in steel with a distinctive antiqued patina, each piece is a small version of one of our full-sized swords and represents a style unique to its own time in history. Each is provided with its own stand and is packaged with a card detailing its origins. Key Features: Historically Accurate Antiqued Stand Included Specifications: Overall length: 8 inches
Price: 14.99
Viking raiders were famed for their lightning attacks on European coastal settlements. These tactics demanded light, fast weaponry and their sword designs were based on this need. Surviving swords show the Viking swordsmiths to be highly skilled in steel manufacture and forging techniques. These letter openers from CAS Hanwei are the perfect functional accent to any home or office decor. Crafted in steel with a distinctive antiqued patina, each piece is a small version of one of our full-sized swords and represents a style unique to its own time in history. Each is provided with its own stand and is packaged with a card detailing its origins. Key Features: * Historically Accurate * Antiqued * Stand Included Specifications: Overall length: 9
Price: 14.99
The Roman Gladius was the sword that built the fabulous Roman Empire, earning its reputation in the hands of Legionnaires on the battlefield and Gladiators in the arena. Short and double-edged, the Gladius was unmatched in the close-quarters combat for which the Romans were renowned. These letter openers from CAS Hanwei are the perfect functional accent to any home or office decor. Crafted in steel with a distinctive antiqued patina, each piece is a small version of one of our full-sized swords and represents a style unique to its own time in history. Each is provided with its own stand and is packaged with a card detailing its origins. Key Features: * Historically Accurate * Antiqued * Stand Included Specifications: Overall length: 7 3/4
Price: 15.99
The Scottish Basket-Hilt Sword, evoking images of kilted highlanders raging into battle, served the clansman well for the 17th Century on, and is still carried by officers of Scottish regiments to this day. These letter openers from CAS Hanwei are the perfect functional accent to any home or office decor. Crafted in steel with a distinctive antiqued patina, each piece is a small version of one of our full-sized swords and represents a style unique to its own time in history. Each is provided with its own stand and is packaged with a card detailing its origins. Key Features: * Historically Accurate * Antiqued * Stand Included Specifications: Overall length: 9 1/2
Price: 15.99
The English Knightly Mini Sword (MH2301) replicates one of the most popular designs of the medieval period, while the German Hand-and-a-Half Mini Sword (MH2302) demonstrates a style used throughout Europe around the 15th century. Both blades are forged from high-carbon spring steel.
Our new line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
The English Knightly Mini Sword (MH2301) replicates one of the most popular designs of the medieval period, while the German Hand-and-a-Half Mini Sword (MH2302) demonstrates a style used throughout Europe around the 15th century. Both blades are forged from high-carbon spring steel.
Our new line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.br> Specifications:
Each of our Rapier Minis faithfully replicates period swords in every detail. The blades are forged from maraging steel, a steel typically associated with the sport fencing world, then tempered in a process unique to this material, creating the flexibility inherent in the rapier style.
Our line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
Each of our Rapier Minis faithfully replicates period swords in every detail. The blades are forged from maraging steel, a steel typically associated with the sport fencing world, then tempered in a process unique to this material, creating the flexibility inherent in the rapier style.
Our line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
Our Mini Roman Sword recreates the classic Waisted Gladius pattern, the standard choice for the late-era Roman foot soldier.
Our line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
The Mini Mortuary sword closely resembles the sword worn by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War.
Our line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
The Scottish Basket-Hilt Mini replicates in miniature the back swords commonly carried by Scottish highlanders.
Our line of Mini-Swords features miniature replicas of several of our full-sized swords, all with fully tempered blades and correctly detailed hilts. Each comes with an attractive wood and metal display stand with a metal placard identifying the sword type, origin and approximate period of use. Each piece is furnished in a clam shell presentation box and handsome black and gold sleeve, making an exceptional gift.
War is the reciprocal and violent application
of force between hostile political entities aimed at
bringing about a desired political end-state via armed
conflict. In his seminal work,
On War,
Carl Von Clausewitz calls war the "continuation of
political intercourse, carried on with other means."[1]
War is an interaction in which two or more militaries
have a “struggle of wills”.[2]
When qualified as a
civil war, it is a dispute inherent to a given
society, and its nature is in the conflict over modes of
governance rather than
sovereignty. War is not considered to be the same as
mere
occupation,
murder or
genocide because of the reciprocal nature of the
violent struggle, and the
organized nature of the units involved.
War is also a cultural entity, and its practice is
not linked to any single type of political organisation
or society. Rather, as discussed by
John Keegan in his “History Of Warfare”, war is a
universal phenomenon whose form and scope is defined by
the society that wages it.
[3]
The conduct of war extends along a continuum, from the
almost universal
tribal warfare that began well before recorded human
history, to wars between
city states,
nations, or
empires. A group of combatants and their support is
called an
army on land, a
navy at sea, and
air force in the air. Wars may be prosecuted
simultaneously in one or more different
theatres. Within each theatre, there may be one or
more consecutive
military campaigns. A military campaign includes not
only fighting but also intelligence, troop movements,
supplies,
propaganda, and other components. Continuous
conflict is traditionally called a
battle, although this terminology is not always fed
to conflicts involving aircraft, missiles or bombs
alone, in the absence of ground troops or naval forces.
War is not limited to the
human species, as
ants engage in massive intra-species conflicts which
might be termed warfare. It is theorized that other
species also engage in similar behavior, although this
is not well documented.
[4][5][6]
Some believe war has always been with us; others
stress the lack of clear evidence that war is not in our
prehistoric past, and the fact that many peaceful,
non-military societies have and still do exist.
Originally, war likely consisted of small-scale raiding.
Since the rise of the state some 5000 years ago,
military activity has occurred over much of the globe.
The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of
technological advances led to modern warfare.
Since the close of the
Vietnam War, the ideas expounded by the Prussian
military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) have
come to thoroughly permeate American military writing,
doctrinal, theoretical, and historical. His book
On War, first published (as
Vom Kriege) in 1832, was adopted as a key
text at the Naval War College in 1976, the Air War
College in 1978, the Army War College in 1981. It has
always been central at the U.S. Army's School for
Advanced Military Studies at Leavenworth (founded in
1983). The U.S. Marine Corps's brilliant little
philosophical field manual
FMFM 1: Warfighting (1989) is essentially a
distillation of On War, and the newer Marine
Corps Doctrinal Publications (MCDPs,
c.1997) are equally reflective of Clausewitz's basic
concepts.*1
This is not the first time Clausewitz has been in
fashion. Indeed, On War has been the bible of
many thoughtful soldiers ever since Field Marshal
Helmuth von Moltke attributed to its guidance his
stunning victories in the wars of German unification
(1864, 1866, 1870-71). Nor is it the first time that
individual American soldiers and military
thinkers have been attracted by his ideas: George
Patton, Albert Wedemeyer, and—especially—Dwight
Eisenhower were intensely interested in what he had to
say.
It is, however, the first time that the American
armed forces as institutions have turned to
Clausewitz. While the philosopher had insisted that war
was "simply the expression of politics by other means,"
the traditional attitude of American soldiers had been
that "politics and strategy are radically and
fundamentally things apart. Strategy begins where
politics end. All that soldiers ask is that once the
policy is settled, strategy and command shall be
regarded as being in a sphere apart from politics."*2
The sudden acceptability of Clausewitz in the wake of
Vietnam is not difficult to account for, for among the
major military theorists only Clausewitz seriously
struggled with the sort of dilemma that American
military leaders faced in the aftermath of their defeat.
Clearly, in what had come to be called in scathing terms
a "political war," the political and military components
of the American war effort had come unstuck. It ran
against the grain of America's military men to criticize
elected civilian leaders, but it was just as difficult
to take the blame upon themselves. Clausewitz's analysis
could not have been more relevant:
The more powerful and inspiring the motives for
war,... the more closely will the military aims and
the political objects of war coincide, and the more
military and less political will war appear to be.
On the other hand, the less intense the motives, the
less will the military element's natural tendency to
violence coincide with political directives. As a
result, war will be driven further from its natural
course, the political object will be more and more
at variance with the aim of ideal war, and the
conflict will seem increasingly political in
character.*3
When people talk, as they often do, about
harmful political influence on the management of
war, they are not really saying what they mean.
Their quarrel should be with the policy itself, not
with its influence.
Vom Kriege (IPA: [fɔm
ˈkʁiːgə]) is a book on
war and
military strategy by
Prussian general
Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the
Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and
published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It has been
translated into
English several times as On War. On
War is actually an unfinished work; Clausewitz had
set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827,
but did not live to finish the task. His wife eventually
compiled all the work and the final two chapters
Clausewitz never finished.
On War is one of the first books on modern
military strategy. This is mainly due to Clausewitz'
integration of politics and social and economic issues
as some of the most important factors in deciding the
outcomes of a war. It is one of the most important
treatises on strategy ever written, and is prescribed at
various
military academies to this day.
Carl von Clausewitz was a
Prussian officer among those baffled by how the
armies of the
French Revolution and
Napoleon had changed the nature of war through their
ability to motivate the populace and thus unleash war on
a greater scale than had previously been the case in
Europe. Clausewitz was well educated and had a strong
interest in art, science, and education, but he was a
professional soldier who spent a considerable part of
his life fighting against Napoleon. There is no doubt
that the insights he gained from his experiences,
combined with a solid grasp of European history,
provided much of the raw material for the book. On
War represents the compilation of his most cogent
observations.
Note: Clausewitz states that Napoleon's tactics were
not revolutionary at all and that Napoleonic Warfare did
not change anything greatly in military history. The
technology of weaponry for the most part remained
static, and new strategies weren't developed, but rather
Napoleon refurbished old ones, mixing them into one
grand strategy.
The book contains a wealth of historical examples
used to illustrate its various concepts.
Frederick II of Prussia (the Great) figures
prominently for having made very efficient use of the
limited forces at his disposal.
Napoleon also is a central figure.
Among many strands of thought, three stand out as
essential to Clausewitz' concept:
War must never be seen as a purpose to itself,
but as a means of physically forcing one's will on
an opponent ("War is not merely a political act, but
also a real political instrument, a continuation of
political commerce, a carrying out of the same by
other means."[1]).
The military objectives in war that support
one's political objectives fall into two broad
types: "war to achieve limited aims" and war to
"disarm” the enemy: “to render [him] politically
helpless or militarily impotent."
The course of war will tend to favor the party
employing more force and resources (a notion
extended by Germany's leaders in World War One into
"total war"—the pursuit of complete military victory
regardless of the political consequences).
Military strategy is a
national defence policy implemented by
military organisations to pursue desired
strategic goals.[1]
Derived from the
Greek
strategos, strategy when it appeared in use
during the 18th century[2],
was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the
general"[3],
'the art of arrangement' of troops.[4]
Military strategy deals with the planning and conduct of
campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and
the
deception of the
enemy. The father of modern strategic study,
Carl von Clausewitz, defined military strategy as
"the employment of battles to gain the end of war."
Liddell Hart's definition put less emphasis on
battles, defining strategy as "the art of distributing
and applying military means to fulfil the ends of
policy" Hence, both gave the pre-eminence to political
aims over military goals, ensuring
civilian control of the military.
"You must not fight too often with one enemy,
or you will teach him all your art of war." –
Napoleon Bonaparte
Military strategy is the plan and execution of
the contest between very large groups of armed
adversaries. It involves each opponent's diplomatic,
informational, military, and economic resources wielded
against the other's resources to gain supremacy or
reduce the opponent's will to fight. It is a principle
tool to secure the
national interest. A contemporary military strategy
is developed via
military science.
[5]
It is as old as
society itself. It is a subdiscipline of
warfare and of
foreign policy. In comparison,
grand strategy is that strategy of the largest of
organizations which are currently the
nation state,
confederation, or international
alliances. Military strategy has its origins before
the
Battle of the Ten Kings and will endure through the
space age. It is larger in perspective than
military tactics which is the disposition and
maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield.[6]
Military strategy in the 19th century was still
viewed as one of a trivium of "arts" or "sciences" that
govern the conduct of warfare; the others being
tactics, the execution of plans and manœuvering of
forces in battle, and
logistics, the maintenance of an army. The view had
prevailed since the Roman times, and the borderline
between strategy and tactics at this time was blurred,
and sometimes categorization of a decision is a matter
of almost personal opinion.
Carnot, during the
French Revolutionary Wars thought it simply involved
concentration of troops.[7]
The Battle of Siffin, illustration from a
19th century manuscript by
Muhammad Rafi Bazil.
Strategy and
tactics are closely related and exist on the same
continuum.
