The classic work of the brilliant Russian military thinker of the late 19th – early 20th centuries N.P. Mikhnevich presents readers with an outline of the development of military affairs over several thousand years and right up to the beginning of the New Age. The author examines tactics and strategy not in isolation, but in the context of general civilizational processes. “The state of the military art of a given era is the best indicator of the culture and civilization of which it has always been more or less a product; the energy displayed by armies and troops during war is the surest sign of the degree of strength of the state, the representatives of which are the armies and troops,” he writes.