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How did Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert use the term grand tactics?
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tactics
Sumerian phalanx, a block of foot soldiers depicted standing shield-to-shield, presenting spears, and advancing in a dense mass, detail from the Stele of the Vultures, limestone bas-relief, c. 2450 bce; in the Louvre Museum, Paris.
The French military author Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert coined the term grand tactics around 1780 to describe the conduct of major battles.1
While the term was used to distinguish the management of large-scale engagements from "minor tactics"âwhich focused on the art of fighting individuals or small unitsâthe concept has largely fallen out of use in modern military theory. It has since been replaced by the concept of the operational level of war, partly because the classical notion of a pitched battle between the main forces of belligerents is no longer considered a standard feature of modern conflict.1