Engines of War: How wars were won and lost on the railways

The nature of warfare changed radically in the 19th century. Contrast the Napoleonic Wars, with battles such as Waterloo that were decided in a day, with the prolonged and entrenched conflict that characterised the First World War a century later.

What brought about this remarkable change? The Napoleonic Wars were the last major battles fought before the crucial invention that transformed the very nature of how wars were conducted: the railways. Yet, this aspect of military history has been widely ignored. There has been much focus on how the development of weaponry increased the efficiency of armies as killing machines but little attention has been paid to how the weapons got to the front. And it was the railways which changed the logistics of war.