The development of new infantry tactics during the early eighteenth century: a computer simulation approach to modern military history

Abstract

Computational models have been extensively used in military operations research, but they are rarely seen in military history studies. The introduction of this technique has potential benefits for the study of past conflicts. This paper presents an agent-based model (ABM) designed to help understand European military tactics during the eighteenth century, in particular during the War of the Spanish Succession. We use a computer simulation to evaluate the main variables that affect infantry performance in the battlefield, according to primary sources. The results show that the choice of a particular firing system was not as important as most historians state. In particular, it cannot be the only explanation for the superiority of Allied armies. The final discussion shows how ABM can be used to interpret historical data, and explores under which conditions the hypotheses generated from the study of primary accounts could be valid.

Keywords:

• military history
• modern history
• agent-based simulation
• War of the Spanish Succession
• high-performance computing

Acknowledgements

This research is part of the SimulPast Project (CSD2010-00034) funded by the CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Special thanks to Francesc Riart for his contributions regarding eighteenth-century warfare and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments about preliminary versions of the text.