Chapters 2 and 3 have dealt with attitudes to war and its purpose in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern history, highlighting both changes and continuities. This chapter will dwell on aspects which have partly or entirely continued to the present: the basic pattern of siege warfare; debates about the recruitment and status of troops; the question of the importance of battle as well as defensive and offensive strategies; the spectrum of warfare from limited to major; and the ceaseless quest for eternal principles guiding warfare and ruling war.

Sieges and static defences from Troy to Basra

From Antiquity to the present, territorial conquest has never been achieved by a total physical occupation of all land. Instead, the symbolic seizure of certain settlements and strategically crucial points like mountain passes or bridges or crossroads (frequently coincident with settlements) had and has to make do. In turn, such places would be defended, best done by fortifying them.