By the end of its existence the ancien régime had reached the limit of its powers in military no less than in other spheres. The size of armies and the scale of warfare had greatly increased, but there was a fatal clumsiness in the means by which this was achieved and the uses to which the expanded resources were put. The rigid line formation adopted to get the best out of mediocre weapons and troops made it hard to concentrate force for a telling blow at key points on the front. The large armies with their ponderous supply-trains could only move slowly and were not readily able to force an engagement on an inferior opponent. Consequently battles were either evaded by the weaker side or failed to be decisive. Wars dragged on without result until the huge expense which their expanded scale involved led the combatants to desist. From this impasse only an occasional stroke of luck or genius afforded escape.

Between 1763 and 1792 there was little fighting on land between the major European powers. In this breathing space, means were devised of making decisive victory the normal, instead of the exceptional, outcome of a major war. The new military thinking was an integral part of the general movement of criticism of established institutions; inspired by the same ideas, it triumphed only when the general cause of reform did so.