Henry Lloyd (military writer)

Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd (* probably 1720 in Wrexham , North Wales , † 1783 in the Netherlands ) was a Welsh soldier and military writer. He served as an officer in various armies, most recently as a Russian general, and published various papers on strategy and tactics.

Corresponding to the thinking of his time, he tried to geometrically grasp the essence of strategy and tactics and the secret of military success and to represent the rules of warfare through certain arrangements of lines and angles. It is believed that he coined the concept of the line of operations , which dominated operational thinking until World War I and is still used today. As the creator of this term, he continues to this day and is one of the classic thinkers of the art of war.

Life and military background

Born the son of a country pastor and destined for an ecclesiastical career, he spent some time with a lawyer and after 1744 as a lay brother in a French Jesuit college. On his way he must have acquired knowledge that earned him a recommendation as a teacher of geography and field engineering, which in turn later found himself in the army of the Marshal of Saxony . He noticed him at the Battle of Fontenoy (1745) through his terrain sketches. In 1747 he took part in the siege and capture of Bergen op Zooms on the French side during the War of the Austrian Succession and became a major. He may then serve briefly under Keith in Prussia. In 1754 he is back in France, for which he is to conduct explorations for a landing company on the British coast. His report is said to have moved the French government to distance themselves from the company. In 1757 Lloyd became an adjutant in Lacy's staff in Austria and, as a lieutenant colonel, commanded an association of light troops. Dissatisfied, he left the Austrian service and entered the Prussian service under Ferdinand von Braunschweig until after 1763. He then went to Italy as a British agent and observed the Corsican struggle for independence , before going into Russian service as a general in 1773. For Russia he drafts the campaign plan against the Turks, besieges Silistra , receives a higher command against Sweden and surprisingly leaves the Russian service for unknown reasons to devote himself to his history of the Seven Years' War in England . In 1779 he observed the fleet leaving for England in Boulogne, reported this on the island and wrote his "Rhapsody on the present system of French politics ..." . The publication of this document is said to have been thwarted by the British government through high offers and later also through confiscation, as it was feared that the exact description of the coast from this book might be useful to an opponent.

Such an adventurous way of life was no exception at the time. The armies were international and changing from one army to another was the order of the day. However, the information on Lloyd's life is incomplete and even in the known points not certain, which Lloyd himself is not innocent of.

Works

Lloyd became known as a military writer for his "History of the late war in Germany between the King of Prussia and the Empress of Germany and her Allies" (History of the Seven Years' War).

• Henry Lloyd: History of the Seven Years' War in Germany between the King of Prussia and the Empress Queen with her allies; translated and edited by Georg Friedrich von Tempelhoff : 6 volumes; Berlin 1783ff. Online at Google Books: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6

Another work was the already cited "Rhapsody on the present system of French politics, on the projected invasion, and the means to defeat it" .

His "Military Memoirs" were published three years after their first publication in London in German translation under the title "Des Herr General von Lloyd's treatise on the general principles of the art of war" in 1783 in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

literature

• Rudolf Vierhaus: Lloyd and Guibert . In: Werner Hahlweg : Classics of the art of war . Darmstadt 1960
• Patrick J. Speelman (Ed.): War, Society and Enlightenment. The Works of General Lloyd (= History of Warfare; Vol. 32), Leiden [u. a.] 2005, ISBN 90-04-14410-2