It is not uncommon for historians searching for the roots of the total warfare that tore apart Europe in the twentieth century to arrive, sooner or later, at the great conflicts of the revolutionary era. Here, after all, we find the gentlemanly, limited warfare of the eighteenth century abandoned in favor of centrally directed national war efforts, ideologically-fired mass citizen armies using new battlefield tactics that aimed for decisive victories and the destruction of the enemy, single clashes that produced massive, mind-numbing casualty figures, and long-term military occupation of foreign lands, the emergence of guerilla warfare and vicious counter-insurgency operations that evolved into exterminative campaigns against civilian populations. In short, so it seems, the great age of revolution not only ushered in political modernity throughout the north Atlantic world, but also the age of modern, merciless warfare as its pendant.