The conduct of war thus became a true game, in which the cards were dealt by time and by accident. In its effect it was a somewhat stronger form of diplomacy, a more forceful method of negotiation, in which battles and sieges were the principal notes exchanged. Even the most ambitious ruler had no greater aims than to gain a number of advantages that could be exploited at the peace conference.
This limited, constricted form of war was due, as we said, to the narrow base on which it rested. But the explanation why even gifted commanders and monarchs such as Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII, and Frederick the Great, with armies of exceptional quality, should have risen so little above the common level of the times, why even they had to be content with moderate success, lies with the balance of power in Europe. With the multitude of minor states in earlier times, any one of them was prevented from rapidly expanding by such immediate and concrete factors as their proximity and contiguity, their family ties and personal acquaintances. But now that states were larger and their centers farther apart, the wide spread of interests they had developed became the factor limiting their growth. Political relations, with their affinities and antipathies, had become so sensitive a nexus that no cannon could be fired in Europe without every government feeling its interest affected. Hence a new Alexander needed more than his own sharp sword: he required a ready pen as well. Even so, his conquests rarely amounted to very much.
Even Louis XIV, though bent on destroying the balance of power in Europe and little troubled by the general hostility he faced by the end of the seventeenth century, continued waging war along traditional lines. While his military instrument was that of the greatest and richest monarch of all, its character was no different from that of his opponents'.
It had ceased to be in harmony with the spirit of the times to plunder and lay waste the enemy's land, which had played such an important role in antiquity, in Tartar days and indeed in mediaeval times. It was rightly held to be unnecessarily barbarous, an invitation to reprisals, and a practice that hurt the enemy's subjects rather than their government—one therefore that was ineffective and only served permanently to impede the advance of general civilization. Not only in its means, therefore, but also in its aims, war increasingly became limited to the fighting force itself. Armies, with their fortresses and prepared positions, came to form a state within a state, in which violence gradually faded away.
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