A school of modern historians has systematically depreciated the study of military history. As a fair example of their view take J. R. Green's History of the English People (preface).

“It is the reproach of historians that they have too often turned history into a mere history of the butchery of men by their fellow-men. But war plays a small part in the real story of European nations, and in that of England its part is smaller than in any. The only war which has profoundly affected English Society and English Government is the Hundred Years' War with France (1336-1451).”

Apparently then neither the campaign of Hastings, nor those of Plassey and Quebec, nor the War of American Independence, nor the Napoleonic War, played any great part in the development of British institutions or social and commercial conditions!

This strange view is due to political and personal bias. The old school of historians imagined that the main trend of the annals of the world was determined by great personalities like Alexander, Julius Caesar, Mahomet, or Napoleon. The modern liberal teacher of history wishes to substitute the view that “the people” must always be the protagonist. The “hero” of the type that Carlyle praised must be turned into a mere typical development of the tendencies of his age and race, whose greatness shall not offend the susceptibilities of smaller minds, or sin against the great doctrine of equality.