War in Europe began with the first human migrants. Rival bands fought for thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans began writing about their military history, first as legend-for instance, the hero Achilles battling the Trojans-and then as fact. War developed from sticks and stones to bronze, iron, and steel, including armor and edged weapons. Then came gunpowder, guns, and cannons, which eventually replaced edged weapons. Finally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technology exploded: railroads, steamships, telegraphs, machine guns, automobiles, airplanes, and tanks enabled European states to muster, equip, arm, transport, and command more men than ever before, with more firepower than ever before. In the past seventy-five years, atomic weapons changed the military landscape of Europe-as have the internet and cyber warfare.
In this colorful new telling of European warfare-and indeed European history through the continent-s all too numerous wars and conflicts-
