It was broadly true that all European royalty were cousins; even the Habsburgs of Austria, most imperious of sovereigns, occasionally mingled their b… - John Keegan

By the end of 1915, none of the original combatants was fighting the war that had been wanted or expected. Hopes of quick victory had been dashed, new enemies had appeared, new fronts had opened.

The opening months of the First World War marked the termination of two hundred years of a style of infantry fighting which, with decreasing logic, taught that drill and discipline was the best defence against missile weapons, however much improved.

The basic and stark fact, nevertheless, was that the conditions of warfare between 1914 and 1918 predisposed towards slaughter and that only an entirely different technology, one not available until a generation later, could have averted such an outcome.
The first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, was to be an awful demonstration of that truth.