THE SECRETS OF THE CIVIL WAR

Beyond the titanic battles, the Civil War emerges as one of the first, if not the first, modern conflicts in history. From the appearance of the first machine guns to the direction of artillery fire by observation balloon, from the first submarines and the first ironclad vessels to the large-scale use of the telegraph and the railways, this conflict was marked by the emergence of new means of waging war.

In response to the problem of massive battlefield casualties, combatants resorted for the first time to means of identifying the dead on the field. In terms of the art of war, the large-scale use of cavalry in a new role — the deep raid — would lastingly transform the function of this arm in subsequent conflicts.

This war is also the expression of all the contradictions that were shaking American society at the time. From the role of African Americans in both armies to the presence of Native American nations fighting alongside the Confederates, the conflict is an expression of striking paradoxes. Finally, the passions tearing the United States apart drove certain French figures to cross the Atlantic and enlist on one side or the other. Thus the princes of the House of Orléans joined the Union's Army of the Potomac, while the Count of Polignac became a general in the Confederate Army.