{"id":21252,"date":"2026-01-25T00:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T00:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21252"},"modified":"2026-01-25T00:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T00:09:08","slug":"why-didnt-early-modern-armies-always-dig-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21252","title":{"rendered":"Why Didn&#8217;t Early Modern Armies Always Dig In?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Early modern armies knew about trenches and fortifications and used them often, but these wars didn&#8217;t turn into WWI style trench wars because trenching takes a lot of labor and locks in positions that the enemy can just go around. There were fewer scenarios where you could know that the enemy would attack you in a particular position, so building a trench would just get you avoided. Part of warfare is maneuvering around and trying to start a battle when you have the advantage, but if you want to engage the enemy, they wouldn&#8217;t fight you if you are entrenched in too strong a position, unless they had to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Why Didn&#039;t Early Modern Armies Always Dig In?\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zfxcgJsEWY0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early modern armies knew about trenches and fortifications and used them often, but these wars didn&#8217;t turn into WWI style trench wars because trenching takes a lot of labor and locks in positions that the enemy can just go around. There were fewer scenarios where you could know that the enemy would attack you in a particular position, so building a trench would just get you avoided. Part of warfare is maneuvering around and trying to start a battle when you have the advantage, but if you want to engage the enemy, they wouldn&#8217;t fight you if you are entrenched in too strong a position, unless they had to. <\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zfxcgJsEWY0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[770,259,1936,158],"class_list":["post-21252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-history","tag-military","tag-tactics","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21253,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21252\/revisions\/21253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}