To understand the world, one must understand conflict, and conflict on the grandest scale. Peoples, nations, civilizations took their shapes predominantly as a result of wars. Although most, if not all, of classical education, which focuses on the ancient world, has been jettisoned by the modern American public school system, understanding the conflicts between nations and empires over the millennia is as important today as it ever was and ever will be.
Of course, classical education isn’t just about war. It includes philosophy, religion, economics, literature, and history, and it reaches all the way up to the modern doorstep of the Enlightenment thinkers—thinkers who heavily influenced the American Founding Fathers. But for our purposes, we will stick with war—from the ancient world to the Napoleonic Era―and how learning about it in the most intimate way possible is still possible. How? The answer may surprise you.