In following Witt's trail, I ran into two books which seemed too interesting not to order them.

The first deals with the Limited War construct of the the 18th century and early 19th century - a video and the book itself.

Book Talk with Professor James Q. Whitman: The Verdict of Battle: the Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Yale Law School) (1.5 hrs)

Meet the author, James Q. Whitman, and listen to a conversation about his new book. Today, war is considered a last resort for resolving disagreements. But a day of staged slaughter on the battlefield was once seen as a legitimate means of settling political disputes. James Whitman argues that pitched battle was essentially a trial with a lawful verdict. And when this contained form of battle ceased to exist, the law of victory gave way to the rule of unbridled force. The Verdict of Battle explains why the ritualized violence of the past was more effective than modern warfare in bringing carnage to an end, and why humanitarian laws that cling to a notion of war as evil have led to longer, more barbaric conflicts.
and The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Amazon)

Today, war is considered a last resort for resolving disagreements. But a day of staged slaughter on the battlefield was once seen as a legitimate means of settling political disputes. James Whitman argues that pitched battle was essentially a trial with a lawful verdict. And when this contained form of battle ceased to exist, the law of victory gave way to the rule of unbridled force. The Verdict of Battle explains why the ritualized violence of the past was more effective than modern warfare in bringing carnage to an end, and why humanitarian laws that cling to a notion of war as evil have led to longer, more barbaric conflicts.

Belief that sovereigns could, by rights, wage war for profit made the eighteenth century battle’s golden age. A pitched battle was understood as a kind of legal proceeding in which both sides agreed to be bound by the result. To the victor went the spoils, including the fate of kingdoms. But with the nineteenth-century decline of monarchical legitimacy and the rise of republican sentiment, the public no longer accepted the verdict of pitched battles. Ideology rather than politics became war’s just cause. And because modern humanitarian law provided no means for declaring a victor or dispensing spoils at the end of battle, the violence of war dragged on.

The most dangerous wars, Whitman asserts in this iconoclastic tour de force, are the lawless wars we wage today to remake the world in the name of higher moral imperatives.
Whitman recognizes, BTW, that one pitched battle did not necessarily lead to a binding result; and that result might be reached only after a series of pitched battles - e.g., the career of Frederick the Great. Moreover, the "verdict" of a pitched battle(s) was not always accepted.

The second book deals with the much longer period before 1701, where warfare resembled Sherman's Marches and then some.

Lauro Martines, Furies: War in Europe, 1450-1700 (Amazon)

We think of the Renaissance as a shining era of human achievementa pinnacle of artistic genius and humanist brilliance, the time of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Montaigne. Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society. In Furies, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance history captures the dark reality of the period in a gripping narrative mosaic.

As Lauro Martines shows us, total war was no twentieth-century innovation. These conflicts spared no civilians in their path. A Renaissance army was a mobile city - indeed, a force of 20,000 or 40,000 men was larger than many cities of the day. And it was a monster, devouring food and supplies for miles around. It menaced towns and the countryside-and itself-with famine and disease, often more lethal than combat. Fighting itself was savage, its violence increased by the use of newly invented weapons, from muskets to mortars.

For centuries, notes Martines, the history of this period has favored diplomacy, high politics, and military tactics. Furies puts us on the front lines of battle, and on the streets of cities under siege, to reveal what Europe's wars meant to the men and women who endured them.
Hans Delbruck, History of the Art of War, vols I-IV (esp. vol III and vol IV); Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages and Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy, to list just three references, seem material (IMO) to the issues raised by Witt, Whitman and Martines, in what amounts to at least six centuries of political and military history.

All in all, these three books seem an outstanding workout in military history.

Regards

Mike