French Fleets A and B were ordered to defeat Fleet C, which represented the Italian fleet in the 1895 maneuvers. The scenario records the state of Franco-Italian relations at that moment. It also warns against treating the eventual coalitions of World War I as predetermined, since several plausible crises could have begun a wider war with different alignments. Exercise scenarios preserve strategic assumptions that later outcomes can obscure.
Notable Point · 34:57-35:30
The 1895 exercise against Italy and contingent alliances
Use an exercise against a simulated Italian fleet to see why the later coalitions of World War I should not be read backward as inevitable.