Rout

However, with the advent of armoured warfare and blitzkrieg style operations, an enemy army could be kept more or less in a routed or disorganized state for days or weeks on end.

In modern times, a routed formation will often cause a complete breakdown in the entire front, enabling the organized foe to attain a quick and decisive victory in the campaign.

In the blitzkrieg warfare that characterized World War II, the French Army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Sedan (1940) opening a 20-kilometre (12 mi) gap in Allied lines into which Heinz Guderian poured his mechanized forces.

In the Battle of Cowpens, Daniel Morgan's planned retreat of the unreliable forward militia was interpreted by the British commander Banastre Tarleton as a rout, as intended.

Desperate to lure the Allies into battle, Napoleon gave every indication in the days preceding the engagement that the French army was on the brink of collapse, even abandoning the dominant Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz.

The term covered a variety of styles of event, but they tended to be basic, and a guest could not count on any music, food, drink, cards, or dancing being available, though any of them might be.