By the first of these sciences is understood as perfect a knowledge as possible, of all the elements of power, and all the means of war of the enemy we are called upon to combat; the second consists in the topographical and strategical description of the theatre of war, with all the obstacles which art and nature may offer to enterprises; the examination of the permanent decisive points which a frontier or even the whole extent of a country presents. Not only the public ministry, but the chief of the army and of the staff should be initiated into this knowledge, under pain of finding cruel mistakes in their calculations, as often happens, even in our day, notwithstanding the immense progress which civilized nations have made in all the sciences, statistical, political, geographical and topographical. I will cite two examples of them of which I was a witness; in 1796, the army of Moreau, penetrating into the Black Forest, expected to find terrible mountains, defiles and forests, which the ancient Hercinius called to memory with frightful circumstances; we were surprised after having climbed the cliffs of that vast plateau, which look upon the Rhine, to see that those steeps and their counterforts form the only mountains, and that the country, from the sources of the Danube to Donauwerth, presents plains as rich as fertile.

The second example, still more recent, dates in 1813; the whole army of Napoleon, and that great captain himself, regarded the interior of Bohemia as a country cut up with mountains, whereas, there exists scarcely one more flat in Europe, as soon as you have crossed the belt of secondary mountains with which it is surrounded, which is the affair of a march.

All the European military men had nearly the same erroneous opinions upon the Balkan, and upon the real force of the Ottomans in the interior. It seems that general orders were given from Constantinople to cause this enclosure to be regarded as almost impregnable, and as the palladium of the empire, an error which, in my quality of inhabitant of the Alps, I have never shared. Prejudices, not less deeply rooted, led to the belief, that a people, all the individuals of which went unceasingly armed, would form a redoubtable militia, and would defend themselves to the last extremity. Experience has proved, that the ancient institutions which placed the elite of the Janizaries in the frontier cities of the Danube, had rendered the population of those cities more warlike than the inhabitants of the interior, who make war against the unarmed rayahs; this phantasmagoria has been appreciated at its just value; it was but an imposing curtain which nothing sustained, and the first enclosure forced, the prestige has disappeared. In truth, the projects of reform of the Sultan Mahmoud had exacted the overthrow of the ancient system without giving time to substitute a new one for it, so that the empire found itself taken unprepared; experience has proved, however, that a multitude of brave men, armed to the teeth, does not still constitute a good army, nor a national defense.

Let us return to the necessity of being well acquainted with the geography and military statistics of an empire. Those sciences are wanting, it is true, in elementary treatise, and remain yet to be developed. Lloyd, who has made on them an essay in the fifth part of his Memoirs, in describing the frontiers of the great states of Europe has not been happy in his sayings and his predictions; he sees obstacles everywhere; he presents, among others, as impregnable, the frontiers of Austria upon the Inn, between the Tyrol and Passau, where we have seen Moreau and Napoleon manoeuvre, and triumph with armies of a hundred and fifty thousand men in 1800, 1805 and 1809. The greater part of those reasonings are open to the same criticism; he has seen things too materially.

But if these sciences are not publicly taught, the archives of the European staffs must be rich with valuable documents for teaching them, at least in the special schools of this corps.

In waiting for some studious officer to profit from those documents, published or unpublished, for giving the public a good military and strategical geography, it may, thanks to the immense progress which topography has made in our day, be supplied in part, by means of the excellent maps published within the last twenty years in all countries. At the epoch of the commencement of the French revolution, topography was yet in its infancy; excepting the semi-topographical map of Cassi, there was scarcely any but the works of Bakenberg, which would have merited that name. The Austrian and Prussian staffs had, meanwhile, good schools already, which from time to time, have borne their fruits; the maps recently published at Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Stuttgard, Paris, as well as those of the interesting institute of Herder, at Friburg in Brisgau, assure to future generals immense resources, unknown to their predecessors.

Military statistics is scarcely better known than geography; there are only a few vague and superficial tables, in which are thrown at hazard the number of armed men and vessels which a State possesses, as well as the revenues that it is supposed to have, which is far from constituting entirely a science necessary for combining operations. Our aim is not to examine here thoroughly those important matters, but to indicate them as means of success in those enterprises which it should be desired to form.

A government would adopt in vain the best regulations for organizing an army, if it did not apply itself also to exciting a military spirit in the country. If, in the city of London, they prefer the title of richest cashier to military decoration, that may do with an insular country, protected by its innumerable squadrons; but a continental nation, which should adopt the manners of the city of London, or of the bourse of Paris, would sooner or later be the prey of its neighbors. It was to the assemblage of civic virtues and military spirit passed from institutions into manners that the Romans were indebted for their greatness; when they lost those virtues, and when, ceasing to regard the military service an honor as well as a duty, they abandoned it to the mercenary Goths, Heruli and Gauls, the loss of the empire became inevitable. Without doubt, nothing of that which may augment the prosperity of a country ought to be forgotten o<*> despised; it is necessary even to honor skillful men and traders who are the first instruments of this prosperity, but it is necessary that this be subordinate to the great institutions which make the strength of States, by encouraging the masculine and heroic virtues. Policy and justice will be agreed in that, for, whatever Boileau may say of it, it will always be more glorious to brave death in the steps of the Caesars, than to fatten on the public miseries, by playing upon the vicissitudes of the credit of the State. Woe to those countries where the luxury of the contractor and the stockholder insatiable of gold, shall be placed above the uniform of the brave man who shall have sacrificed his life, his health or his fortune, in the defence of the country.

The first means of encouraging the military spirit is to surround the army with all consideration, public and social. The second, is to assure to the services rendered to the State, the preference in all the administrative employments which should chance to be vacant, or to require even a given time of military service for certain employments. It would be a subject worthy of the most serious consideration, that of comparing the ancient military institutions of Rome with those of Russia and Prussia, and of drawing afterwards the parallel between them and the doctrines of modern Utopists who, declaiming against all participation of the officers of the army in the other public functions, no longer wish any but rhetoricians in the great offices.

For example, in France, in place of excluding the military from elections, the right of elector ought to be given to all colonels, and that of eligibility to all generals; the most venal of the deputies will not be the military men.

Without doubt, there are many employments which require special studies; but would it not be possible for the military man to devote himself, in the numerous leisures of peace, to the study of the career which he should wish to embrace, after having paid his debt to his country in that of arms? And if administrative places were given by preference to officers retired from service with the grade of captain at least, would it not be a great stimulant for them to seek to arrive at this grade? Would it not also be a stimulant for officers to think, in their garrisons, of seeking their recreations elsewhere than in the theatres and public cafes.

Perhaps it will be found that this facility of passing from the military service to places of civil administration, would be rather injurious than favorable to the military spirit, and that, in order to strengthen the latter, it would be suitable on the contrary to place the condition of soldier altogether beyond other careers. The Janizaries and the Mamelukes had their origin in this principle. These soldiers were bought at the age of seven or eight years, and they were reared in the idea that they must die under their colors. The English even, those men so proud of their rights, on becoming soldiers, contract the obligation for life ; and the Russian soldier must serve for twenty-five years, which is almost equivalent to a life enlistment like that of the English.

With such armies, as well as in those which are recruited by voluntary enlistment, perhaps it wouln be in fact, more suitable not to admit a fusion between the posts of military officers and civil places. But, whenever the military service shall be a temporary duty imposed on the population, the case seems different, and the Roman institutions which required a service of ten years in the legions, before being able to aspire to the various public functions, appears rather in effect the best means of preserving the martial spirit, especially at an epoch when the general tendency to material well-being, seems to become the dominant passion of societies.

However that may be, I think, that under all possible regimes, the constant aim of a wise government will be to elevate the military service to the end of nourishing the love of glory and all the warlike virtues, under penalty of incurring the blame of posterity, and of experiencing the fate of the Roman empire.

It will not be all to inspire the military spirit in the populations; it will be necessary still to encourage it in the army. What, in fact, would be gained, though the uniform should be honored in the city aid imposed as a civic duty, if men did not carry under their colors all the warlike virtues? We should have a militia numerous, but without valor.

The moral exaltation of an army and military spirit are two very different things which we must take care not to confound, and which produce nevertheless, the same effect. The first is, as has been said, produced by passions more or less transient, such as political or religious opinions, and a great love of country; whilst that military spirit being inspired by the skill of a chief or by wise institutions, depends less on circumstances and ought to be the work of a far seeing government.

It is important especially that this spirit should animate the lists of officers and noncommissioned officers; soldiers always go well when those lists are good and the nation is brave.

Let courage be recompensed and honored, let the grades be respected, and let discipline be in sentiment and in conviction still more than in form.

Let the body of officers and the ranks in general be convinced that resignation, bravery and the sentiment of duty, are virtues without which no army is respectable, no glory possible; let all know well that firmness in reverses is more honorable than enthusiasm in successes, for there is only courage necessary for taking a position, whilst heroism is required for making a difflcult retreat before a victorious and enterprising enemy, without being disconcerted, and opposing to it a bold front. It is the duty of the prince to recompense a handsome retreat as highly as the finest victory.

To harden the armies to labor and fatigue; not to allow them to be idle in the effeminacy of garrisons in times of peace; to inculcate in them the sentiment of their superiority over the enemy; without, however lowering the latter too much; to inspire the love of great actions; in a word, to excite enthusiasm by inspirations in harmony with the spirit which governs the masses; to decorate valor and punish weakness; and finally to brand cowardice; these are the means of forming a good military spirit,

It was effeminacy above all which was the ruin of the Roman legions; those formidable soldiers who carried casque, buckler and cuirass under the burning sky of Africa in the days of the Scipios, found them too heavy under the cold sky of Gaul and Germany; then the empire was lost.

I have said that it is necessary never to inspire too much contempt for the enemy, because that where you should find an obstinate resistance, the moral of the soldier might he shaken by it. Napoleon, addressing himself at Jena to the corps of Lannes, praised the Prussian cavalry, but promised that it could do nothing against the bayonets of his Egyptians!

It is necessary also to forewarn the officers, and through them the soldiers, against those sudden turns which often seize the bravest armies when they are not restrained by the curb of discipline, and by the conviction that order in a troop is the pledge of its safety. It was not for the want of courage that a hundred thousand Turks were beaten at Peterwaradin by the Prince Eugene, and at Kagoul by Roumanzof; it was because that once repulsed in their disorderly charges, each one found himself delivered to his personal inspirations, all fighting individually without any order in the masses. A troop seized with panic finds itself in the same state of demoralization, for disorder being once introduced, all concert and all ensemble in the individual wills becomes impossible; the voice of the chiefs can no longer make itself heard; every manoeuvre for re-establishing the combat becomes impossible of execution, and then there remains safety only in a shameful flight.

The people of lively and ardent imagination are more subject than others to these panics, and those of the south are almost all in this category. The remedy is in strong institutions and skillful chiefs alone. The French even, whose military virtues have never been questioned when they have been well conducted, have often witnessed those alarms which it is permitted to call rediculous. Who does not recall the inconceivable panic terror with which the infantry of Marshal Villars was seized after having gained the battle of Friedlingen (1704)? The same thing had place in the infantry of Napoleon after the victory of Wagram, when the enemy was in full retreat. And, what is more extraordinary still, is the rout of the 97th demi-brigade at the seige of Genoa, where fifteen hundred men fled before a platoon of hussars, whilst that those same men took two days after the Diamond Fort by one of the most vigorous coups-de-main of modern history.

It would seem, nevertheless, very easy to convince brave soldiers that death strikes more quickly and more surely men flying in disorder, than those who remian united to present a bold front to the enemy, or rally promptly if they happen to be momentarily forced. The Russian army in this respect, may serve as a model for all those of Europe, and the steadiness which it has displayed in all its retreats, belong as much to the national character as to the national instinct of the soldiers and to the establishment of a rigid discipline. It is not indeed always the vivacity of imagination of troops which introduces disorder among them, the want of habits of order has much to do with it, and the want of precautions in the chiefs to assure the maintainance of them, contributes still more to it. I have been often astonished at the indifference of the greater part of generals on this subject; not only did they disdain to take the least logistic precaution for assuring the direction of small detachments and isolated men, they adopted no rallying signals in order to facilitate, in the different corps of an army, the reunion of the fractions which might be scattered in consequence of a sudden terror, or even an irresistible charge of the enemy; but they were even offended that any one should think of proposing to them such precautions. In the meantime the most incontestable courage, and the severest discipline would be often impotent for remedying a great disorder, which the good habit of division rallying signals would much more easily obviate. Without doubt there are cases where all human resources would be insufficient for the maintainance of order; such, for example, is that where the physical sufferings to which the troops should find themselves a prey, should have succeeded in rendering them deaf to all kinds of appeal, and where the chiefs themselves should be unable to do anything to reorganize them; this is what happened in 1812. But beyond these exceptionable cases, good habits of order, good logistic precautions, and a good discipline will succeed the most often, if not in preventing all panic. at least in carrying a prompt remedy thereto.

It is time to quit those matters of which I have desired only to trace a sketch, and to pass on to the examination of the purely military combinations.

the art of war, independently of the parts which we have just succinctly explained, is composed yet, as has been seen above, of five principal branches: strategy, grand tactics, logistics, (la logistique) elementary tactics, (la tactique de detail,) and the art of the engineer. We shall treat only of the first three, for reasons already indicated; it is necessary then to commence by defining them.

In order to do so more surely, we shall follow the order in which the combinations which an army may have to make, present themselves to its chiefs at the moment when war is declared ; commencing naturally with the most important, which constitute in some sort the plan of operations, and proceeding thus the reverse of tactics, which should begin with small details in order to arrive at the formation and the employment of a great army.

To learn tactics it is necessary to study first the school of the platoon, then that of the battalion, finally the evolutions of the line; then you pass to the small operations of the campaign, then to castrametation, afterwards marches, finally the formation of armies. But in strategy we begin at the top, that is to say, with the plan of campaign.

We will suppose then the army about to take the field; the first care of its chief will be to settle with the government upon the nature of the war which it shall make; afterwards it will be his duty to study well the theatre of its enterprises; then he will choose, in concert with the chief of the State, the most suitable base of operations, according as its frontiers and those of its allies shall favor thereto.

The choice of this base, and still more the end which it shall be proposed to attain, will contribute to determine the zone of operations that will be adopted. The generalissimo will take a first objective point for his enterprises; he will choose the line of operations which would lead to this point, whether as a temporary line, or as a definitive line.

The army marching upon this line of operations, will have a front of operations or a strategic front; behind this front it will do well to have a line of defense, to serve as a support in case of need. The transient positions which its army corps will take on the front of operations, or upon the line of defense, will be strategic positions.

When the army shall arrive near its first objective point, and the enemy shall commence to oppose its enterprises, it will attack him, or manoeuvre to constrain him to a retreat; it will adopt to this effect one or two strategic lines of manoeuvres, which being temporary, may deviate to a certain point from the general line of operations, with which they must not be confounded.

To connect the front of operations with the base, one will form as he advances, his staple line and lines of supply, depots, &c.

If the line of operations be somewhat lengthened in depth, and there be hostile corps in reach of disturbing it, choice will have to be made between the attack and expulsion of those corps, and the pursuit of the enterprise against the hostile army, paying no attention to them, or merely observing them; if this latter course be resolved upon, there will result from it a double front of operations and great detachments.

The army being near obtaining its objective point, and the enemy wishing to oppose this, there will be a battle ; when this shock shall be indecisive, it will be resolved to recommence the struggle; if a victory be gained, our enterprises will be carried on for attaining or passing beyond the first objective point and adopting a second.

When the aim of this first objective shall be the taking of an important place of arms, the siege will commence. If the army is not sufficiently numerous for continuing its march, leaving a siege corps behind it, it will take a strategic position for covering it; thus, in 1796, the army of Italy, not numbering fifty thousand combattants, was not able to pass Mantua, in order to penetrate to the heart of Austria, leaving twenty-five thousand men before the place, and having besides forty thousand men in front, upon the double line of the Tyrol and the Frioul.

In the case, on the contrary, where the army should have sufficient forces to obtain greater advantages from its victory, or rather where it should have no siege to make, it would march to a second objective point more important still. If this point be found at a certain distance, it will be necessary to procure an intermediate point of support; an eventual base will then be formed by means of one or two cities secure from insult, which will doubtless have been occupied; in the contrary case, a small strategic reserve will be formed, which will cover the rear and protect the grand depot by field works. When the army shall pass considerable rivers, tetes de ponts will be hastily constructed there, and if the bridges are in cities enclosed by walls, a few intrenchments will be raised to augment the defense of those posts, and to double thus the solidity of the eventual base, or of the strategic reserve which should there be placed.

If, on the contrary, the battle has been lost, there will be a retreat to the end of approaching the base, and of drawing therefrom new forces, as well from the detachments which would be drawn in, as from the places and intrenched camps, which would arrest the enemy or oblige him to divide his means.

When winter approaches, there will be winter cantonments, or else operations will be continued by that one of the two armies which, having obtained a decided superiority, and finding no serious obstacles in the hostile line of defense, should wish to profit from its ascendancy; there would then be a winter campaign; this resolution, which, in, all cases, becomes equally painful for both armies, presents no special combinations; unless it be the necessity for a redoubled activity in the enterprises, in order to obtain the most prompt denoument.

Such is the ordinary movement of a war; such will also be that which we shall follow, in order to proceed to the examination of the different combinations which those operations lead to.

All those which embrace the ensemble of the theatre of war, are in the domain of strategy, which will thus comprehend:

1. The definition of this theatre and of the different combinations which it might offer;

2. The choice and the establishment of the fixed base, and of the zone of operations;

3. The determination of the objective point to be attained, whether it be offensive or defensive;

4. The determination of the decisive points of the theatre of war;

5. The fronts of operations and lines of defense;

6. The choice of the lines of operations which lead from the aforesaid base to the objective points, or to the front of operations;

7. That of the best strategic lines to take for a given operation; the different manoeuvres for embracing those lines in their divers combinations;

8. The bases of eventual operations, and strategic reserves;

9. The marches of armies considered as manoeuvres;

10. The magazines considered in their relations with the marches of armies.

11. Fortresses regarded as strategical means; as refuges for an army, or as obstacles to its march; the sieges to make and to cover;

12. Intrenched camps, tetes de ponts, &c.;

13. Diversions and great detachments.

Independently of those combinations which enter principally in the projection of the general plan for the first enterprises of the campaign, there are other mixed operations, which participate of strategy for the direction to be given them, and of tactics for their execution; as the passage of rivers, and streams, retreats, winter quarters, surprises, descents, great convoys, &c.

The 2d branch is tactics, that is to say, the manoeuvres of an army on the field of battle, or of, combat, and the different formations for leading troops to the attack.

The 3d branch is logistics, (la logistique) or the practical art of moving armies, the material details of marches and of formations, the situation of non-intrenched camps and cantonments, in a word, the execution of the combinations of strategy and of tactics.

Several futile controversies have had place for determining, in an absolute manner, the line of demarkation which separates those divers branches of the science. I have said that strategy is the art of making war upon the map, the art of embracing the whole of a theatre of war; tactics is the art of combatting on the ground, of placing thereon one's forces according to the localities, and of putting them in action on the different points of the field of battle, that is to say, within a space of four or five leagues, in such a manner that all the acting corps may receive orders and execute them in the course even of the action; finally, la logistique is in substance only the science of preparing the application of the other two. My definition has been criticised without a better one being given; it is certain that many battles have been decided by strategical movements, and have been even but a series of such movements; but that has never been the case except against dispersed armies, which is an exception; now the general definition, being applicable only to pitched battles, is none the less exact.

It may be said that tactics is the combat, and that strategy is all the war before and after the combat. sieges alone excepted, even they belong to strategy so far as the deciding upon those necessary to be made, and how they must be covered. Strategy decides where we should act, la logistique conducts and places the troops there; tactics decides their employment and the mode of execution.

Thus, independently of the measures of local execution which are within its province, grand tactics, in my view, will comprehend the following objects:

1. The choice of positions and of defensive lines of battle;

2. The offensive defense in combat;

3. The different orders of battle, or grand manoeuvres for attacking a hostile line;

4. The meeting of two armies in march and unexpected battles;

5. The surprise of armies;

The surprise of armies in open field is here meant, and not the surprise of winter quarters.

6. The dispositions for conducting troops to the combat;

7. The attack of positions and intrenched camps;

8. Coups de main.

All the other operations of war enter into the details of petite guerre, such as convoys, foraging, the partial combats of advanced and rear guards, the attack even of small posts, in a word, all that which must be executed by an isolated division or detachment,

The essential object of this work is to demonstrate that there excists a fundamental principle of all the operations of war, a principle which ought to preside over all the combinations in order that they be good. It consists:

1. In carrying by strategic combinations the mass of the forces of an army successively upon the decisive points of a theatre of war, and as much as possible upon the communications of the enemy, without endangering its own;

2. In manoeuvering in such a manner as to engage this mass of the forces with fractions only of the hostile army;

3. In directing equally, on the day of battle, by tactical manoeuvres, the mass of one's forces upon the decisive point of the field of battle, or upon that of the hostile line which it would be important to overwhelm;

4. In managing so that those masses be not merely present upon the decisive point, but that they be put in action there with energy and concert, in a manner to produce a simultaneous effort.

This general principle has been found so simple that it has not lacked criticisms.

To meet these criticisms. I ought, perhaps, to place here the entire chapter of the general principles of the art of war, which terminates my Treatise on Grand Operations, (chap. XXXV. of the 3d edition) ; but powerful motives have prevented me from despoiling my first work of the chapter which makes its principal merit, and which my censors ought at least to read.

It has been objected that it were very easy to recommend the carrying one's principal force upon the decisive points, and to know how to engage them thereon; but that the art consists precisely in recognizing these points.

Far from contesting so naive a truth; I own that it would be at least ridiculous to utter a like general principle, without accompanying it with all the developments necessary for causing its different chances of application to be comprehended; I have, therefore, neglected nothing for putting every studious officer in condition to determine easily the decisive points of a strategical or tactical field (un échiquier strategique ou tactique.) There will be found in article 19, the definition of those different points, and there will be recognized in all articles from the 18th to the 22d, those which apply to the divers combinations of a war. Military men who, after having meditated upon them attentively, should still believe that the determination of those decisive points is an insoluble problem, ought to despair of ever comprehending any thing of strategy.

In fact, a theatre of operations never presents but three zones, one to the right, one to the left, and one at the centre. In the same manner each zone, each front of operations, each strategical position and line of defense, as well as each tactical line of battle, has never but those same subdivisions, that is to say, two extremeties and a centre. Now, there will always be one of those three directions which it will be proper to follow, in order to reach the important object desired, one of the other two will be more or less removed from it, and the third will be altogether opposed to it. Hence, in combining hostile positions with geographical points, and with the projects which should be formed, it seems that every question of strategic movement, as well as of tactical manoeuvre, would always be reduced to knowing whether we ought to manoeuvre to the right, to the left, or directly to the front; the choice between three alternatives so simple, could not be an enigma worthy of a new sphinx.

I am far from pretending, nevertheless, that the whole art of war consists merely in the choice of a good direction to be given to masses, but it could not be denied that it is at least the fundamental point of strategy. It will be for talent of execution, skill, energy, and coup d'oeil, to complete what good combinations will have been able to propose.

We are about to apply then the principle indicated, to the different combinations of strategy and tactics, then to prove, by the history of twenty celebrated campaigns, that all their successes or reverses were the result of the application, or of the neglect of this principle.

The account of those twenty campaigns, together with fifty plans of battles, will be found in my history of the Seven Years War, in that of the wars of the Revolution, and in the political and military life of Napoleon.

The theatre of a war embraces all the countries in which two powers may attack, whether by their own territory, or by that of their allies, or of the secondary powers which they will draw into the vortex through fear or through interest. When a war is complicated with maritime operations, then its theatre is not restrained to the frontiers of a State, but may embrace the two hemispheres, as has happened in the struggles between France and England, from Louis XIV down to our day.

Thus, the general theatre of a war is a thing so vague, and so dependent upon incidents, that it must not be confounded with the theatre of operations which each army may embrace, independently of all complications.

The theatre of a continental war between France and Austria, may embrace Italy alone, or Germany and Italy, if the German princes take part in it.

It may happen that the operations are combined, or that each army is destined to act separately. In the first case, the general theatre of opertions ought to be considered only as the same échiquier, upon which strategy should cause the armies to move with the common object which shall have been resolved upon. In the second case, each army will have its special theatre of operations, independent of the other.

The theatre of operations of an army comprehends all the ground which it should seek to invade, as well as that which it may have to defend. If it is to operate by itself, this theatre forms its whole échiquier, out of which it might indeed seek an issue in the case where it should find itself invested therein on three sides, but out of which it ought never to combine any manoeuvre, since nothing would be provided for a common action with the secondary army.

If, on the contrary, the operations are concerted, then the theatre of operations of each army, taken separately, becomes, in some sort, but one of the zones of operations of the general échiquier where the belligerents are to operate with the same object.

Independently of the topographical accidents with which it is strewn, each theatre or échiquier, which is to be operated upon by one or several armies, is composed for both parties:

1. Of a fixed base (or basis) of operations;

2. Of an objective aim;

3. Of fronts of operations and lines of defense;

4. Of zones and lines of operations;

5. Of strategic lines and lines of communications;

6. Of natural or artificial obstacles to conquer or to oppose to the enemy;

7. Of important geographical strategic points to occupy in the offensive, or to cover defensively;

8. Of accidental bases of operations intermediate between the objective aim and the positive base.

9. Of points of refuge in case of reverses.

To render the demonstration more intelligible, I will suppose France, wishing to invade Austria with two or three armies, destined to be united under one chief, and departing from Mayence, from the Upper Rhine, from Savoy, or from the maritime Alps. Each country, which one or the other of these armies would have to pass over, will be, in some sort, a zone of operations of the general échiquier. But if the army of Italy is to act only as far as the Adige, without concerting any thing with the army of the Rhine, then what was considered only as a zone of operations in the general plan, becomes the sole échiquier of that army and its theatre of operations.

Hence each échiquier should have its special base, its objective point, its zones and lines of operations Which lead from the base to the objective aim in the offensive, or from the objective aim to the base in the defensive.

With regard to the material or topographical points, with which a theatre of operations is found more or less furrowed in every direction, the art is not wanting in works which have discussed their different strategical or tactical properties; the routes, the rivers, the mountains, the forests, the cities offering resources, or secure from a coup de main, the strong holds, have been the object of many debates, in which the most erudite have not always been the most luminous.

Some have given to names strange significations; it has been published and taught, that rivers were lines of operations par excellence! Now, as such a line could not exist without having two or three roads for moving the army within the sphere of its enterprises, and at least one line of retreat, those modern Moseses pretended thus to transform rivers into lines of retreat, and even into lines of manoeuvre! It would appear much more natural and correct to say that rivers are excellent lines of supply, powerful auxiliaries for the establishment of a good line of operations, but are never this line itself.

It is not with less astonishment that we have seen it affirmed by a grave writer, that, if a country were to be created to make of it a good theatre of war, it would be necessary to avoid constructing converging routes therein, because they facilitate invasion! As if a country could exist without a capital, without rich and industrious cities, and as if the routes did not per force converge towards those points where the interests of a whole country are naturally and irresistably concentrated. Even though a steppe were made of all Germany, in order to reconstruct in it a theatre of war to the liking of the author, commercial cities would rise again, chief towns would be re-established, and all the roads would converge anew towards those vivificating arteries. Besides, did not the Arch-Duke Charles owe to these converging routes the facility with which he beat Jourdan in 1796? And, in fact, do not those routes favor the defense as much as the attack, since two masses, falling back on two converging rays, can unite quicker than the two masses which should follow, and thus beat them separately.

Other authors have insisted that mountainous countries are full of strategic points, and the antagonists of this opinion have affirmed that strategical points were, on the contrary, more rare in the Alps than in the plains, but that, on the other hand, if they were less numerous, they were for that reason all the more important and decisive.

Some writers have presented also high mountains as so many Chinese Walls, inaccessible for every thing; whereas, Napoleon, in speaking of the Rhetian Alps, said, that an army ought to pass wherever a man could plant his foot.

Generals, experienced also in mountain warfare, have acknowledged, in the same manner, the great difficulty of conducting therein a defensive war, except by uniting the advantages of a rising in mass of the populations to those of a reuglar army, the first for guarding the summits and harrassing the enemy, the latter for delivering him battle upon the decisive points at the junction of the great valleys.

In animadverting upon these contradictions, we do not yield to a futile spirit of criticism, but merely to the desire of demonstrating to our readers that, far from having carried the art to its utmost limits, there still exist a multitude of points to discuss:

We shall not undertake to demonstrate here the strategical value of the divers topographical or artificial accidents which compose a theatre of war, for the most important will be examined in the different articles of this chapter, to which they belong; but, it may be said in general, that this value depends much upon the skill of the chiefs, and upon the spirit with which they are animated; the great captain who had crossed the St. Bernard, and ordered the passage of the Splugen, was far from believing in the impregnability of those chains, and he little suspected that a miserable, muddy stream, and a walled enclosure were to change his destinies at Waterloo.

The first point in a plan of operations is to be assured of a good base; this name is applied to the extent of the frontiers of a State from whence an army will draw its resources and reinforcements; that from whence it will have to depart for an offensive expedition, and where it will find a refuge in time of need; that, in fine, upon which it will have to support itself, if it covers its country defensively. In this last case, the line of the frontiers will become the first line of defense, and the army will then have to provide itself with a base in second line, either in the direction of the centre of the State, or in a direction nearly parallel to the frontier, according to what will be explained in article 38, upon so styled excentric retreats.

Although the base of operations is also ordinarily that of resources, meanwhile, every line by which a part of those resources should come, vould not for that be a line of operations, but a line of supply.

Each army may have several successive bases. A French army operating in Germany, has for a first base the Rhine; but if it be withdrawn behind that river, it has a new base upon the Moselle; it may have a third upon Seine, and a fourth upon the Loire.

When an army is repulsed upon its first base, this becomes then a line of defense, especially if it be fortified; in this case, the army must have a new base in second line.

A base, supported upon a large and impetuous river, the banks of which should be held by good fortresses, situated in command of this river, would be, without contradiction, the most favorable that could be desired.

The larger the base, the less easy it is to cover, but the less easy will it be also to cut off the army from it.

A State, the capital or centre of power of which, is too near the first frontier, offers less advantages for basing its defenders, than a State whose capital is more removed.

Every base, to be perfect, should offer two or three places, of a capacity sufficient for establishing thereon magazines, depots, &c. It should have at least one intrenched. tete de pont, upon each of the unfordable rivers found upon it.

Until now, there has generally been sufficient accord upon all the requisites we have just enumerated; but there are other points upon which opinions have been more divided. Several writers have insisted that, to be perfect, a base should be parallel with that of the adversary; whereas, on the contrary, I have uttered the opinion that bases, perpendicular to those of the enemy, are the most advantageous, particularly those which, presenting two faces nearly perpendicular, the one to the other, and forming a reentrant angle, would assure a double base at need, would control two sides of the strategic field (échiquier strategique,) would procure two lines of retreat very distant from each other, and finally, would facilitate every change of the line of operations which the unexpected turn of the chances of war could render necessary.

I demonstrated nearly thirty years ago, in my treatise on grand military operations, the influence which the direction of frontiers ought to exercise upon that of the base and of the lines of operations. It is recollected that, in applying those truths to the different theatres of war, I compared the latter to an échiquier, bounded on one side or the other by a sea, or by a great neutral power, which would form equally an insurmountable obstacle. See how I expressed myself:

The general configuration of the theatre of war may have also a great influence upon the direction to be given to lines of operations, (and consequently to the bases.)

In fact, if the whole theatre of war form a field, or figure, presenting four faces, more or less regular, it may happen that one of the armies, at the commencement of the campaign, occupies a single one of those faces, as it is possible that it may hold two of them, whilst the enemy should occupy but one only, and that the fourth should form an insurmountable obstacle. The manner in which this theatre of war would be embraced, would present then very different combinations in each of those hypotheses.

In order better to make this comprehended, I will cite the theatre of war of the French armies in Westphalia, from 1757 to 1762, and that of Napoleon in 1806.

There are strategic points and lines of divers natures. Some receive this name from the fact alone of their situation, from which results all their importance on the field of operations; they are then permanent geographical strategic points. Others acquire their value from the relations which they have with the position of the hostile forces, and with the enterprises which it should be designed to form against them; these, then, are strategic points of manoeuvre, and altogether eventual. Finally, there are strategic points and lines which have but a secondary importance, and others the importance of which is at once immense and incessant; these last I have named decisive strategic points.

I am about to endeavor to explain those relations as clearly as I myself conceive them, which is not always so easy as is believed in such matters.

Every point of the theatre of war which should lave a military importance, either from its situation at the centre of communications, or from military establishments and fortified works of whatever description, which would have an influence over the strategic field, will be, in reality a territorial or geographical strategic point.

An illustrious general affirms, on the contract, that every point which might unite the above-mentioned conditions, would not be for that a strategic point, if it were not found in a suitable direction relatively to the operations which should be had in view. If shall be pardoned for declaring a different opinion, for a strategical point is always such from its nature, and that on even which should be the farthest removed from the theatre of first enterprises, could be drawn into it by the unxpected turn of events, and thus acquire all the importance of which it Would be susceptible. It had been more exact then, in my opinion, to say that all strategic points were not decisive points.

Strategic lines are equally either geographical or relative only to temporary manoeuvres; the first may be subdivided into two classes, namely, the geographical lines which from their permanent importance, belong to the decisive points of the theatre of war,

I shall be reproached yet, perhaps, for a barbarism, because I give the name decisive or objective point to lines, and that a point could not be a line. It is useless to observe to my readers, that objective points are not geometrical points but a grammatical formula, expressing the object which an army proposes to itself. And if the word decisive be objected to, seeing that a point by itself is rarely decisive, the word important, may be substituted for it. although it does not express so strongly the idea which I attach to it.

For fear of confounding these different subjects, we shall treat separately of the strategic lines which relate to a combined manoeuvre, in order to limit ourselves here to what concerns the decisive and objective points of the zone of operations upon which the enterprises will be directed.

Although there exist intimate relations between these two kinds of points, seeing that every objective must necessarily be one of the decisive points of the theatre of war, there is, meanwhile, a distinction to be made, for all decisive points could not be at the same time the objective aim of operations. Let us occupy ourselves, then, in the first place, in defining he former, which will conduct more easily to the good choice of the second.

If think the name decisive strategic point, may be given to all those which are susceptible of exercising a notable influence, whether upon the whole of the campaign, or upon a single enterprise. All points, the geographical situation and artificial advantages of which would favor the attack or defense of a front of operations, or of a line of defense, are of this number, and the great well situated places of arms hold the first rank among them.

The decisive points of a theatre of war are then of several kinds. The first are the geographical points, or lines, the importance of which is permanent, and is derived from the configuration even of the échiquzer. Let us take, for example, the theatre of war of the French in Belgium; it is quite plain that the one of the two parties which shall be master of the course of the Meuse, will be master of the country; for its adversary, outflanked and shut up between the Meuse and the North Sea, could not receive battle parallelly to this sea, without running the risk of a total loss. In the same manner, the valley of the Danube presents a series of important points, which have caused it to be regarded as the key to Southern Germany.

Geographical decisive points are also those which would control the junction of several valleys, and the centre of the great communications which intersect a country. For example, Lyons is an important strategic point, because it commands the two valleys of the Rhone and the Saone, and is found at the centre of the communications of France with Italy, and of the south with the east; but it would be decisive only so far as there should be found there a strong place, or intrenched camp with tetes de ponts.

Leipzig is incontestably a strategic point, because it is found at the junction of all the communications of the north of Germany. If this city were fortified, and situated on the two banks of a large river, it would be almost the key of the country, (if a country has a key, and this figurative expression means any thing else than a decisive point.)

All capitals, being at the centre of the routes of a country, would thus be decisive strategic points, not only for that reason, but through other motives which add to this importance.

Besides those points, there exist, in mountainous countries, defiles which are the only practicable issues for an army; these geographical points may be decisive in an enterprise upon the country; it is known what importance the defile of Bard, covered by a little fort, had in 1800.

The second kind of decisive points is that of eventual points of monoeuvre, which are relative, and result from the situation of the troops of the two parties; for example, Mack, being found concentrated in 1805, near Ulm, and awaiting the Russian army by Moravia, the decisive point for attacking him was Donauwerth, or the Lower-Lech, for, in gaining it before him, one cut off his line of retreat upon Austria, and upon the army destined to second him. On the contrary, in 1800, Kray, finding himself in the same position at Ulm, did not wait for the concurrence of any army from the side of Bohemia, but rather from the Tyrol and the victorious army of Melas in Italy; hence the decisive point for attacking him was no longer Donauwerth, but the side opposite in preference, that is to say, by Schaffhausen, since it was the means of taking in reverse his front of operations, of cutting off his retreat, and of isolating him from the secondary army, as well as from his base, by throwing him back upon the Maine. In the same campaign of 1800, the first objective point of Bonaparte, was to fall upon the right of Melas by the St. Bernard, in order to seize his communications; it is judged that the St. Bernard and Aosta were not decisive geographical points, but rather those of manoeuvre, since their importance depended upon the march of Melas on Nice.

It may be laid down as a general principle, that the decisive points of manoeuvre, are upon that one of the extremities of the enemy from whence he could be the more easily separated from his base and from his secondary armies, without exposing one's self to running the same risk. The extremity opposite to the sea ought always to be preferred, because it is as advantageous to drive the enemy upon the sea, as it is dangerous to expose yourself to a like chance; unless you have to do with an insular and inferior army, in which case you may seek to cut it off from its vessels.

If the hostile army be scattered, or extended over a very long line, then the decisive point will be the centre; for, by penetrating there, the division of the hostile forces will be augmented, that is to say, their weakness will be doubled, and these troops overwhelmed in detail, will doubtless be ruined.

The decisive point of a field of battle is determined:

1. From the configuration of the ground;

2. From the combination of the localities with the strategic aim of an army.

3. From the positions of the respective forces.

But, in order not to anticipate the combinations of tactics, we shall treat of those points in the chapter on battles.

There are certain points in the military science which have so much affinity to each other, that we are tempted to take them for one and the same thing, although they are substantially different.

Of this number are fronts of operations, lines of defense, and strategical positions. One will be assured by the following observations, of the intimate relations, and of the difference which exist between them, and will appreciate the motives which have decided us to unite them in the same article.

Lines of defense are of several natures; they are strategical and tactical. In the first, there are those which are permanent, and relate to the system of defense of the State, as fortified frontier lines, &c.; others which are only eventual, and have reference merely to the transient posisition where an army is found.

The lines of frontiers are the permanent lines of defense, when they present a mixture of natural and artificial obstacles, such as chains of mountains, great rivers and fortresses, forming between each other a well connected system. Thus, the chain of the Alps between Piedmont and France, is a line of defense, since the practicable passages are garnished with forts which would interpose great obstacles to the enterprises of an army, and at the outlets of the gorges, great places of arms cover the different valleys of Piedmont. In the same manner the Rhine, the Oder and the Elbe may, in some respects, also be considered as permanent lines of defense, because of the important places which cover them.

All those combinations relating rather to a system of places than to the operations of a campaign, we shall treat of them in the article on fortresses, (Art. 26.)

With regard to eventual lines of defense, it may be said that every considerable river, every chain of mountains, and every great defile, having upon its accessible points a few temporary intrenchments, may be regarded as a line of defense at once strategical and tactical, since it serves to suspend, for some days, the march of the enemy, and compels him often to deviate from his direct route to seek a less difficult passage; in this case it procures an evident strategic advantage; but if the enemy attack it in front, it has, unquestionably, a tactical advantage, since it is always more difficult to force an army behind a river, or in a post strong by nature and art, than to attack it in an open plain.

However, this tactical advantage must not be exaggerated, lest we should fall into the system of positions (starke positionen,) which has caused the ruin of so many armies; for, whatever may be the difficulties at first of a defensive camp, it is certain that he who waits in it passively will end by succumbing.

It must be observed that it is not a question here of fortified camps, which make a great difference, and will be treated of in Art. 36.

There is a certain disposition of armies to which may be given the name strategical position, to distinguish it from tactical positions, or those of combat. The first are those which are taken for a given time, to the end of embracing the front of operations on a larger scale than could have place for combat. All positions taken behind a river, or on a line of defense, the divisions of which should be at a certain distance asunder, count in this number; those which the armies of Napoleon had at Rivoli, Verona and Legnano, to watch the Adige, those which he had in 1813 in Saxony and in Silesia in advance of his line of defense, were strategical positions, as well as those of the Anglo-Prussian armies on the frontier of Belgium before the battle of Ligmy (1815), and that of Massena upon the Albis, along the Limmat and the Aar in 1799. Even winter quarters when they are very compact and placed in front of the enemy without being guarantied by an armistice, are nothing else than strategic positions; such were those of Napoleon on the Passarge in the winter of 1807.

It is seen then that this denomination may be equally applicable to all the situations in which an army might be found, either for covering several points at the same time, or forming any line of observation whatever; finally, for every position of expectation. Thus the positions extended over a line of defense, a double front of operations, the corps covering a a siege whilst the army is operating on another side; in a word, almost all the great detachments composed of considerable fractions of an army are equally to be ranged in this category, or, more properly speaking, constitute the different parts of a strategical position.

The essential conditions for every such position are, that it be more concentrated than the hostile forces to which it should be opposed, and that all the parts of the army have easy and sure communications, in order to be able to unite without the enemy being in condition to offer opposition thereto; thus with nearly equal forces, all central or interior positions would be preferable to exterior positions, since the latter would necessarily embrace a much more extended front, and would occasion a scattering of forces, always dangerous. The great mobility of the parts which compose a strategic position can also contribute to their security, or even to their superiority, by the alternate employment of the forces upon all the important points of the échiquier. Finally, an army could not occupy surely a strategic position, without taking the precaution to have one or two tactical positions fixed upon beforehand, with the view to uniting thereon, to receive the enemy and to combat him with all the disposable forces, when his projects should be well unmasked: it was thus that Napoleon had prepared his battle fields of Rivoli and of Austerlitz — Wellington, that of Waterloo, and the Arch-Duke Charles, that of Wagram.

In the strategic positions which an army takes in the course of a campaign, whether in march, whether for remaining in observation, or for awaiting the occasion for retaking the offensive, it will occupy also compact cantonments: these kinds of positions require on the part of the general, a practised calculation, for judging all that he may have to fear from the enemy. The army ought to embrace a space sufficient for finding therein means of existence, and meanwhile it must remain as much as possible in condition to receive the enemy, should he present himself; two conditions difficult enough to reconcile. There is no better means than that of employing its divisions upon a space nearly square, that is to say, as extended in depth as in breadth, in such a manner, that in case of necessity the army may be united upon any point of the échiquier where the enemy should chance to disturb it. Nine divisions, placed thus at half a march from each other, may in twelve hours be united upon that of the centre. There should be practised for the rest in such a case, all that is recommended for winter quarters.

For the rest, as those strategical positions are connected with nearly all the combinations of a war, they will be represented in the greater part of the articles which treat of those divers combinations, and we could add nothing striking upon this subject without falling into repetitions.

From what precedes, one could be convinced that the front of operations is the space embraced by the enterprises of an army, on the side where the enemy is found; that the line of defense is the part of that front where the bulk of the forces should be united when reduced to the defensive; finally, that strategic positions designate the provisory distribution of the forces of an army, whether upon the line of defense, or upon the front of operations. It will be concluded from thence, in accordance with my views, that those three combinations, which seem to be confounded with each other, so much analogy is there between them, are distinct objects, but that the same rules may apply equally to all three; at least, in what concerns the manner in which the troops should be distributed and put in action.

By zone of operations, there should be understood a certain fraction of the general theatre of war, which should be passed over by an army with a determinate aim, and principally when this aim should be combined with that of a secondary army. For example, in the ensemble of the campaign of 1796, Italy was the zone of operations of the right; Bavaria was that of the army of the centre (Rhine and Moselle); finally, Franconia was the zone ofthe army of the left (Sambre and Meuse).

A zone of operations may sometimes present but a single line of operations, as much from the configuration itself of the country, as from the small number of routes practicable for an army which should be found therein. But this case is rare, and the zone will ordinarily present several lines of operations, the number of which will depend in part upon the projects of the general, and in part upon the number of great communications which the theatre should offer for his enterprises.

It ought not to be concluded from this, however, that each road is in itself a line of operations; doubtless, according to the turn which the events of the war might take, each good route at first unoccupied could become momentarily a line of operations; but so long as it should be followed only by detachments of scouts, or should be found in a direction out of the sphere of the principal enterprises, it would be absurd to confound it with the real line of operations. Besides that, three or four practicable roads which should be found at one or two marches only from each other, and should conduct to the same front of operations, would not form three lines of operations.

In fact, this name could only be given to a space sufficient for the centre and the two wings of an army to be able to move thereon in the sphere of one or two marches from each of those wings or extremities,

This paragraph is rather obscure. It should read, perhaps, this name could be given only to a space sufficient to allow an army to move in a sphere such that its wings may be separated by one or two marches from the centre. Translators.

It may here be inferred that, if the words zone and lines of operations have been until now confounded and employed often the one for the other, it has been the same in regard to lines of operations, strategic lines, and roads of eventual communication.

I think, then, that the term zones of operations ought to be employed to designate a great fraction of the general theatre of war; that of lines of operations will designate the part of that grand fraction which an army will embrace in its enterprises, whether it follow several routes, or whether it follow but one; the term strategical lines would designate, then, the important lines which connect the different decisive points of the theatre of war, whether with each other, or with the front of operations of the army; finally, for the same reason, this name would be given also to the lines which an army would follow in order to attain those points, or to march to a decisive manoeuvre, and by deviating an instant from the general line of operations. Finally, the term lines of communications will be suitable for designating the different practicable routes which should be found in the extent of the zone of operations.

This definition, which differs a little from that which I had at first given, seems to me to satisfy all exigences; I shall have occasion to develop it successively in the present article and in the one which follows.

Let us yet cite an example in order to render these ideas more clear. In 1813, after Austria had acceded to the great coalition against Napoleon, three allied armies were to invade Saxony, another Bavaria, and another Italy; thus Saxony, or more properly speaking, the country situated between Dresden, Magdeburg and Breslau, formed, then, the zone of operations of the principal mass. This zone had three lines of operations conducting to the objective point, Leipzig: the first was that of the army of Bohemia, leading from the mountains of Erzgebirge by Dresden and Chemnitz upon Leipzig; the second was the line of operations of the army of Silesia, going from Breslau by Dresden or by Wittemberg upon Leipzig; finally, the third was the line of operations of the Prince of Sweden's army, departing from Berlin to go by Dessau to the same objective point. Each of those armies marched upon two or three routes parallel and little distant from one another, meanwhile it could not be said that it had three lines of operations.

This example will suffice, I trust, to demonstrate that this designation could not be applicable to every road that might be found upon the theatre of war, but rather to the portion of this theatre which the projects of the general will have embraced, and where he will have directed all his means of war, his active columns, his staple lines, his parks and depots.

This distinction being well established, it remains for us to define what should be understood by manoeuvre-lines. In my first treatise, I had thought that I might give this name to all the combinations of a generalin-chief which relate to the choice of territorial lines of operations, that is to say, to the direction the most suitable to give to his forces in order to apply the general principles of war. This figurative expression has been judged of variously, because it has been taken literally, without the pains necessary to penetrate its meaning. It is true that the same word has frequently been used to designate the divers strategic lines temporarily adopted for any enterprise whatever, and which are nevertheless not to be confounded with the general line of operations. To the end of distinguishing them, the first might be designated by the name strategical combinations of lines of operations, and the others could be called eventual strategical lines of manoeuvre:

I will give an example of these two combinations. In 1796, the armies of Moreau and Jourdan formed two exterior lines of operations against the Arch-Duke Charles, who operated on two interior or central lines; united under the same command. These are combinations of lines of manoeoeuvre-operations.

In the same year, Wurmser, debouching from the Tyrol to the succor of Mantua, had at first only the simple line of operations of the Adige, but arrived at Roveredo he formed three columns separated by great obstacles; he operated then upon three momentary strategical lines, which were not general lines of operations.

If the choice of zones of operations offers few combinations, and depends more frequently upon the topography of the theatre of war, it is not always the same with the choice of lines of operations; for the latter relating especially to the position and the employment of the hostile forces, will necessarily offer complications more varied and susceptible of being subjected to rules. Those different combinations constitute as many different manoeuvres, and forming one of the essential branches of strategy, they require a definition as exact as possible.

The relation of these lines with those which nature has traced, with the positions of the enemy and the views of a general-in-chief, form as many different classes which receive a name from the character of those relations themselves.

The general line of operations of an army is that which the bulk of its forces will follow, and upon which will be found in echelons its depots, its means of transportation and its store-houses; the line of retreat will also ordinarily be the same, but in urgent cases the army may be forced to take a different line of retreat; a resolution always painful, and which could not be taken without submitting to great sacrifices.

We shall call simple lines of operations, those of an army acting in the same direction from a frontier, without forming great corps independent of each other.

By double lines of operations, I understand those which two armies independent of each other would form upon the same frontier, or those also of two masses nearly equal in forces and obeying nevertheless the same chief, but acting separately at great distances asunder and for a long period of time.

This definition has been criticised, and as it in fact has given rise to mistakes I think it my duty to explain it.

In the first place it must not be forgotten that manoeuvre-lines are referred to, that is to say those of combination, and not highways. Then it must be admitted also that an army marching by two or three routes but little distant from each other in a manner to unite in forty-eight hours, has not for that reason three lines of manoeuvre-operations. When Moreau and Jourdan entered Germany with two masses of seventy thousand men independent of each other, they formed indeed a double line, but a French army from which a single detachment should depart from the Lower Rhine to march upon the Maine: whilst five or six other corps should march from the Upper Rhine upon Ulm, would not for that form a double line of operations in the sense which I give to that term for designating a manoeuvre. In the same manner Napoleon uniting seven corps to march by Bamberg upon Gera. whilst Mortier with one corps only marched upon Cassel to occupy the Hesse and to flank the principal enterprise, formed but a general line of operations with an accessory detachment. The territorial line was composed of two rays, but the operation was not double.

Interior lines of operations are those which an army would form to oppose several hostile masses, but to which would be given a direction such that the different corps could be drawn towards each other and their movements connected, before the enemy could possibly oppose to them a greater mass.

Some German writers have said that I confounded central positions (central-stellungen), with lines of operations. ln this they are wrong; an army may have a central position in presence of two hostile corps, and not have interior lines of operations, these are two very different things. Others have pretended that I could have employed the term rays of operations to designate what I mean by double lines, &c.; with regard to these, their reasoning is more specious, especially if one would figure to himself the theatre of operations by a circle, but as every radius is a line, I think it a dispute of words.

Exterior lines present the opposite result; they are those which an army will form at the same time upon the two extremities of one or several hostile lines.

Concentric lines of operations are several lines which depart from distant points to arrive on the same point, in front or in rear of their base.

By divergent lines is understood those which a single mass will take departing from a given point, and dividing in order to move upon several divergent points.

Deep lines are those which, departing from their base, pass over a great extent of ground to arrive at their end.

I shall employ the term secondary lines to designate the relations between two armies, when they act upon the same development of frontiers; thus the army of the Sambre and Meuse was, in 1796, a secondary line of the army of the Rhine; in 1812, the army of Bagration was secondary to the army of Barclay.

Accidental lines are those brought about by events which change the primitive plan of campaign and give a new direction to the operations. These last are rare and of great importance; they are ordinarily comprehended only by a vast and active genius.

Finally we might add to this nomenclature provisory lines of operations and definitive lines: the first would designate those which an army follows to march to a first decisive enterprise, without prejudice to adopting a more solid or more direct one after first successes; but they seem to belong as much to the class of eventual strategic lines, as to that of lines of operations.

These definitions sufficiently prove how much my ideas differ from those of the authors who have preceded me. Indeed those lines have been considered under their material relations only: Lloyd and Bulow gave them but a relative value to the magazines and the depots of armies; the latter has even asserted, that there were no longer any lines of operations when an army encamped near its magazines. The following example will suffice to destroy this paradox. I will suppose two armies encamped, the first upon the upper Rhine, the second in advance of Dusseldorff or any other point of that frontier. I will admit that their grand depots are immediately beyond the river, which is without contradiction the most sure, the most advantageous and the nearest approached position which it is possible to suppose them. Those armies will have an offensive or defensive aim; hence they will incontestably have territorial lines and lines of manoeuvre.

1. Their defensive territorial line departing from the point where they are found, will go to that of the second line which they are to cover; now, they would both be cut off from it if the enemy chanced to establish himself in the interval which separates them from it. Melas could have had for a year munitions in Alexandria, though he would have been none the less cut off from his base of the Mincio, as soon as the victorious enemy occupied the line of the Po.

It has been thought that this might be subject to contestation; I do not think so: Melas deprived of recruits, shut up between the Bormida, the Tanaro and the Po, being scarcely able to receive emissaries or couriers, must have ended by opening himself a way, or by capitulating, if not succored.

At the commencement of this terrible struggle, which had chances so various, Prussia and Austria were the only open enemies of France, and the theatre of war extended to Italy only for observing each other reciprocally, because this country was too far removed from the object. The development of the field of operations, comprehending the space which extends from Huninguen to Dunkirk, presented three principal zones: that of the right contained the line of the Rhine, from Huninguen to Landau, and from thence to the Moselle; that of the centre was formed of the interval between the Moselle and the Mense; that of the left comprehended the extent of from Givet to Dunkirk.

When France declared war, in the month of April 1792, her intention was to anticipate the union of her enemies; she had then a hundred thousand men upon the extent of the three zones of which we have just spoken, and the Austrians had not over thirty-five thousand in Belgium. It is impossible then to penetrate the motive which prevented the French from conquering that province, where nothing could have resisted them. Four months elapsed from the declaration of war until the assembling the Allied forces. Was it not probable nevertheless, that the invasion of Belgium would have prevented that of Champagne by giving to the Prussian King the measure of the forces of France, and deciding him not to sacrifice his armies for the secondary interest of imposing upon her a form of government? And if this invasion of Champagne had not the consequences which everybody expected from it, to what was it due that it did not change the face of Europe?

When the Prussians arrived towards the end of July at Coblentz, it is certain that the French could no longer make a war of invasion, and that this part was destined for the Allied armies: it is known how they acquitted themselves of it.

The French forces on the development of the frontiers of which we have just spoken, amounted then to about a hundred and fifteen thousand men. Spread over a front of a hundred and forty leagues, divided into five army corps, it was impossible that those forces could present a very efficacious resistance; for in order to prevent them from acting, it was sufficient to operate on their centre to oppose their junction. To this military reason were united every State reason; the object proposed was entirely political; it could be attained only by rapid and vigorous operations: the territorial line situated between the Moselle and Meuse, which was that of the centre, less fortified than the rest of this frontier, presented besides the excellent place of Luxembourg for a base; it was chosen then with discernment; we are about to see that the execution did not respond to the plan.

The court of Vienna had the greatest interest in this war, on account of its family relations and the dangers to which its provinces would have been exposed in case of reverse. By a political speculation of which it would be difficult to give an account, the principal part was nevertheless abandoned to the Prussians; the house of Austria co-operated in the invasion with but thirty battalions; forty-five thousand men remained in observation in the Brisgaw, on the Rhine and in Flanders. Where then were concealed those imposing forces which that power subsequently displayed? What better destination could have been assigned them than that of protecting the flanks of the army of invasion? This astonishing system, for which moreover Austria paid very dearly, might explain the resolution of the Prussians, of leaving later the scene, which they unfortunately quitted at the very instant when they should have entered upon it.

If I have allowed myself to be drawn into this observation foreign to the art, it is because of its close connection with the existence of a corps which should have covered, not the Brisgaw, but the flank of the Prussians, by fronting the Moselle and holding Luckner in the camp of Metz. It must be owned, however, that the Prussian army did not give to its operations all the activity necessary for assuring their success; it remained eight days in its camp of Kons to no effect; if it had anticipated Dumouriez at the Islettes, or had attempted more seriously to drive him from thence, it would have had still all the advantage of a mass concentrated against several isolated divisions, in order to overthrow them successively, and render their union impossible. I think that Frederick, in such a case, would have justified the words of Dumouriez, (the latter said at Grandpre that, if he had had to do with the great king, he would have found himself already repulsed far behind Chalons.)

The Austrians proved, in this campaign, that they were then still imbued with the false system of Daun and Lacy, of covering all to hold all. The idea of having twenty thousand men in the Brisgaw, whilst the Moselle and the Sarre remained disgarnished, demonstrated that they were afraid of losing a village, and that this system compelled them to form those great detachments which ruin armies. Forgetting that heavy battalions are always in the right, they believed it necessary to occupy the whole development of the frontiers, in order that they should not be invaded, whilst it is a means of rendering them accessible on all points.

I will not enlarge further here upon that campaign. I shall merely observe that Dumouriez abandoned without cause the pursuit of the Allied army, in order to transfer the theatre of war from the centre to the extreme left of the general éhiquier; moreover, he did not know how to give to this movement a great object, and went to attack in front the army of the Duke de Saxe-Teschen, near Mons, whilst that by descending the Meuse upon Namur, with his mass, he would have been able to roll it back upon the North Sea, near Nieuport or Ostend, and to annihilate it entirely, by a battle more fortunate than that of Jemmapes.

The campaign of 1793 offers a new example of the influence of a bad direction of operations. The Austrians gained victories, and retook Belgium, because Dumouriez extended unskillfully his front of operations to the gates of Rotterdam. Until then, the Allies were deserving of all eulogies; the desire of reconquering those rich countries justified that enterprise, wisely directed against the extreme right of the great front of Dumouriez. But when they had repulsed the French army under the cannon of Valenciennes; when the latter, disorganized, delivered up to all the ravages of the anarchy which desolated the interior, found itself in no condition to resist, why remain six months before a few places, and leave the committee of public safety time to form new armies? When the deplorable situation of France, and the destitute condition of the army of Dampierre is recalled, can any thing be comprehended of the parades of the Allies before the places of Flanders?

A war of invasion is especially advantageous, when the empire which is attacked is wholly in the capital. Under the government of a great prince, and in ordinary wars, the chief place of the empire is at the general Headquarters; but under a feeble prince, in a republican State, and still more in a war of opinions, the capital is ordinarily the centre of national power.

The taking of Paris by the Allies decided the fate of Napoleon, but this circumstance does not destroy my assertion. Napoleon, without an army, had all Europe upon his back, and the nation itself had separated its cause from his. If he had had fifty thousand more old soldiers, it would indeed have been seen that his capital was truly at general Headquarters.

If this truth could have been called in question, it would have been justified on this occasion. So much in Paris was France, that two-thirds of the nation raised the standard against the government which oppressed it. If, after having beaten the French army at Famars, the Dutch and Hanoverians had been left in observation before its remnants, whilst the English and the great Austrian army should have directed their operations upon the Meuse, the Sarre and the Moselle, in concert with the Prussian army, and a part of the useless army of the Upper Rhine, it is certain that a mass of a hundred and twenty thousand men would have been able to act with two flanking corps for covering its line of invasion. I think even that, without changing the direction of the war, or running great risks, the Hanoverians and Dutch might have been left the care of masking Maubeuge and Valenciennes, to the end of pursuing with the bulk of the army the remnants of that of Dampierre. But, after several victories, two hundred thousand men were occupied in laying sieges, without gaining an inch of ground. At the moment when they menaced to invade France, they established fifteen or sixteen corps in defensive positions to cover their own frontier! When Valenciennes and Mayence had succumbed, instead of attacking with all their forces the camp of Cambrai, they ran excentrically to Dunkirk on one side, and to Landau on the other.

It is not less astonishing that, after having made, at the commencement of the campaign, the greatest efforts upon the right of the general échiquier, they should direct them afterwards upon the left; thus, whilst the Allies acted in Flanders, the imposing forces which were upon the Rhine did not second them, and when those forces operated offensively in their turn, the Allies remained inactive upon the Sambre. Do not these false combinations resemble those of Soubise and of Broglie in 1761, as well as all the lines of the Seven Years War?

In 1794, the scene is wholly changed. The French pass from a painful defensive to a brilliant offensive. The combinations of that campaign were, doubtless, well established; but they have been exaggerated in presenting them as a new system of war. To be assured of the justice of my assertion, let us cast a glance over the respective positions of the armies in this campaign, and in that of 1757; we see that they were nearly the same, and that the direction of the operations resemble each other absolutely. The French had four corps, which united into two great armies; as the king of Prussia had four divisions, which formed two armies at the debouches of the mountains. The two great corps took in their turn a concentric direction in 1794, upon Brussels, as Frederick and Schwerin had done in 1757, on Prague. The single difference which exists between these two plans, is that the Austrian troops, less disseminated, had in Flanders a position less extended than that of Braun in Bohemia, but this difference was certainly not in favor of the plan of 1794. This last had, moreover, against it the position of the North Sea; in order to outflank the right of the Austrians, it was ventured to send Pichegru between the shores of that sea and the mass of the hostile forces; the most dangerous and faulty direction that could be given to great operations. This movement was precisely the same as that of Benningsen. upon the Vistula base, which was near compromising the Russian army in 1807. The fate of the Prussian army, thrown back upon the Baltic, after having been cut off from its communications, is another proof of this truth.

If the Prince of Coburg had operated as has been done in our day, he would easily have made Pichegru repent of having executed that audacious manoeuvre a month before Jourdan was in condition to second him. The Austrian grand army, destined for the offensive, was at the centre, before Landrecies; it was composed of a hundred and six battalions, and a hundred and fifty squadrons; it had on its right flank, the corps of Clairfayt to cover Flanders, and on its left the corps of the Prince de Kaunitz to cover Charleroi. The gain of the battle under the walls of Landrecics caused it to open its gates, there was found upon General Chapuis the plan of the diversion in Flanders, and he was sent twelve battalions! A long time after, and when the successes of the French were known, the corps of the Duke of York marched to his succor. But what did the remainder of the army before Landrecies, since the departure of those forces obliged it to retard its invasion? Did not the Prince of Coburg lose all the advantages of his central position, allowing all his heavy detachments to be beaten in detail, enabling the French to consolidate in Belgium? Finally, the army was put in motion, after having sent a part of its forces to the Prince de Kaunitz, at Charleroi, and left a division at Cateau. If, instead of scattering this great army, it had been directed at once upon Turcoing, there could have been united in it a hundred battalions and a hundred and forty squadrons. What would have been the result then of the famous diversion of Pichegru, cut off from his frontiers, and shut up between the North Sea and two hostile fortresses?

The plan of invasion of the French, had not only the radical defect of all exterior lines, it was faulty also in execution; the diversion on Courtrai took place the 26th of April, and Jourdan only arrived at Charleroi the 3d of June, more than a month afterwards. What a fine occasion for the Austrians to profit from their central position! I think, that had the Prussian army manoeuvered by its right, and the Austrian army by its left, that is to say, both upon the Meuse, affairs would have taken a very different turn; in fact, establishing themselves upon the centre of a disseminated line, their mass would certainly have prevented the union of its several parts. It may be dangerous to attack, in a pitched battle, the centre of an army in continuous line, which has the facility of being sustained simultaneously by its wings and all its reserves; but it is quite otherwise with a line of a hundred and thirty leagues.

In 1795, Prussia and Spain retired from the coalition; the theatre of war upon the Rhine was contracted, and Italy opened to the French armies a new field of glory. Their lines of operations in this campaign were still double; it was wished to operate by Dusseldorff and Manheim; Clairfayt, wiser than his predecessors, carried alternately, his mass upon those two points, and gained victories so decisive at Manheim and in the lines of Mayence, that they forced the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse to repass the Rhine to cover the Moselle, and brought Pichegru back under Landau.

In 1796, the lines of operation are traced upon those of 1757, and upon those of 1794; but obtain, as in the preceding year, a very different result. The armies of the Rhine and of the Sambre-and-Meuse, start from the two extremities of their base, to take a concentric direction upon the Danube. They formed, as in 1794, two exterior lines. The Arch-Duke Charles, more skillful than the Prince de Coburg, profits from the interior direction of his own, to give them a point of concentration more approached; he then seizes the instant when the Danube covers Latour, for stealing a few marches upon Moreau, and for throwing all his forces upon the right of Jourdan, whom he overwhelms; the battle of Wurzburg decides the fate of Germany, and constrains the army of Moreau, extended upon an immense line, to make its retreat.

Bonaparte, in Italy, commences his extraordinary career. His system is to isolate the Piedmontese and Austrian armies; he succeeds, by the battle of Millesimo, in making them take two exterior strategic lines, and beats them afterwards in detail, at Mondovi and at Lodi. A formidable army is assembled at the Tyrol, for saving Mantua, which he besieges; it commits the imprudence of marching there in two corps, separated by a lake. The lightning is less prompt than the French general; he raises the siege, abandoning every thing, directs himself, with the better part of his forces, upon the first column which debouches by Brescia, beats it and throws it back into the mountains. The second column arrived upon the same ground, is there beaten in its turn, and forced to retire into the Tyrol, in order to communicate with its right. Wurmser, upon whom these lessons are lost, wishes to cover the two lines of Roveredo and Vicenza; Bonaparte, after having overthrown and repulsed the first upon the Lavis, changes direction then to the right, debouches by the gorges of the Brenta upon the line of the left, (Austrian) and forces the remnant of that fine army to save themselves in Mantua, where they are finally constrained to capitulate.

In 1799, hostilities recommence; the French, punished for having formed two exterior lines in 1796, have, nevertheless, three upon the Rhine and the Danube. An army of the left observes the Lower Rhine, that of the centre marches upon the Danube; Switzerland, which flanks Italy and Suabia, is occupied by a third army as strong as the other two. The three corps could be united only in the valley of the Inn, forty leagues from their base of operations! The Arch-Duke has equal forces, but unites them on the centre, which he overthrows at Stockach, and the Helvetic army is forced to evacuate the Grisons and eastern Switzerland.

The Allies commit in their turn the same fault as their adversaries, and instead of pursuing the conquest of this central bulwark, which cost them so dearly afterwards, they form a double line in Switzerland and the Lower Rhine. Their army in Switzerland is overthrown at Zurich, whilst that of the Lower Rhine is amusing itself at Manheim.

In Italy the French form the double enterprise of Naples, where thirty-two thousand men are uselessly occupied, whilst on the Adige, where the greatest blows ought to be struck, the too feeble army sustains overwhelming reverses. When that army of Naples returns to the North, it again commits the fault of taking a strategical direction opposite to that of Moreau; Suwaroff profits skillfully from the central position left him, marches upon the first of those armies, and defeats it at some leagues from the other.

In 1800, all is changed; Bonaparte has returned from Egypt, and this campaign presents a new combination of lines of operations; a hundred and fifty thousand men defile by the two flanks of Switzerland, debouch on the one side upon the Danube, and on the other upon the Po; this wise movement assured the conquest of immense countries; modern history had offered until then no similar combination; the French armies form two interior lines which reciprocally sustain each other; the Austrians, on the contrary, are forced to take an exterior direction, which deprives them of communicating with each other. By the skillful combination of its march, the army of reserve cuts off the enemy from his line of operations, and preserves itself all its relations with its own frontiers and with the army of the Rhine, which forms its secondary line.

The analysis of the memorable events of which we have just sketched the outline, will suffice to convince us of the importance of choosing good manoeuvre-lines in military operations. In fact, it may repair the disasters of a lost battle, render an invasion vain, extend the advantages of a victory, and assure the conquest of a country.

In comparing the combinations and the results of the most celebrated campaigns, it will be seen also that all lines of operations which have succeeded, adhere to the fundamental principle which we have at divers times presented; for simple lines and interior lines have for object the putting in action, on the most important point, and by means of strategic movements, a greater number of divisions, and consequently a stronger mass than the enemy. It will be equally obvious that all those which have failed, contained the vices opposed to these principles, since all multiplied lines tend to present feeble and isolated parties, to the mass which is to overwhelm them.

From all the events analyzed above, and still more from those which followed closely the first publication of this chapter in 1805, I believe that the following maxims may be deduced.

1. If the art of war consists in putting into action the most forces possible on the decisive point of the theatre of operations, the choice of the line of operations being the first means of succeeding, may be considered the fundamental basis of a good plan of campaign.

I believe it my duty to repeat that I have never admitted the possibility of tracing beforehand the plan of a whole campaign. That could only extend to the primitive project which indicates the objective point that is proposed to be attained, the general system that will be followed for arriving at it, and the first enterprise that will be formed to that effect; the rest depends naturally on the result of this first operation, and on the new chances which it will bring about.

2. The direction which it is suitable to give to that line, depends not only upon the geographical situation of the theatre of operations, as we shall demonstrate further on, but still upon the position of the hostile forces upon that strategic field. However, it could only be given upon the centre, or upon one of the extremities; in the case only where we should have infinitely superior forces, it would be possible to act upon the front and extremities at the same time; in every other supposition this would be a capital fault.

The inferiority of an army is not calculated upon the exact figure of the number of its soldiers; the talents of the chief, the moral of the troops, their constitutive qualities, count also in the balance, and the superiority will even be relative, although numerical proportions enter therein for much.

In general it can be laid down as a principle, that the best direction of a manoeuvre-line will be upon the centre of the enemy, if the latter commit the fault of dividing his forces upon a too extended front; but that in every other hypothesis, this direction ought to be given upon one of the extremities, and from thence upon the rear of the hostile line of defense or front of operations.

The advantage of this direction does not arise merely from the circumstance that in attacking an extremity, but a part of the hostile army is combatted; there is derived from it a still greater in that his line of defense is menaced and taken in reverse. It was thus that the army of the Rhine, having gained in 1800 the extreme left of the line of defense of the Black Forest, caused it to fall almost without a combat, and delivered upon the right bank of the Danube two battles which, although not very decisive in themselves, had for result the invasion Suabia and Bavaria, on account of the good direction of the line of operations. The consequences of the march which carried the army of reserve by the St. Bernard and Milan upon the extreme right, and afterwards upon the rear of Melas, were much more brilliant still; they are sufficiently well known to dispense with our recalling them here.

This manoeuvre, entirely similar to that which we have traced upon the map of the Alps, is found, it is true, in flagrant opposition to certain rather too exclusive systems, which require bases parallel to those of the enemy, and double lines of operations forming a right angle, the summit of which should be directed upon the centre of the strategic front of the adversary. But we have already said enough of those systems to demonstrate that our's is preferable. However, when it shall be the question to operate upon the centre of the enemy, nothing would oppose the adoption of the right-angled system of Bulow, provided that no account is held of the exaggerated conditions with which its commentators have loaded it, and that the double lines which it renders necessary should be interior, as will be seen hereafter.

3. It must not be believed, nevertheless, that it is sufficient to gain the extremity of a hostile front of operations, in order to be able to throw one's self with impunity upon the rear; for there are cases where, in acting thus, he will find himself cut off from his own communications.

In order to avoid this danger, it is important to give to your line of operations a geographical and strategic direction, such, that the army preserve behind it a sure line of retreat, or that, at need, it may find one on another side where it could throw itself, in order to regain its base by one of those changes of lines of operations of which we shall speak hereafter. (See 12th maxim.)

The choice of such a direction is so important, that it characterizes of itself alone one of the greatest qualities of a general-in-chief, and I shall be permitted to cite two examples of it, to make myself better understood.

For example, if Napoleon, in 1800, after having passed the St. Bernard, had marched direct by Turin upon Asti or Alexandria, and had received battle at Marengo, without being assured previously of Lombardy and the left bank of the Po, he would have been cut off from his line of retreat more completely than Melas was from his, whilst that having at need the two secondary points of Casal and Pavia on the side of the St. Bernard, and those of Savona and Zendi on the side of the Appenines, he had, in case of reverse, all the means of regaining the Var or the Valais.

In the same manner in the campaign of 1806, if he had marched from Gera straight to Leipzig; and had there awaited the Prussian army returning from Weimar, he would have been cut off from his base of the Rhine, as well as the Duke of Brunswick from that of the Elbe; whereas by moving from Gera to the west in the direction of Weimar, he placed his front of operations in advance of the three routes of Saalfield, Schleiz and Hof, which served him as lines of communication, and which he covered thus perfectly. And even if the Prussians had imagined they could cut him off from his lines of retreat by throwing themselves between Gera and Bareith, then they would have opened to him his most natural line, the fine highway from Leipzig to Frankfort, besides the ten roads which lead from Saxony through Cassel to Coblentz, Cologne, and even Wesel. Here is enough to prove the importance of those kinds of combinations; let us return to the series of maxims announced.

4. To manoeuvre wisely, it is necessary to avoid forming two independent armies upon the same frontier; such a system could scarcely be suitable except in cases of great coalitions, or when there should be immense forces which could not be made to act upon the same zone of operations without being exposed to an incumbrance more dangerous than useful. Still, even in this case would it not always be better to subject these two armies to one chief, who would have his Headquarters with the principal army?

5. In consequence of the principle we have just announced, it is certain that with equal forces, a simple line of operations on the same frontier will have the advantage over a double line of operations.

6. It may happen nevertheless, that a double line becomes necessary, 1st, from the configuration of the theatre of. war, afterwards, because the enemy will have formed one himself, and it will be necessary to oppose a part of the army to each of the two or three masses which he will have formed.

7. In this case, the interior or central line will be preferable to the exterior line, since the army which shall have the interior line will be able to make each of its fractions co-operate in a plan combined between them, and can thus assemble the mass of its forces before the enemy, for deciding upon the success of the campaign.

An army whose lines of operations should offer such advantages would then be in condition, by a strategical movement, well combined, to overthrow successively the fractions of the adversary which should offer themselves alternately to its blows. To assure the success of this movement, a corps of observation would be left before the part of the hostile army which it should be desired merely to hold in check, prescribing to it not to accept a serious engagement, but to content itself with suspending the march of the enemy by favor of the accidents of the ground, and in falling back upon the principal army.

8. A double line may be suitable also when you have a numerical superiority so decided, that you can manoeuvre in two directions without being liable to see one of your corps overthrown by the enemy. In this hypothesis it would be a fault to accumulate your forces on a single point, and thus to deprive yourself of the advantages of your superiority, by rendering it impracticable for a part of your forces to act. Nevertheless, in forming a double line, it will always be prudent to reinforce suitably the part of the army which, by the nature of the theatre of war and the respective situations of the two parties, would be called upon to play the most important part.

9. The principal events of the late wars prove the correctness of two other maxims. The first is, that two interior lines, sustaining each other reciprocally, and showing front, at a certain distance, to two masses superior in numbers, ought not to allow themselves to be compressed by the enemy in a too contracted space, where they might end by being simultaneonsly overthrown, as happened to Napoleon in the celebrated battle of Leipzig. The second is that interior lines ought not to go either into the contrary excess, by extending to a too great distance, for fear of allowing the enemy time to gain decisive successes against the secondary corps left in observation. It could be done, nevertheless, when the principal object in view should be so decisive that the whole fate of the war might depend upon it; in this case, one could look with indifference upon what might happen at secondary points.

10. For the same reason, two concentric lines are preferable to two divergent lines; the first, more conformed to the principles of strategy, procure moreover the advantage of covering the lines of communications and of supply; but in order that they be exempt from danger, they should be combined in such a manner that the two armies which pass over them, may not meet separately the united forces of the enemy, before being themselves in condition to operate their junction.

11. Divergent lines may nevertheless be suitable, either after a battle gained, or after a strategic operation by which you will have succeeded in dividing the forces of your adversary by breaking his centre. Then it becomes natural to give your masses excentric directions in order to finish the dispersion of the vanquished; but, although acting upon divergent lines, those masses will nevertheless find themselves on interior lines, that is to say, more approached to each other, and more easy to reunite than those of the enemy.

12. It happens at times that an army sees itself forced to change its line of operations in the midst of a campaign, which we have designated under the name of accidental lines. It is one of the most delicate and important of manoeuvres, which may give great results, but may lead also to great reverses, when it is not combined with sagacity, for it is scarcely used but for extricating an army from an embarrassing situation. We have given, in Chapter X. of the Treatise on grand operations, an example of such a change, executed by Frederick in the course of the raising of the siege of Olmutz.

Napoleon projected several of them, for he was accustomed, in his adventurous invasions, to have such a project ready for parrying unexpected events. At the epoch of the battle of Austerlitz, he had resolved, in case of check, to take his line of operations through Bohemia upon Passau or Ratisbon, which offered to him a country, new and full of resources, instead of retaking that by Vienna, which offered nothing but ruins, and on which the Arch-Duke Charles might be able to anticipate him.

In 1814, he commenced the execution of a manoeuvre more bold, but favored at least by localities, and which consisted in basing himself upon the belt of fortresses of Alsace and Lorraine, opening to the allies the road to Paris. It is certain that had Mortier and Marmont been able to join him, and he had had fifty thousand men more, this project would have been followed by the most decisive results, and put the seal to his brilliant military career.

13. As we have said above (maxim 2), the configuration of frontiers and the geographical nature of the theatre of operations, may exercise a great influence upon the direction itself to be given to these lines, as well as upon the advantages to be derived from them. Those central positions which form a salient angle towards the enemy, like Bohemia and Switzerland, are the most advantageous, because they naturally lead to the adoption of interior lines and facilitate the means of taking the enemy in reverse. The sides of this salient angle are so important there that it is necessary to join all the resources of the art to those of nature to render them unattackable.

In default of those central positions, they might be supplied by the relative direction of manoeuvre lines as the following figure shows.

C D manoeuvering upon the right flank of the Army A B; and H I directing itself upon the left flank of F G, will form two interior lines, C K and I K, upon an extremity of each of the exterior lines A B, F G, which they will be able to overthrow one after the other by carrying alternately against them the mass of their forces. This combination presents the results of the lines of operations of 1796, of 1800 and 1809.

14. The general configuration of the bases may also have a great influence upon the direction to be given to the lines of operations, which must naturally be subordinate to the situation of their respective bases, as will be obvious by recalling what we have said before upon this article. Indeed, by a simple examination of the figure annexed to said article, page 90, it will be seen that the greatest advantage which would result from the conformation of frontiers and bases, would consist in prolonging the latter perpendicularly to the base of the enemy, that is to say parallelly to his line of communications, which would give the facility of seizing this line, and of separating thus the enemy from his base.

But if, instead of directing your own operations so as to effect this, you choose badly the direction of your line, all the advantage of the perpendicular base will become null. It is evident that the Army E, which should possess the double base A C and C D, if it marched by the left towards the point F, instead of prolonging itself by its right towards G H, would lose all the strategical advantages of its base, C D. (See page 90.)

The great art of directing our lines properly consists, then, as we have just seen, in combining their relations with the bases and with the movements of the army. in such a manner as to be able to seize upon the communications of the enemy without being liable to lose our own; a strategical problem the most important as it is the most difficult to resolve.

15. Independently of the cases before cited, there is yet one which exercises a manifest influence upon the direction to be given to lines of operations; it is that in which the principal enterprise of the campaign should consist in effecting the passage of a great river in the presence of a large and intact hostile army. In this case, it is sensibly felt that the choice of the line of operations could not depend merely upon the will of the general-in-chief, or upon the advantage which he would find in attacking a certain part of the hostile line; for the first thing to be considered, is to know the point where the passage could be effected most surely, and that upon which would be found the material means necessary to that effect. The passage of the Rhine by Jourdan, in 1795, was executed near Dusseldorff, for the same reason which decided that of the Vistula by Marshal Paskievitch near Ossick, 1831; that is to say, because the army not having in its train a sufficient bridge equipage, it was necessary to send up large commercial ships bought in Holland by the French army, the same as the Russian army had purchased theirs at Thorn and Dantzic. The neutral territory of Prussia furnished, in these two circumstances, the facility of sending those vessels up the river, without the enemy being able to interpose any obstacle thereto. This facility, of an incalculable advantage in appearance, forced the French nevertheless to the double invasions of 1795 and of 1796, which failed precisely because the double line of operations resulting therefrom gave the means of partially defeating them. Paskievitch, better advised, caused the Upper Vistula to be passed only by a secondary detachment, and after the principal army had already arrived at Lowicz.

When there are military positions in sufficiency, there are less vicissitudes to be undergone in the passage. Meanwhile, it is necessary still to choose the point which offers the most chances of success in consequence of the localities and the position of the hostile forces. The discussion between Napoleon and Moreau about the passage of the Rhine in 1800, which I have reported in the 13th volume of the History of the wars of the Revolution, is one of the most curious examples of the different combinations which this at once strategical and tactical question presents.

The position chosen for the passage exercises the same influence upon the direction suitable to give to the first marches after it is effected, in view of the necessity of covering the bridges against the enemy, at least until after a victory; this choice may nevertheless, in every state of things, present a just application of principles for it will definitively be limited always to the single alternative of a passage upon the centre or upon one of the extremities.

An army united, which should force the passage upon one of the points of the centre, against a somewhat extended cordon, could divide itself afterwards into two divergent lines to the end of dispersing the parts of the hostile cordon which, being found thus out of condition to unite, will scarcely think of troubling the bridges.

If the line of the river be sufficiently short to allow the hostile army to remain concentrated, and if the means be had of taking after the passage a front of operations perpendicular to the river, then it would be best perhaps to pass it upon. one of the extremities, to the end of throwing back all the hostile forces out of the direction of the bridges. For the rest we shall treat of this subject in Article 37, on the passage of rivers.

16. There is still a combination of lines of operations, which ought not to be passed over in silence. It is the notable appearance which exists between the chances of a line of operations established in one's own country and that established in a hostile country. The nature of these hostile countries will have an influence also upon those chances. An army crosses the Alps or the Rhine to carry war into Italy or Germany; it finds at first, States of the second order; supposing even that their chiefs are allied to each other, there will be nevertheless in the real interest of those small States, as well as in their populations, rivalries which would prevent the same unity of impulsion and of force which would be met with in a great State. On the contrary, a German army, which shall pass the Rhine or the Alps to penetrate into Prance, will have a line of operations much more hazardous and more exposed than those French who should penetrate into Italy, for the first would have to encounter the whole mass of the forces of France united in action and will.

It will be comprehended that I speak here of the ordinary chanscs of a war between two powers merely, in a calm state within themselves. The chances of wars of party make exceptions.

An army on the defensive, which has its lines of operations on its own soil, has resources in everything; the inhabitants of the country, the authorities, the productions, the places, the public and even the private magazines, the arsenals, all favor it; it is not the same abroad, at least not ordinarily; one does not always find banners arrayed against the national standard, and even in that case he will still have against him all the advantages which the adversary will find in the elements of the public force.

I have said that the nature of countries influence also the chances of lines of operations; in fact, besides the modifications which we have just explained, it is certain that the establishment of lines of operations in countries rich, fertile and industrial, offer to the assailants many more advantages than those in countries more barren and desert, especially when whole populations are to be contended with. There will be found indeed in those fertile, industrial and populous countries, a thousand things necessary to every army, whereas in the others nothing will be met with but huts and straw, the horses will merely find pasturage there, but as for everything else, it will be necessary to carry it along, so that the embarrassments of the war will thereby be increased without end and brisk and bold operations will be more rare and hazardous. The French armies, so accustomed to the comforts of Suabia and rich Lombardy, came near perishing in 1806 in the mud of Pultusk, and did perish in 1812 in the marshy forests of Lithuania.

17. There is yet a rule relative to lines of operations to which several writers have attached a great importance, that seems very just when reduced to geometrical formula, but which, in its application, might be ranged in the class of Utopias. According to this rule, it would be necessary that the countries lateral to each line of operations should be disembarrassed of every enemy, to a distance which would equal the depth of that line, because, otherwise, those enemies could menance the line of retreat; an idea which has been translated geometrically, as follows: There can be no security for an operation until the enemy is driven outside of a semi-circle, the centre of which is the most central subject (Mittelstes Subject), and the radius of which (Halbmesser) is equal to the length of the line of operations.

Then, in order to prove this somewhat obscure axiom, it is demonstrated that the peripheric angles of a circle, which have the diameter for opposite side, form right angles, and that in consequence the angle of ninety degrees required by Bulow for lines of operations, that famous strategical caput-porci, is the only rational system: from which it is afterwards charitably concluded, that those who do not choose to make war trigonometrically are ignoramuses.

This maxim sustained with so much warmth and so specious on paper, is found nevertheless belied by the events of war: the nature of the country, the lines of rivers and mountains, the moral state of the two armies, the spirit of the people, the capacity and energy of the chiefs, are not measured by angles, diameters, and peripheries. Doubtless considerable corps could not be tolerated upon the flanks of a line of retreat, in a manner to seriously disturb it; but to push too far the maxims so much vaunted, would be to deprive one of every means of making a movement into the enemy's country; now, it would be all the more natural to free one's self of it, as there is not a campaign of the last wars and of those of Prince Eugene and of Marlborough that does not test the nullity of these pretended mathematical rules. Did not General Moreau find himself at the gates of Vienna in 1800, whilst Fussen, Sharnitz and all the Tyrol, were yet in the power of the Austrians? Did not Napoleon find himself at Placentia when Turin, Genoa and the Coldi Tendi were occupied by the army of Melas? I shall ask finally what geometrical figure did the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy form when it marched by Stradella and Asti to the succor of Turin, leaving the French on the Mincis at a few leagues only from his base?

Those three events would suffice, in my opinion, to prove that the compass of the geometrician will ever wane, not only before such geniuses as Napoleon and Frederick, but before great characters such as the Suwaroffs, the Massenas, &c.

God forbid, nevertheless, that I should think of depreciating the merit of officers, versed in those sciences which have taught us to calculate even the courses of the stars. I have for them, on the contrary, a kind of veneration; but my own experience authorizes me to think that if their science is necessary for constructing or attacking places and intrenched camps, as well as for drafting plans and projecting maps, if it gives besides real advantages in all calculations of practical application, it is but a feeble succor in the combinations of strategy and grand tactics where the moral impulsions, seconded by the laws of statics, play the principal part.

It will be objected that strategy especially is combined by means of lines; that is true, but to know whether one of those lines leads to a suitable point or to a gulf. and to calculate the shortest distance from the point where we are to that which we wish to attain, there is no need of geometry, for a post map would be more useful for that than a compass. I have known a general almost the rival of Laplace, whom I have never been able to make comprehend why such a strategical line would be preferable to such another, nor how that of the Meuse was the key of the low countries, when they are defended especially by a continental army.

I ask pardon of my readers if I divert their attention for a moment, in order to add here a few words upon the controversies of which this article has been the subject. I have hesitated if I should defer these observations to the end of the volume, but as they contain useful elucidations of the doctrines which precede, I have thought I might place them here.

The critics have been very little agreed in their reproaches; some have disputed upon the meaning of certain words and definitions; others have censured certain points of view which they had badly comprehended; the latter finally have taken occasion from a few important events, to deny my fundamental dogmas, without troubling themselves whether the conditions which modify those dogmas, were indeed the same as those which they supposed (which I formally deny,) and without reflecting that in admitting even their applications as exact, a fortuitous exception could not destroy a rule consecrated by the experience of centuries, and founded upon principles.

Several of those military writers, willing to contest my maxims upon interior or central lines of operations, have opposed to them the famous march of the Allies upon Leipzig, which succeeded by a contrary system.

It is thirty-three years since I presented these maxims for the first time; the quite recent events which have transpired in Navarre, prove how just they are, and how much the principles so simple upon which they repose are frequently misconceived. The troops of Don Carlos, attacked by three great corps at considerable distances asunder. have gained a complete victory by favor of their central position put to good profit. The ignoramuses cry treason, when immutable principles alone have caused the loss of Evans. If the generals who have succeeded each other for ten years past in Spain. had ever thought of the application of principles, such a rout could never have happened; but to read and to meditate are things too vulgar for men who unceasingly proclaim themselves invincible.

We have made mention, in Articles 19 and 21, of strategical lines of manoeuvre, which differ essentially from lines of operations; it will not be useless to define them, for many military men frequently confound them.

Strategical lines are of several kinds, as has been seen in Article 19. We have not occupied ourselves with those which have a general and permanent importance from their situation, and from their relations with the configuration of the country, such as the lines of the Danube, or of the Meuse, the chains of the Alps and the Balkan. As the latter figure in the number of the decisive points of the theatre of war, or in that of the lines of defense of which we have already spoken, and as they are traced by nature, we shall have nothing to say of them, for they could be subjected to no other investigation than the detailed and profound study of the military geography of Europe, and to a description, the immense scope of which, it may well be supposed, does not accord with that of this summary; the Arch-Duke Charles has given an excellent model of this study in his description of Southern Germany.

But we name strategic lines also, all the communications which lead by the most direct or the most advantageous way from one important point to another, as well as from the front of operations of the army to all the objective points which it may have the project to attain.

It is comprehended, therefore, that the whole theatre of war is found furrowed with such lines, but that those which it should be wished to pass over with any object whatever, are alone of any-real importance, at least for a given period. This fact will suffice to make comprehended the great difference which exists between a general line of operations adopted for a whole campaign, and those eventual strategical lines, changeable as the operations of armies themselves.

Finally, independently of material or territorial strategical lines, we have already said that there existed a kind of combination, in the disposition and the choice of those lines, which constitutes as many different manoeuvres, and we have named them strategical lines of manoeuvre.

An army which should have Germany for a general échequier. would take for zone of operations the space between the Alps and the Danube, or else that between the Danube and the Main, finally, that between the mountains of Franconia and the sea. It would have upon the zone adopted, a simple line of operations, or at most, two concentric lines of operations, it would have those lines interior and central, or else exterior; whilst it would embrace perhaps twenty strategical lines, one after another in proportion as its enterprises should be developed; it would have at first one, for each of its wings, which would terminate in the general line of operations; then, if it operate upon the zone between the Danube and the Alps, it might adopt according to events sometimes the strategical line which should lead from Ulm upon Donanwerth and Ratisbon, sometimes that which should lead from Ulm towards the Tyrol; finally, that which should conduct from Ulm upon Nuremberg or upon Mayence, and all according as the turn of events should render necessary.

It may be affirmed, then, without incurring the blame of creating a confusion of words, that all the definitions given in the preceding article for lines of operations, are necessarily reproduced for strategical lines, and also the maxims which are derived from them. Those lines must be co[ngrave]centric when the object is to prepare for a decisive shock, then excentric after the victory; strategical lines are rarely simple, for an army will scarcely march upon a single road, but when they shall be double, triple, quadruple even, they must also be interior if the forces of the armies are equal, or exterior for those which should have a great numerical superiority. We could, it is true, deviate at times from the too strict application of this maxim, by throwing an isolated corps in an exterior direction, even in case of an equality of forces, when it shall be the question to obtain a great result without running great risks, but this is already entering again into the category of detachments, which we shall treat separately, and could not be applicable to principal masses. Of course strategical lines couid not be interior in the case when our efforts should be directed against an extremity of the hostile front of operations.

Departing from thence, it will seem that all the maxims which we have presented upon lines of operations, would be the only ones which we could reproduce, and our readers will not blame us for sparing them their repetition; they can easily of themselves make the application of them.

There is, meanwhile, one which it is our duty to point out: it is that in general, in the choice of momentary strategical lines, it is important to avoid wholly uncovering the line of operations and exposing it to the enemy. This may be tolerated when it is the question to extricate one's self from a great danger or to seek great results; but it is necessary at least; even in this case, to prepare the means of escape by one of those sudden changes of lines of operations which we have before indicated, and it is important that the operation be not of long duration.

Let us apply those divers combinations to the lessons of history, it is the best means of comprehending them; and let us take for first example the campaign of Waterloo. The Prussian army had the Rhine for a base; its line of operations ran from Cologne and from Coblentz upon Luxemburg and Namur; Wellington had Antwerp for a base, and for a line of operations, the short route to Brussels. The sudden attack of Napoleon on Fleurus decided Blucher to receive battle parallelly to the English base, and not to his own, for which he did not appear to trouble himself. This was pardonable, because strictly he could always hope to regain Wesel or at least Nimeguen, and in the last extremity he would have been able even to seek a refuge in Antwerp. But if a Prussian army, deprived of its powerful maritime allies, had committed such a fault, it would have been annihilated.

Beaten at Ligny, and a refugee at Gembloux, then at Wavre, Blucher had but three strategical lines to choose, that which led direct to Maestricht, that which went farther to the north towards Venloo, or else that which led to the English army near Mont Saint-Jean. He audaciously took the latter, and triumphed by the application of interior strategic lines, which Napoleon had neglected for the first time, perhaps, in his life. It will be admitted that the line followed, from Gembloux by Wavre, upon Mont Saint-Jean, was neither the line of operations of the Prussian army, nor a line of battle, but rather a strategic line of manoeuvre: a central or interior line, audaciously chosen, in that the natural line of operations was left uncovered in order to seek safety in the important junction of the two combined armies, which in reality rendered this resolution conformable to the principles of war.

An example less happy was that of Ney at Dennewitz; debouching from Wittemberg upon the direction to Berlin, he prolonged himself to the right in order to gain the extreme left of the Allies; but by this movement he left his primitive line of retreat exposed to all the blows of an enemy superior in numbers and in veteran troops. It is true that he had the mission of putting himself in connection with Napoleon, whose project was to join him by Herzberg or Luckau; but then the Marshal should at least have taken, from his first movement, all the logistical and tactical measures for assuring this change of strategical line, and to have informed his army of it. He did nothing of the kind, whether through neglect, or from a feeling of aversion to every supposition of a retreat; the cruel losses which he sustained at Dennewitz were the sad result of this imprudence.

One of the operations which best retraces the different combinations of strategic lines is that of Napoleon through the gorges of the Brenta in 1796. His general line of operations, departing from the Appenines, led to Verona, where it stopped. When he had repulsed Wurmser upon Roveredo and had resolved to penetrate into Tyrol in his pursuit, he pushed into the valley of the Adige to Trent and the Lavis, where he learned that Wurmser had thrown himself by the Brenta upon the Frioul, without doubt to take him in reverse. There were but three courses to choose: to remain in the narrow valley of the Adige at the risk of being compromised there; to retrograde by Verona to meet Wurmser; or else, what was grand, but rash, to throw himself after Wurmser in that valley of the Brenta enclosed by rocky mountains, and the issues of which could be barred by the Austrians.

Napoleon was not a man to hesitate between three such alternatives; he left Vaubois upon the Lavis to cover Trent, and threw himself with the remainder of his forces upon Bassano; the brilliant results of this bold movement are known. Surely the route from Trent to Bassano was not the line of operations of the French army, but a strategic line more audacious still than that of Blucher upon Wavre. However, it was a question only of three or four days operation, at the end of which Napoleon would either be conqueror or vanquished at Bassano; in the first case he opened his communication direct with Verona and with his line of operations, in the contrary case he regained Trent in all haste, where, rallied upon Vaubois, he would equally fall back upon Verona, or Peschiera. The difficulties of the country which rendered this march audacious under one aspect, favored it also under another; for Wurmser, though even he had triumphed at Bassano, could in no wise disturb the return upon Trent, no road permitting him to anticipate Napoleon in that direction. There would have been only the case in which Davidovich, left upon the Lavis, should have driven Vaubois from Trent, which would have somewhat embarrassed Napoleon; but that Austrian general, beaten anteriorly at Roveredo, ignorant for several days of what the French army was doing, and believing that he had it all upon his back, would scarcely have thought of retaking the offensive when Napoleon, repulsed at Bassano, would already have returned. Even though Davidovich had advanced to Roveredo, facing Vaubois, he would there have been surrounded in that gulf of the Adige between the two French masses which would have made him undergo the fate of Vandamme at Culm.

I have enlarged upon this incident to show that the calculation of time and distances, joined to a great activity, can cause to succeed enterprises in appearance altogether imprudent. I conclude from thence, that it is sometimes permitted to throw an army momentarily on a direction which would uncover its lines of operations, but that all measures should be taken that the enemy do not profit from it, as much by the rapidity of its execution, as by demonstrations which might deceive him, and leave him in ignorance of what is passing. Meanwhile, it is one of the most hazardous of manoeuvres, and. one which should never be resolved upon but in urgent cases.

We think we have sufficiently demonstrated the divers combinations which those strategic lines of manoeuvre present, in order that each of our readers may be able to appreciate their different species and the maxims which should preside over their choice.

We understand by the ancient system of positions, that ancient manner of making war with armies encamped in tents, living by their magazines and their bakeries, reciprocally watching each other, the one for besieging a place, the other for covering it; the one coveting a small province, the other opposing its designs by self-styled impregnable positions; a system which was generally in practice from the middle ages down to the French revolution.

In the course of this revolution great changes supervened; but there were at first divers systems, and they were not all improvements in the art. In 1792, war was commenced as it had been finished in 1762; the French armies encamped under their places, and the Allies encamped for besieging them. It was not until 1793, when it saw itself assailed within and without, that the republic threw a million of men and fourteen armies upon its enemies; of necessity other methods were to be taken; those armies having neither tents, nor pay, nor magazines, marched, bivouacked or cantoned; their mobility was increased by it, and became an instrument of success. Their tactics changed also; their chiefs held them in columns, because they are more easy to manage than deployed lines, and by favor of the broken country of Flanders and the Vosges, where they fought, they threw out a part of their forces as skermishers to cover their columns.

This system, which was born thus of circumstances, succeeded at first beyond all expectation; it disconcerted the methodical troops of Prussia and of Austria, as well as their chiefs: Mack, among others, to whom the successes of the Prince of Coburg were attributed, augmented his reputation by publishing instructions for extending lines to the end of opposing a thinner order to those skermishers! The poor man had not perceived that the skermishers made the noise, but that the columns carried the positions.

The first generals of the republic were fighting mien, and nothing more; the principal direction came from Carnot and the Committee of Public Safety; it was sometimes good, but also frequently bad. It must be owned, nevertheless, one of the best strategical movements of this war came from him; it was he who directed, at the end of 1793, a choice reserve successively to the succor of Dunkirk, Maubeuge and of Landau; so that this small mass, transported by post, and seconded by the troops already assembled on those places, succeeded in causing the French territory to be evacuated.

The campaign of 1794 began badly, as has already been said; it was the force of circumstances which led to the strategical movement of the army of the Moselle upon the Sambre, and not a premeditated plan; for the rest this movement decided the success at Fleurus and the conquest of Belgium. In 1795, the French committed such great faults, that they were imputed to treason; the Austrians, on the contrary, better directed, by Clairfayt, Charteler and Schmidt, than by Mack and the Prince of Coburg, proved that they had some conception of strategy.

Every one knows that the Arch-Duke triumphed in 1796, over Jourdan and Moreau, by a single march, which was the application of interior lines.

Until then the French armies had embraced great fronts, either more easily to obtain provisions, or that their generals imagined they were doing well in putting all their divisions in line, leaving to their chiefs the care of disposing of them for combat as they could, and keeping in reserve but slender detachments incapable of repairing any thing, if the enemy chanced to overthrow a single one of those divisions.

Such was the state of things when Napoleon made his debut in Italy; the rapidity of those marches routed the Austrians and Piedmontese from the commencement of his operations; for, disengaged of all useless material, he surpassed the mobility of all modern armies; he conquered the Peninsula by a series of strategical marches and combats.

His movement upon Vienna in 1797, was a rash operation, but legitimated perhaps by the necessity of conquering the Arch-Duke Charles before the arrival of the reinforcements coming from the Rhine.

The campaign of 1800, more characteristic still, signalised a new era in the projection of plans of war, and in the directions of lines of operations; from thence date those bold objective points, which have in veiw nothing less than the capture or destruction of armies, and of which we have spoken in Article 19. Orders of battle were equally less extended, the organization of armies into corps of two or three divisions, became more rational. The system of modern strategy was from that time carried to its zenith, for the campaigns of 1805 and 1806 were only corollaries of the great problem resolved in 1800.

With regard to tactics, that of columns and of skermishers, which Napoleon found quite established, suited too well the broken country of Italy not to be adopted.

At this day there presents itself a grave and capital question, it is to decide whether the system of Napoleon is suitable to all capacities, to all epochs, and to all armies; or if, on the contrary, it were possible that governments and generals could return to the methodical system of wars of position, after having meditated upon the events of 1800 and 1809. Let us compare, in fact, the marches and encampments of the Seven Years War, with those of the seven weeks war, (an epithet which Napoleon gave to the campaign of 1806,) or with the three months which elapsed from the departure from the camp of Boulogne in 1805, to the arrival upon the plains of Moravia, and let us decide then whether the system of Napoleon is preferable to the ancient one.

This system of the French Emperor was to make ten leagues a day, to combat, and to canton afterwards in repose. He has himself told me that he recognized no other kind of war than this.

It will be objected that the adventurous character of this great captain was joined to his personal position, and to the situation of minds in France, to excite him to do what no other chief would have dared to do in his place, whether lie were born upon a throne, or whether he were a simple general under the orders of his government. If this is incontestable, it appears to me true also, that between the system of immoderate invasions and that of positions, there is a medium, so that, without imitating his impetuous audacity, it will be possible to follow the routes which he has trodden, and that the system of wars of position will probably be proscribed for a long time, or at least considerably modified and improved.

Doubtless, if the art is found enlarged by the adoption of the system of marches, humanity will lose thereby more than it will gain, for those rapid incursions, and those bivouacs of considerable masses, feeding from day to day upon the same countries which they invade, do not badly recall the devastations of the peoples which overran Europe from the 4th to the 13th century. However, it is little probable that they will be renounced so soon, for a great truth has been at least demonstrated by the wars of Napoleon, it is that distances could no longer secure a country from invasion, and that States which wish to secure themselves from it, ought to have a good system of fortresses and lines of defense, a good system of reserves and military institutions, finally, a good system of policy. Therefore, the populations organize themselves every where into militia, to serve as reserves to the active armies, which will maintain their force upon a footing more and more formidable; now, the greater armies are the more necessary the system of rapid operations and prompt denouements becomes.

If, in the sequel, social order recovers a calmer tone, if nations, instead of combatting for their existence, fight no longer except for relative interests, to round their frontiers, or to maintain the European equilibrium; then a new law of nations may be adopted; and it will perhaps be possible to put armies upon a less exaggerated footing. Then also, in a war of power against power, armies of eighty or a hundred thousand men may be seen to return to a mixed system of war, which would hold the middle ground between the volcanic incursions of Napoleon, and the impossible system of the Starke Positionen of the last century. Until then we must admit this system of marches which has produced so great events, for the first who should dare to renounce it in presence of a capable and enterprising enemy, would probably become its victim.

By the science of marches, we do not understand at the present day, simply those minute details of logistics which consist in well combining the order of troops in column, the time of their departure and arrival, the precautions necessary in their journey, the means of communication, either between themselves, or with the point which is assigned them, these are all things which make an essential branch of the functions of the staff. But, besides these very material details, there exists a combination of marches which belong to the grand operations of strategy. For example, the march of Napoleon by the St. Bernard, to fall upon the communications of Melas; those which he made in 1805 by Donauwert, to cut off Mack, and 1806 by Gera, to turn the Prussians; the march of Suwaroff to fly from Turin upon Trebbia to meet Macdonald; that of the Russian army upon Taroutin, then upon Krasnoi, were decisive operations, not from their relations with la logistique, but from their relations with strategy.

However, properly considered, those skillful marches are never but means of putting in practice, the various applications of the principle which we have indicated, and which we shall yet develope; to make a fine march, is then nothing else than carrying the mass of one's forces upon the decisive point; now, the whole science will consist in determining well that point after the manner we have essayed to demonstrate in Article 19. In fact, what was the march by the St. Bernard, if not a line of operations directed against an extremity of the strategic front of the enemy, and from thence upon his line of retreat? What were the marches to Ulm and Jena but the same manoeuvre? What was the march of Blucher to Waterloo, but the application of the interior strategical lines recommended in Article 22?

Hence it may be concluded, that all strategical movements which tend to direct the masses of an army successively upon the different points of the hostile front of operations, will be skillful marches, since they will apply the general principle indicated, page 81, by putting in action the mass of forces upon fractions merely of the hostile army. The operations of the French at the end of 1793, fron Dunkirk to Landau, those of Napoleon in 1796, in 1809 and in 1814, may be cited as models of this kind. It would be useless to enlarge upon those combinations, since they enter by their applications in the series of maxims already presented.

We shall observe, nevertheless, that there exists a species of marches which have been designated under the name of flank marches, and which we could not pass over in silence. In all times they have been presented as hazardous manoeuvres, without any thing satisfactory having ever been written on this subject. If we understand thereby tactical manoeuvres made in view of the hostile line of battle, doubtless such a flank movement is a very delicate operation, although it succeeds at times; but if ordinary strategical marches are meant, I can see nothing dangerous in a flank march, unless the most common logistical precautions have been neglected. In a strategical movement, the two hostile main bodies ought always to be separated by an interval of about two marches, (counting the distance which separates the respective advanced guards, from the enemy and from their own columns.) In such a case there could exist no real danger in the strategical journey from one position to another.

There are two cases, nevertheless, where a flank march seems altogether inadmissible: the first is that where the system of the line of operations, of the strategical lines and front of operations, should all present the flank to the enemy in the whole course of an enterprise. Such was the famous project of marching upon Leipzig, without being disquieted about Dresden and the two hundred and fifty thousand men of Napoleon, a project which, resolved upon at Trachenberg in the month of August, 1813, would probably have been fatal to the allied armies, if my soliditations made at Jungferteinitz, had not caused it to be modified. The second case is when we should have a remote or deep line of operations, like that of Napoleon at Borodino; especially if this line of operations offered still but a single suitable line of retreat; then every flank movement which should leave it exposed, would be a grave fault.

In countries where good secondary communications should be numerous, flank movements would be less dangerous, because at need one could have recourse to a change of line of operations if he were repulsed. The physical and moral state of armies, the more or less energetic character of the chiefs and of the troops, could also have an influence upon the opportuneness of such movements.

In fact, the often cited marches of Jena and of Ulm were veritable flank manoeuvres, quite like that upon Milan after the passage of the Chiusella, and like that of Marshal Paskiewics for crossing the Vistula at Ossiek; every one knows how they succeeded.

It is otherwise with tactical movements, made by flank in presence of the enemy. Ney was punished for this at Dennewitz; Marmont at Salamanca, and Frederick the Great at Kollin.

Meanwhile, the manoeuvre of Frederick the Great at Leuthen, become so celebrated in the annals of the art, was a veritable movement of this kind, (see chapter VI, Treatise on Grand Operations;) but skillfully covered by a mass of cavalry, concealed by the heights, and operated against an army which remained immovable in its camp, it had an immense success, because, at the moment of the shock, it was really the army of Daun which lent the flank, and not that of the king. Moreover, it must be owned also, that with the old system of moving by lines at platoon distance, in order to form, without deployment, by a right or left into line of battle, the movements parallel to the hostile line are not flank marches, since then the flank of columns is, in reality, nothing else than the line of battle.

The famous march of Prince Eugene in sight of the French camp, for turning the lines of Turin, was much more extraordinary still than that of Leuthen, and was not less successful.

In these different battles, I repeat, they were tactical and not strategical movements; the march of Prince Eugene, fiom Mantua upon Turin, was one of the greatest strategical operations of the age; but the movement here alluded to was that made on the eve of the battle for turning the French camp. For the rest, the difference of results which those five days present, is an additional proof that in this point also tactics is variable.

With regard to the logistical part of marches, although it forms but one of the secondary branches of the military art, it is so closely connected with great operations, that it may be regarded as the executive part of them; hence I believe it my duty to say a few words of it, uniting it in Article 41, with some ideas upon la logistique in general.

The combinations which are most nearly connected with the system of marches, are those of magazines, for, in order to march quickly and for a long time, provisions are necessary; now the art of subsisting a numerous army, in a hostile country especially, is one of the most difficult. The science of a commissary general of subsistence has its special treatises, to which we shall refer our readers, limiting ourselves to indicating what it has in common with strategy.

The work of Count Cancrin, formerly Intendant-General of the Russian armies could not be too highly recommended; there exist few as satisfactory on the art of administering the subsistence department.

The system of supply of the ancients has never been well known, for, all that Vegetius says of the administration of the Romans, does not suffice to discover to us the machinery of a subject so complicated. A phenomenon which will ever be difficult to conceive, is that Darius and Xerxes were able to subsist immense armies in Thrace, (Romelia,) whilst, in our day, one would have difficulty to subsist there thirty thousand men. In the middle ages, the Greek emperors, the barbarians, and still later, the crusaders fed there also considerable masses of men.

Caesar has said that war ought to nourish war, and it is hence generally concluded that he always lived at the expense of the country which he passed over.

The middle ages were remarkable for their great migrations of all kinds, it would be very interesting to know exactly the number of Huns, Vandals, Goths and Mongols, which successively traversed Europe, and how they lived on their marches.

In the earlier times of modern history, it is to be believed that the armies of Francis First, crossing the Alps to enter fertile Italy, did not carry great magazines in their trains; for they were only forty or fifty thousand men strong, aud such an army is not embarrassed with living in the rich valleys of the Ticino, and of the Po.

Under Louis XIV and Frederick II, more considerable armies, fighting on their own frontiers, lived regularly by the magazines and bakeries which followed them; which constrained much their operations, by precluding them from moving from their depots beyond a space proportioned to the means of transportation, to the quantity of rations which they carry, and to the number of days which was necessary for the vehicles to go and return from the camp.

In the Revolution, necessity caused these magazines to be despised; large armies, invading Belgium and Germany without provisions, lived sometimes among the inhabitants, sometimes by forced requisitions upon the country, finally, by marauding and pillage. To march cantoning among the inhabitants is very possible in Belgium, in Italy, in Suabia, upon the rich banks bf the Rhine and of the Danube, especially if the army, marching by several columns, does not exceed a hundred or a hundred and twenty thousand men; but it becomes very difficult in other countries, and impossible in Russia, Sweden, Poland, and in Turkey. It is conceived with how much more velocity and impetuosity an army acts, when it has no other calculation to make than that of the vigor of the limbs of its soldiers. This system gave great advantages to Napoleon; but he abused it, by extending it upon a large scale, and in countries where it was impracticable.

The general of an army ought to know how to make all the existing resources of the country he invades concur in his enterprises; he must employ the authorities, when they remain therein, to levy uniform and legal requisitions, which he will cause to be paid for when he has the means of so doing; when the authorities do not remain, he should establish provisory ones, composed of the notables, and clad with extraordinary powers. He will cause those provisions required to be collected upon points the most favorable to the movements of the army, according to the principles of lines of operations. To the end of husbanding the supplies, he will cause to be cantoned in the cities and villages the greatest possible numbers of troops, securing an indemnity to the inhabitants for the surcharge which will result therefrom. The army, besides its provisions and forage, will have parks of auxiliary carriages furnished by the country, in order that the provisions may reach it wherever it should remain stationary.

It is as difficult to establish rules as to what it would be prudent to undertake, without forming magazines in advance, as to trace the exact demarcation between the possible and impossible. The countries, the seasons, the force of the armies, the spirit of the population, all vary in these combinations; but we may establish as general maxims:

1. That in fertile and populous countries, the inhabitants of which should be hostile, an army of a hundred or a hundered and twenty thousand men moving towards the enemy, but yet sufficiently distant to embrace without danger, a certain extent of country, may march during the whole time that a given operation may require, drawing its resources from the country. Now, as a first operation never requires more than a month for the bulk of its masses to be in motion, it will suffice to provide, by reserve supplies, for the eventual necessities of the army, and especially for those of the forces which should be obliged to remain stationary at the same point. For example, the army of Napoleon, half'united around Ulm, to blockade Mack therein, might have need of biscuit until the surrender of the city, and if it were wanting the operation might fail.

2. During this time, it would be necessary to apply one's self to collecting, with all possible activity, the resources which the country offers, in order to form magazines of reserve, and to relieve the wants which the army should experience after the success of the operation, whether for concentrating in positions of repose, or for departing from thence, and marching to new enterprises.

3. The magazines which should have been collected by purchase, or requisitions upon the country, ought to be disposed as much as possible in echelons, on three different rays of communications, which will facilitate on one side the supply of each of the wings of the army, and on the other the greatest possible extension of the sphere of successive requisitions; finally, the means of better covering, if not the whole, at least a good part of the line of depots. With this last aim it would not be useless that the depots of the two wings should be established on rays converging towards the principal line of operation, which will ordinarily be found to be that of the centre. By this precaution two real advantages will be obtained, the first, of placing the magazines in greater security from the insults of the enemy, by augmenting the distance which separates them from him; the second would be to facilitate the concentric movements in rear, which the army might execute, in order to unite on a single point of the line of operation, with the object of falling in its turn upon the enemy, and of wresting from him, by seizing again the initiative of attack, the momentary ascendancy which he should have acquired.

4. In countries where the population is too sparse, and the soil little fertile, an army will lack the most essential resources; hence it will be prudent not to remove it too far from its magazines, and to carry along supplies of reserve sufficient to give it time, at need, to fall back upon the base of its grand depots.

5. In national wars, and in countries where the whole population flies and destroys every thing, as has happened in Spain, Portugal, Russia and Turkey, it is impossible to move without being followed by regular magazines, and without having a sure base of supplies in proximity with the front of operations, which renders a war of invasion much more difficult, not to say impossible.

6. It does not suffice to assemble immense provisions, there is yet necssary the means of causing them to follow the army, and it is in this that consists the greatest difficulty, especially when it is wished to march to brisk and rapid enterprises. In order to facilitate the march of the magazines it is necessary, in the first place, to compose them of the most portable provisions, such as biscuit, rice, &c.; then it will be necessary to have military carriages which unite lightness and solidity, to the end of being able to pass over all kinds of roads. It is important, also, as we have said, to collect the greatest number possible of the vehicles of the country, taking care that the proprietors or conductors be well treated and protected by the troops; parks of them will be formed in echelons in order not to remove them too far from their homes, and to have successive resources husbanded. Finally, it will be necessary to habituate the soldier to carry for a few days biscuit, rice, or even flour, in default of other provisions.

7. The neighborhood of the sea offers very great facilities for the supplying of an army; that one which is master of the sea, it seems ought never to want for anything. However, this advantage is not without its inconvenience for a great continental army, for with the object of remaining in sure relations with its magazines, it will allow itself to be drawn into carrying its operations upon the shore, which would expose it to cruel disasters, if the enemy acted with the mass of his forces upon the extremity opposite to the sea.

It is seen that I mean to speak here only of wars between European nations which know how to manoeuvre; one might deviate from these rules against Asiatic and Turkish hordes, little to be feared in the field; they have neither instruction nor troops capable of punishing the faults which should be committed before them

8. The continental army, which shall employ the sea to facilitate its arrivals, must not neglect to have its principal base of operations by land, with a reserve of supplies, independent of maritime means, and a line of retreat upon the extremity of its strategical front opposite the sea.

9. The rivers or navigable streams, whose course should be nearly parallel with the routes which should serve as a line of operations to an army, would furnish, as well as canals, great facilities for the transportation of provisions; and although these means are not comparable to those which great navigation procures, they would, notwithstanding, be very valuable. It is concluded thence with reason that lines of operations parallel to a river are the most favorable, especially in that they render arrivals more easy, and permit a great diminution of the embarrassment of carriages; but so far from the river being within itself the true line of operations, as has been pretended, it would be necessary always to have care that the greater part of the troops should be able to keep removed from it, to the end of preventing the enemy, coming to attack them in force on the extremity opposite to the river, from placing them in a position quite as fatal as if they were hemmed in upon the sea.

It must be observed, however, that in a hostile country it is very rare to be able to profit by a river for the arrival of provisions, either because of the destruction of its vessels, or because light corps might disturb its navigation. In order to render it sure it would be necessary to direct corps upon the two banks, which is not without danger, as Mortier experienced at Dirnstein. In a friendly or allied country the case is different, and the advantages of rivers are more real.

10. In default of bread or biscuit, flesh upon the foot has often sufficed for the immediate wants of an army; and in populous countries, beasts are always sufficiently abundant to provide it for some time. But these resources are soon exhausted, and they drive troops to marauding; it is important, then, to regulate by all means possible the requisitions for beasts, to pay for them if practicable, and especially to cause the columns to be followed by bullocks bought out of the sphere of the marches of the army.

I could not terminate this article without citing a saying of Napoleon, which will appear strange, but which, however, has its good side. I have heard him say that, in his first campaigns, the hostile army was always so well provided that, when he found himself embarrassed to feed his own, he had only to throw it upon the rear of the enemy, where he was certain to find every thing in abundance. A maxim which it would doubtless be absurd to lay down as a system, but which explains perhaps the success of more than one rash enterprise, and which. demonstrates how much veritable war differs from too measured calculations.