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THE 
 
 EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY 
 
THE EVOLUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN STRATEGY 
 
 FROM THE XVIIIth CENTURY TO 
 THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 BY 
 
 Lieut. -Colonel F. N. MAUDE, 
 
 F.S.C.y LATE R.E., 
 COMMANDING 1ST HAMPSHIRE ROYAL ENGINEERS (VOLUNTEERS). 
 
 \}\'^i V 
 
 >••••• 
 
 • »..:. ^ » . • • • • 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 23, COCKSPUR STREET, S.W. 
 
 1905. 
 
^3f 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED 
 
 LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 For the last twenty-five years I have formed one of a group of 
 British officers who have been as intensely keen to fit themselves 
 for command, and to prepare the men under them for War, as any 
 men in any nation under the sun. This group was, and still is, 
 far more numerous than the British public imagines, and those 
 members of it, who have been fortunate enough to obtain and to 
 recognise their opportunities, have won for themselves the respect 
 and admiration of all competent critics, of whom, unfortunately, 
 there are few enough within our own islands. 
 
 Wherever men met, in clubs, messes, railway carriages — 
 particularly railway carriages — we foregathered and talked, not 
 "shop" but "War," with the single, whole-souled idea of being 
 ready when the call should come, and so far from finding that 
 this interest in our duty was considered "bad form," I, at least, 
 personally found that it made me everywhere a welcome guest. 
 As, in addition to my own, I was a dining member of seventeen 
 different messes of all arms, and besides my club in town, belonged 
 to half a dozen others in different parts of the world, I think I 
 may claim abundant opportunity for the formation of my opinion. 
 
 Many of us had enjoyed, or rather made for ourselves, opportuni- 
 ties for becoming acquainted with foreign armies, and in proportion 
 as to the use they had made of their time, they brought into the 
 service a different attitude towards the fundamental considerations 
 which lie at the base of all warlike operations than that which had 
 hitherto prevailed amongst the senior officers. 
 
 Those who had fought through such campaigns as those against 
 the Sikhs', the Crimea, and the Mutiny, saw in Warfare only the 
 collision of the rival interests of governments, in which armies alone 
 were concerned, and in which the nations, as nations, had but little 
 interest — the old eighteenth-century standpoint, in fact, which sur- 
 vived quite naturally under the peculiar nature of our surroundings. 
 
 M176640 
 
vi PREFACE, 
 
 Those trained in the foreign schools saw deeper into the heart 
 of things, and knew that when, as in France and Germany, the 
 terms " Army " and " Nation " had become synonymous, the whole 
 conduct of warlike operations must undergo profound modification. 
 
 To reconcile the two schools was no easy task, for to express 
 the difference one needs two entirely distinct vocabularies, and 
 there was only one. Hence both sides constantly used the same 
 words to express fundamentally different ideas, and it took far 
 more time and opportunity for study than falls to the lot of most 
 of us in the first twenty years of one's service, to recognise wherein 
 these differences really lay. 
 
 Had it been possible to gather the pick of us together under 
 one roof, and subject us to the guidance of a body of instructors, 
 who had themselves preserved the continuity of tradition from the 
 Napoleonic times as in Prussia, progress would, I think, have been 
 both rapid and secure ; but, unfortunately, the machinery for this 
 purpose did not, and still does not, exist, and when we asked for 
 bread we were officially tendered an inferior concrete, a jumbled 
 up mass of ideas derived from [practice in varying climates, and 
 conditions imperfectly held together in a matrix of semi-digested 
 historical tradition. 
 
 Being thus left without superior guidance, there was nothing for 
 us but to work back to some common point of origin from whence 
 both schools arose — i.e, some period in which all European nations 
 made War with armies of similar organisation under similar circum- 
 stances — and then trace out at what point, and owing to what 
 alterations, our paths began to diverge. 
 
 Following out this line of investigation, it became clear that 
 " organisation " was the disturbing cause. When the French 
 Revolution brought home to every unit in that nation that he or 
 it was personally most vitally concerned in the issue of the great 
 struggle in which they were engaged, an entirely new driving force 
 made its appearance, which modified in the most startling manner 
 the practice of the leaders in the field — i.e, the Art of Strategy. 
 
 Clausewitz was the first to define War as an extreme form of 
 human competition. In other words, he did for the nation what 
 Darwin subsequently did for individuals, viz. he showed that War 
 was nothing more or less than the " struggle for the survival of the 
 fittest " on the national plane, and once this idea is clearly grasped 
 in its entirety the whole of the confusing problems involved in the 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 raising of troops for War, their organisation, training, and employ- 
 ment in the field all fall into their proper places, and can be 
 treated by ordinary scientific methods of research identically like 
 any other matter susceptible of adequate analysis. The degree of 
 accuracy in the solution attainable depending upon the number and 
 reliability of the observations available, and the skill and trained 
 judgment with which these are handled. 
 
 Now this is a method we have never attempted to apply, nor is 
 it within the power of a single individual to do so, for the amount 
 of material to be collated is enormous, and it would need a large 
 staff of scientifically trained men to handle ; and hitherto neither 
 our schools, universities, or the Army itself has been able to train 
 and select the type of man fitted for such work in sufficient 
 numbers. 
 
 The introduction of short service some thirty years ago, how- 
 ever, threw open the doors for all practical reforms, and sound 
 reform must have " grown itself " had the Public only been content 
 to wait. By throwing greatly increased responsibility on the junior 
 ranks it had compelled them to master the alphabet of their pro- 
 fession, and to use their brains before these organs had become 
 atrophied by disuse, as had formerly been the case, and by degrees 
 it was becoming apparent that the Army was a career in which 
 brains would tell in the end just as in any other. But continuity in 
 the conditions was just the one thing needed to give these men 
 time to work their way to the front, and just at the critical moment 
 we were struck in rapid succession by three most fatal blows, viz. 
 1st, the adoption of the three years' term of service with the 
 colours ; 2nd, the Report of the South African Commission with 
 its sequels ; and 3rd, the recurrence to what is practically the long 
 service ideal, which fundamentally alters the whole condition of our 
 military existence, and which, if it ever takes root, will divorce the 
 regular Army from the nation, and sap the driving energy which 
 was giving us the new race of officers we required. The mere fact 
 that reform was attempted before, to quote Clausewitz, **the 
 sensuous impressions of the battlefield had had time to yield to the 
 results of mature reflection," proved the incapacity of the Public, as 
 at present educated, to deal with such a problem. We ought to 
 have had, twenty years ago, a properly organised General Staff to 
 have dealt with the question ; but, failing that, the only thing to be 
 done was forthwith to create one, and furnish it with a Military 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 History Section to collect material in sufficient quantity to check 
 the tendency which exists after every campaign to treat its ex- 
 periences as the last word to be said on the whole subject. 
 
 There is an idea in the public mind that an efficient Army can 
 be produced if only departments are organised on a certain pattern 
 — in other words, that it is the form and not the spirit which 
 signifies. Recent events in Russia sufficiently refute this assump- 
 tion, for here we see a staff organised, with almost Chinese fidelity, 
 on the Prussian plan, producing results in diametric opposition to 
 those achieved by their model. The truth really is, that no matter 
 what departments may be called or how they are arranged, the 
 daily output of work depends on the trained ability of its members, 
 and the strength of the sense of " Duty " each brings to his 
 task. If and in so far as the work done by the several branches of 
 the War Office has fallen behind the standard the Public had a 
 right to expect, the cause lay in the fact that, it being impossible 
 under the conditions of long service either to train or select men of 
 ability, personal interest was the determining factor in a man's 
 career, and hence the internecine strife between the Departments, 
 and the triumph of the Adjutant-General and chief Supply Officer 
 over the real Staff Officer, viz, the Quarter-Master General. 
 
 No man could afford to look sufficiently far ahead to hold the 
 balance between the several interests, and hence since in Peace the 
 most important work is done in the Adjutant-General's Department, 
 and in small Wars supply is the chief element of success, these two 
 branches throve at the expense of the others, and when a relatively 
 great War arose, neither the Quarter-Master General's or the Intel- 
 ligence Departments had weight or position enough to make their 
 influence sufficiently felt. 
 
 The only corrective for this state of affairs lies in the creation of 
 a Military History Section of the General Staff, through which all 
 the higher Staff Officers should be passed, so that all at all likely to 
 occupy eventually responsible positions, would have had the oppor- 
 tunity of learning how the scientific historian works, and thus of 
 estimating the value of the data collected and conclusions 
 formulated. 
 
 It is enough to turn over the evidence given before the South 
 African Commission to see how badly such an institution was 
 needed. Men who had been really grounded in military history by 
 having been made to help in the collection and appreciation of the 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 data from which it is written, could never have fallen into the 
 astounding inaccuracies of statement and hasty generalisations these 
 pages reveal. It would need a whole treatise to expose all these 
 mistakes and their consequences, and the task would bring one into 
 collision with so many old friends and comrades, that I have not 
 the slightest intention of undertaking it, it will suffice for my pur- 
 pose if I select the most widespread fallacy resulting from the 
 whole, viz. the exaggerated importance that has come to be attached 
 to the value of good individual shooting in modem Warfare. 
 
 Good shooting in action is conditioned by the state of the firer s 
 nerves at the moment he pulls the trigger — and this quite obviously 
 is determined by the impression produced on the soldier's mind 
 by the appearance of the target his General is skilful enough to 
 secure for him. For instance, if our men had never had a less favour- 
 able target than a mob of Boers driven into a hollow square around 
 their led horses, they would have made quite as high a percentage of 
 hits as did the Boers when the conditions were reversed. As it 
 happened, it was the Boers who always had the good targets and 
 we who had the difficult ones, and since there was not the smallest 
 grounds for supposing that the leading of the former was better 
 than that on our own side, it would have become clear that we 
 had to deal with a new disturbing influence ; and by a process of 
 elimination, the conclusion must ultimately have been arrived at, 
 that this disturbing influence could only be the excess of mobility 
 on the Boer side, from which all else logically followed. Since, 
 however, owing to local conditions, we could not outclass the 
 enemy in this respect, the policy we ultimately adopted — viz. to 
 crush them by sheer weight of numbers — was the only conceivable 
 solution ; and hence it would have been found quite unnecessary 
 for any one to have questioned the courage of our troops, for, 
 after all, that is what complaining of their shooting amounts to. 
 
 Further, the principal factor of success in War, whether modem, 
 mediaeval, or pre-historic, is confidence between men and leaders, 
 which evidently in our case only existed sporadically. Yet I 
 contend that, in the great majority of cases, such want of mutual 
 confidence was unmerited on either side. 
 
 Had both officers and men been so far grounded in military 
 history as to understand how the factor of mobility was bound to 
 affect the problems they were called on to solve, the leaders would 
 not have complained of the men's bad shooting, or the men of their 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 leader's want of capacity. If a general distrusts his men, not only 
 are his decisions hampered and the strain of command enormously 
 increased, but the men are quick to notice the want of confidence, 
 and to react under the suspicion in a variety of ways, which still 
 further increase the difficulties of the general's position. 
 
 Nothing, to my mind, proves the extraordinary capacity of the 
 British soldier and his regimental officers better than the staunch- 
 ness with which they stuck to one another throughout these trying 
 years ; but the strain was there none the less, and I see no reason 
 why it should be imposed on them in the future, when it can so 
 easily be mitigated. 
 
 It was in the hope of contributing somewhat towards this 
 mitigation that I commenced these pages in serial form. It would 
 have been far more satisfactory to have attempted a closely 
 reasoned treatise, unbroken by allusions to questions of the day, 
 and working up to a final presentation of conclusions ; but the need 
 seemed to me urgent, and both time and opportunity for more 
 thorough research were alike lacking. I therefore gladly embraced 
 the offer of my friend, Lieut-Colonel Alsager Pollock, Editor of 
 the United Service Magazine, to contribute my ideas in monthly 
 letters to his pages, and now beg to return him my sincerest thanks 
 for the chance thus afforded to me of laying my views before the 
 public. As they stand they are necessarily incomplete and im- 
 perfect, but I trust they will suffice to show something of the field 
 for research and scientific investigation the study of military history, 
 as a path to the exercise of command — which is strategy — discloses, 
 and thus to entice some of the really strong intellects of the Army 
 into its pursuit. 
 
 That the Army always has attracted such men, and in con- 
 siderable numbers, is sufficiently demonstrated by the numbers of 
 ex-soldiers who have achieved exceptional eminence as engineers, 
 scientists, mathematicians, organisers of labour, etc. The misfortune 
 has been that it has not known how to retain them ; and the reason 
 I submit in explanation of the fact, I have derived from the study 
 of several typical cases. 
 
 I have found that the scientific habit of mind simply recoiled from 
 the empirical form in which all military subjects have been presented. 
 It has always been a question of opinion, never of observed fact, 
 and the class of mind which can really grasp and handle the 
 aggregates of facts and figures with which military history deals. 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 is disgusted with a subject that gives no scope for the exercise of 
 their faculties. Finding no outlet here for their energies, they have 
 turned aside to bridge-building, irrigation, astronomy, or quaternions, 
 often with most conspicuous success for themselves, but loss to the 
 country. But had it been made clear to them, as in the Prussian 
 school, that the Art of Strategy is based on the sciences of 
 organisation and tactics, both of which are essentially subjects for 
 the exercise of the highest order of mathematical ability, and, 
 above all, had there been the slightest indication twenty years ago 
 that such intellectual exercise would have met with the slightest 
 recognition, whilst our scientific lists might have been the poorer 
 by several eminent names, the Army would have been out of all 
 proportion more efficient, and the nation so much the stronger. 
 
 That generation is, I fear, lost to us ; but as the work of 
 reorganisation goes on, and when at length the great cycle of War 
 breaks over us, our generals and politicians, I feel assured, will find 
 out the danger of relying on empirism as opposed to scientific 
 method so vividly, that the demand for the true mathematician will 
 soon exceed the supply, and the men who by organised scientific 
 method can help our generals to secure ultimate victory, will find 
 themselves the recipients of the empire's most substantial rewards. 
 
 If by these pages I succeed in attracting only a few of the 
 rising generation who, to my knowledge, exist in quite adequate 
 numbers at Chatham and Woolwich, to take up these subjects in 
 the spirit and with the thoroughness they deserve, I shall have 
 amply attained my object, and any assistance I can give them I 
 will most freely place at their disposal. 
 
 F. N. MAUDE, 
 Lieut-Colonel^ P.S.C.j late R.E, 
 February 6, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introductory. 
 
 Great difficulty in the study of strategy due to the use of terms which denote variable 
 quantities not concrete things — Study of "the struggle for existence," i.e. War 
 on the Continent — The French Revolution originated the "Nation in Arms" 
 — Conditions of the coming struggle — Origin of protective tariflfs — Our present 
 danger — A land army only can decide — War and the labour market — Given 
 men the Army will evolve itself — Example, the American Civil War, 1862-64 
 — Need of intelligent obedience — Waterloo — Our bed-rock qualities — Ignorance 
 of the consequences of defeat — Derrecagaix and Clausewitz's views on War — 
 The use of force is absolute — Philanthropy in War a pernicious error — War 
 indemnities — Effect on capital — On workmen — Surrender means national star- 
 vation, worse than the sufferings caused by War — Function of the "Volunteers " 
 — The Parisian Commune — The food question — Influence of our officers — 
 Dependent on custom and habit — Numbers in War — Discipline and its sanction 
 — Effect of national ignorance of War in the past — Influence of the " Volun- 
 teers " not " political " — Numbers, not efficiency, our chief need — Effect of 
 national ignorance on operations in the Boer War 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The British public and the British subaltern — The differences of conditions under 
 which civilians and soldiers work — The cause of routine — Simplicity of military 
 conditions three centuries ago — Origin of military terms — Hard fighting, not 
 manoeuvring, the primary condition of success — The early Militia levies had no 
 communications — Origin of standing armies — Use of armour and consequent 
 slowness of motion and growth of impedimenta — The Thirty Years' War — 
 Armour is abandoned — Increase of manoeuvring power — Death of Gustavus 
 Adolphus — Desolation of country paralyses all army movements — Influence of 
 mercenaries — Contrast the soldiers of Cromwell — Origin of the *' laws of War " 
 — Expediency not humanity — Dissolution of armies at close of the Thirty 
 Years' War — Cause of Wars in the eighteenth century— Nature of armies — 
 Origin of term "strategy" — Marlborough and the ne plus ultra lines — His 
 real claim to our admiration — Influence of French literature — Frederick the 
 Great and Napoleon — Their power of command — Defence of the British officer 
 — His intelligence revolts at the teaching provided for him . . . .15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Marlborough's march to the Danube ; a violation of established rule, but the act of 
 a genius in War — Forging of the Prussian Army — Its influence on the conduct 
 of operations — Contrast between the topography of the Netherlands and Silesia 
 — Origin of the "magazine system" — Cost of enlistment and training of the 
 soldiers — Frederick's Wars not sufficiently studied in England — Skill of our 
 generals in "small Wars" — The chief obstacles to a leader's success — Gradual 
 change in Frederick's methods — Result on military thought — The school of 
 manceuvrers — Poverty of Prussia — Consequences for the army — The "foreigners'* 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 paCr 
 and " Landeskinder " — * Barry Lyndon ' — Codes of punishment — Limits of 
 discipline — Desertion — These conditions common to all contemporary armies 
 — Result when opposed to the French Revolutionary Armies — Influence of 
 "starvation" as a "driving force" — Internal condition of France, 1790 — 
 Creation of the new French Army — Their mobility, and its consequence when 
 opposed to the slow moving forces of the Allies — Comparison with the Boer 
 War — Origin of '* cordon system " — Object of present chapter — Difficulties 
 created by our present system .25 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The French Army from 1792-1796. 
 
 Importance of the study of French memoirs of the Revolutionary period to British 
 officers — The code of punishment in the armies of the Revolution — State of the 
 Army of Italy when Napoleon assumed command — The campaign of 1796 in 
 Italy — The five plans for its conduct — Positions occupied on Napoleon's arrival 
 at Nice — The Austrian Army and its inherent weakness • • • • 33 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Bonaparte's instructions from the Directory — The Austrians assume the offensive — 
 Combat of Monte Legino — Bonaparte issues his orders — His generals obey 
 to the letter — Defeat and rout of d'Argenteau — Provera at Cosseria — Beaulieu 
 receives news of Argenteau's defeat — Wukassovitch's detachment and his 
 unfortunate mistake — French discipline breaks down at Dego — Bonaparte 
 rallies his troops and retakes Dego — Beaulieu's continued inaction — Bonaparte 
 turns on the Sardinians — Ceva — The Biccogna — Critical situation of the French 
 — Colli withdraws from his entrenched position — Criticism — "Interior lines" 
 — Willisen's definition of " strategy " — Bonaparte's best sources of supply — 
 Clausewitz's views on "retaining" forces — Application to situation before Dego 
 — Napoleon's true merit 42 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Moreau and the Archduke Charles in Germany, 1796 — The Archduke's limitations 
 compared with Napoleon — ^Jomini and the French plan of campaign — Real 
 nature of the miscalculation of the French Government — "Exterior lines of 
 operations" — The campaign of Marengo — Bonaparte's preparations — The 
 "Army of Reserve" — Concentration on Geneva — Comparison with modern 
 conditions of transport — Sea-power — The object of national armaments — Bona- 
 parte's feverish energy — What is an "army" — Comparison between 1800 and 
 1870 — Did Bonaparte originate the idea of using Switzerland as a "re-entrant 
 base" — Physical difficulties of the march over the Alps compared with modern 
 exploits — Value of the St. Gotthard as a line of communications — Suggested 
 War game — The Austrian collapse after Marengo 52 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Campaign of Ulm, 1805. 
 
 Advantages of a re-entering frontier — The works of MAL Alombert and Colin — 
 The Grand Army — Napoleon's supreme influence over it — The Staff — Pro- 
 portion of veterans — The Hussars — The discipline of the infantry — Age of the 
 officers — Instruction at the depots — The artillery and engineers — Horse supply 
 — Inadequacy of transport arrangements — Terrible weather encountered — 
 Sufferings of the troops— Even Vandamme complains— Marmont's letters — 
 Berthier's reply — Hunger as an incentive to marching — Davout's letters — 
 Condition of the Guard — Captain Bugeaud's testimony — Fezensac's description 
 of the hardships — Napoleon's letter to Luchesini — His "strategical deploy- 
 ment " — Importance of Wiirzburg — Navigation of the Main — Bamberg — Berna- 
 dotte's march from Gottingen to Frankfurt — Consequent delay of Davout's 
 corps — Feeling against the French in Hannover .,.,,. 63 
 
CONTENTS, XV 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Campaign of Ulm, 1805 {continued). 
 
 PAGE 
 
 State of French Army on arrival on the Rhine— Comparison with 1870 — The 
 Austrian Army — Its commanders — General Mack — His reforms — The requisi- 
 tion system — Its effects — Progress of the campaign — Mack's reason for pressing 
 on to Ulm — French violation of Prussian neutrality — Mack's views — His 
 mistakes — Reorganisation of his army — Mack's opportunity — He believes the 
 French in full retreat — Secrecy and despondency in War — loth October — 
 French Stafif blunders — 14th October — Elchingen — Conduct of the Archduke 
 — State of the roads prohibits rapid movement— Wemeck's surrender — Mack's 
 unfortunate faith in Russian promises 74 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Poland and East Prussia : influence of their topography on Napoleon's movements 
 — The "magazine system" again — The Russian Armies — Eylau and Friedland 
 — Introduction of the case-shot preparation by. '* massed " batteries — The effect 
 of this innovation on strategy — Spain and Portugal — The British system of 
 supply — The Duke of Wellington's merit as a *' strategist" — The campaign of 
 1814 — Its interest rather diplomatic than military — Bar sur Aube — Sezanne — 
 The question of obstacles — ' Hamley ' — Practice in the writing of orders — Intelli- 
 gent confidence in one's leaders — Character and initiative — Waterloo : the 
 cause of Napoleon's failure 85 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Influence of the Napoleonic legend — His memoirs — The St. Gotthard Pass— 
 Wiirsburg — Essential cause of Napoleon's failure — Military reform in Prussia — 
 Scharnhorst — Clausewitz— His training — The permanent value of his work — 
 War, the "struggle for the survival of the fittest" — Frederick's system 
 compared with the French school — Clausewitz's purpose to train average men 
 for the responsibilities of high command — He was the first to introduce 
 "scientific method" into military research — Influence of short service — Com- 
 petitive examinations — Continuity of tradition — The Prussian General Staff"— 
 Influence of " mobility " — The study of military history .... 95 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Effect of alterations in armament on strategy — The " case-shot " attack — Becomes 
 impossible in America against long-range small arms — The consequences 
 disastrous to the Federals — Richmond as an "objective " — The Austro- Prussian 
 campaign of 1866 — The Franco-German War — French fail to make use of the 
 advantages of their new infantry weapon — Fatal influence of Marshal Niel's 
 views — Napoleon III.'s reliance on Austrian and Italian assistance — The new 
 French official account — German comments — Critical moment in the strategical 
 deployment of the German armies — Want of "driving energy" in the French 
 Army — Comparison with 1800 and 1805 — Breach of continuity in warlike 
 tradition — Effect of rumours on French staff— Lorrach and Duttweiler — Absence 
 of maps on the French side — Transport and supply — Result of requisitioning — 
 Commencement of hostilities before declaration of War .... 104 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Moltke's memoir of 1869 — Influence of universal service on the temper of the 
 German nation — Absence of confidence of the French nation in its leaders — 
 German miscalculations — Errors in execution of Moltke's deployment — The 
 Crown Prince and Von Blumenthal — Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles — 
 Events take the supreme direction out of Moltke's hands — The German armies 
 "fight themselves" — " Readiness to assume responsibility " the secret of their 
 success — Want of this readiness on the French side — The crisis of Gravelotte — 
 Result of Clausewitz's teaching — The Boer War and political considerations . 114 
 
xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The object of military education — The "spirit of the age" — Influence of numbers 
 on degree of literal obedience required — The true purpose of our armaments — 
 The "strategy" of the eighteenth century doomed — Influence of superior 
 mobility — Steps necessary to secure it — The training of infantry to spade work 
 — Improved means of transport on roads — Supply of provisions — Co-operation 
 of business men — Our danger in War-time from the "unemployed" — The 
 dangers from the Press — How to combat them — The purpose of a Great General 
 Staff— Importance of training in the writing of orders— Decentralisation and its 
 safe limits — Concluding reflections . . . . . . . .124 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN 
 STRATEGY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Introductory. 
 
 Great difficulty in the study of strategy due to the use of terms which denote variable 
 quantities not concrete things — Study of " the struggle for existence," i.e. War on 
 the Continent — The French Revolution originated the "Nation in Arms" — Con- 
 ditions of the coming struggle— Origin of protective tariffs — Our present danger — 
 A land army only can decide — War and the labour market — Given men the Army 
 will evolve itself — Example, the American Civil War, 1862-64 — Need of intelligent 
 obedience — Waterloo — Our bed-rock qualities — Ignorance pf the consequences of 
 defeat — Derrecagaix and Clausewitz's views on War — The use of force is absolute — 
 Philanthrophy in War a pernicious error — War indemnities — Effect on capital — On 
 workmen — Surrender means national starvation, worse than the sufferings caused by 
 War— Function of the "Volunteers " — The Parisian Commune — The food question — 
 Influence of our officers — Dependent on custom and habit — Numbers in War — 
 Discipline and its sanction — Effect of national ignorance of War in the past — Influence 
 of the "Volunteers" not "political" — Numbers, not efficiency, our chief need — 
 Effect of national ignorance on operations in the Boer War. 
 
 The great stumbling-block in the path of the would-be student of 
 strategy arises out of the fact that whereas books and treatises 
 invariably use expressions which are intended to convey definite 
 concrete conceptions, such as "armies," "infantry," "cavalry," etc., 
 none of these " things " are in fact " constant quantities," but repre- 
 sent " variable " measures of fighting magnitude, changing daily, 
 even hourly in value, and often according to no known law which 
 might enable their commander to anticipate and hence provide 
 means to meet their variation. 
 
 Were it otherwise, if for instance an army of say 200,000 fighting- 
 men always represented a fixed number of units of fighting-work, 
 neither more nor less, how infinitely simple all strategical combina- 
 tions would become. There is not a militia candidate who could 
 not tell you, and rightly too, what Napoleon should have done in 
 the Waterloo campaign to ensure a crushing numerical superiority 
 over Wellington on the battlefield of the i8th June, and the same 
 holds true of hundreds of other instances, in which, nevertheless, 
 
 B 
 

 ' ^^2^ WiiU^ 'evolution of modern strategy. 
 
 War-trained leaders of acknowledged capacity have failed to bring 
 off combinations which appear to us now, by the light of subsequent 
 knowledge, to have needed but the simplest exercise of their arith- 
 metical faculties, involving purely elementary efforts of addition and 
 subtraction, to find the required result. 
 
 If, then, we find the greatest captains of all ages constantly 
 making these astounding mistakes, the inference lies not far away 
 that far deeper and more recondite causes than mere numerical 
 relations, or even the distribution of masses in time and space, 
 exist to disturb their calculations, and it is to the determination of 
 these sources of error that the military thinkers of all Continental 
 armies are at present devoting their time and attention. 
 
 Of this great movement, we in England know but very little. 
 The conditions under which our many minor campaigns have been 
 waged, the freedom of our nation as a whole from the pressure of 
 foreign invasion, have combined to obscure the true nature of a 
 modern " struggle for existence " between two great races from our 
 statesmen, pressmen, and soldiers, to such an extent, that but for our 
 naval supremacy our existence as a nation would not be worth six 
 weeks purchase against any one of the four great land powers of 
 Europe, could they bring their forces to bear upon us. 
 
 This assertion contains no reflection either on the courage, skill 
 at arms, or intelligence of our men or officers, on the contrary, on 
 all these points I am an optimist, and believe our men markedly 
 superior as fighting units to those of any other race, and know of 
 nothing in military history to disturb my opinion ; but even if we 
 could meet our enemies corps for corps and unit for unit, I still hold 
 that our defeat would be certain, simply because we have not yet 
 begun to realise the change that has come over Warfare, not as a 
 consequence of modern weapons of destruction, but of the social 
 upheaval initiated on the Continent by the French Revolution, of 
 which improved armaments, increased commercial competition, and 
 all the latter implies are themselves but consequences. 
 
 The French Revolution introduced a new factor into strategy, 
 viz. the conception of a "Nation in Arms," and crude as the 
 execution of this conception actually was, its pressure sufficed to 
 forge and weld the scattered provinces of Germany and Austria in 
 turn into nations, which year by year have grown and thriven till, 
 in spite of many vicissitudes, each nation has become a coherent 
 entity, and in each " the army is the nation," or vice versd^ so that 
 each constituent unit in the nation has its place in the fighting 
 organisation, and is pledged to bear its part in the great " struggle 
 for national existence," whenever it may happen to break out. 
 
 From this process of concretion, still in progress in many parts 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 3 
 
 of Europe, but practically completed in France and Germany, we 
 escaped by reason of our insular position, and the consequences are 
 evident in every line of every utterance, written or spoken of our 
 statesmen, our soldiers, and particularly of our press, almost all of 
 whom still use the time-worn terminology of the eighteenth century 
 unconscious of the profound change in signification these phrases 
 have undergone, so that the nation, as a whole, remains in a fool's 
 paradise, supremely unconscious of the nature and magnitude of 
 the struggle for survival, it must sooner or later be called upon to 
 face. 
 
 A short digression is here inevitable to trace the future as I see 
 it, and which I contend we must be prepared to face. 
 
 Every great power has long since outgrown the capacity of its 
 own soil to furnish the amount and quality of sustenance each con- 
 stituent individual, which in their aggregate make up a " Power," 
 has learnt to consider indispensable, hence, each power has thrust 
 out trade tentacles to suck up and bring into the central organism 
 the commodities of which it stands in need. They can no longer 
 supply themselves by plunder, but have to do so by means of trade, 
 and trade implies manufacturing industries on a scale not only 
 adequate to supply internal needs, but to leave a large and cheap 
 surplus for exportation. 
 
 But everywhere these powers find that we have been beforehand 
 with them, and to protect themselves they have been forced to erect 
 prohibitive tariffs, under shelter of which they have been enabled to 
 undersell us in what we have hitherto considered as our own 
 markets. In turn, we, tired of being made the " dumping ground " 
 for other nations' surplus products, and having our hands tied by 
 the fatuous imbecility of our free trade fanatics, are now com- 
 pelled to revolutionise our fiscal policy, and thus to bring ourselves 
 into collision with what are now vested interests all over the 
 world. 
 
 It seems to me, that whatever view our electors may take of the 
 question about to be submitted to them, the seeds of War have been 
 already sown ; if Mr. Chamberlain's proposals are accepted, the 
 Continent will not take them sitting, and if they are rejected, it will 
 only be a very short time before our own people fight for free 
 markets as they fought the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the French 
 before. 
 
 No doubt the actual issue will not present itself with this brutal 
 directness ; but as pressure of competition is more and more 
 brought home to all peoples, the temperature of the masses will rise, 
 recent events have shown it to be pretty high already, then will 
 occur friction at some frontier post or port, some insult to the flag 
 
4 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 or our sovereign, that will fan the heat to boihng point, and the 
 pent-up forces of national enmity which are daily gathering 
 strength as each British industry goes under, will flash out beyond 
 the control of the Governments, and before diplomacy can step in, 
 the whole force of the explosion will be upon us.* 
 
 Whenever and wherever it may overtake us, one thing remains 
 a reasonable certainty, the final decision, the knockout blow, can 
 only be given by the shock of land forces, for the reason the Sultan 
 of Turkey neatly expressed in the remark that " Ironclads cannot 
 climb hills." f No nation, least of all ours, possesses patience 
 enough to endure the strain War must place on industry, till 
 starvation does its slow and relentless work, and since the command 
 of the sea will almost certainly after a time fall to us, we shall have 
 to go to the Continent to reap the harvest our fleets will have sown. 
 The details of such a struggle are too long for a mere intro- 
 ductory chapter ; but I base my predictions on the facts that our 
 racial cohesion is stronger than that of any other nation on the 
 Continent, by reason of our geographical position, which gave us two 
 hundred years' start in the race : our wealth and credit is markedly 
 superior, and our resources for both manning and building fleets, 
 taking the whole Empire and the shipyards of America into con- 
 sideration, must give us command of the sea in the long run, for 
 even if all our ironclads go to the bottom of the sea in the first 
 great encounters, they will not go alone, and once they are all out 
 of the way, any ship that can carry a few brave men, and a couple 
 of quick-firers, even 15-pounders, will become a fighting-ship from 
 sheer force of necessity, and then our enormous numerical strength 
 in such vessels will soon begin to tell, even as it did in the past. 
 
 Then will come the time for the land forces, and since, to meet 
 the strain on the labour market, and secure an equitable system for 
 the distribution of such food as remains at our disposal, we shall 
 have to enrol in one form or another upwards of three million men, 
 we shall easily be able to raise a first line fighting army of say 
 one and a half million to send abroad if necessary. 
 
 This effort may sound gigantic, and many of my readers no doubt 
 will hold their breath at the very idea ; but it will still be relatively 
 small compared to what we actually accomplished only a century 
 ago, and smaller too than what both the Americans and French 
 achieved, the former in 1862-66, the latter in 1792 and 1870 
 respectively, neither possessing at the time anything approaching 
 the same military resources that we at present control. 
 
 Once we get the men, the army will make itself; but the 
 
 * Written two years before the "North Sea" incident. 
 
 t On the occasion of our naval demonstration at Dulcigno, 1880. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 5 
 
 degree of success which will attend its first efforts will depend on 
 the average of sound military knowledge which it will be possible 
 to disseminate throughout the nation during the time of prepara- 
 tion which may still be left to us. 
 
 The great object lessons for us to study in this respect are the 
 American Civil War, above referred to, and the story of the French 
 Revolution, for nowhere else can we find examples both of what 
 nations can do with sufficient driving power behind them, or of the 
 awful cost in men and suffering the Warfare of untrained masses 
 involves, as a consequence of want of military knowledge. No 
 skill on the part of the leader can compensate for the evils of this 
 ignorance, for until men have been educated to yield intelligent, 
 not merely willing, obedience, it is impossible to combine their 
 efforts on any one spot ; and in the absence of this power of 
 combination. War becomes merely a matter of mutual butchery, 
 from which the side whose men will face the bloody slaughter 
 without panic reaction — not the most numerous army by any means, 
 as our experience in India long since sufficiently established — 
 will in the long run emerge victorious. This quality the British 
 race undeniably possesses in the highest degree, for whether raw 
 soldiers, half or fully trained, they have proved themselves never 
 more dangerous than when by all the rules of the game they 
 should have been defeated. 
 
 This is no mere opinion, founded on the patriotic brag which 
 too often disfigures all military history, our own as well as those 
 of other nations, but results from a careful consideration of our 
 records from the earliest times downward ; but a word of amplifica- 
 tion is necessary to prevent the idea being applied too literally. 
 It is not meant that British troops are invincible or have never 
 given way to panic — we have had panics enough and defeats 
 likewise, but generally, and taking all circumstances of each case 
 into consideration, a greater percentage of our men have rallied 
 afterwards, within less time than observers of other nations 
 believed to be possible, and the consequences of such incidents 
 have remained more local than in other armies. Since the same 
 tendency asserts itself equally in the disasters and panics of civil 
 life, whether on foundering ships or in theatre fires, the presumption 
 is strong that it is primarily a racial characteristic and not the 
 consequence of any particular system of military enlistment or 
 training. 
 
 Moreover, taken in the bulk, our men, though never repre- 
 sentative of the average national intelligence in the same degree 
 as the armies of other nations — the French from 1 792-1 806, or the 
 Germans from 18 13-15, and again in 1866 and 1870 for instance 
 
6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 — have always shown a capacity to rise to the occasion and to 
 understand the importance of the stakes for which they have been 
 fighting. Often they have gone into action in a spirit of almost 
 indecent light-heartedness, as if War were merely a glorified form 
 of sport ; but when the fate of the Empire has been dependent 
 on their prowess, they have felt it out as if by instinct, and 
 astonished their own officers by their staunchness. 
 
 This is what an old Peninsular veteran * says of them in 
 describing the final struggle of Waterloo, of which he was himself 
 an eye-witness. 
 
 " There was plenty of despondency and want of confidence as to 
 results in the army on the evening of the battle of Waterloo ; but 
 it never shook :-the resolution of the men. On the contrary, it 
 brought on that stubborn and resolved kind of fierceness that, after 
 any desperate and protracted resistance, seizes on the minds of 
 British soldiers, and makes them callous to all but the desire of 
 destroying their enemies. On ordinary occasions, when soldiers 
 assist their wounded officers or comrades to the rear, they return, 
 when they do return at all, leisurely enough ; but at Waterloo 
 many of them refused to quit the ranks, and others actually left 
 wounded officers in the road and then returned to their posts." 
 Yet this army was only half War trained, and far inferior as a 
 sample of the character and intelligence of the race to the one we 
 shall put in the field when next the occasion arises. Is it anticipating 
 too much to suggest that they will not fail us in the future either } 
 
 These are the bed-rock qualities which ultimately decide the 
 fate of nations ; though they cannot avert defeat, they are a 
 guarantee of recuperation, and though I do not hesitate to 
 prophecy defeats as bloody as those of Gettysburg, the Wilder- 
 ness, and Cold Harbour, I am convinced that the same strain in 
 the blood that brought both Federals and Southerners to face 
 the same chances of slaughter again and again after the battles 
 I have named, will enable us to revise both our tactics and strategy 
 in face of the enemy, only the number of such defeats and the 
 cumulative misery of the nation will be in precise proportion to 
 the intelligence we now show in preparing in advance for this, 
 probably, final effort, for final it will be as regards the British 
 Empire if we allow the War to end on any but our own terms. 
 
 To my mind, this ignorance of the inevitable consequences of 
 defeat is at present our gravest danger, and is directly traceable to 
 our want of national military training by which we have been left 
 a century behind the rest of Europe in the knowledge of what 
 War really is. The French paid the price of such ignorance thirty 
 
 * Major-General Michel, 'Thoughts on Modern Tactics.' 1839. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 7 
 
 years ago, and it will be interesting here to cite the words of one 
 of their ablest writers * on this very head, since every word of it 
 applies with twofold force to our own case, for our ignorance has 
 had a couple of centuries in which to solidify and accrete. 
 
 "This state of things is the graver from the fact that the 
 normal idea of the rights of States is obscured by the proceedings 
 of the War of 1870, by the brutal maxim thrown then in the face of 
 the world, might is superior to right, which seems to have become 
 the only law recognised in international relations. It is more than 
 ever necessary then to know what War is, and what we as French- 
 men ought to expect from this act of force and violence." 
 
 Then follows a recapitulation of the current ideas on Inter- 
 national Military Law, much as the eighteenth century left them, 
 and as we still accept them, which are contrasted with the views 
 in vogue in Germany in the following forcible passages. 
 
 " The opinions which follow were expressed by Clausewitz at the 
 beginning of the century.f They constitute the foundation of the 
 convictions held by the German officers, and this fact of itself obliges 
 us to recognise their force in our turn, under penalty of being one 
 day exposed to a cruel and terrible awakening from our delusions. 
 
 "Moreover, they have a practical side, to which we cannot 
 close our eyes, and with which each of us ought henceforth to 
 be thoroughly imbued, if he wishes to be prepared for the re- 
 quirements of the future. 
 
 " War is a duel between nations. 
 
 " It is an act of violence as natural and as legitimate as all other 
 acts resulting from international relationship, such as those per- 
 taining to commerce, industry, etc. 
 
 " It is an act which exalts the people which successfully engages 
 in it. 
 
 " War has only one aim — to overthrow the enemy and render 
 him incapable of continuing resistance. 
 
 " Under another aspect, it should destroy his will, and make it 
 submissive to ours by the annihilation of his moral power. But in 
 order to impose a law upon the enemy, it is essential to render him 
 incapable of defending himself. 
 
 " War has but one means of action : force. No other exists. 
 Its exercise should be manifested only by death, wounds and 
 destruction. 
 
 " Moral force should serve only to render the employment of 
 physical force more efficacious. 
 
 * Colonel Derrecagaix. Part I. * Modern War,' p. 23. American translation. 
 t Colonel Derrecagaix omits to say that they were deduced by Clausewitz from 
 personal observation of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic practice. 
 
8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 " The use of force in War is absolute. 
 
 " It is an error to believe in other modes of action. 
 
 " For armies, ordinary rights place but an insignificant restraint 
 upon the aims and rights of War. 
 
 '' These ordinajj rights should never be permitted to weaken its 
 energy. 
 
 ''Every idea of philanthropy in War is a most pernicious error, 
 
 "He who uses physical force to its fullest extent, without 
 sparing blood, will always acquire superiority over an adversary 
 who does not act in the same way, and will impose his law upon 
 the latter. 
 
 " To introduce a principle of moderation into the philosophy of 
 War, is to commit an absurdity. 
 
 " If civilised nations do not slay their prisoners, nor destroy 
 cities and villages, etc., it is not through humanity ; it is because 
 intelligence has more part in War than formerly. 
 
 '' Civilisation has developed this intelligence, and has revealed 
 to them a better use of force ; that is to say, by contributions 
 raised from the enemy y a?id the treaties he is forced to conclude, victory 
 is made to yield a greater profit. 
 
 " War is an act of violence in the employment of which there 
 are no limits. 
 
 " The operating powers in War are force of will and the material 
 resources at disposal. 
 
 "In order to conquer, these forces must be strained to the 
 uttermost. 
 
 " Such are the utterances of Clausewitz — of that remarkable 
 man whom the Germans with reason call their immortal Clausewitz, 
 but whom they reproach with having introduced a little too much 
 poetry into his ' Treatise on War.' " 
 
 The sting of this passage lies for us in the words " by the 
 contributions raised from the enemy and the treaties he is forced 
 to conclude." 
 
 Judging by the contribution levied on France in 1871, one 
 thousand million sterling would not be an exorbitant demand to 
 make upon us, and we may be sure that steps would not be 
 neglected to hinder the re-creation of our maritime supremacy — on 
 the lines suggested by Napoleon's limitation of the numbers of the 
 Prussian Army after Jena, but far more difficult to evade than the 
 former. You cannot build ironclads in secrecy — and shorn of our 
 Navy, with the load both of indemnity and the expenses of the 
 War, probably by direct and indirect losses not less than another 
 1000 millions, what prospect of resurrection could even the most 
 hopeful patriot discern ? 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, g 
 
 We could not raise 2000 million at 3^ per cent. ; even 6 per cent 
 seems moderate ; and what margin of profit would remain to our 
 manufacturers with another 120 million of taxation added to the 
 burdens under which they already complain ? 
 
 Capital, having no country, would seek more favourable con- 
 ditions, but could our workmen follow it ? Would any nation, even 
 the most patriotic of our colonies, welcome the irruption of some 
 six to eight million of our artisans with their wives and families, 
 even if the money is forthcoming to move them ? Judging by the 
 tendency of recent legislation in Australia, the answer must be 
 in the negative, for human nature remains much the same every- 
 where, and no democratic Government has yet arisen strong enough 
 to see where its true interest lies. 
 
 The best men undoubtedly would go ; but what of the less fit 
 who remained behind } There would ensue an intensified struggle 
 for the survival of the individual, a prolonged agony of partial 
 starvation to which the worst that War could bring would be but 
 child-play, for in War at least the sense of community in suffering 
 is an enormous alleviation, but in peace, and particularly after such 
 a peace, when the ablest have gone, and the whole nation is sick 
 with shame at its own cowardice and want of endurance, there is no 
 one to control the people who are left to the mercy of the most rabid 
 demagogues. 
 
 We see the consequences of industrial failure relentlessly 
 working out to their logical conclusion in Ireland nowadays, and 
 having lived in two conquered countries and seen famine at 
 close quarters in India, I venture to predict, making due allowance 
 for the peculiar racial individuality of our own country, that our 
 dying agony will be more awful and appalling than that of any race 
 in history. " Every one for himself, and the devil take the hind- 
 most," is an excellent motto for material prosperity when wages are 
 high and work plentiful, but it means " hell " when real privation 
 approaches, and neither caste, family aff'ection, or even serious 
 religion, is left to distribute the load of calamity over many pairs of 
 shoulders. 
 
 Here, at least, is a field for work in which all who hope for 
 military efficiency can join without prejudice as to the ultimate 
 form which it may take — for until this bed-rock foundation is reached 
 neither Navy or Army can protect us. We must be clear in our 
 own minds that •' surrender " means an intensification long drawn 
 out of the worst that War can bring. It will be easy enough to 
 obtain recognition for this truth now, whilst we still have peace, 
 and we can at least make it flesh and bone of all the thousands 
 who yearly, in one capacity or the other, pass through the ranks 
 
10 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 — if only of the Volunteers ; but with hundreds of thousands of 
 starving workmen in the street, a Government judged to be incom- 
 petent because the inevitable has at last come to pass, and the 
 floodgates of demagogic eloquence and press hysteria fairly opened, 
 it will be a very different task. 
 
 I would earnestly implore my readers to study for themselves 
 the whole history of the outbreak of the Commune in Paris, and 
 note the closeness of resemblance in the conditions of the two 
 problems. For a time we shall be as a beleagured city — enormous 
 prices and no wages — like every other beleaguered city we shall have 
 to find work for the many without pauperising them. The 
 Parisians were successful for a time, as theirs was a visible enemy 
 close at hand, whose presence demanded labour on the fortifications 
 and service in the ranks, but we shall have no visible enemy, only 
 the clamour of the mob howling for that " surrender " which in their 
 ignorance they believe will give them bread. 
 
 The two Royal Commissions now sitting — the one on Food 
 Supply, the other on the Militia and Volunteers — have a glorious 
 opportunity if they have Statesmanship to rise to it. For the 
 solution of the latter problem carries with it the solution of the 
 former, if only the matter be taken in time.* 
 
 There is food enough in the country, and there always will be ; 
 for all the navies in Europe could not establish an effective blockade 
 of these islands without suffering losses in collision with our own, 
 which, even if they were victorious, would send all their ships into 
 dock for months ; the difficulty lies in its distribution, and the 
 solution of that, as I have already stated, lies in the enrolment of 
 every able-bodied man — in the auxiliary forces first, so as to give 
 each a vested interest in the established Government which alone 
 guarantees him food for himself and family. These men, being 
 provided for from day to day, whilst they will have no sufficient 
 incentive to prolong the duration of the struggle like the old time 
 " Condottiere," will at least have time to look about them, and 
 decide where their real interest lies. They will not be accessible 
 to the demagogue ranter, but will be directly under the influence 
 of the bom leaders of the people, i.e., the fighting families of the 
 race, who, generation after generation, have upheld the honour of the 
 country in every quarter of the globe, and which by natural selection 
 have differentiated out into a "caste" almost as well defined as 
 the "Khsytrias" of Hindustan. These men may be as intellectu- 
 ally inferior as our literary authorities represent them, but at least 
 "National Surrender" is a conception not to be found in their 
 vocabulary, and in their presence the thought will never even arise. 
 
 ^* Written in November, 1903. Needless to say, they did not rise to it. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, ii 
 
 People do not realise the enormous power an officer can still 
 exercise without even opening his mouth. Provided he possesses 
 anything of the inborn power of command common to most of his 
 class — his mere presence will hold and control a whole mass of 
 sedition. His uniform (provided it is not khaki) embodies the 
 whole fighting traditions of the race, and the fighting spirit is still 
 the strongest element in human nature. 
 
 But the power grows with habit and custom, and the greater 
 the numbers prepared in peace to submit to its influence, the less 
 dilution will it suffer when under pressure of War, the ranks are 
 crowded with fresh recruits ; hence, numbers enrolled in peace, 
 not efficiency, is the point to aim at, for with the collective esprit 
 de corps numbers alone can guarantee, discipline sufficient to secure 
 tactical efficiency can be soon achieved. But with weak cadres and 
 high peace efficiency, the influx of men will so lower the standard 
 of possible discipline, that efficiency may never be attained at all, or 
 only at the cost of discontent and latent insubordination which will 
 hand the whole body over to the mercy of the radical agitators. 
 
 All this may appear at first sight to have no practical bearing 
 on " Strategy," but on closer inspection I think it will be found to 
 lie at the foundation of the whole question. 
 
 Numbers alone in War count for little ; men must be educated, 
 as pointed out above, to yield intelligent obedience, but you 
 cannot educate without the power to enforce obedience ultimately 
 in the background. Nowadays this power comes solely from the 
 people ; hence, unless you have popular feeling on your side, it is 
 impossible to create the armies which form the raw material with 
 which the strategist works, and the strength of the popular feeling 
 supporting the general in the exercise of the disciplinary powers, 
 by which he tempers and adjusts the fighting-machine, is the one 
 dominating condition underlying his whole activity. 
 
 Our history gives abundant instances of the helplessness of the 
 bravest and most devoted troops when abandoned by the Govern- 
 ment, i.e. by the nation ; and France, America, and Germany all 
 show what armies, by no means of the best, can achieve with the 
 driving power of a great nation behind them. But there is this 
 essential difference between their position and ours. With them 
 the fighting lay within their frontiers, and actual contact with the 
 concrete visible consequences of War, stung them to resentment 
 and effort, so that the race was willing to submit to any curtail- 
 ment of personal liberty which was necessary to secure the 
 ejectment of the invader. We shall suffer famine and pestilence, 
 but there will be no burning homesteads, ravished women, and 
 murdered children to arouse the true fighting passions of the race, 
 
12 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 and history shows that it needs direct object lessons of this drastic 
 nature to raise patriotism in a peaceful population to a temperature 
 high enough to take the imprint of discipline and keep it amid 
 hunger, cold, and misery, in the bivouac, and under heat and burn- 
 ing thirst on the battlefield, when the shells are throwing great 
 fragments of warm, living flesh around, as at Spion Kop. 
 
 In other nations the sense of the need of submission to 
 discipline has become hereditary ; with us it has almost to be 
 recreated from the beginning, and the essential need of our 
 machinery is, to use a metaphor, a boiler in which to generate the 
 driving force of national opinion, and insure a pressure sufficient 
 to keep in motion against all friction the fighting forces, whether 
 land or sea, in face of the enemy. 
 
 This function the Volunteers fulfil almost in precise proportion 
 to the numbers which are at any moment present with the colours, 
 or have passed through the ranks. For they represent the largest 
 united voting power in the country ; they will have arms in 
 their hands, and may be trusted to resist "surrender" down 
 to the youngest drummer boy in the ranks, provided always, 
 as the lawyers say, their officers feel their responsibility and act 
 up to it. 
 
 This responsibility involves no interference in political fields, 
 indeed, it precludes it — all that is necessary is the courage and 
 determination to enforce law and order, for as long as law is 
 maintained there will be no necessity for the expression of opinion. 
 Surrender could only be enforced on a Government by fear of 
 revolutionary proceedings on the part of the mob howling for bread, 
 and if the mob-leaders knew there were a solid three million votes 
 to be cast against their policy they would not be likely to challenge 
 the issue. If the Government then in office were weak, dissolu- 
 tion would only bring in a stronger one, for the three million votes 
 against surrender would assuredly make themselves felt at the 
 polling booths, and the change of Government then could only be 
 for the better. 
 
 The essential point, it will be seen, turns upon numbers which 
 can be counted in the Volunteer ranks, not on efficiency which 
 cannot be measured by any peace time standard of War Office 
 design, for numbers are necessary to encourage the growth of that 
 Esprit de corps in existing formations to such an extent that the 
 inroad of fresh elements in War time will not swamp the un- 
 expressed, but latent will-power of the mass, which by habit is all 
 on the side of law and order. There must be weight enough in 
 the body to absorb the momentum of the fresh arrivals, and not 
 to be disintegrated by their impact. If this sufficient weight is 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 13 
 
 guaranteed, then continuity of War policy follows, and as a con- 
 sequence our strategists have something solid to build upon. 
 
 If, on the other hand, in the race after peace time efficiency we 
 lose the weight, our foundation is gone, and no well-considered 
 policy is possible, as recent events in South Africa have sufficiently 
 demonstrated. It is easy now to fling mud at the reputations of 
 our politicians and generals, but I would ask any one inclined to 
 criticise harshly, to put themselves first in their scapegoats' place 
 and ask what other course either could have adopted. The 
 poUtician could not promise the soldier troops till he knew whether 
 the country was behind him, and the soldier could make no plans 
 till he knew what material was available. 
 
 Had our politicians and soldiers studied " Strategy," which term 
 I use here in its ordinary accepted sense, they would never have 
 indulged in the campaign of mutual recrimination with which the 
 gaiety of Continental general staffs has been surfeited, but would 
 have held the position I have above indicated with even more than 
 Boer-like tenacity, nor can I see by what effort of logic they could 
 have been dislodged. I know, as a fact from private sources, that 
 some of the ablest thinkers in Germany actually did consider it 
 impregnable until the controversy began, and entertained as a 
 consequence a very high degree of respect for the apparent skill 
 our generals showed in "adapting the means at hand to the 
 attainment of the object in view." * Now, unfortunately, this 
 respect is no longer possible in the light of the revelations of the 
 War Commission, and by so much has the "prestige," i.e. the dread 
 of the unknown, and incalculable factors on which victory and 
 defeat depend, which for so long has stood between us and 
 foreign aggression, been diminished ; it may, therefore, be of 
 national service to show that automatically this British constitution, 
 which we have been told " is'not adapted to War," has evolved by 
 spontaneous growth a guarantee against a similar lack of driving 
 power when a really great national emergency again arises. 
 
 It ought to be matter of common knowledge, taught in every 
 Board School, that our enemies have for years counted on the 
 internal troubles, certain in their opinion to be evoked by War, to 
 destroy the continuity of our naval and military operations under- 
 taken in defence of the Empire, but that the action of natural 
 forces developed by free institutions has enabled the organism of 
 the State to adapt itself to its environment, and produce a counter- 
 poise to the threatening danger, which may be relied on to meet 
 the emergency precisely in proportion to the intelligent apprecia- 
 tion of its purpose, and the sense of duty which exists in each 
 
 * Moltke's * Definition of the Art of War.' 
 
14 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 individual unit of the nation. If this sense of duty is deficient, no 
 efforts of our generals or soldiers can save us, we shall take the 
 field with sawdust cartridges and brown-paper boot soles, and with 
 an insurgent population behind us, our fate will be settled before- 
 hand ; but if, on the other hand, Nelson's last signal was not 
 hoisted in vain, then we possess in our existing organisation the 
 guarantee of ultimate victory as certain now as it proved a century 
 ago. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The British public and the British subaltern — The diflferences of conditions under which 
 civilians and soldiers work — The cause of routine — Simplicity of military conditions 
 three centuries ago — Origin of military terms — Hard fighting, not manoeuvring, the 
 primary condition of success — The early Militia levies had no communications — 
 Origin of standing armies — Use of armour and consequent slowness of motion and 
 growth of impedimenta — The Thirty Years* War — Armour is abandoned — Increase 
 of manoeuvring power — Death of Gustavus Adolphus — Desolation of country 
 paralyses all army movements — Influence of mercenaries — Contrast the soldiers of 
 Cromwell — Origin of the '* laws of War " — Expediency not humanity — Dissolution 
 of armies at close of the Thirty Years' War — Cause of Wars in the eighteenth 
 century — Nature of armies — Origin of term "strategy" — Marlborough and the ne 
 plus tiltra lines — His real claim to our admiration — Influence of French literature 
 — Frederick the Great and Napoleon — Their power of command — Defence of the 
 British officer — His intelligence revolts at the teaching provided for him. 
 
 In the eyes of the British Public — at least judging by the kind of 
 literature (!) it paid the daily Press to publish during the recent 
 war in South Africa — the British subaltern is the most feckless, 
 idle, and stupid person in existence, an habitual shirker of his 
 work and duty ; the direct antitype of the conscientious, able, and 
 devoted young gentlemen who may be seen everyday journeying 
 into the city in carefully brushed tall hats and frock coats, the 
 future merchant princes of our happy Island. Without going into 
 the question of the ethical instinct of duty which leads to such a 
 disproportionate sacrifice of life amongst the juniors in all our 
 little expeditions — one is tempted to ask why it is that these 
 young men, all of them the survivors in an intellectual struggle 
 many times harder than any the average business men are called 
 on to undergo, should so suddenly collapse the moment the strain 
 upon them is relaxed and they become commissioned officers in 
 His Majesty's Army, assuming for the moment that this collapse 
 actually happens. 
 
 In everyday civil life the conditions of a man's occupation are 
 continuous, the duties he performs to-day remain substantially the 
 same to-morrow and the next day, and any marked deviation from 
 the prescribed order of conduct brings its own punishment, often 
 with startling rapidity. If a young doctor mixes a few drachms of 
 arsenic in a prescription by carelessly taking up a wrong bottle, the 
 
i6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 patient's internal economy soon reveals the error, and a coroner's 
 inquest does the rest — that young doctor is eliminated. If an 
 engineer or architect miscalculates the strain on his girder or foun- 
 dations, down comes the bridge or house, and again there is a 
 young gentleman out of employment and likely to remain so. 
 
 But in peace such drastic and dramatic consequence can hardly 
 result from dereliction of duty in any Army — though, they may in 
 the Navy — hence a man does not work with the fear of consequences 
 immediately before his eyes, nor is it easy to trace the direct 
 sequence between cause and effect. The tendency, therefore, is to 
 settle down into a routine method of performing duties which will 
 satisfy the demands of the Inspecting Officer, and leave the future 
 to take care of itself. Even men of the utmost keenness and of 
 high intellectual ability — in the absence of the special guidance to 
 which I shall presently refer — are bound to succumb to routine 
 more or less, since so great is the complexity of modern military 
 problems, so endlessly interwoven are the threads of ultimate fight- 
 ing efficiency, that only years of the collective industry of many 
 trained minds can suffice to grapple with all the many emergencies 
 which may arise, and even then they can only formulate " princi- 
 ples " to guide action, never "orders," i.e. "methods " to limit the 
 responsibility of the executive officers in each grade of the military 
 hierarchy. 
 
 Three centuries ago this complexity hardly existed, the con- 
 ditions of social existence, of armament and of the maintenance of 
 armies changed so slowdy that there was not much difficulty in 
 laying down fixed rules of conduct for all probable contingencies, 
 and as the existence of such fixed rules saved a world of trouble 
 and relieved the commanders of an immense amount of responsi- 
 bility, the search after them became almost a popular pastime. 
 
 From the literature thus evolved, certain catch phrases and 
 terms came into general use, and were employed to explain the 
 successes or defeats of certain popular leaders, the use of the learned 
 term being considered the same thing as the explanation of the 
 phenomenon which in point of fact it very rarely is. 
 
 Still, the conditions of collision being simple, and the leaders 
 essentially practical men brought up in a school of continuous War- 
 fare, honours remained usually easy until the average general found 
 himself confronted by an adversary of considerably greater ability, 
 who, seizing on the new factors of fighting power, the consequence 
 of the slow evolution which is always at work in society, made a 
 better " application of the means at hand to the attainment of the 
 object in view," and the theoreticians had to deduce fresh theories 
 to square with the new facts. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 17 
 
 Omitting all references to the exploits of the Greeks and 
 Romans, the sequence of events in Europe has practically been as 
 follows. 
 
 The early Militia levies had no transport, and hence required no 
 lines of communication. They came together, each man carrying 
 a few days' rations and supplementing them by what they could 
 pick up in the country they moved through. Hard fighting alone 
 decided the issue, and the word " Strategy " was not even invented. 
 But it was soon seen that skilled disciplined fighters possessed an 
 enormous superiority in man-killing power over raw levies, greater 
 by far than they have ever enjoyed since ; and since a small body 
 of men can find provisions where a larger one would starve, they 
 could keep the field very much longer than the levies to which they 
 were opposed, and being practically invulnerable to their antagonists, 
 could hunt the others down, very much as a small column of British 
 troops, carrying its own supplies with it, can ultimately reduce an 
 Afghan frontier district ; hence every king or potentate, who could 
 afford it, soon surrounded himself with bands of these highly 
 specialised fighting machines. Their numbers still remained rela- 
 tively small, because they had to be proportionate to the food 
 supplies of the district in which they operated, and, again, when 
 they encountered one another the result only depended on hard 
 fighting ; manoeuvring was still practically out of the question. 
 
 But as the power of projectile weapons grew, the need of keep- 
 ing out the bullets or bolts increased likewise, and the weight of 
 defensive armour made the men very slow. Still, as during the 
 sixteenth century warfare raged principally in very fertile, highly 
 cultivated tracts — Belgium, the north of France, Lombardy, and so 
 forth, the disadvantages of this slowness of movement did not 
 at once become apparent, and the slower the movement the greater 
 became the tendency to overload the troops with transport 
 columns. 
 
 Then came the Thirty Years' War, soon transferred to a 
 theatre where supplies were less concentrated. The Swedes, by 
 far superior drill and discipline, obtained marked tactical ad- 
 vantages, and as a consequence shed their armour from them. 
 With lighter loads they could march farther and faster, thus being 
 able to subsist a larger Army on the same resources, and the 
 period of manoeuvring began. 
 
 How far this tendency would have then travelled had Gustavus 
 Adolphus not been killed it is difficult to say; but his death 
 brought on a reaction, and matters soon reached a deadlock. 
 
 Movements became slow, as there was no longer the driving 
 energy of his genius to conduct them, time was given to the enemy 
 
 C 
 
i8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 to fortify himself, and wearisome sieges took the place of his 
 relatively rapid marching campaigns. 
 
 Again, armies became stereotyped in the mould of the pro- 
 fessional mercenary soldier, who, being paid and fed from day to 
 day, had no personal interest in the termination of hostilities, and 
 the War dragged on its slow length until the expense and ravages 
 of these mercenaries rendered combined operations no longer 
 possible. Large armies would have starved in the devastated 
 countries, small detachments could effect nothing against the 
 entrenchments everywhere thrown up for protection against them. 
 
 At this point it is worth while calling attention to the difference 
 in the conduct of War which at once made itself apparent when the 
 personal incentive to get back to peaceful pursuits formed a 
 leading factor in the composition of the whole Army. During 
 the great Civil War the impatience of Cromwell and the bulk of 
 our Armies on both sides to end the struggle by a decisive victory 
 was so great as to actually shock the old veterans of the Swedish 
 school, who were all for the slower and less risky methods of the 
 Continent ; but our men had their way, with the result, which 
 Hoenig has so well brought out in his ' Life of Cromwell,' that the 
 Art of War went up at a bound in England to much the same point 
 to which Moltke raised it in 1870 — rapid marches, decisive battles, 
 and enveloping movements such as Worcester, which he indicates 
 as the prototype of Sedan, his inference being that it is the 
 character of the individual units of the Army that primarily 
 controls the execution of the commander's designs. In other 
 words, that a general does what he can, not what he would like 
 to, a point I hope to develop at greater length hereafter. 
 
 The long series of campaigns known as the Thirty Years' War 
 had been waged primarily for " religion," not for " conquest ; " and as 
 soon as men ceased killing one another for the love of God, a 
 curious transition took place which deserves special notice, as it 
 forms the foundation on which all English theories of humani- 
 tarianism in War and international law have been reared. 
 
 It is generally taught in our text-books on the latter subject 
 and implicitly accepted by our statesmen, that the so-called " laws 
 of War " originated in the revulsion of humanity at the horrible 
 barbarities which had characterised the conduct of operations and 
 culminated in the sack of Magdeburg and similar atrocities, and it 
 is the fact that, more or less, all nations had tacitly agreed to the 
 code of Grotius contained in his "De Jure Belli ac Pacis." Actually, 
 however, it was "expediency," not "humanity," that decided the 
 concession ; and since it is " expediency " that alone conditions 
 the degree of violence which can be usefully employed in War, it 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 19 
 
 will be as well to see how the change arose and why modern War, 
 as shown in the long summary of Clausewitz's views in the previous 
 <:hapter, has shown such a marked tendency to revert to more 
 (primitive brutality. 
 
 When active hostilities in the field came, as above described, to 
 an end, owing to the mutual exhaustion of both forces, all central 
 Europe lay at the mercy of armed bands of mercenaries who were 
 •determined not to starve as long as they had arms in their hands. 
 To suppress the ravages of these hordes it became expedient for 
 the reigning princes to take a part of these men into their service 
 and employ them in hunting down the others. 
 
 This was the true origin of the " standing armies " such as they 
 continued on the Continent until after Jena, and of which our own 
 long-service Army survived into the seventies.* 
 
 At first the nations cheerfully paid blackmail to the few to be 
 quit of the many ; but when things settled down, and the memories 
 •of past services were forgotten, the charge was heavily felt by the 
 taxpayer, and it became necessary to shift the burden of their 
 maintenance on to other shoulders. 
 
 The national politics of the period were those of the landed 
 proprietors of to-day. Each king wanted to extend his boundaries 
 — honestly, if possible — for the greater his landed estates the 
 -greater his revenue, and in the absence of any court of appeal with 
 •executive power behind it, the troops came in usefully to enforce 
 a covetous prince's claim ; but the wealth of the acquisition 
 •depended on the labour available to cultivate it, and hence it 
 became " expedient " not to frighten the labourer away from the 
 •soil. For the next two centuries this system prevailed and, though 
 •broken through now and again, when momentary " expediency " 
 •dictated an opposite course — e.g. when the French devastated the 
 Palatinate and Marlborough let loose fire and sword in Bavaria — it 
 formed the ruling condition which overrode all other military con- 
 siderations until the French Revolution brought matters in practice 
 {though not in theory) down to more natural bearings. 
 
 This, briefly, is the origin of all the claptrap theories of our 
 
 * There had of course been a nucleus of royal guards and other troops for a long 
 •period before all over Europe, but essentially the difference lay in this, that the bulk of 
 an army in the field was contract labour for the "job," raised precisely as a modem 
 contractor raises men for his special work, and once the task was finished the State incurred 
 no further liability for pensions and so forth. Either they were disbanded on the spot 
 with as little consideration as a humane modern prince of commerce shows when he sacks 
 .his workmen, or they followed the fortunes of their leader to whatever court might be 
 in need of his services. They were true only to the man who paid them, and owned no 
 allegiance either to country or people ; they were, in fact, devoid of all sense of nationality 
 •or patriotism— a very important point to note, as this tradition perpetuated itself for 
 :.s:enerations afterwards. 
 
20 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 historians, international lawyers, and statesmen, who seem to 
 imagine that their Continental opponents are wandering in the same 
 dark ages as themselves, and who believe that War is still only 
 a quarrel between the Governments, and not, what it has since 
 become, a "struggle for existence between the races," the only 
 sure starting-point for all efficient organisation. 
 
 One point, however, they invariably overlook. Whilst agreeing 
 with the unfortunate Prussians, whose ignorance of things as they 
 really were brought upon them the awful calamities of 1806 to 
 181 5, that warlike operations should not be allowed to interfere 
 with the peaceful pursuits of the honest citizen, they entirely 
 fail to perceive that not even in the palmiest days of sentimental 
 humanitarianism run mad, did any army in a position to prevent 
 it, allow food to enter a beleaguered city ; but the distinction 
 between a beleaguered island and a starving city is not easy to 
 see. Are our Continental neighbours likely to forget that we 
 fought the *' Glorious First of June " (1794) on purpose to prevent 
 the entry of a food convoy into French harbours } 
 
 Reverting now to the more purely military side of our subject, 
 it happened that the scene of the next great series of Wars, after the 
 Thirty Years' War and our own Great Rebellion, was again chiefly 
 laid in the very fertile plains of the Netherlands, already bristling 
 with fortifications and susceptible of a step by step defence. In 
 such a district mobility has small scope, and the feeding of the 
 troops presents relatively little difficulty. The recruiting, organisa- 
 tion, and armament of the men being all on the same plan, a 
 deadlock in the strategic situation soon ensued. 
 
 The armies lay sheltered behind miles of formidable storm- 
 proof fortifications, and owing to the shortness of range, and want 
 of shell power, it was impossible to bring upon any one point of 
 their development, a concentration of fire adequate to prepare the 
 way for an assault. 
 
 Under these conditions, the skill and cunning of the leader in 
 feints, ruses, and the dissemination of false intelligence, practically 
 alone decided the result, and it was at this time that the word 
 *' Strategy " first made its appearance as a generic term to cover 
 all these manifestations of intellectual activity on the part of a 
 general. 
 
 Curiously it was this intellectual side of a leader's personality 
 which alone attracted attention. Of the " Willenskraft "—as the 
 Germans call it — which inspires troops with their leader's energy, 
 enabling them to overcome internal resistances and sacrifice them- 
 selves body and soul at his behest— that quality which found its 
 highest expression a century later in Napoleon— there is nowhere 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 21 
 
 the slightest appreciation. Though, at least in the case of Marl- 
 borough, it must have been there in a very high degree, yet it is 
 only in the cunning by which he masked his ultimate designs that 
 contemporary commentators find a cause for admiring surprise. 
 
 When by a forced march, involving almost unparalleled exertion 
 from the troops, he doubled back on Aubanch-ceuil-au-bac,* and 
 forced the celebrated ne plus ultra lines, it is on the cunning of the 
 trick that his panegyrists love to dwell, though the trick was little 
 more than the sharpness of a cute schoolboy heading a raid on a 
 neighbour's orchard ; the resolution of the man to stake everything 
 on the spirit he had himself inspired in his men by years of the 
 most strenuous effort on his part to understand, alleviate, and 
 appreciate their difficulties, which alone, in fact, confers on him the 
 stamp of the greatest leader of his day, passes unnoticed and is at 
 most referred to as characteristic of the amiability of his tempera- 
 ment and care for the men under his command, to be imitated, 
 certainly, but not to be spoken of in the same breath with the in- 
 genuity which put his opponents off their guard. 
 
 The explanation may probably be found in the fact that, in the 
 absence of any strong racial feeling, military society was more 
 cosmopolitan than it is now, and the French not only did most of 
 the memoir-writing, but theirs was also the language of civilised 
 intercourse all over Europe. They could hardly praise the leader- 
 ship of their adversary without detracting from the merits of their 
 own men, and further, whereas the trick was obvious and its success 
 a sufficient justification, the devotion of the men which made it 
 possible was known only to those who had actually seen the inci- 
 dents of the march and knew the superhuman efforts it had entailed. 
 
 Moreover War was so chronic, and generally the gap between 
 men and leaders so great, that far more was taken for granted as 
 to the men than is nowadays the case. Soldiers, with years ot 
 active service behind them, did not consider it necessary to explain 
 that bloodshed and suffering are the usual consequences of the 
 collision of armed forces, and the public being divorced from the 
 soldier's life, failed to realise that after all the soldier's uniform 
 covers a very human heart, which requires more training than a 
 mere martinet can give, before it can be relied on to stand up to 
 death and mutilation without serious misgiving. 
 
 When troops conquered, well and good, they had merely done 
 what they were paid to do ; when they broke and ran, they were 
 cowards, and no one wrote letters to the daily press on the 
 psychology of the battlefield to palliate their disgrace. 
 
 * See the admirable description of this operation in Fortescue's * History of the 
 British Army,' vol. ii. 
 
22 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 Be this as it may, the net result of nearly half a century of 
 continuous fighting was to establish a new word in all dictionaries, 
 embodying a meaning which the philologist will hardly unre- 
 servedly sanction. For " Strategy " from its root means only the 
 " Art of the leader," and in that " Art " a knowledge of and aptitude 
 for tricks and chicane plays a very subordinate part indeed, as I 
 propose in this and the following chapters to show. 
 
 The writings of this period became in course of time, as was 
 only natural, the classics of the next, and it was from them that 
 Frederick the Great, and after him Napoleon, derived their early 
 military education. For them it mattered little ; they were above 
 restraint ; when words or ideas clashed with their intentions, the 
 words had to go under — their will was law ; but it was otherwise 
 with the swarm of commentators which in turn their exploits 
 awoke. These had to find explanations for their heroes' performances 
 by reference to fixed and established standards, and being, as most 
 of us are, quite unconscious of the profound modifications of con- 
 ditions always in progress around us, they sought to justify the 
 success, due solely to genius of the highest order, which is simply 
 the intuitive power of grasping things as they are, by seeking a 
 conformity with time-honoured prescriptions which was entirely 
 non-existent at the moment in the chief actor's brain. 
 
 Anticipating a little, it is safe to say that both Frederick and 
 Napoleon won their campaigns by sheer force of overmastering 
 " will-power,'* a power which arose spontaneously within them as 
 circumstances confronted them. It was the extraordinary power 
 of their own personality which was at the time as great a secret 
 to them as it has remained to us, and which they were quite in- 
 capable of explaining. No great commander knows why men are 
 willing to die more readily for him than another, and being com- 
 pelled to justify his victories, he unconsciously falls back on the 
 terminology of his school-books, only using the old words in the 
 fresh meaning his acts have conferred upon them, leaving posterity 
 to find out and explain, if they can, their new meaning. His 
 biographers, unaware of the unconscious modification in the terms 
 he uses, still interpret them in the old way, and thus in process of 
 time a confusion of thought arises which requires a fresh genius^ 
 but of a different order of mind, to clear away. 
 
 One thing, however, is certain, viz. that neither Frederick nor 
 Napoleon owed their successes to the same proximate causes which 
 had determined the issues of former campaigns, for the conditions 
 of Warfare meanwhile had completely changed, and the new circum- 
 stances left no room for the successful application of the " Strategy " 
 of former days. It took the defeat of Jena and years of subsequent 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 23 
 
 suffering to open the eyes of the Germans to all that these changes 
 meant ; and Sedan with its sequels was required to bring the same 
 knowledge home to the French Staff; what extent of disaster will 
 suffice to liberate us from the bonds these antiquated traditions still 
 throw around us, I hardly venture to contemplate, but of one thing 
 at least I am certain, viz. that until we boldly cut adrift from all 
 our effete old nomenclature, and adopt clear and intelligible mean- 
 ings for the words we are compelled to use, the study of the 
 direction and leading of troops in War will never be popular with 
 British officers. 
 
 It is not that they are stupid or wanting in soldierly keenness ; 
 on the contrary, they come to us generally with most praiseworthy 
 anxiety to learn ; but when they are confronted with the illogical 
 maunderings that make up the bulk of our text-books on Strategy, 
 their clear common-sense sees through the attempted imposition, 
 and, according to temperament, either they say, " No fellow can be 
 expected to follow this reasoning," or, " This is obvious nonsense* 
 and it is sheer waste of time to try and do anything but cram it." 
 
 This at least is the outcome of my experience, extending over a 
 good number of years, in which I have had Staff College candidates. 
 Regular Officers, Militia and Volunteers under my charge, and it 
 is to their exceedingly direct and often scathing criticism that I owe 
 nine-tenths of my own acquaintance with the subject. I have never 
 found any difficulty in bringing home to them the principles taught 
 by Clausewitz and Moltke, and with such pupils one might go far 
 indeed ; but there is always the haunting dread of the text-book 
 " fetish " behind one : " It is not in the book, and if I do not write 
 down what is in the book I shall get no marks." Actually the fear 
 is groundless. Examiners for the most part nowadays are only too 
 glad to welcome clear original thought reasonably expressed, and 
 well know the distinction between a " drill-book " and a " text- 
 book," and if once this tradition of parrot-like repetition could be 
 broken, I make no doubt that progress would be rapid and 
 continuous. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Marlborough's march to the Danube ; a violation of established rule, but the act of a 
 genius in War — Forging of the Prussian Army — Its influence on the conduct of opera- 
 tions — Contrast between the topography of the Netherlands and Silesia — Origin of 
 the " magazine system " — Cost of enlistment and training of the soldiers — Frederick's 
 Wars not sufficiently studied in England — Skill of our generals in "small Wars" — 
 The chief obstacles to a leader's success — Gradual change in Frederick's methods — 
 Result on'military thought — The school of manoeuvrers — Poverty of Prussia — Con- 
 sequences for the army— The " foreigners " and " Landeskinder " — ' Barry Lyndon ' 
 — Codes of i^unishment — Limits of discipline — Desertion — These conditions common 
 to all contemporary armies — Result when opposed to the French Revolutionary 
 Armies — Influence of "starvation" as a "driving force" — Internal condition of 
 France, 1790 — Creation of the new French Army — Their mobility, and its conse- 
 quence when opposed to the slow moving forces of the Allies — Comparison with 
 Boer War — Origin of "cordon system" — Object of present chapter — Difficulties 
 created by our present system. 
 
 As we have seen in the previous chapter, when the War of the 
 Spanish Succession came to an end in the Netherlands, the methods 
 of War had crystallised into certain definite forms, conditioned by 
 the local circumstances, system of recruiting and tactics, common 
 to all the contending forces, and above which only exceptional 
 leaders, such as Marlborough, Eugene of Savoy, and Villars, could 
 rise superior. 
 
 Marlborough's march to the Danube is in itself the best 
 evidence of how little attention was paid to the " science of com- 
 munications," * and was really a retrogression to the old Thirty 
 Years' War type, a march of a relatively small army through a 
 relatively rich district, in which as long as the troops kept moving 
 money would draw provisions. His ability as a " strategist," i.e. a 
 " general," was shown by the conduct of his adversaries, who were 
 so tied and bound by the prejudices of their own period that they 
 not only failed to anticipate his purpose, but declined to believe 
 that he was really in motion until too late to prevent its execution. 
 
 It was a perfect example of "the practical adaptation of the 
 means at hand to the attainment of the object in view," t and as such 
 establishes beyond question or cavil his reputation as a great 
 "strategist ;" but judged by the rules laid down by the writers of 
 his own and subsequent periods, until in fact Clausewitz evolved 
 
 *■ Willisen's definition of the Art of War. 
 t Moltke's definition of the Art of War. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 25 
 
 a more rational standard, it appears as the most hare-brained flank 
 march the mind of man ever devised. Success was its sole justifi- 
 cation, but what is the practical use of a theory which fails to 
 explain such success ? 
 
 Meanwhile, whilst the practical soldiers and strategists of the 
 period were at work framing rules to lighten the load of re- 
 sponsibility for incompetent soldiers in the future, the Prussians, 
 on their peace-time parade grounds, were forging a new weapon 
 of War, destined in due course to destroy all their elaborate 
 structures. They were training an infantry by rigid drill to a fire 
 discipline, against which only overwhelming numbers could prevail. 
 
 For details of their methods, I must refer the reader to papers 
 on the Evolution of Cavalry and Infantry, which originally appeared 
 in the Uftited Service Magazine dm'mg 1902 and 1903 — the purport 
 of which is to show how Frederick the Great, inheriting from his 
 father only an infantry capable of developing an unprecedented 
 fire power, built up on this foundation a fighting Army, whose 
 efficiency was such that against anything approaching a numerical 
 equality its victory was a foregone conclusion. The difficulty 
 remained to bring this Army unweakened by privation in face of 
 its enemy, for in the districts in which his campaigns took place, 
 all the conditions of the Netherland theatre of operations were 
 entirely lacking. Instead of fertility, short lines of communications, 
 fortresses, etc., his field of action lay in barren roadless districts, 
 almost destitute of fortifications, and covering an area very many 
 times greater than anything the critics and schoolmasters of the 
 day had ever contemplated. 
 
 Only one thing was common to both, viz. the exaggerated respect 
 it was found expedient to pay to the rights of private property, when 
 operating in an enemy's country ; in one's own it did not so much 
 signify. These causes led to the evolution of the much ridiculed 
 but little understood " magazine system," which, however, was a 
 practical solution of the problem which confronted the Prussians, 
 and distinctly comes within the scope of Moltke's above-quoted 
 definition. 
 
 Essentially, the Prussians could not afford to expend a single 
 man unnecessarily, for each trained soldier represented a cash 
 investment of the nation's capital, great out of all proportion to the 
 total wealth of the State. 
 
 The actual cost of enlistment and maintenance during the two 
 years' training needed to bring him up to the standard of drill 
 necessary for the execution of the volley-firing tactics of the times, 
 has been variously calculated and appears to have been about 
 £100, about the same as one of our own eighteen-year-old recruits 
 
26 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 costs us before he is fit or considered fit for service in an unhealth>^ 
 semitropical country ; but whereas Sir R. Giffen calculates the 
 wealth of this Empire in 1903 as not less than twenty -two thousand 
 millions sterling ; it is very doubtful whether all the gold and 
 property in Prussia at that time was worth twenty-two millions, and 
 whereas our present white population is about fifty millions, six 
 millions would be an outside estimate for the inhabitants of Prussia 
 in 175 1. 
 
 It was obviously worth while to take some care of such men,, 
 and since in the relatively roadless but practicable districts iri' 
 which the War was waged, it did not much matter where you fought 
 the enemy, provided you beat him, the slowness entailed by the 
 magazine system was of little consequence. 
 
 Still, though the general conduct of operations was slow, when 
 a crisis arrived, and within the margin of time allowed by the 
 magazine system, the Prussian Army was relatively very mobile,, 
 and its marches and manoeuvres once within striking distance oi 
 the enemy were generally very rapid. 
 
 It is unfortunate that Frederick's Wars have met with such 
 superficial study in our own country, for however necessary accurate 
 knowledge of the Napoleonic methods — which knowledge, I may 
 parenthetically remark, we have never possessed — may be for the 
 comprehension of modern European Warfare, our more normal 
 employment lies in countries and under conditions which conform 
 far more closely to the Frederican period. Roadless countries, 
 scarcity of supplies, necessitating endless convoys and detachments,, 
 and British soldiers worth perhaps ;^iooo a-head to the nation 
 before they actually reach the fighting-line, necessitate a very wide 
 departure from contemporary Continental practices for the achieve- 
 ment of economical results, and I fancy that if some of our 
 Continental critics could put themselves in our places they would 
 accord a higher meed of praise to our Indian and African exploits 
 than they have hitherto seen fit to do. 
 
 Actually nothing has served to confirm me more in the high 
 opinion I have always expressed as to the innate capacity for 
 leadership existing in our race, than the intuitive skill which our 
 average column and detachment commanders have generally shown 
 in adapting their action in the field to things as they find them, 
 without being misled by the false teaching too often inculcated in 
 our text-books. The slow methodic collection of supplies, then 
 the swift and sudden, often most daring manoeuvres around 
 the enemy's flanks, characteristic of almost all our Afghan and 
 frontier expeditions during the last thirty years, form a record 
 which I feel certain the Prussian " General Stab " would be the first 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 27 
 
 to appreciate if they were able to realise even dimly the difficulties 
 with which we have to contend.* 
 
 The diffusion of this more accurate knowledge would in itself 
 be the simplest and most economical way of increasing our 
 collective efficiency, for, after all, that is limited by the amount 
 of available character in the leader's head free to overcome 
 internal resistances, and which in " small Wars " are often far 
 greater than the external resistances opposed by the enemy. In 
 an Army where each man understands the nature of its com- 
 mander's difficulties, and the spirit in which he faces them, 
 every one works with a will and an absence of all disposition 
 to carp. But where every subaltern tries to apply his recently 
 acquired text-book strategy to conditions which that strategy was 
 never devised to face, there is an undercurrent of distrust and 
 dissatisfaction in the air, which the special correspondent is quick 
 to note and disseminate, to the destruction of national confidence 
 in the General, who may thus find his hands tied at the very 
 moment he requires full freedom most. Correspondents are not 
 altogether free agents, but only report what the camp thinks ; 
 hence, if the dominant note of the press correspondence of any 
 campaign is despondent and hypercritical, it is a safe inference 
 that the General is working under difficulties. 
 
 As long as the numerical disproportion against Frederick the 
 Great was not too crushing, his strategy was bold to the verge 
 of rashness, but always conditioned by confidence in the fighting 
 value of the troops he commanded. He formed front to a flank 
 or across his enemy's communications without apparent hesita- 
 tion. But when at last he was confronted by two Armies, each 
 individually numerically superior to his own, seeing that his 
 country could not supply the waste these constant battles 
 occasioned, he had recourse to manoeuvring, and ultimately to field 
 
 * Shortly after the Afghan War I met a Prussian officer who had fought in 1866 and 
 1870, chiefly in the Black Forest and amongst the Jura and Vosges mountains, and who 
 has since risen to a considerable position in his own Army. He held a most fair and 
 judicial attitude towards things English, but could not help criticising the apparent slow- 
 ness of our operations in Afghanistan, which he had followed most attentively. We were 
 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, so I took him for walks up some of the torrent beds 
 amongst the millstone grit districts between the Aire and Wharfe, then into the 
 mountain limestone of Craven, and took him through some of the '* Tangi's," such as 
 Goredale Scar, Coniston, near Kilnsea, and so forth, and asked him to consider what 
 delays the march by such tracks would entail even to a European Army, then to double 
 at least the actual magnitude of the physical obstacles, and in his imagination to fill them 
 up with, say, 10,000 fighting men, 15,000 followers, elephants, camels, byles, mules, 
 etc., and finally to calculate the marching time for ten miles of such a road. He loyally 
 admitted that he had been mistaken in his estimate, and when subsequently I stayed with 
 him and his regiment in Germany, I found a very different appreciation of our perform- 
 ances than I had hitherto met with in other garrisons. 
 
28 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 entrenchments, not because he regarded this policy with favour, but 
 because he calculated, and as the event proved with correctness, 
 that the threat of battle in itself would suffice to impose caution on 
 his adversaries and thus indirectly compass his purpose. 
 
 Unfortunately for his posterity, it happened as it always 
 happens, that the recollection of his later campaigns outlived the 
 glory of his earlier victories, and his Generals, anxious at all costs 
 to economise the troops for which they were personally responsible, 
 raised this cult of manoeuvres without fighting to the dignity 
 of a dogma, not seeing that they were trading on the reputation 
 won for them by their leader, and that some day they might 
 encounter an Army and General who might refuse to take them 
 at their own valuation. For the time, however, the system 
 answered, and in the last campaign in Bohemia (1778) the 
 Prussians never required to fire a single shot, the Austrians 
 being successfully imposed upon by mere ** bluff." A worse 
 school of training for the troubles to come could hardly be 
 imagined, and as if this was not enough worse had yet to come. 
 
 The poverty of Prussia, after the Seven Years* War came to 
 an end, was so terrible that the King was compelled to turn all 
 his energies to the agricultural and commercial development of 
 the country. The Treasury being too impoverished to pay the 
 whole Army, only about one-third of the men were kept with 
 the colours the whole year round, the others only being called 
 up for a month's training in the spring, and a fortnight in the 
 autumn. But the mere preparation of the companies for the 
 platoon firing, on which the Prussian tactics essentially depended, 
 in itself required three times that amount of time, and as for the 
 squadrons, the whole year barely sufficed to attain that ''uncon- 
 ditional control " of their horses, on which Seydlitz had relied.* 
 
 To encourage the commercial regeneration of the country, 
 great concessions were made to many of the cities and townships ; 
 the effect of this was still further to reduce the recruiting area, 
 and thus render the retention of " foreigners " in the ranks still 
 more necessary than even before. 
 
 These " foreigners," however, were the last remnant of the former 
 " mercenaries " — men who had been originally induced to desert 
 from their own colours, or kidnapped, or entrapped by the wiles 
 of the recruiting agents, who spread their nets far and wide, 
 even into England. Thackeray's ' Barry Lyndon ' sufficiently 
 depicts the type, and the condition of affairs his pages reveal is 
 
 * See von der Marwitz, quoted in * Cavalry, its Past and Future,' which originally 
 appeared in the United Service Magazine. For the Infantiy, see Max Jahns and the 
 publications of the General Stab, No. 28. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 29 
 
 but little in excess of what even reliable Prussian authorities 
 admit. Such men required a hand of iron to keep them in 
 restraint, and furnished the excuse, not merely for the brutalising 
 punishments, for these were common to all countries at the time, 
 but also for the attitude adopted towards the private soldier by 
 the civilians, to which the King, in the interests of commercial 
 development, felt himself compelled to acquiesce ; but cruel and 
 degrading to humanity as these were, it must be remembered that 
 they were little more stringent than the restraints to which our 
 own men have had to submit until within the last twenty years, 
 and which some of our magistrates, publicans, clergy, and other 
 old women would like to see laid upon them again. 
 
 Such a code of punishments and such conditions always 
 produce the same results in a long service Army, unless active 
 service, or, failing that, frequent changes of station alleviate the 
 sufferings of the soldier. Life becomes unendurable to officers 
 and men alike, and both combine to evade all but the absolute 
 letter of the law. True discipline goes to the wall, and though 
 regiments may show a faultless turn-out on parade and march 
 past like a wall, it needs but a touch of misfortune, once the 
 absolute fighting blood has cooled down, to ensure the most 
 wholesale desertion from the colours. 
 
 There is a certain point very easily reached, beyond which the 
 discipline of repression and punishment cannot go in War time, 
 for the few in whose hands the enforcement of punishment lies are 
 soon overpowered by the numbers of offenders, and you cannot tell 
 off half the Army into firing parties to execute the remaining half. 
 
 Desertion was the scourge of all such armies, and the pre- 
 cautions necessary to be taken to prevent the men escaping 
 both from the line of march and from their sleeping quarters, 
 not only took up most of the officers' time, causing them more 
 anxiety than the proximity of the enemy, but practically necessi- 
 tated encampment, and thus added enormously to the length of 
 the baggage columns and proportionately reduced their mobility. 
 
 Speaking generally, these conditions were common to all 
 armies ; everywhere it was the policy of the State to degrade 
 the soldier below the civilian, and with the leaven of unrest 
 spread by the French pre-Revolutionary pamphleteers seething 
 below the surface, no ruler, however enlightened, could dare to 
 enforce proper respect towards the national uniform ; chiefly because 
 the idea of nationality had hardly as yet come into existence, 
 and Wars were still held to be the "Sport of Kings," in which 
 the civil inhabitants of a State had no concern. Officers and 
 men, taken as a body in all countries, were as keen and zealous 
 
30 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 in the performance of their duties, and intellectually as much 
 above the average of the classes from which they were drawn, as 
 nowadays ; but, like us, they were the outcome of their surroundings, 
 and when fhe outbreak of the French Revolution brought them 
 face to face with conditions it had never occurred to the wildest 
 dreamer to contemplate, they had to improvise tactics and strategy 
 to meet the changed circumstances, precisely as we have so recently 
 had to do in South Africa. 
 
 Into the question of the Evolution of the French Army of 
 the Revolution I have entered in considerable detail in previous 
 papers.* The only special point requiring to be accentuated here 
 is the influence " starvation " exercised as a " driving force " on the 
 whole series of campaigns until the proclamation of the Empire. 
 
 The internal condition of France in the years preceding 1792 
 had been one of chronic scarcity, aggravated by excessive taxation 
 — the letters of Mr. Arthur Young, an English traveller, and 
 careful observer, especially of agricultural affairs, are the best 
 evidence on this point — and community of suffering had brought all 
 classes of society and all provinces of the country into closer touch 
 with one another than had hitherto been the case. M. Taine has 
 most conclusively shown how this community of suffering ultimately 
 precipitated the outbreak of the Revolution by making the ruling 
 classes, as a body, more tolerant of the seething disaffection of the 
 people, and thus bringing about a relaxation of the stringency of 
 the laws by which they had hitherto been kept under. There was 
 executive power enough behind the judges, had they cared to 
 employ it ; but their humanity shrank from the performance of 
 their duties, and thus unconsciously the door was opened for the 
 spread of the revolutionary agitation.j 
 
 When, therefore, the impulse to closer union was given by the 
 invasion of French soil by the Allies in 1792, there was in existence 
 a nucleus, around which the units of the population could accrete, 
 which had never existed in previous Wars, and, to use a chemical 
 metaphor, the nation of France crystallised out of solution in 
 regular military order, there being no other form available for 
 it to take, or, indeed, for any other nation under similar 
 circumstances. 
 
 The almost unanimous reply of the nation to the call to arms, 
 
 ♦ Vide * Cavalry, its Past and Future,' and • The Evolution of Infantiy Tactics,' in 
 the United Sei-vice Magazine from January to May, 1903. 
 
 t The same process is in active operation at the present moment in Russia, and the 
 end is not difficult to foresee. And, as a necessary sequence of the fourfold rise 
 in price of foodstuffs which' a declaration of War must entail upon us in these islands — 
 thanks to our Marine Insurance practices — we are likely to find ourselves confronted in 
 ihe not far distant future with identically the same difficulty. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 31 
 
 however, intensified the previous pressure, for all the valid males 
 being withdrawn from agricultural pursuits the famine became 
 worse than ever, so that those who deserted when their first flush 
 of enthusiasm had expired under the chilling influences of wet 
 bivouacs and the kindred hardships of the march, found their last 
 state worse than the first when they regained their villages, and 
 gladly went back to their colours, where, at least, they had the best 
 and surest chance of securing sufficient sustenance. 
 
 Had France been normally prosperous, provincial jealousies 
 would have kept the nation apart, as frequently on previous 
 occasions the centre and south of the country had looked on at 
 the sufferings of the northern districts ; but hunger drove them to 
 make common cause, and thus the Allies found themselves 
 confronted by hordes far in excess of anything they had anticipated, 
 and rendered far more mobile than any existing standing Army by 
 reason of the very penury of the central government, which they 
 had relied on as the chief factor towards the attainment of a speedy 
 and satisfactory peace. 
 
 Where the Allies marched with heavy trains of tents and 
 provisions, rendered necessary, according to tradition, to prevent 
 desertion, the French, having no tents and no desertion, spread 
 themselves for subsistence, best attained by hunting together in 
 handy packs, and thus completely mystified their more regular 
 opponents, by the uncertainty of their movements and the 
 consequent impossibility of predicting their intentions. 
 
 To men without trains or commissariat, and held together by 
 the bonds of common necessities, districts were passable into which 
 no regular Army could think of penetrating, and the constant 
 appearance of armed parties from unexpected directions had 
 upon the outpost services of the Allies much the same mystifying 
 effect that similar circumstances induced in our own case in South 
 Africa. 
 
 The parallel in the two cases is most singularly close and 
 deserves far more attentive study than it has hitherto received. 
 The French could not, of course, move as rapidly as our recent 
 opponents ; but they had an absolute numerical superiority, and 
 having no trains, and practically no bases, they gave no tangible 
 target to strike at. 
 
 Out of these conditions the so-called " cordon system," which 
 was only our " small column " system under another name, quite 
 naturally arose. 
 
 Since magazines, convoys, etc., had of necessity to be protected, 
 and a small column of regulars being at first much more than a 
 match for the irregulars, such small columns were everywhere 
 
32 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 disposed, and since the concentration of these small bodies was 
 always a matter of difficulty, and in the absence of a definite 
 object to concentrate against promised no results, the attempt was 
 naturally seldom made, so that the initiative passed tacitly over 
 to the French, and when their purpose of concentration was fully 
 declared, it was too late for the counter-concentration to act. 
 
 For the Allies to have copied the French would have been as 
 impossible as for us to have copied the Boers, nor was there even 
 the same incentive, for their fighting forms and methods were 
 intrinsically far superior to those employed by the French, and 
 their ultimate defeat was occasioned solely by political treachery. 
 But this defeat shook the faith of their company officers and men, 
 whilst it strengthened the confidence of the superior officers in 
 their tactical methods, so that when Bonaparte appeared on the 
 scene, the weapons failed in the hands of the leaders, and their 
 combinations broke down because the men no longer fought with 
 the same consciousness of superiority, whilst the French, rendered 
 confident by success, had learnt in War to adapt the very same 
 methods that had previously been employed against them. 
 
 The same process is again apparent in South Africa. When 
 our cavalry had given up the idea of charging in ordered lines, 
 simply because there was never anything tangible to ride at, the 
 Boers learnt to order their files and charged home with ever 
 growing determination as the War went on. Fortunately for us 
 they had neither time, resources, nor a Napoleon to guide them. 
 
 The whole end, aim, and purport of this present chapter is to 
 establish a plea for wider and less prejudiced reading of military 
 history as a preliminary to the study of strategy, and is meant to 
 enforce the accuracy of Moltke's above-quoted definition. "The 
 art of War consists in the practical adaptation of the means at 
 hand to the attainment of the object in view." 
 
 To attempt to teach strategy always and solely on Napoleonic 
 lines serves only to disgust the indifferent and turn the zealous 
 into pedants — for the conditions, i.e. " the means at hand," are 
 constantly varying, and combinations practical and brilliant with 
 one Army may prove worse than disastrous with another. In 
 Continental Armies not much harm may be done, the conditions 
 are too uniform ; but for us the danger is great and imminent, 
 not so much that our leaders will fall into pedantic pitfalls, but 
 because of the difficulty they may find in getting their ideas 
 appreciated and put into execution by their Staff and the regimental 
 officers under them, who, crammed with Hamley and kindred text- 
 books at their colleges, see in every departure from established rule 
 cause for questioning the capacity of their chief. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 The French Army from i 792-1796. 
 
 Importance of the study of French memoirs of the Revolutionary period to British 
 officers — The code of punishment in the armies of the Revolution — State of the 
 Army of Italy when Napoleon assumed command — The campaign of 1796 in Italy 
 — The five plans for its conduct — Positions occupied on Napoleon's arrival at Nice 
 — The Austrian Army and its inherent weakness. 
 
 As I am writing these pages * the issue of Peace or War between 
 Japan and Russia is still in the balance, if it inclines to the latter no 
 man knows how far the results may spread, but even if the danger 
 is for the time averted, the pause marks but a step in the direction 
 of the great cycle of convulsion that civilised society is now 
 approaching. Short of exercising our strength to absolutely forbid 
 War, which we certainly shall not do, no step that we can now take 
 will " save our face " in the East, and once our " Izat " is shaken 
 trouble will arise in every quarter, whilst in Europe the menace of 
 growing navies grows ever stronger and stronger. 
 
 With the bonds of discipline within the Army so relaxed that 
 the word is almost meaningless, and against the growing power of 
 the press to influence the public mind against all real leadership, 
 the lot of our officers in the Great War, when it does burst, will be 
 far from enviable, and I would earnestly advise those who will have 
 to face it, and have spirit enough to see in the coming trials their 
 opportunity, to study carefully the makings of national armies 
 which have arisen on the wreck of older formations, that of the 
 American Colonies under Washington, and that of the French 
 Revolution as examples. 
 
 For though it is to the last degree unlikely that matters with 
 us will ever be quite so serious, yet there are ample indications, in 
 the events of the past five years, that our officers in the future will 
 have their work cut out for them to keep their position in front of 
 their men. 
 
 But what men have done that men can do, and if both American 
 and French gentlemen have had to submit, twice over within a 
 
 * January, 1904. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 century, to the supreme degradation of re-election as officers at the 
 hands of their men, perhaps we can survive the lesser troubles that 
 are before us. 
 
 Let them read again and again such works as the ' Memoirs of 
 General Thiebault,' the books of M. Chuquet, and the recent publi- 
 cations of the French General Staff, and learn to realise what a 
 very rough process the " survival of the fittest " becomes, when an 
 excited democracy once lays hold of the reins of military power. 
 I have little doubt the majority will succeed, but their sufferings 
 will be less in proportion as they have learnt from the examples of 
 their predecessors. 
 
 These books, and the many similar records, are also interesting 
 for the light they throw upon the persistence of the causes tending 
 always to the readaptation of a severe military code of punish- 
 ment, however much opposed to restraint may be the nations from 
 which the armies are recruited, and as the point has a special 
 bearing on the action of a Commander in planning and executing 
 a campaign, it will be a saving of time to consider it here. 
 
 The code of punishment in all regular armies of the eighteenth 
 century was, as is well known, very severe, and nothing could have 
 been further from the minds of the first enthusiastic French volunteers 
 of 1792 than submission to such a scale of degrading punishments. 
 Flogging of all kinds was abolished, and the death punishment 
 only retained for extreme cases ; but no sooner did the free and 
 independent soldiers find out from experience the consequences 
 that neglect of military duties, such as sleeping on a post, dis- 
 obedience of orders, minor cowardice, entailed upon themselves, 
 than they immediately instituted a barrack-room scale of their own 
 which was many times harder than the law because administered 
 by interested parties, and without the security trial by a man's 
 superiors in birth and station invariably ensures. 
 
 Still it had the advantage of promptitude, and eliminated 
 strictly military offences from their armies, so that after the first 
 few years of trial and error, under leaders of average capacity, the 
 Army was ripe in every respect but one for the hand of its master 
 — Napoleon. If a combatant order was given, it was obeyed to 
 the limit of human endurance, but an administrative one, or one 
 relating to offences against property, took its chance according to 
 circumstances, and, as we shall presently see, it was laxity in 
 these latter laws which ultimately brought ruin upon the whole 
 nation. 
 
 Into Napoleon's early history it is unnecessary here to inquire, 
 it is sufficient to point out that he had enjoyed a first-rate education 
 for the period, and though hardly a strong mathematician according 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 35 
 
 to present standards, he possessed an essentially mathematical and 
 scientific mind, reasoning always from "facts" and not from 
 opinions, and viewing War and all its problems, to use his own 
 expression, as " a calculation of probabilities," not as a matter 
 capable of " exact prescription," which happened unfortunately for 
 them to be the standpoint of his earlier adversaries. 
 
 His first command was not at Toulon, as usually asserted, but 
 at the siege of Avignon, and came about in the following manner. 
 Having been sent up from Nice to expedite the despatch of guns 
 and stores for the coast batteries of the Riviera, he met a column 
 of Revolutionaries, under the command of the patriot and painter 
 Carteaux, marching to reduce the Royalist insurgents in Avignon, 
 and these having no gunner officer with them, invited him to join 
 them and take command of their artillery, which amounted to two 
 i8-pdr. guns and 16 gunners. In this position he so won the hearts 
 of the patriots, that meeting them again a few weeks later, on a 
 chance visit to the camp at Toulon, he was again invited to take 
 over the command of the artillery which had been got together for 
 the siege of that place, and which at the date of his arrival, i6th 
 September, 1793, amounted to only two 24-pdrs., two i8-pdrs., and 
 a couple of mortars. 
 
 The claim advanced for him by his admirers of having been the 
 first to suggest the attack on the British fleet in the roads instead 
 of the formal siege of the landside of the fortress, has long since 
 been shown to be untenable by the publication of the report of the 
 Representatives of the People present with the Army, and dated 
 the 13th September. This distinctly lays down the procedure 
 afterwards adopted, and probably the extent of his real service was 
 measured by the astounding energy and driving capacity he 
 developed, by which alone an adequate artillery force was at length 
 collected for the execution of the predetermined plan. 
 
 Certainly the siege made his name and won him such golden 
 opinions from the Representatives of the People, Robespierre the 
 younger, and Salicetti, that immediately after its termination he 
 was offered the command of the artillery of the Army of Italy, and 
 thus gained the opportunity of studying the theatre of operations 
 of the campaign which first revealed his extraordinary capacity as 
 an executive leader. 
 
 As this campaign is unanimously accepted as the starting-point 
 of modern strategy, and as the wealth of criticism to which it has 
 been submitted has obscured the true issues involved to an almost 
 unprecedented degree, it will be as well to recall the exact stand- 
 point of such contemporaneous critics, so as to show how unavoid- 
 able such errors as they committed must necessarily be, whenever 
 
36 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 it is attempted to bring hitherto unperceived factors of success into 
 line with predetermined principles. 
 
 A great commander had suddenly arisen, he was obviously 
 great, judged by the results of his deeds, and all the world wanted 
 to know how the experts explained his greatness. So the experts, 
 trained habitually in those days (and frequently even now) to 
 judge by opinion and not by fact, looked up their precedents and 
 endeavoured to wheel his actions into line. A great commander 
 hitherto had always had a "plan of campaign," as this was a 
 necessity of existence in the days of the magazine system — conse- 
 quently they looked for his " plan of campaign," and as it happened 
 they found one, and having found it, they lost themselves in 
 ecstasies over the conception whilst entirely overlooking its real 
 merit — viz. its execution. 
 
 There has been so much discussion about this plan of campaign, 
 and the majority of the disputants have so misapprehended the 
 point really at issue, that it will be well to give its history briefly. 
 
 As already stated, Bonaparte's energy had attracted the par- 
 ticular notice of Robespierre the younger, and Salicetti. There 
 appears to have been considerable intercourse between the three, 
 and several projects for operations were put forward, officially by 
 the two representatives. 
 
 The first was dated 20th May, 1794, and though it bears very 
 little of the Napoleonic stamp, such as the world came soon to 
 know it, it was acknowledged as his work by him, and is contained 
 in his published correspondence. 
 
 It provided for a combined operation between all the columns 
 of the Army of the Alps and the Army of- Italy, who were to 
 advance concentrically from points on the arc of a circle embracing 
 nearly 180 degrees and fully 120 miles in perimeter. 
 
 How, under existing difficulties of communications unity was 
 to be imparted to all these columns, does not appear on the surface, 
 and the whole scheme strikes one nowadays as a " cordon " 
 manoeuvre of the worst kind ; but since not only the generals in 
 command of the two armies, but the Representatives of the People 
 with each, had to give their united assent, the situation was changed 
 before this harmony was established, and a new plan had to be 
 devised to meet the fresh requirements. 
 
 This new plan was dated 20th June, 1794, and this again shows 
 the same tendency to undue subdivision and over regulation. It 
 was also drafted by Napoleon, and Robespierre himself undertook 
 to submit it for the approval of the Committee of Public Safety in 
 Paris. As this, too, was never put into execution, it is needless to- 
 go into details. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 37 
 
 A third plan now follows, still stretching far too much into 
 futurity to satisfy the modern standpoint of criticism, but 
 characterised by such clearness of thought and power of expression, 
 that as a "political," not ''military," plan, it stands unrivalled. 
 But, again, it had very little to do with the campaign as ultimately 
 carried out, and never received the sanction of the directing 
 authorities, for whilst still on its road to Paris, the revolution of 
 the 9th Thermidor (27th July) broke out, and Robespierre with all 
 his party were hurled out of power. In anticipation of further 
 disturbance in the interior arising out of this event, a stop was put 
 to all military operations in the South, and Bonaparte himself paid 
 the penalty of his friendship with the fallen by being placed under 
 arrest on a charge of suspicious conduct at Genoa, which might 
 easily have cost him his head. Fortunately the accusation against 
 him could not be maintained ; it is, in fact, probable that he was 
 arrested and accused on the spot merely to preserve him from the 
 greater danger of being summoned under suspicion to Paris, and 
 no incriminating documents being found in his rooms, he was soon 
 released, but he had lost his position. 
 
 Nevertheless, he remained at the front, and appears to have 
 exercised more influence over the conduct of the Army than its 
 actual commander, Dummerbion ; for on the 28th August — four 
 days after his release from arrest — the Representatives of the People 
 notified the authorities that in consequence of renewed activity 
 on the part of the Austrians and Sardinians, instant action was 
 essential, and on the 19th September the troops took the field. 
 This time the enemy was anticipated, and much the same chance 
 on nearly the same ground, was afforded the French to beat them, 
 as the year afterwards, when under Napoleon's direct command. 
 But though it seems that the whole Army was much struck by the 
 rapidity of movement and certainty of combination imparted to 
 their several columns, and all gave the credit to Bonaparte, he was 
 not yet supreme, and Dummerbion's energy failed him at the critical 
 moment. Nothing decisive took place, and by degrees the armies 
 separated and drifted back nearly to their former positions, and 
 Bonaparte was sent to organise an expedition by sea against 
 Corsica. 
 
 This undertaking was frustrated by the ever present and 
 watchful British Fleet, and after months of relative inaction, the 
 unfortunate man was transferred to the Army of the West to serve 
 under Hoche, and started for Paris, accompanied as usual by his 
 two faithful adjutants, Junot and Marmont, in anything but an 
 exalted frame of mind. He did not hurry himself about joining ; 
 Hoche was his junior, and he did not like the prospect of serving 
 
38 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 under him, so he dawdled about the capital, literally nearly starving-, 
 and evading compliance with his orders in a manner altogether 
 inexplicable to the modern military mind. His ruling idea seems 
 to have been to make use of his thorough and intimate knowledge 
 of the topography of the Apennines, and the dreary inactivity of 
 the men on the spot, soon offered him a chance. In August he was 
 at last successful in obtaining employment in the Topographical 
 section of the Headquarter Staff, and simultaneously the character 
 and style of the official letters fired off at the heads of the un- 
 fortunate men on the spot show a marked alteration in poignancy. 
 It is customary to attribute these all to his inspiration, but the fact 
 appears to be that there was little new in the ideas which were 
 obvious and almost common knowledge to many. The change was 
 only in the incisive style. 
 
 It appears to have been the old story. On the map it is 
 always easy to beat an enemy, provided he will sit still, and your 
 own troops can move, but on the spot it seems more doubtful 
 whether the enemy will be so obliging, and every one is quite 
 positive that his own men are not yet fit to move, and this principally 
 through the fear of responsibility that presses on every mind. It 
 will be all right when new shoes are served out, but by the time the 
 new shoes arrive, the gaiters or some other essential article of the 
 men's kit has worn out, and there is a further delay. It needs a 
 master mind to say as Napoleon very shortly afterwards did say, 
 that as long as there are the enemy's magazines in front, even men 
 without arms can be sent into action, if the will is there to drive 
 them. But that will was wanting, and the armies starved. 
 
 His stay at the office was, however, short. His first chief, 
 Pontecoulant, lost his appointment on the ist September, and very 
 shortly afterwards his successor turned Bonaparte out for his 
 insubordinate and overbearing manners, and, because he hesitated 
 to join the command previously assigned him in the West, on 
 the 17th his name was removed from the list of generals. 
 
 Then came the turn in his fortunes. Barely more than a fort- 
 night afterwards there ensued the rising of the 1 3th Vendemaire 
 (5th October), and Barras who, as " Officer Commanding the Army 
 of Paris and the interior," found it his duty to put it down, suddenly 
 remembered Bonaparte, and made him his second in command, 
 and with a few " wiffs of grape-shot " the fame of the latter was 
 made. 
 
 His reward was the command of the Army of Italy, his com- 
 mission being dated the 2nd March, 1796. On the 9th he married 
 Josephine de Beauharnais, and on the nth he started for the front, 
 reaching Nice on the 26th, where he was joined by Berthier coming 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 39 
 
 from the Army of the Alps who had already been applied for by 
 Scherer, Bonaparte's predecessor, for the position of Chief of the 
 Staff, and thus began the long partnership between the two, the 
 one the necessary complement of the other, which endured until 
 the days of Elba.* 
 
 Now followed what I have always considered Bonaparte's most 
 remarkable achievement. 
 
 He was already known and respected by men and officers as a 
 most able and energetic officer, but between that and getting him- 
 self loyally accepted by the veteran and distinguished soldiers whom 
 he superseded as Commander-in-Chief in the field — he being still 
 in his twenty-seventh year — and all within the space of a month, 
 seems to me one of the most astounding triumphs of personality 
 ever attained by man. Pitt's early success was sufficiently striking, 
 but he had to deal with civilians in matters where common sense 
 had most to say, not with tried leaders in the field, who had won 
 their spurs in face of the enemy, not so much by commanding 
 mental ability, as by extraordinary force of character, not untinged 
 by obstinacy. With them it had been a case of diamond cut 
 diamond ; what then must have been the temper of the metal of 
 Napoleon's genius to which they all succumbed ? 
 
 I dwell on this especially, because there are a vast number of 
 minds which imagine that by copying Napoleonic methods with 
 fidelity, a man may himself become a second Napoleon. I, too, 
 urge the importance of studying the Master's methods, but would 
 suggest that before endeavouring to apply them, a man should be 
 sure that he possesses the determination of character necessary to 
 carry them through against all opposition, as without such gift 
 most pitiful failure must be the certain result. 
 
 The state of the French Army on his arrival has become matter 
 of common knowledge ; w^ithout pay for months, ragged, shoeless, 
 and famished, the men were in a truly desperate condition. It 
 seems doubtful now whether the celebrated appeal to be found in 
 Jomini and Thiers ever was issued by Bonaparte, at any rate no 
 trace of the original has as yet been discovered, but it would appear 
 that on his round of inspections made to make friends with his 
 
 * Those specially interested in Napoleon's life and his relations with Josephine, should 
 study the analysis of the events between the 13th October and the date of his marriage 
 in the pages of Major Kuhl, of the Prussian General Staff, to whose work I am mainly 
 indebted for my facts in this article. Only on one point is the evidence, which has since 
 become available, against him, viz. in his suggestion that the relations between Barras 
 and Josephine were of an improper nature. This has been most indignantly repudiated 
 by Madame Tallien, who states in her recently published memoirs, that during the whole 
 time, Barras was living with /icr^ and on this and all it implies she certainly ought to be 
 " best evidence." 
 
40 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 generals, and to ascertain for himself the condition of the troops, he 
 did issue a number of stirring appeals, both to their patriotism and 
 cupidity differing but little in their contents to the one for which he 
 has been made responsible, and which, whether genuine or not, 
 certainly struck the right note to ensure the immediate response of 
 the starving Army, though at the same time it called into being that 
 spirit of cupidity and licence which was to prove its ultimate ruin. 
 
 At the time the Army of Italy occupied the crests of the 
 Maritime Alps and Apennines, from the Col di Tenda in the 
 West to Voltri, near Genoa, on the East, a stretch of at least sixty 
 miles,* and the plan of campaign which had been sanctioned by 
 the Directory, and was certainly drawn up by Bonaparte himself, 
 aimed at a rapid advance through the Gap of Savona along the 
 Cairo- Acqui Road, which formed the line of junction of the two 
 opposing armies — the Sardinians and the Austrians, whose lines 
 of communication ran, the former to Turin, the latter eastward to 
 Piacenza. As the road through this gap is the only one in the 
 whole chain of mountains practicable at this season of the year for 
 heavy wheeled traffic, and siege-guns were considered a necessity 
 for the reduction of the fortified places which might be expected 
 to offer resistance, there would seem to have been no other alter- 
 native possible, and there was certainly no strategic novelty in the 
 conception of massing troops against one enemy whilst holding the 
 other with a containing force. Nor does one see any indication of 
 dazzling genius in the idea that the line of junction of two allies 
 is generally the line of least resistance. 
 
 But what does strike the imagination when one comes to the 
 opening of the campaign itself, is the instant resolution to strike, 
 when at the critical moment, some days before he was ready to take 
 the field, the Austrians took the initiative, and led off with a first 
 success, quite big enough to have paralysed the energies of any of 
 his predecessors. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that both the Sardinian and Austrian 
 forces were commanded by men of considerable eminence, and by 
 no means so old as is usually supposed. The troops, too, were 
 good long-service forces, raised essentially by voluntary enlistment, 
 tempered by the ballot in the background, and during the two 
 previous years accustomed to give a very good account of them- 
 selves before the French. 
 
 Their essential weakness lay in the want of a properly organised 
 system for the rapid circulation of orders, an inheritance from by- 
 gone days, perfectly intelligible when bodies of such numbers would 
 have camped and fought on a limited area, but most dangerous as 
 
 * See the map in Hamley's ' Operations of War,' or any atlas. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 41 
 
 soon as the conditions imported by the growth of the " Cordon " 
 system, to which reference has already been made above, scattered 
 the units over a very wide front, with difficult communications over 
 intervening ridges to further delay transmission. 
 
 Neither in the Austrian or Sardinian armies was there any 
 intermediate grouping of units in permanent organisations below 
 the Commander-in-Chief. Though detachments, often of the 
 strength of a modem division, were frequently employed, these 
 consisted essentially only of a number of battalions, liable to con- 
 stant transfer almost from day to day, each of which reported and 
 received its orders direct from headquarters. As no increase in 
 the clerical staff had been authorised to suit these new conditions, 
 the delays which ensued were endless, and the time of even the 
 generals was wasted in writing and copying orders which should 
 have been done by their clerks. 
 
 The French were not more mobile in the ordinary sense of the 
 term than their opponents ; indeed, probably the well shod and 
 equipped Austrian battalions could march both faster and further 
 in a day than the corresponding units of their adversaries; but 
 when it came to moving bodies over a wide area, the transmission 
 of orders, thanks to the divisional system which by now had taken 
 firm root in the French Army, was so much more rapid that they 
 were always able to anticipate their opponents with masses at the 
 decisive points. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Bonaparte's instructions from the Directory — The Austrians assume the offensive — 
 Combat of Monte Legino— Bonaparte issues his orders — His generals obey to the 
 letter — Defeat and rout of d'Argenteau — Provera at Cosseria — Beaulieu receives 
 news of Argenteau's defeat — Wukassovitch's detachment and his unfortunate 
 mistake — French discipline breaks down at Dego — Bonaparte rallies his troops and 
 retakes Dego — Beaulieu's continued inaction — Bonaparte turns on the Sardinians — 
 Ceva — The Biccogna — Critical situation of the French — Colli withdraws from his 
 entrenched position — Criticism — " Interior lines" — Willisen's definition of "strategy " 
 — Bonaparte's best sources of supply — Clausewitz's views on " retaining " forces — 
 Application to situation before Dego — Napoleon's true merit. 
 
 As already related, Bonaparte arrived at Nice on the 26th March, 
 1796, and immediately proceeded to infuse life and vigour into all 
 departments of the French Army, more particularly the supply 
 services, which were in a disgraceful condition of corruption. 
 
 His first instructions from the Directory, dated 2nd March, and 
 sent off on the 6th, clearly indicated the Austrians as the primary 
 objective; but a subsequent despatch gave him somewhat wider 
 discretion with regard to his conduct against the Sardinians, in- 
 dicating the capture of Ceva, as a necessary, or at least advisable, 
 precaution to adopt prior to an advance against the main body of 
 the Austrians in the direction of Acqui, about north by east of 
 Savona. 
 
 Actually he carried out neither plan in its entirety, and since 
 he was certainly primarily responsible for the drafting of both, 
 one sees how little weight he himself attached to a plan of campaign 
 drawn up in advance, and not framed to meet the day to day 
 circumstances as they presented themselves. 
 
 It was the Austrians who assumed the offensive, advancing on 
 the morning of the nth April against the exposed right wing of 
 the French Army, in accordance with a plan involving the co- 
 operation of the British Fleet, which from the standpoint of the 
 time, and even nowadays, must be admitted to have been thoroughly 
 well conceived, and which even against Bonaparte only narrowly 
 missed being a decided success. 
 
 The French having pushed forward their right to Voltri, rather 
 more than halfway between Savona and Genoa, the Austrians 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 43 
 
 moved against them in two columns — one westward along the 
 Riviera on Voltri, the other directed well in rear of the enemy's 
 position over the crest of the Appenines by Monte Legino. Had 
 this latter column proved successful in its mission, about a brigade 
 of French troops must have been taken prisoners, and a strip of 
 country, some fifteen miles by five in area, been secured, almost 
 without bloodshed, a result which would have been considered at 
 the time as a true triumph of strategical art. 
 
 Further, this advance would have concentrated the bulk of the 
 Austrian Army on the prolongation of the enemy's wing by a very 
 neat concentric advance, and a threat of landing from the sea in 
 rear of every successive position between Savon a and the Var 
 would have sufficed to compel the French to evacuate each in 
 succession till they were all safely driven within their own frontier, 
 and all this was to be gained practically without bloodshed — quite 
 in accordance with the sentiments of our modern humanitarians. 
 
 Unfortunately the extraordinary obstinacy displayed by the 
 garrison of the little redoubt on Monte Legino, which was not 
 commanded by Colonel Rampon, and did not heroically swear on 
 their weapons to die at their posts, but merely fought with the 
 stubborn courage and discipline that comes from years of active 
 service training, spoilt the whole of the Austrian combination and 
 gave Bonaparte his great opportunity. 
 
 As the sound of the cannon rolled in from the east and stragglers 
 wounded and unwounded (including the above-mentioned Colonel 
 Rampon) brought the usual tidings of dismay, Bonaparte seized 
 the whole situation and sent out his orders with the energy and 
 inspiration of the real strategic genius. 
 
 Any average General of the period, face to face with the circum- 
 stances of the moment, would first have remembered the hopeless 
 condition of his own Army, their want of boots, muskets and ammuni- 
 tion, the proverbially uncertainty of execution of orders issued by 
 night, and whose execution was to be commenced before daylight, 
 etc. ; but Bonaparte never hesitated. Sending the nearest troops at 
 hand, La Harpe's Division, to the direct support of the threatened 
 garrison, he called on his other Divisional Generals, Massena and 
 Augereau, to march at once with every available man to intercept 
 the Austrian line of retreat. 
 
 The order was obeyed to the letter, men without muskets, 
 ragged, shoeless, all fell in and started towards the enemy. For 
 La Harpe's Division a convoy of boots had only that evening 
 arrived, but he did not wait for their distribution. Forming the 
 waggons up at the issues from the several villages where the troops 
 lay, the boots were handed out to the men as they passed, to be 
 
44 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 slung over their necks, fitted, "swapped," and otherwise adjusted 
 as opportunity might offer, and thanks to this fiery energy, the 
 joint result of their leader's character acting on minds trained to 
 " combatant " discipline by the " ambulatory guillotine," when day- 
 light came the whole force was well on its way down the northern 
 slopes of the Appenines. Fortunately for the French the morning- 
 clouds hung late that day over the crests of the mountains, and 
 quite unaware of the dangers of delay, the Austrians waited for 
 better light to advance. About nine the mists began to disperse, 
 and the attack on the redoubts was begun ; but in the last half- 
 hour fresh reinforcements had arrived, and the Austrians were 
 again checked. Then the fog lifted, and for the first time they 
 realised the danger of their position. Fresh troops in front of 
 them and far away to the westward streaming down the mountains, 
 they descryed French columns aiming well in rear at their exposed 
 communications. The game was evidently up, and they com- 
 menced a withdrawal, which ended in something approaching a 
 rout, as their losses the previous day had been heavy, and the 
 cold of the bivouac on the bleak mountain-tops intense. Argenteau, 
 who commanded the right or turning column, himself seems to 
 have completely lost his head, as he reported his misfortune in the 
 following words to Beaulieu, his commander-in-chief: "For God's 
 sake send help. Yesterday I was completely successful ; to-day I 
 am as completely defeated." 
 
 The nearest Sardinians under General Colli were still too far 
 away to be of any assistance, but their General sent a couple of 
 battalions under Provera to Cosseria, on the flank of the French 
 advance, and to drive these off, Bonaparte, on the night of the 
 1 2th April, directed Augereau's column, whilst Massena and La 
 Harpe continued to press on towards Dego. 
 
 At daybreak next morning Provera, finding himself in presence 
 of a great numerical superiority, shut himself up in the old " storm 
 free " castle with some 800 men, and allowed the others to fall 
 back into the mountains. Here he was summoned to surrender, 
 but rejected the demand with energy ; he was then assaulted, but 
 the assailants, being without heavy artillery, were easily beaten off. 
 Some hours later the summons was again renewed, and again sent 
 back, and the assaulting columns met with no better result. Here 
 Bonaparte intervened in person, and for a third time sent the 
 troops back at their goal, only to see them beaten off as before. 
 Bouvier, w^hose work on this campaign, published some three years 
 ago, under the auspices of the French General Staff, may be con- 
 sidered the standard authority for the French side, calls special 
 attention to the determination this triple assault discloses, and 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 45 
 
 notices the marked effect it had on both officers and men. At that 
 time probably no other General would have dared to demand such 
 evidently useless attacks from their men ; and the mere fact of his 
 doing so, stamped him, throughout the Army in spite of their failure 
 and, for that time, heavy punishment, as the one leader amongst 
 them all whose will was not to be denied and who meant to have 
 obedience at all costs. 
 
 Curiously, General Sherman, in one of the many fights which 
 marked his progress to Atalanta in 1863, took exactly the same 
 means of " ingratiating " himself with his men. Having success- 
 fully manoeuvred the Confederates out of their position in several 
 successive encounters, he suddenly sent his troops full at the 
 front of the opposing intrenchments, to teach his men obedience, 
 as he said, and to demonstrate to his enemy that he was not afraid. 
 He was beaten off with pretty bloody slaughter, but he certainly 
 did not lose the confidence of his army or forfeit the respect of his 
 enemies ; such are the lengths to which really strong characters 
 will go when it is necessary to bring home to relatively undisciplined 
 troops their unconquerable determination to compel victory. 
 
 At 8 A.M. on the following morning (14th) Provera, being 
 without food or water, surrendered, but his brave resistance had 
 gone near to wreck Bonaparte's whole plan of campaign, for both 
 Massena and La Harpe had been constrained to suspend their 
 advance on Dego, and but for the extraordinary slowness which 
 characterised the circulation of intelligence and orders in the 
 Austrian Army, alluded to in the previous chapter, the next day 
 might have proved disastrous to the French arms. 
 
 Beaulieu only received news of Argenteau's success of the nth 
 on the afternoon of the 12th, though not fifteen miles away, and 
 at what time the report of the defeat of the morning arrived cannot 
 now be traced, but all through the night of the 12th and 13th he 
 was sending couriers to Colli, and ever}* one within reach, to 
 concentrate on Dego. Colli, however, was too much disturbed, for 
 his right wing, threatened by the advance of Serurier's Division 
 down the valley of the Tanaro, to comply with these appeals, and 
 only one of the others reached its destination in time to be of any 
 service ; but owing to a typical blunder in the interpretation of 
 orders, even this was of little ultimate avail. 
 
 A brigade of three battalions, commanded by Wukassovitcb,. 
 a fighting General of the best type, was lying at Fajallo, and 
 received its orders during the night of the 12th and 13th. Start- 
 ing at once, it marched all day, overcoming all kinds of natural 
 hindrances, swollen torrents, and almost impracticable hill paths 
 towards the sound of the guns at Cosseria ; reaching Sassello, only 
 
46 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 some six miles from Dego, about nightfall and reporting its arrival 
 to Argenteau at once. In reply it received an order, dated 14th 
 April, I A.M., directing it to pick up four other battalions already 
 at that spot and to push on " to-morrow," meaning next daylight, 
 on Dego. Wukassovitch receiving the orders about daylight, 
 naturally made no allowance for the conditions under which it 
 had been written by a tired man looking forward to a night's rest 
 before another day's work, and obeyed it literally, giving his weary 
 men a much needed rest, but one scarcely justifiable under the 
 actual circumstances ; for with the fall of Cosseria at 8 A.M. of the 
 14th, Massena and La Harpe were at once set in motion on Dego, 
 and being in great numerical superiority they managed to capture 
 the place about 3 P.M. in the afternoon, in which, judging by 
 subsequent events, they would hardly have succeeded had 
 Wukassovitch and his seven battalions been already on the spot, as 
 they might easily have been, but for the above-mentioned mistake. 
 
 Having captured the town, French discipline completely gave 
 way. In their defence it must be admitted that the men were 
 starving, they had outmarched even such supplies as they had 
 found in the barren mountainous district they had traversed ; 
 but even this excuse hardly palliates the horrors of the sack, 
 or the drunken orgy to which all ranks apparently gave them- 
 selves up. Outpost duty was entirely neglected, and the whole 
 place seems to have been given up to a drunken sleep, when 
 suddenly about daybreak Wukassovitch's brigade burst in upon 
 them, and in a few minutes the two French Divisions were flying 
 in panic along the road towards Millesimo by which they had 
 advanced. 
 
 Here at last the exertions of their Generals, and of Bonaparte 
 in person, succeeded in restoring order, and in the afternoon it 
 became possible to lead them again against Dego, where in the 
 meanwhile Wukassovitch had firmly established himself, and sent 
 out appeals for help in every direction. Unfortunately these were 
 not responded to in time, the fatal slowness of the Staff service 
 again interfered, and after a most gallant defence, Wukassovitch 
 was finally compelled to evacuate the town — but not until he had 
 inflicted very heavy punishment upon his pursuers. 
 
 Again, as the day before, success proved too much for the 
 discipline of the French soldiery, they broke out again into drunken- 
 ness and plundering, and by morning had reached such a pitch 
 of disorganisation, that even Bonaparte himself could not call on 
 them for pursuit, and at this critical moment a whole day was 
 .allowed to pass without action. 
 
 He had left Augereau the morning before (15th April) to 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 47 
 
 watch Colli before Ceva, and had intended to reinforce him with 
 La Harpe and Massena's divisions, and with these forces united to 
 storm the enemy's fortified position, but all dispositions had to be 
 cancelled, and Augereau, either in ignorance of what had occurred 
 or out of overweening self-confidence, attacked Colli single-handed 
 with quite inadequate numbers, and was badly beaten, panic as at 
 Dego again breaking out 
 
 Meanwhile Beaulieu remained inactive, there were troops enough 
 within call to have done much to turn the scale, and even a show 
 of activity must, under the circumstances, have gone far to redress 
 the balance in his favour ; but not a move was made, and Bonaparte, 
 learning from reconnaisances that nothing was to be feared from 
 his immediate antagonists, got the upper hand of his marauding 
 soldiery, and turned them next day (17th) upon the Sardinians, 
 leaving only La Harpe's Division as containing force. 
 
 The attack as planned was to have been concentric, overlapping 
 each wing of the enemy, and aiming well in rear at his communica- 
 tions, and it may be noted here as characteristic of all attacks 
 throughout this campaign which succeeded, the reason being that 
 the French had practically no artillery, and without artillery pre- 
 paration were hardly a match for the disciplined soldiery opposed 
 to them, except on condition of threatening their flanks. 
 
 As soon as Colli saw what was threatening, he promptly 
 retreated, and occupied a very strong position along the left bank 
 of the Corsaglia — an affluent of the Tanaro. 
 
 Ceva ranked as a fortress in those days, and Colli had left a 
 sufficient garrison within it, but though in all his previous plans of 
 operations, Bonaparte had laid great stress on its capture, and 
 indeed had selected the pass of Savona, Cairo, Dego, principally 
 for the facility it offered for bringing up the artillery necessary for 
 its siege ; face to face with the obstacle, he promptly abandoned his 
 design, and leaving only a handful of men to watch it, pressed on 
 in pursuit of the true objective, the field army, a step no other 
 leader of the day would have dared to undertake ; and thereby 
 deprived Colli and Beaulieu of the time margin which both counted 
 on in order to come to one another's help. 
 
 The attacks on the heights of Biccogna, as the position above 
 the Corsaglia was called, was to have been delivered on the after- 
 noon of the 1 8th, but through straggling or owing to the difficulties 
 of the roads, the French troops were not up in time, and the 
 attempt had to be postponed to the following day. 
 
 Even then there was no time to turn the position systematically, 
 and owing partly to the swollen state of the river, partly to the 
 want of adequate artillery, but perhaps mainly owing to the want of 
 
48 THE EVOLUTION OE MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 discipline in the French troops, who, having achieved a temporary- 
 success, broke their ranks and straggled in search of plunder, all 
 efforts failed, and the night closed down on one of the most critical 
 situations in Bonaparte's eventful career. For when the reports of 
 his Divisional Generals came in, it became apparent even to him 
 that for the moment the men could do no more. Serurier's message 
 concluding with the words, "without bread the troops will not 
 march," and the others more diplomatically conveyed the same 
 impression. 
 
 The 2 1st was to have been spent in bringing up fresh rein- 
 forcements, particularly of artillery ; but when morning dawned it 
 was found that, as at Ceva, Colli had withdrawn to a position in 
 rear, and whilst still engaged in settling himself therein, he was 
 attacked by the pursuing French, and driven back in considerable 
 confusion. 
 
 Practically, this settled the campaign, for the last chance of 
 gaining time enough to ensure co-operation with the Austrians had 
 now lapsed. The Sardinians deployed three times in more or less 
 favourable positions to check the French advance, but a threat at 
 their flanks and the show of a frontal attack invariably sufficed to 
 insure their retreat ; and as the troops were worn out with constant 
 night marching, and profoundly disheartened by successive defeat, 
 the King ultimately accepted the terms offered him, and concluded 
 a separate treaty of peace without reference to his ally, who, now 
 too late, was again beginning to show signs of renewed vitality. 
 
 In the space at my disposal, and without adequate maps for 
 illustration, it is difficult to convey the series of strategical situations 
 evoked during the campaign ; but a reference to ' Hamley's Opera- 
 tions ' — or any good map of the campaign will, I think, suffice to 
 show not only that neither at the commencement of the campaign 
 nor during its progress did the relative positions of the opposing 
 forces affect the ultimate result. The divergent interests of the 
 allied forces, purely a moral consideration, was throughout the 
 determining factor. 
 
 Eliminate this, assuming also equal resolution and celerity of 
 despatch of business in the Allied Headquarters, and it is clear that 
 the tables might have been turned on the French again and 
 again. 
 
 As in all cases of " interior lines," the matter resolved itself into 
 a question, of which force could be trusted by its leader to fight 
 the hardest — the old question of the nut and the crackers ; if the 
 crackers are the strongest, you break the nut ; if the nut is the 
 hardest, it bends the crackers. 
 
 Strategy has been defined by Willisen, a German author of 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 49 
 
 considerable repute some years ago, as *'the science of communica- 
 tions," and this 1796 campaign has often been cited as an illustration 
 of this definition. 
 
 With all due deference to established authority, I submit that, 
 after the question of divergent political interests referred to above, 
 the essence of each situation is to be found in the nature of the 
 supply problem in each Army, which enabled the French practically 
 to disregard their communications, but compelled the Austrians 
 and Sardinians, both tied by tradition and the nature of their 
 recruitment, to place the safeguarding of their magazines above 
 all else. 
 
 Bonaparte's best and most promising source of supply lay in 
 his enemy's encampments. If they had conquered the ground on 
 which the French had bivouaced, they would have found nothing ; 
 whereas, he occupying theirs, would have obtained food, clothing, 
 boots, arms, and ammunition. 
 
 Clausewitz always maintained that in this respect the Directory 
 saw more clearly than Bonaparte, and that had he followed their 
 instructions,* he would have escaped his two most serious dangers — 
 before Ceva, and the Biccogna. 
 
 Clausewitz uniformly condemns the use of a "retaining" or 
 "containing" force when acting on interior lines, and justifies his 
 position by first principles and his knowledge of human nature. 
 The first principle in the conduct of War is to be " as strong as 
 possible at the decisive point ; " but if the containing force is not 
 drawn in to that point, then obviously one is not as strong as one 
 might be, and the last " closed battalions " the retaining force repre- 
 sents might make all the difference between a mere drawn battle 
 and a crushing defeat. The point is to make your decision quickly, 
 and throw every available man, horse, and gun against the chosen 
 wing for attack, whilst distance alone renders the enemy's inter- 
 ference diflficult, if not impossible. 
 
 Apply this idea to the situation before Dego on the day of 
 Cosseria. Provera alone with his two thousand men at the outside 
 was negligible ; but the same troops that spent their strength 
 uselessly in assaults on the old castle of Cosseria might, joined 
 with those of Massena, have crushed the Austrians in Dego some 
 hours sooner, and by a vigorous pursuit have carried the French 
 over the inhospitable mountain districts and out into the fertile 
 plains, and upon their enemy's magazines in almost as many hours 
 as they actually took days to reach, even relative plenty. 
 
 Now all the French difficulties arose primarily from want of 
 
 ♦ At the time Clausewitz wrote, Bonaparte's share in preparing these schemes had 
 iiot been made public. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 provisions and of discipline. If Dego had been evacuated, as it 
 probably would have been, at the mere appearance of overwhelming 
 numbers, at any rate at the first rush instead of after prolonged 
 fighting, it is at least probable that the discipline, at least of the 
 intact reserves, would have been maintained — the pursuit would 
 have been pushed, and once in possession of the enemy's stores, 
 it mattered nothing what the Sardinians might have done with the 
 communications, for in point of fact there was practically nothing 
 to cut off. 
 
 It is quite certain now that a vigorous pursuit was all that was 
 needed to insure a rapid withdrawal on the part of the Austrians, 
 and Clausewitz maintains that even in default of positive evidence, 
 there was a strong presumptive case based on the known facts of 
 human nature; but tradition was still too strong even for a 
 Napoleon, and he allowed himself to be misled into withholding 
 two whole divisions for two days, whilst his subordinate, Augereau, 
 was being badly hammered before Ceva, and then turned back into 
 the mountains where he ran the very serious risk of downright 
 mutiny arising from privation, and suffered two severe checks 
 before he reached a region where it was possible for him to give 
 the men that subsistence from the country which he had led them 
 to expect in his proclamations. 
 
 This is by no means the only instance in which Clausewitz blames 
 Napoleon for the same lack of strategic insight, and the Waterloo 
 campaign is perhaps a better known instance of his opinion. Here, 
 again, he proves, and I think to demonstration, that if instead of 
 dividing his force before Quatre Bras and Ligny, Napoleon had 
 thrown the whole upon Blucher, overpowered and pursued him, living 
 on his magazines and using his ammunition (he could not use ours, 
 the bore of Brown Bess was the larger), he might well have reached 
 the Rhine, with political consequences of incalculable magnitude, 
 before our somewhat slow moving Army could by any possibility 
 have overtaken him ; and in this view each successive study of this 
 campaign has only served to confirm my own opinion. 
 
 We were slow — the slowest Army in Europe — because we still 
 lived by the magazine system. Napoleon had mobility, and failed 
 to make the most of it. 
 
 Yet in that 1796 campaign Napoleon earned from his troops, 
 and deservedly, the title of the greatest leader the world perhaps, 
 France certainly, has ever seen ; and I submit that the reason was, 
 not because of the skill with which he ordered his Divisions about, 
 many lesser men had shown equal skill, but because throughout a 
 time of unexampled strain, by his indefatigable zeal, unwearied 
 activity and astounding tact, he everywhere brought order out of 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 51 
 
 chaos, and convinced every one, his seniors, contemporaries, and 
 even his recruits, that here at last they had to deal with the true 
 strategist ; the living embodiment of the highest " art of the 
 Leader " which " art " is not evinced in the mere dictation of orders, 
 or even in the sifting of intelligence, but by superior will-power 
 impresses itself as irresistible on friend and enemy alike. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Moreau and the Archduke Charles in Germany, 1796— The Archduke's limitations 
 compared with Napoleon — Jomini and the French plan of campaign— Real nature 
 of the miscalculation of the French Government — ** Exterior lines of operations" — 
 The campaign of Marengo — Bonaparte's preparations— The ** Army of Reserve" — 
 Concentration on Geneva — Comparison with modern conditions of transport — Sea- 
 power — The object of national armaments— Bonaparte's feverish energy — What is 
 an **army" — Comparison between 1800 and 1870— Did Bonaparte originate the 
 idea of using Switzerland as a " re-entrant base" — Physical difficulties of the march 
 over the Alps compared with modern exploits — Value of the St. Gotthard as a line 
 of communications — Suggested War game — The Austrian collapse after Marengo. 
 
 Whilst countless commentators have wearied their readers with 
 their views on Bonaparte's campaign of 1796, the equally brilliant, 
 and for British purposes far more useful, exploits of the Archduke 
 Charles during the same year in the valley of the Danube and 
 upon the Rhine have received but scanty attention even in the 
 country of the victors, where until within the last ten years no 
 adequate study of this, the most instructive of all their many 
 campaigns, had even been attempted.* 
 
 Where in Italy Bonaparte had only been handling somewhere 
 about 30,000 men in a mountainous region some fifty miles square, 
 Moreau and the Archduke in Germany had been at the head of 
 armies, numerically not insignificant even in the present day, and 
 moving in a district complicated by forests, rivers, and mountains 
 fully four times as large in area, and whereas, in the former, the 
 victor owed his successes mainly to the absence of the supply 
 difficulty ; in the latter, the Archduke was almost as much 
 hampered as Wellington in Spain, by the necessity of conciliating 
 the inhabitants of the region in which he was moving. 
 
 I would wish particularly not to be misunderstood on this point 
 of supply. Neither Bonaparte nor the Austrians could afford to 
 neglect their communications altogether, but whereas victory 
 solved all difficulties for weeks for the former, the Austrian 
 magazines being generally well provided, the French when defeated 
 
 * See * Geist und Stoflf im, modernen Krieg,' by C. von B. K. Vienna, 1893. The 
 Archduke himself has given an excellent study of the campaign, but he had hardly the 
 necessary information of his opponent's army to render it final. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 53 
 
 left nothing but a desert waste to the conqueror, who thereby found 
 his freedom of movement curtailed almost in direct proportion to 
 the freedom and rapidity of movement the other gained. 
 
 In pursuing Joubert after his victory at Wurzburg, neglecting 
 for the time the threat of Moreau's presence in his rear, and harass- 
 ing him till the loosely knit French Army became a mere rabble, 
 then returning in time to threaten Moreau's retreat to the Rhine, 
 the Archduke showed greater boldness than Bonaparte and more 
 real insight into the true nature of War ; but this alone will not 
 suffice to place him in history on the same level as a "strategist," 
 a master of the art of leading armies, because he was lacking in 
 that extraordinary driving power which characterised Napoleon, 
 and could not exact from his followers of all ranks that extra- 
 ordinary self-abnegation which seemed to permeate all ranks of 
 the French Army when under their leader's eye. 
 
 The Archduke was a master in the art of moving armies about, 
 Napoleon in the art of making them fight, and of the two the latter 
 seems to me the greater gift. 
 
 The success of the Austrians, however, by no means suffices to 
 condemn the French design. The special circumstances of the 
 case must be taken into account ; but this is just what the average 
 commentator, from the days of Jomini onwards, has always declined 
 to undertake. To him the French were foredoomed to failure by 
 the form of their operations — an advance on exterior lines. I submit 
 that this form was not a matter of free choice, but of necessity for 
 the French Government, and that nothing known or which could 
 reasonably have been known to their authorities at the time of its 
 conception justified any want of confidence in its ultimate success. 
 
 A French Army in those days needed a vast area to subsist 
 upon, and if both their armies had been moved on one line, the 
 probabilities are that it would have starved before it could have 
 caught up with the retreating Austrians, who, being numerically 
 much the weaker, must have fallen back to pick up reinforcements. 
 By the lines selected, the French moved through the richest 
 country available, and each wing was not only strong enough to 
 give a good account of itself, but quite as big as any General of the 
 time could handle in action or on the march with effect. 
 
 Against any other Austrian leader but the Archduke, the plan 
 promised almost certain success, and his qualifications at the time 
 of its inception were quite unknown even in his own Army ; but 
 even he would have failed if the French had possessed the cohesion 
 of regular troops and been better served by their cavalry, for at the 
 crisis of the campaign it was the superiority of the Austrian horse- 
 men in the duties of reconnaissance and screening, helped by the 
 
54 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 fact that the great colh'sion took place in districts which especially 
 favoured the latter and hampered the former, which alone enabled 
 the Archduke to withdraw unperceived from the front of one 
 enemy and concentrate his whole force upon the head of the other. 
 
 The real miscalculation of the French Government lay in their 
 over-estimation of the strength of their materials. Their armies 
 were not homogeneous enough, their leaders not energetic enough for 
 their task. Had the latter been able to impress on the former but 
 a mile a day additional mobility, the weight of numbers must have 
 told, and the Archduke would have been crushed between hammer 
 and anvil. 
 
 To attempt to establish as an axiom on these and similar data 
 that exterior lines of operation necessarily place an army at a 
 disadvantage seems to me a negation of all true scientific reasoning, 
 which is careful always not to generalise from insufficient examples. 
 A broader survey of the facts is needed before a sound conclusion 
 can be arrived at. 
 
 If double lines of operations were under all circumstances un- 
 desirable, what becomes of all the chapters and arguments by 
 which Jomini and his faithful followers, amongst whom Hamley 
 may be assigned almost the first rank, seek to bolster up their 
 theories as to the advantage of a re-entering frontier, as demon- 
 strated in the campaign of Marengo, 1880, Ulm, 1805, and more 
 recently in Bohemia, 1866 } In all three the exterior lines were 
 successful ; but can any one suppose that the existence of a mere 
 imaginary line drawn across a map can seriously modify the result 
 of collision between two fighting forces t 
 
 A more detailed survey of the facts is necessary before one 
 proceeds to any generalisation, and, as much new light has been 
 shed on the subject by recent historical investigations * — light which 
 enables us to view Napoleon from quite a different standpoint than 
 that of a mere conjurer with words and phrases — I propose to deal 
 with his campaigns at somewhat greater length. 
 
 When Napoleon returned from Egypt in 1799, he found on 
 every frontier his work of conquest undone. In Italy the Austrians, 
 to whose armies for the time Suvaroff had succeeded in imparting 
 some of his own energy and resolution in attack, had swept the 
 French back behind the Alps, leaving only Genoa, where Massena 
 still held out, as a rallying point, and in the north also the French 
 were behind the Rhine ; only Switzerland still remained under the 
 control of the Republic, though it would be hardly accurate to 
 describe it as friendly. 
 
 * See the recent publications of the French General Staff, especially de Cugnac's 
 ' L'Armeexie Reserve,' 1800. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 55 
 
 The finances of France were almost at as low an ebb as in 1796, 
 and it seemed to Europe that her last reserve of men and horses 
 had been expended during the previous struggle. 
 
 Only one man even in France thought differently, and whilst 
 the Austrians, after Suvaroff's withdrawal, had relapsed into their 
 habitual lethargy, he was at work creating out of the most un- 
 promising materials a new army, which in his hands became 
 destined to reverse the tide of ill-fortune. 
 
 I have always considered this as by far the greatest triumph his 
 creative energy ever accomplished, for he was not yet emperor and 
 had still to fight against ignorance, incompetence, and political 
 intrigue, practically alone, with no trained staff to help him. 
 
 Though the ranks of the armies had been terribly depleted, 
 there were yet men and units in France who, under one pretext or 
 another, had managed to adhere to the depots, and taking the 
 Army List and distribution returns, he proceeded to " dig out " every 
 man he could find still available for service. Once these had been 
 " rounded up " they appear to have accepted their fate with sufficient 
 cheerfulness — for the moral of the " Army of Reserve " was un- 
 deniably above reproach — and though the temperament of the nation 
 may account for this in part, the fact that the pinch of hard times, 
 as in 1792, was again beginning to exercise its customary effect 
 on human nature, furnishes probably the stronger half of the 
 explanation. 
 
 These units he proceeded to concentrate by a series of route 
 marches, embracing every post-road in France, on a general line of 
 cantonments from Dijon to Geneva, and one must study the maps 
 and original orders given in Captain de Cugnac's * L'Armee de 
 Reserve,' my principal authority for these pages, to realise the 
 astounding capacity for detail labour this whole proceeding involved. 
 Of course he had assistants, but from the exceedingly confidential 
 nature of the matter they must have been few, and he himself must 
 have carried the thread of the whole design in his own brain through 
 all the turmoil, danger, and excitement of his day-to-day life, for 
 the year was a critical one in his fortunes, and though First Consul, 
 he was by no means secure in his seat. 
 
 The execution of this concentration took time, of course ; many 
 units had 600 miles to march, and long before the heads of the 
 columns could reach their ultimate destination, it was allowed to 
 leak out by the secret police that a great^army was concentrating at 
 Dijon, further that a visit there would well repay any foreign secret 
 agent, for Bonaparte himself was about to review the gathering. 
 
 Following the hint, the secret agents, all or most of them well 
 known to the police, journeyed down to Dijon and saw General 
 
56 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 Bonaparte review an exceedingly mixed force — of boys, old men, 
 and cripples, not 10,000 strong, who had been collected for the 
 occasion and dignified with the title /r<? tevi. of "Army of Reserve." 
 
 They sent off their " secret and confidential " reports in all 
 haste, and this time these were not interfered with in the post ; and 
 presently all the Courts in Europe were laughing over stories and 
 cartoons ridiculing the " Corsican's " ridiculous bombast in styling 
 such a collection an army ; but hardly had the authors withdrawn 
 from the scene, having been carefully induced to move by the same 
 secret police, than the heads of the real columns began to arrive, 
 and in the first days of May a very sufficient Army of Reserve took 
 up its allotted position. 
 
 Practically this " ruse " determined the result of the campaign, 
 for so convinced were the Austrians of the truth of the information 
 they received, that to the very last, even when the whole Army was 
 on Italian soil, and almost in their rear, they refused obstinately to 
 credit the reported strength with which they had to deal, and hence 
 the hesitancy which marked their preliminary concentration. 
 
 Except in the wilds of Manchuria, such a scheme would seem 
 to have but little chance of success nowadays, and it would seem, 
 from Mr. Balfour's statement of our Naval and Military policy, 
 made in the debate on the Army Estimates, 9th May, that some 
 such calculation lies at the base of his recent change of opinion as 
 to the possibility of a " surprise raid " upon our coasts. If, however, 
 the increased power of rapidly moving troops conferred by railways 
 and telegraphs be considered, the conclusion seems hardly a sound 
 one, and rather suggests want of information and deficiency of 
 grasp on the part of his strategic advisers. 
 
 The French Army and War Office of to-day is in a very different 
 condition of readiness to what it was a century ago, and it would 
 seem to me a very simple matter to arrange in peace time for the 
 despatch of, say, 1 50 trains from almost as many inland stations by 
 upwards of ten separate double lines of railway to deliver their 
 contents along a front from Dunkirk to St. Malo between 6 p.m. 
 and midnight on any particular day of the week without exciting 
 diplomatic attention ; nor would it take much finesse to decide on 
 a line of operations which would suffice to occupy very fully the 
 attention of our Navy during the critical six to eight hours these 
 troops would require for their sea-passage. Once on shore, how 
 long would it take our new "Districts" to concentrate for the 
 defence of London ? Should we prove very much quicker than the 
 Austrians } 
 
 The point is this : all history teaches that the maintenance of 
 peace depends, not on the knowledge of facts as the}^ are, but on 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 57 
 
 the view taken of some few of these facts from opposite standpoints. 
 How those facts which are known strike the respective observers is 
 ahnost entirely the consequence of the previous training their minds 
 have already received, and I submit that no foreign statesman or 
 soldier, trained to view War from the Napoleonic standpoint, in 
 contra-distinction to ours, the "Nelsonic," to coin a word, could 
 hesitate in his answer if called on to give an opinion. 
 
 I hold the " sea-power " standpoint as firmly as any man in the 
 country, and would give very little for the chances of success of 
 such an enterprise ; but even if we sank every transport within a 
 mile of their beach, the War would have begun and we should be 
 in for a bloody struggle of endurance which could not last much, if 
 at all, less than two years, and which would cost us one thousand 
 million even if we were successful. 
 
 My impression has always been that the object of our 
 expenditure on armaments is to preserve peace unbroken. Our 
 present policy seems to me expressly calculated to invite aggression. 
 
 No officer occupying the position of the French generalissimo 
 could, if called upon by his Government, declare on his honour 
 and conscience that the Army under his command was incapable 
 of attempting by surprise raid the capture of London, for to do 
 so would be to confess that he and those under him had neglected 
 their duty. Only six weeks ago * a mere stroke of the pen on our 
 side would have sufficed to give him the necessary facts to decline 
 the responsibility. Since the Prime Minister can hardly change 
 his mind for the third time, I confess to awaiting the future with 
 no little anxiety. 
 
 Reverting again to the main current of our story, even when 
 the Army had been thus successfully concentrated, it was very far 
 from being a mobilised field force in the present sense of the words. 
 Though organised in divisions, it was almost without field artillery, 
 its trains were chaotic, and its ammunition supply ludicrously 
 inadequate. 
 
 Though everything had been foreseen and ordered by Bona- 
 parte, there was then as always a difference between giving an 
 order and getting it obeyed ; and now comes a fresh display of 
 that marvellous capacity for work and the development of energy 
 in others which formed the dominant characteristic of this unique 
 nature. Again, one must turn to the pages of de Cugnac and read 
 the sheaves of orders and despatches that flowed from his pen. 
 
 Instructions to send on ammunition by post relays, to pick up 
 so many hundredweight of lead in one arsenal, so many pairs of 
 boots in another. To form factories for the manufacture of cartridges, 
 
 * Written in March, 1904. 
 
58 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 and the baking of biscuit at Geneva. Orders to seize every boat 
 on the lake to provide transport for provisions, in fine, orders to 
 every subordinate to carry out and complete the duties which each 
 ought to have done without any reminder. 
 
 Ultimately by the 14th May a sufficiency of stores and munitions 
 were collected for the movement to begin, and if space permitted 
 it would be interesting to give in detail the whole list of deficiencies 
 which even then remained to be made good. 
 
 It raises the whole question of when an army passes from the 
 stage of being a mere aggregation of individuals and becomes a 
 concrete fighting entity. In view of the many discussions of recent 
 years on army organisation, it is well worth considering this point 
 at some length. 
 
 Neither the dictionary nor even the Encyclopcedia Britannica can 
 help us to solve the riddle. Theoretically an army becomes an 
 army from the moment the orders appointing a commander, staff, 
 and naming its units are issued, and it remains one until a similar 
 edict decreeing its dissolution appears ; but the range of its fighting 
 value meanwhile may vary almost indefinitely, and this is a point 
 that statesmen who are not soldiers and soldiers who are not 
 statesmen are both apt to overlook. 
 
 The former, having decreed the constitution of a field force, 
 forthwith imagine they have created a counter of definite value in 
 the game, and expect it to justify its existence by deeds forthwith. 
 The latter, knowing all the thousand and one details that remain to 
 be adjusted before ideal efficiency is attained, hesitate to act before 
 all things are perfect, and by hesitation lose the whole chances of 
 a campaign. 
 
 Thus, in 1870, a first victory was the one and only chance of 
 the French Army, and a comparison of the numbers available on 
 both sides up to the 3rd August show that more than the chance, 
 almost the certainty of winning such a victory existed, had the 
 different Corps and Division Commanders been ready to move. 
 
 But they were not, or considered that they were not. One had 
 no water-bottles for his men, another no " flannel bandages " (? 
 " cholera belts "), a third wanted to put his men through a course 
 of musketry with the new rifle, etc., etc. Surely, as the French official 
 account now in course of publication points out, had the uncle, not 
 the nephew, been in chief command, he would have made short 
 work of all these objectors. 
 
 The driving energy, that all-conquering will-power which accepts 
 no excuse for failure, knowing well that men have marched and 
 conquered, shoeless, ragged, and starving, was needed to set the 
 men in motion, and what such energy can accomplish this 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 59 
 
 marvellous campaign of Marengo remains as an example ; but it 
 must be studied in de Cugnac's pages, not Hamley's. 
 
 Almost to the day the Army started, but so short of musket 
 ammunition that a special order was issued prohibiting the use of 
 ball cartridge for the training of the recruits in musketry, though 
 many had only the day before received their arms for the first 
 time ; and to teach a man to load his weapon in those days was 
 not quite such a simple process as it has since become. 
 
 Does not the ability combined with the iron resolution needed 
 to judge exactly the moment at which the fighting value of this 
 army would suffice for its task and to launch it forward for its 
 performance, undismayed by the cloud of uncertainties which still 
 encircled the future, suggest rather more of the " art of the leader " 
 than the mere recognition of the advantage to be derived from 
 falling upon the enemy's communications — a trick obvious to every 
 schoolboy at play. 
 
 Actually, there is no evidence to show that this idea of drawing 
 advantage from the possession of Switzerland, i.e. from the angular 
 base, was originally the conception of Bonaparte at all. On the 
 contrary, the plan had been in the air for months beforehand, 
 indeed, ever since Switzerland fell under French control. De 
 Cugnac's work and the despatches on which it is founded can 
 leave no doubt on the point, which, of course, lay equally at the 
 bottom of Moreau's simultaneous invasion of South Germany ; but 
 whereas Moreau took over an army organised and equipped in all 
 except one essential detail (horses for his pontoon train), Bonaparte 
 had to find, organise, and equip his own, and that, too, with such 
 rapidity that the secret could not leak out. 
 
 That an army could cross the Alps admitted of no doubt what- 
 ever, they had done so repeatedly for centuries, and only in the 
 preceding year MacDonald and SuvarofF both had succeeded in 
 surmounting them by more difficult pzisses and in far more severe 
 weather. 
 
 The men who marched from Gilgit to the relief of Chitral, or 
 who are even now forcing their way into Thibet,* at an altitude nearly 
 double that of the summit level of the St. Bernard, would laugh at 
 the physical obstacles of the route even as they stood in those days ; 
 but how many men have we had since the days of Sir Charles 
 Napier who would have dared such an effort with such an army, 
 and with no better information than lay at Bonaparte's disposal } 
 
 The only moves of modern times which can be placed in 
 approximately the same category are Sir Donald Stewart's march 
 from Candahar to Cabul, and Lord Roberts' move in the reverse 
 
 * Written in March, 1904. 
 
6o THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 direction ; but in each case the fighting superiority of our force was 
 incontestable, the country easier, and both were assured of abundant 
 supplies on arrival at their destination. Bonaparte had to take his 
 supplies from his enemy first, and, as matters actually turned out, 
 to capture both the guns necessary to complete his equipment, 
 together with their ammunition also, for the protracted defence of 
 Ford Bard cut off his artillery and ammunition columns for some 
 ten days ; and his advance guard, under Lannes, actually entered 
 the plains of Italy and stormed Ivrea without any guns at all. 
 
 Reading his St. Helena despatches, I have always been reminded 
 of the story of BlUcher who, having won a brilliant victory over the 
 French, very much to his own astonishment, said to his Chief of 
 the Staff, Gneisenau : " Now sit down at once and show them that 
 we can not only win a battle, but explain how we did it." It has, 
 in fact, always seemed to me that having won a most glorious 
 campaign, Napoleon felt bound to put himself right in the eyes of 
 the " strategists " with their " science of communications," by calling 
 their attention to the care with which he moved to Milan in order 
 to establish an alternative line of retreat and supply in case of 
 disaster. But what kind of a line of retreat or supply would the 
 St. Gotthard have been for a beaten French Army ; there was 
 no St. Gotthard railway in those days, the pass was even worse 
 than the St. Bernard ; what stores were there awaiting his arrival 
 at Zurich, and what would have been the attitude of the Swiss 
 mountaineers, particularly the German-speaking ones, to a French 
 force in disordered retreat, Napoleon does not say , but the French 
 would have been fortunate indeed had they behaved much better 
 to their oppressors than the Afghans did to us between Cabul and 
 Jellalabad in 1842. 
 
 This excentric movement on Milan not only sacrificed Massena 
 in Genoa, to relieve whom had been the object of the march, but 
 set free the besieging force under Ott, and gave time for Elsnitz, 
 who was then opposed to Suchet on the Var, to retreat and rejoin 
 the main army, the two together very considerably outnumbered the 
 reinforcement Moncey brought to the French main body at Milan. 
 
 The whole movement is so opposed to the Napoleonic practice, 
 that one can only suppose a yielding to overwhelming necessity, 
 that necessity being the provision of subsistence and ammunition 
 for his exhausted men out of the rich Austrian stores which had 
 accumulated at Milan. 
 
 It would be an interesting experiment to prepare a War game 
 map, altering the names and eliminating all political considerations, 
 then give the situation as it appeared to Bonaparte on the 24th of 
 May, to a series of players trained in the modern school and see 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 6i 
 
 what the consensus of opinion would make of it. I have little 
 doubt what the result would be : a concentration against the 
 nearest fractions of the enemy's field army with a view to defeat 
 them in detail before they could reunite. Surprise is so evidently 
 the essence of the operation that no one would dream of sacrificing 
 the opportunity as Napoleon actually did ; the presumption, there- 
 fore, as I have already stated, is very strong that the compelling 
 force to which even his will had to bow must have been of a very 
 unusual nature. 
 
 It is unfortunate that the Austrian records of this campaign are 
 unusually scanty ; but quite recently the Staff at Vienna have 
 published two monographs, the first by Count Neipperg, who was 
 on the Staff of General Melas, the second by the Prince of Hohen- 
 zollern, who throughout the campaign was with General Ott. Both 
 contain much which is of interest with regard to the internal con- 
 dition of the Army ; but neither gives sufficient explanation of 
 the extraordinary slowness with which information and orders 
 circulated within the Imperial Army. 
 
 When one considers that no point in the whole theatre of 
 operations was more than seventy-five miles from headquarters — 
 and that four days should have been ample to mass the whole 
 90,000 men that Melas commanded anywhere in the vicinity of 
 Alessandria, one is absolutely amazed at the appalling lethargy 
 which let some twenty days, from 24th May to 14th June, slip by 
 in inaction. The truth seems to be that up to the very last the 
 Austrians did not believe in the existence of the Reserve Army at 
 all, but thought they had still only to deal with the small column 
 methods of the previous decade — small commands which could be 
 brushed aside whenever their concentrated Army chose to move — 
 and their initial success at Marengo, in spite of all their blunders, 
 goes far to justify this view. After all, it was only a relatively small 
 column — 22,500 (less Desaix on detachment) — which opposed them 
 that day, and the Austrians ought to have crushed it beyond hope 
 of rallying long before Desaix returned to the ground, in which 
 case the state of the French would have been a good deal more 
 hopeless than that of the Austrians ; for there was not a peasant 
 in Lombardy after the French excesses of 1799 who would not 
 have risen against them once committed to a retreat. 
 
 Neipperg's diary shows quite clearly that Melas was absolutely 
 " bluffed " into surrender by the astounding audacity with which 
 Napoleon lied. The Imperial Army was still far more numerous 
 and better in hand than the French, and might easily have renewed 
 the attack next day or slipped away to Genoa, where their supply 
 and transhipment to any point of the coast, thanks to our fleet, 
 
62 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 was assured, but their commander's nerve had given out, and his 
 imagination entirely failed to grasp the enormity of the falsehoods 
 with which he was confronted ; nor is it easy to blame him, for the 
 effrontry with which the French officers carried off their claims was 
 and remains unparalleled. 
 
 With not 5000 men in hand, and the bulk of their Army still 
 flying in panic twenty miles to the rear, they spoke as if still at the 
 head of victorious masses, and the Austrians may well be forgiven 
 if they failed to " go one better." 
 
 Note. — With reference to de Cugnac's work, so often referred to above, I would call 
 special attention to Major-General Furse's book, * Marengo and Hohenlinden.* This 
 is the first attempt in our language to utilise the value of the material published by the 
 French Staff, and deserves the closest attention of all students of Napoleonic times. It 
 has further the great advantage of being written by a practical soldier. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 The Campaign of Ulm, 1805. 
 
 Advantages of a re-entering frontier — The works of MM. Alombert and Colin — The 
 Grand Army — Napoleon's supreme influence over it — The Staff — Proportion of 
 veterans — The Hussars — The discipline of the infantry — Age of the oflScers — In- 
 struction at the depots — The artillery and engineers — Horse supply — Inadequacy of 
 transport arrangements — Terrible weather encountered — Sufferings of the troops — 
 Even Vandamme complains — Marmont's letters — Berthier's reply — Hunger as an 
 incentive to marching — Davout's letters — Condition of the Guard — Captain 
 Bugeaud's testimony — Fezensac's description of the hardships — Napoleon's letter to 
 Luchesini — His '* strategical deployment" — Importance of Wiirzburg — Navigation 
 of the Main — Bamberg — Bernadotte's march from Gottingen to Frankfurt — Conse- 
 quent delay of Davout's corps — Feeling against the French in Hannover. 
 
 There are probably very few officers in the British Army who 
 have not at some period or other of their military career been 
 confronted with an examination question on strategy, couched 
 somewhat in the following terms : — 
 
 " What are the advantages conferred on an invader by the 
 possession of a re-entering frontier ? Illustrate your answer by a 
 sketch and description of the campaign of Ulm (1805)." 
 
 The question recalls the skeleton map at the end of Hamley's 
 * Operations of War.' The Main, with its curious double S curves, 
 running along the top of the page and meeting the Rhine almost at 
 right angles to the west ; whilst from Bamberg, Wiirzburg, Mayence, 
 and Strasburg dotted lines converge on the course of the Danube 
 between Donauworth and Ingolstadt, conveying the impression 
 that the columns of the Grand Army had been quietly awaiting, 
 secure behind the formidable obstacles indicated, the signal to 
 spring upon their devoted prey, which in a climax of intellectual 
 imbecility had elected to remain inert and lifeless under the walls 
 of the celebrated fortress, which has given its name to the 
 campaign. 
 
 Probably ninety-nine out of every hundred further believe 
 that Bamberg and Wiirzburg were two imposing entrenched camps, 
 teeming with stores and provisions, which the "friendly" North 
 Germans brought gladly to the French commissariat in exchange 
 
64 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 for coin of the realm, and from the pages of our text-books, and 
 the ordinary acceptation of such words as "base," " frontier," " lines 
 of communication," etc., I confess I cannot see what other 
 conclusion could be reasonably arrived at. 
 
 Nothing, however, could be less like the reality than this 
 picture, for, if the true development of the plan of campaign is 
 followed— and, thanks to the labours of MM. Alombert and Colin of 
 the Historical section of the French General Staff, it has now been 
 rendered readily accessible to all — it will be found that the line of 
 the Main, as a section of a friendly frontier, never played any part 
 in Napoleon's conception of his design at all, and by the nature of 
 things exercised no influence on the course of events. 
 
 Pursuing the general trend of my investigation, viz. to make 
 it clear that " strategy " is the " art of the leader," and consists, to 
 quote Moltke's definition, in " the practical adaptation of the means 
 at hand to the attainment of the object in view," I propose to 
 devote some little space in the first place to making clear to the 
 reader the nature of the " means at hand " to each of the two 
 leaders engaged, for in no other of his campaigns with which I am 
 acquainted did Napoleon control from the outset such an over- 
 whelming superiority of force, both moral and numerical. 
 
 Marengo had established his reputation on such a pinnacle that, 
 henceforth, his orders met with a readiness of unquestioned 
 obedience in excess probably of anything known in history before 
 or since. It was not merely that he had the right as Emperor to 
 command ; but it was the trust and confidence of all ranks in his in- 
 fallibility that procured for him a zealous service up to the limits of 
 human capacity for endurance, which far transcends, in the energy 
 it communicates to the motion of masses of men, the momentum 
 imported by perfunctory obedience to constituted authority. 
 
 This alone was a new factor in warfare of far more importance 
 than changes in weapons or equipment. Yet, notwithstanding 
 this new power, he came within an ace of failure, and it will be 
 interesting as a contribution to prevailing fallacies as to Army 
 Reform to study the material at his disposal. 
 
 The Grand Army had been formed on the shores of the Channel, 
 its units duly assigned to their respective brigades, divisions, and 
 corps, but already its size was beyond the power of one man's 
 control, and no adequate material for the formation of a " General 
 Staff" as yet existed. 
 
 There were, indeed, a considerable-number of War-experienced 
 men accustomed to the office work of the field, excellent as 
 individuals, but not trained in the same school to view matters 
 from the same standpoint, or to work in harmony with one 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 65 
 
 another; but even these were insufficient in number, whilst no 
 arrangements whatever existed for the education and subsequent 
 selection of men to fill its junior ranks, and in default of such a 
 school, selection tempered by favouritism produced a plentiful crop 
 of the typical "brass hats," — men who, insufficiently taught to 
 appreciate the true needs and capacity of the men in the ranks, 
 issue orders which can only be obeyed at the expense of their 
 fighting efficiency, or circulate them with such carelessness that 
 they always arrive late at their destination. 
 
 The actual composition of the Army as regards the rank and 
 file was excellent. From the inspection returns of the year 
 XIII., preserved in the Archives, it appears that 50,538 out of 
 115,582 had already seen service, though this number was very 
 unevenly distributed amongst the different arms of the service. 
 The sappers coming first with yy per cent, of their strength, then 
 the light cavalry and the infantry, averaging 42*5 per cent 
 
 The number of men over ten years of service varied consider- 
 ably — in the 17th Line there were 918 out of 951, in the 13th Light 
 Infantry 540 out of 569, down to the 14th Line 267 out of 741. 
 
 Generally, 25 per cent, of the Army had fought all through the 
 campaigns of the Republic, a second quarter had been through 
 Marengo and Hohenlinden, and the remainder had been incor- 
 porated since 1801. 
 
 Nearly all the officers and non-commissioned officers had seen 
 service, and in each regiment there were still some sturdy survivors 
 of the old Royal Army, some with forty years' Colour service. 
 
 The Hussars had retained their old traditions, they had 
 received very few conscripts, but had kept up their numbers by 
 voluntary enlistment, generally from Alsatians and other German 
 families ; one half, however, of their officers were quite illiterate, 
 and many did not even know the words of command in French. 
 Marbot's description, written in 1799, is still substantially accurate 
 in 1805. 
 
 The other arms had become more republican ; particularly the 
 infantry, who seem to have been a pretty rough lot from the 
 unmerciful fashion in which they harassed their recruits. Hence, 
 desertion was pretty rife — from 5 to 8 per cent, per annum. The 
 old soldiers also deserted freely ; but this seems to have been merely 
 a republican way of taking furlough, as they generally rejoined 
 after a few months' absence — evidently the punishment must have 
 been merely nominal. The complaints, however, against the want 
 of physical development in the recruits are ceaseless, yet at that 
 time the strain on the population was by no means excessive, 
 though it soon after became so. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 The composition of the officers present with the Grand 
 Army is of peculiar interest. The total number was 5000; of 
 these about 100 came from the new officers' school at Fontaine- 
 bleau, aged from seventeen to twenty-one, 500 to 600 from the 
 original volunteers of 1792, or from the conscripts raised since 
 1785. These were mostly picked men, selected for their general 
 standard of instruction and social position, like " de Fezensac," or 
 for distinguished conduct in action, as " Dulong," commanding a 
 battalion at twenty-five ; but mostly they are still lieutenants 
 in 1805. 
 
 In spite of this element of youth in the cadres, the average age 
 of the sub-lieutenants is thirty-two, and those of the lieutenants 
 thirty-seven, whilst those of the captains and superior officers is 
 only thirty-nine ; but there were more than ninety lieutenants over 
 fifty years of age, and four over sixty. " Men were already 
 beginning to grumble in the Grand Army, and it looks as if a few 
 more years of peace would have destroyed it." 
 
 ** This is not its only fault. It is very poorly trained to 
 manoeuvres, almost all the professional officers of the old Royal 
 Army have disappeared, and the few who remain have attained 
 high rank, whence they exercise little influence on the instruction 
 of their men," and drill has become exceedingly neglected. This, 
 by the way, almost invariably happens in an army which has 
 practically grown up on the battle-field and fought with almost 
 constant success. Men feel that they are " good enough," and 
 having never felt the need of iron discipline in disaster, object to 
 what they consider merely unpractical playing at soldiers. It is 
 the " school of defeat " that turns out the better fighting men and 
 leaders, and hence the curious swing of the pendulum that has so 
 often occurred between races of approximately equal fighting 
 capacity. 
 
 The recruits were supposed to be drilled at the depots, but, as 
 usual, all the most infirm and useless officers had been relegated to 
 those positions, and the instruction given appears to have been very 
 indifferent indeed. The cavalry were poorly mounted, and only 
 here and there in the confidential returns is an officer mentioned 
 as showing keenness or knowledge of equitation, proving how low 
 the standard had fallen since former days. 
 
 The Artillery and Engineers had suffered least from the 
 Revolution, and the former remained to the last the Slite of the 
 Army, but the Engineers as a body seem to have been about the 
 standard of our military foremen of works, good at estimating and 
 at the drawing-board, but with no broad grasp of the principles of 
 their profession. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 67 
 
 The analysis of the ages and service of the 141 general officers 
 is very interesting — unfortunately too long to give in extenso here. 
 They vary from one of twenty-nine years of age to one of fifty- 
 eight, but the mean is about forty. One-quarter had served as 
 officers of the old Army, one-quarter in its ranks, and the re- 
 mainder came chiefly from the levies subsequent to 1791. 
 
 The most crying need of the Army, however, was horses, both 
 Cor cavalry and transport. Many Dragoons, in fact, had to take the 
 field on foot, trusting to pick up mounts on the way, and had not 
 succeeded in this task when Ulm finally fell, a circumstance which 
 proved almost providential for the French, for these dismounted 
 horse-soldiers, not having been able to keep up with the rest of 
 the Army, found themselves right across the line of the attempted 
 Austrian withdrawal near Heidenheim, on the road to Bohemia ; 
 and it was to them that Werneck, commanding the escaping corps, 
 confused and intimidated by the multiplicity of the uniforms by 
 which he appeared to be surrounded, and, of course, not knowing 
 that these were the laggards of the main French Army, ultimately 
 surrendered the wreck of his force at Neresheim on the 15th 
 October. 
 
 The extraordinary weakness of the transport alluded to above 
 seems to my mind a convincing indication of the reality of 
 Napoleon's intention to invade us. No transport would be re- 
 quired for a raid on London, hence none was provided, and it was 
 only in May, 1805, when the alternative of war against Austria 
 came more clearly in sight, that an effort was made to supply the 
 deficiency by the completion of a contract with the " Compagnie 
 Breidt " for the " provision of 30 brigades of waggons, of which, 
 however, only 6, with 163 carriages, were actually ready in time." * 
 The deficiencies had to be made good by requisition, and as the 
 service was most unpopular, the drivers, taken by force from Alsace 
 and Baden, lost no opportunity of deserting, taking, of course, 
 their horses with them. 
 
 Under these untoward circumstances, supply and transport 
 broke down utterly, and almost from the first entry into Germany 
 the troops had to live on the country, with the usual consequences 
 that discipline went to pieces, and scenes which recall the horrors 
 of the Thirty Years' War marked the progress of the French 
 columns. The diaries of French officers, of men like Thiebault and 
 de Fezensac, show how they loathed the whole business ; but they 
 were powerless to check the evil ; and we find even that iron soldier 
 "Davout," whose corps was always the best disciplined in the 
 
 * *Studien zur Kri^sgeschichte u. Taktik.,' Part III., p. 13, note. General Staff, 
 Berlin. 
 
6S THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 Army, writing imploring letters to the Emperor begging for 
 permission to shoot some of the marauders. 
 
 The matter is of so much importance for my general argument 
 that I transcribe almost verbatim the pages on this subject from 
 M. Colin's work.* 
 
 After directing attention to the extraordinary inclemency of 
 the weather, a continuous downpour of rain, snow, and sleet, which 
 lasted almost without interruption from about the 6th to the 25th 
 October,t breaking up the roads and rendering marching almost 
 unpracticable, he continues : " The troops, exhausted by these un- 
 interrupted marches, rarely found sufficient food, and a regular 
 distribution of rations was a most unusual event." It was all very 
 well for the Emperor to issue orders (7th October) recalling that 
 "one should always have four days' bread in reserve ; " but where 
 was the bread to come from ? 
 
 On the 9th October, General Bourcier writes : " It is with the 
 utmost difficulty that my Division has so far been able to provide 
 itself with subsistence. For several days they have had neither 
 bread nor meat, and only most scanty supplies of forage, particularly 
 of oats. The villages I have had to occupy have been completely 
 cleared out by preceding columns." 
 
 " The same day Suchet was still able to issue bread to his 
 Division, thanks, no doubt, to the measures taken by Soult (his 
 corps commander) ; but the remaining Divisions of the 4th Corps, 
 from his own report, had to go without ; and, worn out by the awful 
 weather, had to halt at Augsburg to receive two days' rations." 
 
 " The troops are exhausted by fatigue," wrote Vandamme, 
 "and suffisr particularly from want of food. It is most urgent 
 that we should at last receive some issues of provisions." 
 
 Fortunately a convoy of 4000 rations and a magazine of corn 
 and oats fell into their hands about the following day. 
 
 On the same date Marmont also wrote : " The troops would 
 have marched at once, and should have slept at Pornbach if the 
 cruel hunger from which they suffer had not rendered it indis- 
 pensable to halt in order to distribute to them some provisions. 
 They are to receive a third of a ration of bread and some potatoes, 
 after which they will resume the march and, I hope, make good 
 three leagues on the road to Pfaffenhofen." 
 
 Next day he writes to Berthier : " I have the honour to recall 
 to your recollection our want of food ; it is extreme." 
 
 ♦ * La Campagne de 1805,' Introduction, vol. iii. p. 5. 
 
 t From personal knowledge I can state that such weather in this district in October 
 is absolutely unprecedented. October there is usually almost as perfect as in the Indian 
 plains. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 69 
 
 This state of destitution in which most of the corps now found 
 themselves does not appear to have astonished the Emperor, for 
 in answer to Marmont's complaints Berthier writes on the nth 
 October : — 
 
 " In all the letters which M. le General Marmont writes to me, 
 he speaks of * provisions.* I must repeat to him that in the War 
 of Invasion now being prosecuted by the Emperor there are no 
 magazines ; it is the duty of the generals commanding the corps 
 to provide themselves with the means of subsistence in the country 
 they traverse. The General Marmont has received the orders to 
 provide himself with four days' bread and biscuit in advance ; he 
 cannot, therefore, count on anything but the resources he procures 
 for himself, as all the other Corps of the Grand Army do likewise, 
 and no one knows better than General Marmont the manner in 
 which the Emperor makes War.'* 
 
 This letter deserves study, as it reveals in the clearest maaner 
 the " driving force " Napoleon knew how to apply. As M. Colin 
 points out, " it would be indeed a difficult task to reconcile a satis- 
 factory system of supply with the extreme mobility absolutely 
 essential to the methods of the Grand Army," but be this as it 
 may, the fact remains that the extreme privations undergone by 
 the troops brought in their trains maraud, pillage, and the break- 
 up of discipline. 
 
 Davout writes on the nth October to Berthier : — 
 
 " I have the honour to represent to your Excellency that it has 
 become absolutely necessary to take prompt measures to put a stop 
 to the marauding and pillaging, which have reached the limits of 
 excess ; the inhabitants of the districts see with the keenest anguish 
 that at the moment when their Prince and Army are making 
 common cause with us, they are receiving worse treatment than 
 when allied with Austria against us. I have the honour to solicit 
 your Excellency to procure for me the authority of his Majesty to 
 shoot a few of these scoundrels — terrible examples are necessary 
 to stop this evil, which is constantly growing." 
 
 To this he received no reply — and the fact, taken in conjunction 
 with Berthier's letter to Marmont, reveals only too clearly the 
 Machiavellian insight of the Emperor. Hunger was the " driving 
 force " — what matter if the inhabitants suffered, the weakly men 
 amongst the troops died ? The survivors had to hunt for their 
 dinners like wolves in a pack ; thus, and thus only, could *' mobility," 
 the secret of his " strategy," be imparted to the mass. 
 
 Even in the Guard, M. Colin thinks matters were not much 
 better, and cites a letter from Captain Bugeaud, afterwards the 
 celebrated " Pere Bugeaud," written to his sister, in support of this 
 
70 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 view. I translate it literally, as it seems to me hardly sufficient to 
 support the charge. 
 
 " Judge for yourself whether when io,ocx) men arrive in a village 
 it is easy for each to find something to eat. What troubles me 
 most are the vexations and acts of theft committed on the 
 peasants ; their poultry, their wood, their lard, all is taken with or 
 without their leave. I do not do these things myself, but — when 
 I am very hungry I tolerate in secret and taste my share of the 
 spoil." Personally I would not condemn the Guard on such 
 evidence, but the whole tone of the correspondence above cited 
 prepares one to accept the better known accounts of Thiebault 
 and Fezensac. The former in his Memoires (vol. iii. p. 427) 
 writes; "The night following our departure from Memmingen 
 struck a heavy blow at our discipline, and it was not long before 
 we experienced the results. The men of the Corps who hitherto 
 by their good conduct had shown themselves worthy of having 
 been members of the Camp of Boulogne became pillagers, and even 
 began to rob the peasants of their money. They had a sayings 
 'The enemy is like a sheaf of corn, the more you beat him the 
 more he shells out,' and this extortion of money by violence 
 became a settled habit." 
 
 Fezensac sums up the whole story of these sufferings and dis- 
 orders in the following passage, which to my mind conveys a 
 picture of facts governing Napoleon's strategy absolutely indis- 
 pensable for the student's. guidance. 
 
 " This short campaign proved for me an epitome of all which 
 were to come after it. The extremity of fatigue, the want of food^ 
 the terrible weather, the disorders of the marauders, nothing was 
 wanting, and in one month I tasted a sample of what was to be my 
 destiny during the whole of my career. The brigades, even the 
 regiments, were sometimes dispersed. The order to reunite arrived 
 late, because it had to filter through so many offices. Hence the troops 
 were marching day and night, and I saw for the first time men 
 sleeping as they marched. I could not have believed it possible. 
 Thus we reached our destinations without having eaten anything 
 and finding nothing to eat. It was all very well for Berthier to 
 write : * In the War of Invasion, as the Emperor makes it, there are 
 no magazines ; it is for the generals to provide themselves from the 
 country as they traverse it,' but the generals had neither time nor 
 means to procure regularly what was required for the needs of 
 such a numerous army. It was an authorisation of pillage, and 
 the districts we passed through suffered cruelly. We were often 
 hungry, and the terrible weather intensified our sufferings. A 
 steady, cold rain, or, rather, half-melted snow, fell incessantly, and we 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 71 
 
 stumbled along in the cold mud, churned up by our passage, 
 almost up to our knees — the wind made it impossible to light fires. 
 On the 1 6th October the weather was so infamous that not a soul 
 remained at his post. One found neither sentries nor pickets ; even 
 the artillery remained unguarded. Every one sought shelter as 
 best he could, and never again, except in Russia, did I see the 
 Army suffer so much, or in such disorder. . . . All these causes 
 developed insubordination and marauders. When in such weather 
 the troops entered a village, it was hard to get them out again — 
 hence the number of stragglers roaming about the country became 
 considerable. The inhabitants were exposed to ill-treatment of 
 all descriptions ; and the wounded officers, left behind, who tried to 
 assert their authority, were openly defied and threatened by the 
 marauders. All these details are unknown to those who read the 
 history of our campaigns, one sees only a valiant army whose soldiers 
 vie with their officers for glory, and the price of suffering paid for 
 the most brilliant successes is forgotten." M. Colin concludes : 
 " Such was the condition of the Grand Army in October, 1805, 
 and thus we must picture it, in following day by day its forced 
 marches and its victories." 
 
 Resuming now the thread of events. Though after the 
 publication of Captain Desborde's * Projets des debarquements et 
 invasions sur L'Angleterre,' there can be no doubt of the reality of 
 Napoleon's designs against England in the beginning ; the progress 
 of diplomacy, doubtless instigated from this side of the Channel, 
 and which found expression ultimately in the alliance between 
 Russia and Austria, soon compelled the Emperor to frame an 
 alternative line of action, and that this was conceived in its broad 
 outlines at an early date is shown in his letter to Luchesini, the 
 Prussian Ambassador, dated 27th November, 1803, in reply to an 
 attempt on the part of that country to induce him to consent to 
 the neutralisation of the Southern States. In this he states : " It 
 is on the road from Strasburg to Vienna that the French must 
 force peace on Austria, and it is this road that you wish us to 
 renounce." 
 
 To this idea he clung all along, until, having set his troops in 
 motion on the 25th August, in the expectation of reaching the 
 Inn before the Austrians, news reached him on the 26th which 
 pointed to the preparations of the latter being far more advanced 
 than he had supposed, and led him to transfer the weight of his 
 forces more to his left than he had at first intended, to meet any 
 possible interference of the Russians coming from the frontier of 
 Bohemia. 
 
 In this first project for his "strategical deployment," based on 
 
72 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 the information then to hand, it was anticipated that Bavaria could 
 be occupied and covered before the Austrians could mobilise, and 
 his ruling idea was an advance on as broad a front as possible, 
 for convenience of subsistence, beyond the line Wiirzburg-Ulm, 
 both of which he counted on reaching before the enemy, and no 
 destination was assigned, to the Bavarian Corps under Wrede, 
 as it was impossible to foresee what might happen to it. In all 
 probability it would be found in peaceful occupation of its own 
 cantonments, ready to act as an advance guard to the French 
 Army on the march towards the Inn. 
 
 Actually the sudden irruption of the Austrians very nearly 
 overwhelmed it long before the Grand Army arrived, and it was 
 only by a clever ruse that Wrede succeeded in withdrawing it 
 northwards, ultimately concentrating it around Bamberg. 
 
 In all this there is no trace of a notion of the advantage of a 
 " re-entering base," over which successive generations of our Staff 
 College students have ever since stumbled. 
 
 As for Wiirzburg, or its existence as a fortress capable of 
 serving as a base in any sense to the troops which merely 
 marched through it, the idea is ludicrous to any one who has ever 
 seen the place. It was at the time a rather substantially fortified 
 mediaeval " schlosz," overlooking a small German town of perhaps 
 8000 inhabitants, and, owing to its situation, overlooked by high 
 mountains within easy range of its exposed masonry, the place 
 had no military value whatever. Nor had it occurred at this time 
 to the Emperor to utilise the Main as a line of supply, for it was 
 not till the i6th September that he at last despatched an officer, 
 " Desalles " by name, to find out amongst other things whether 
 the Main was navigable, and if so, how many days it required to 
 work up the stream from Mayence ; it was only some days later 
 that he learnt that, even when the weather was favourable, it 
 usually took from eight to ten days to make the transit — but that 
 the water would be at its worst within a fortnight. It is, therefore, 
 to the last degree improbable that a single boat-load of stores 
 reached the place till after Ulm had fallen ; and though orders were 
 subsequently issued to provide bakeries, etc., in great numbers, 
 it was days before these could be built, and when built the local 
 bakers professed themselves quite unable to understand the use of 
 these new-fangled French ovens. 
 
 As pointed out above, the Bavarians went to Bamberg because 
 they had to, no other line of retreat being open to them ; but 
 Bernadotte's Corps (the 1st) had been for some time at Gottingen, 
 and ultimately did actually march through Wiirzburg. The two 
 facts together probably led to the idea that Napoleon from the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 73 
 
 first had included this march in the scope of his design ; but 
 curiously though the facts are as stated, Bernadotte did not march 
 by the straight road connecting the two points, as one would have 
 anticipated, but actually moved due west from Gottingen till he 
 struck the great road from Cassel to Frankfurt, and would have 
 entered that town had he not found it already occupied by Davout's 
 columns. To avoid confusion, he was switched off by Berthier on 
 to the Hanau-Aschaffenburg road, and had to make such severe 
 marches over difficult roads that, though he reached Wiirzburg on 
 the assigned date, his men were so done up that they had to be 
 given three whole days of rest. It seems to me, therefore, that 
 at this date no importance whatever can have been attached to 
 the flanking position at Gottingen, first, because it flanked nothing 
 — the Austrians were not yet in Ulm — and, secondly, if it had been 
 important, Bernadotte's orders would have been far too precise to 
 admit such freedom of movement. 
 
 The truth would appear to be that Bernadotte's position in 
 Hannover was, under the circumstances, an element of weakness 
 rather than of strength. He had been sent to occupy that country 
 as an act of War against Great Britain, and his presence not only 
 gave umbrage to Prussia, but was intensely resented by all the 
 North German States. 
 
 Feeling was so strong against the French that his corps was 
 very nearly in the position of a besieged garrison, his officers had 
 to be ordered to move about in civilian dress to avoid possible 
 insults to the uniform which it would be impossible to ignore and 
 unwise to attempt to resent, and he evidently felt, when at length 
 the orders to move arrived, that any attempt to move through the 
 difficult defiles due south to his objective might lead to acts of 
 hostility which would not only compromise his own safety, but 
 add enormously to the risks attending the whole operation. Under 
 these circumstances he considered it wiser to fall back straight 
 towards the main Army, as the inhabitants were far more likely 
 to welcome this as a sign of evacuation, and would facilitate his 
 withdrawal instead of opposing it. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Campaign of Ulm, 1805 (continued). 
 
 State of French Army on arrival on the Rhine — Comparison with 1870 — The Austrian 
 Army — Its commanders — General Mack — His reforms — The requisition system — Its 
 effects — Progress of the campaign — Mack's reason for pressing on to Ulm — French 
 violation of Prussian neutrality — Mack's views — His mistakes — Reorganisation of 
 his army — Mack's opportunity — He believes the French in full retreat — Secrecy and 
 despondency in War — lOth October — French Staff blunders — 14th October — 
 Elchingen — Conduct of the Archduke — State of the roads prohibits rapid movement 
 — Werneck's surrender — Mack's unfortunate faith in Russian promises. 
 
 Returning to the concentration of the Grand Army, which may 
 be considered as complete on the 26th September. The rapid 
 marching had told on all the troops. There had been much 
 desertion coming through France, and the Cavalry and mounted 
 arms not being able to forage, as in an enemy's country, had lost 
 condition materially. 
 
 Marmont's Corps, coming from Holland down the Rhine, had 
 started short of horses, and though contracts had been entered 
 into for supplying them along the line of march, the contractors 
 were not very punctual in the carrying out of their engagements. 
 
 Boots had been worn to pieces over the four hundred miles of 
 country already traversed, and the new ones ordered to be in 
 readiness at the frontiers had not yet arrived. Great-coats and 
 other clothing were also deficient, and, as already mentioned, only 
 six out of thirty brigades of transport were on hand. 
 
 By the side of the whole list of deficiencies, the position of the 
 French in almost the same districts, in 1870, seems comparatively 
 luxurious, for each division then had more transport than one of 
 Napoleon's Corps ; but the energy which compels obedience was 
 lacking, with results familiar to all, and surely this energy, which 
 overcomes all difficulties, gives a higher title to our admiration 
 than the intellectual ability needed to solve War's very simple 
 problems. " Im Kriege ist alles einfach — aber das einfache is 
 schwer," wrote Clausewitz, which merely means that the wise 
 commander adopts the simplest plan for the attainment of his 
 purpose, because even then the difficulties of execution will tax 
 his energy to the utmost. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 75 
 
 The condition of the Austrian Army at the outbreak of 
 hostilities deserves more than a passing reference. Though her 
 men had fought bravely enough, and fully justified the methods 
 of their training regimentally, ten years of Warfare with the 
 balance very decidedly against them had seriously undermined the 
 confidence of all ranks, and completely destroyed it as regards 
 the civilian ministers. Every one was clamouring for reform, of 
 course, on French lines, just as in England at the present moment 
 the public are looking for salvation to the Boer methods ; and, alike 
 in both cases, no attention whatever is, or was, paid to the advice 
 of experienced soldiers who recognised the absence of the essential 
 " driving force," which alone conditioned Boer or French successes. 
 
 As I have already shown, "mobility" was the key-note of 
 French efficiency. This mobility was derived from an almost entire 
 absence of supply arrangements ; and this want of organised supply 
 brought in its train a whole host of evils, even in an army having 
 in its ranks a far higher average of intelligence and patriotism 
 than were obtainable under the existing conditions of enrolment in 
 any country in Europe. 
 
 The civilians saw only the success ; the soldiers, who had done 
 the fighting, alone realised the price at which it was bought, and 
 were able to appreciate the consequences which blind imitation 
 might bring in its train. Since, however, reform there had to be, 
 they cast about for some one to cdixry it through. And to find such 
 a man, they had to go outside the charmed circle of hereditary 
 caste influence ; which in Austria, as elsewhere, taken as a whole, 
 was conservative to the verge of imbecility. The Archduke 
 Charles, though undoubtedly a man of conspicuous ability, was 
 after all a creature of his time, and sought salvation mainly in the 
 strategic shibboleths in which he had been trained ; though to do 
 him justice, he could generally throw them overboard when the 
 time came for decisive action ; and, of course, his followers, without 
 his ability, were many times more narrow-minded than he. Good 
 men in executive positions, they had all been taught to fear, not 
 accept, responsibility ; and with such men as leaders, not even 
 Napoleon could have guaranteed success. 
 
 The need for action was, however, imperative. Russia, backed 
 by England, was clamouring for her decision, and since the Arch- 
 duke refused to write anything but most despondent memoirs, the 
 civilian ministers fixed their eyes upon a man whose previous 
 career, extraordinary diligence, and apparent disregard of 
 difficulties gave promise, to them, of brilliant success. But 
 diligence is not synomymous with ability ; and a disregard of 
 difficulties, even when united with undeniable personal courage in 
 
y6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 face of the enemy as a young man, does not necessarily imply 
 indomitable strength of character in riper years when in chief 
 command. 
 
 This man, whom they destined to be the country's saviour, was 
 the unfortunate " Mack," upon whose unlucky shoulders it is still 
 the custom to fasten the burden of the sins of omission accumulated 
 by a whole previous generation, too careless and pleasure loving to 
 view War as it really was, and is — the struggle for the survival of the 
 fittest. 
 
 He had risen from the ranks, and made a most brilliant career, 
 all the more remarkable when we consider the intense caste spirit 
 of the Austrian nobility. But his industry and fatal facility of the 
 pen had attracted the attention of the Emperor, and when it was 
 found that he was ready to recast the whole army, almost in face 
 of the enemy, his services were eagerly accepted. 
 
 It must be admitted that his ideas were not bad. The needs 
 of the moment were Mobility, Artillery, and Corps commands. To 
 secure mobility, he laid down that troops must live on the country, 
 like the French, then they could dispense with at least one half of 
 their trains, and the horses thus set free could be handed over to 
 the Artillery. His idea of Corps commands was less satisfactory, 
 for, as the event proved, he did not in the least understand what a 
 Corps was, or what decentralisation means. To make a Corps or 
 divisional command efficient, you must first have a staff trained to 
 accept responsibility ; to invert the process, is merely to make 
 confusion worse confounded. But there were no officers in Austria 
 trained to responsibility, and hence Army Headquarters still had to 
 issue detailed orders to every battalion — the system which had cost 
 them, as previously explained, the defeats of 1796 and 1800 in Italy. 
 
 The evil of recourse to requisitions lay in this, that you can- 
 not alter the spirit of a whole army merely by the publication 
 of a general order — a point too frequently forgotten. It was all 
 very well to tell the men to steal and rob, for that is, of course, 
 what it comes to in the end ; but the same men had been brought 
 up to an altogether exaggerated conception of the rights of private 
 property in the field, and needed a senior officer to stand over 
 them, and tell them both when and what to steal, and how to 
 find it. 
 
 With the French, plunder had become an instinct of self- 
 preservation. Like Sikhs in an Afghan village, they knew exactly 
 where to look and how to persuade ; they could suck more nutriment 
 out of a square mile of ground than any other troops in Europe, 
 and they had as little sympathy with the poor Bavarian, or German, 
 as the Afghan for the Hindoo. But the bulk of the Austrians were 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 77 
 
 of German extraction, and, as such, more inclined to pity than to 
 beat the unfortunate villagers upon whom they were directed to 
 batten. 
 
 Ultimately things were brought into train. The Archduke was 
 almost compelled to take a more hopeful view, and a plan of 
 operations was mutually agreed to by Russia and Austria, according 
 to which the former agreed to join the latter with 100,000 men on 
 the river Inn about the middle of October ; and the Austrians 
 undertook to operate with their main army south of the Alps, 
 under the Archduke, and with a smaller force of 80,000 men 
 between the Alps and Danube. A further army was to be 
 mobilised by Russia, primarily to bring diplomatic pressure on 
 Prussia to join the coalition, but ultimately to advance through 
 Bohemia into the north of Bavaria, and it was the news of this 
 concentration, somewhat distorted in transmission, that led Napoleon 
 at the very outset of his movement {i.e. on the 26th August) to 
 direct his troops from Boulogne and the Netherlands further north 
 than orginally intended, towards Wlirzburg. Generally, the plan 
 of the Allies may be described as an advance in echelon of armies 
 from the left. 
 
 Mack was appointed what we should now call " Chief of the 
 Staff" * to the Army of the Centre, responsible directly to the 
 Emperor, and the Archduke Ferdinand, aged twenty-five, was 
 sent with him, practically as the Emperor's representative, though 
 nominally in chief command. It having been determined that the 
 army was to live by requisition, it became necessary to assign it a 
 district, other than their own country, upon which to live, and this, 
 together with the desire to secure the support of the Bavarian 
 Army, led to the premature advance towards the Iller. But, as 
 already stated, the Bavarian Army escaped, and the Austrians 
 did not take naturally to requisitioning, and thus from the very 
 beginning an excessive strain was thrown on such transport as 
 existed, which rapidly broke down under the strain of the terrible 
 weather, from which both armies suffered. Hence the mobility of 
 the Austrians fell off to an unusual extent, whilst similar sufferings 
 from hunger were inspiring their enemy with almost wolf-like 
 energy and celerity. The French knew from experience that 
 forward movement could alone supply their necessities ; the 
 Austrians from experience looked backward for their supply 
 columns. This contrast must be borne in mind in judging the 
 almost unexampled slowness of the Austrian movements. 
 
 Reverting now to the actual course of the campaign. Napoleon's 
 progress, from the date his Cavalry patrols picked up contact with 
 
 * His title then was " Quartermaster-General." 
 
78 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 the enemy, followed naturally and logically from the reports he 
 received. Finding his right opposed whilst his left was clear, 
 he checked the pace of the former and let the latter swing round, 
 closing them to meet resistance, extending them again for 
 subsistence ; but only regulating their marches as far in advance 
 as it was safe to do so — precisely as all modern authorities advise 
 — and not till the information received made it perfectly clear that 
 the Russians could not interfere, did he conceive the idea of 
 crossing the Danube and interposing between the separated portions 
 of his enemy's front. 
 
 He certainly did not foresee Mack's continued inaction, for he 
 was quite unaware of the motives which dictated it, and as these 
 have never to my knowledge been presented in an English garb, 
 it may not be amiss to enlarge upon them, as they certainly place 
 Mack's conduct in a far better aspect than it has hitherto been 
 regarded. 
 
 Mack, it appears, had been seriously misled by the accounts of 
 the Austrian secret agents in France, who had represented the 
 whole condition of the country far more unfavourably than turned 
 out to be the case ; and in particular, had underrated the strength 
 of the Grand Army by nearly one half ; and since the French had 
 generally disseminated false information on this head before, he had 
 no reason to doubt the statement he received. 
 
 Further, he had been led by his own Government to believe 
 that England meditated an immediate diversion, both naval and 
 military, on Boulogne ; and he actually received information very 
 early in October that this attack had been successfully undertaken. 
 Since England had been foremost in urging on the War, and such 
 a diversion was obviously sound in principle, he, as a soldier, 
 may be pardoned if he failed to fathom the depths of fatuous 
 imbecility of which a civilian ministry is capable. Gordon was not 
 the first, and will not be the last, brave man to be betrayed by his 
 confidence in ministerial honour. 
 
 Lastly, when the news of the violation of Prussian neutrality, by 
 the passage of French troops through the territory of Ansbach, 
 reached him, as it did in a very few hours after the event, he 
 believed, and very naturally, that the Lord had really delivered his 
 enemy into his hands. He knew the temper of the Prussian Army 
 well, and was aware that every officer's hand was itching to draw 
 the sword, and since even the King of Prussia's own wife failed 
 to grasp the full extent of poltroonery that unfortunate monarch 
 was capable of, he can hardly be blamed for a similar error of 
 judgment. 
 
 Now let us reconstruct the strategical problem as it appeared 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 79 
 
 to him at the moment when Napoleon's left wing and centre were 
 sweeping down on the Danube on his rear. 
 
 His rear was the Russian front, and the Russian Army was to 
 be about 100,000 strong, and due on the Inn, only eighty miles 
 away, about the 20th October. 
 
 If the Russians advanced whilst he. Mack, stood still, he 
 became the anvil on which the Russian hammer would crush the 
 Grand Army. And as it happened, he had to stand still, because he 
 had eaten up all the supplies in the district he had traversed, as the 
 French were soon to discover to their cost, and could not have 
 retreated even had he desired to do so. 
 
 He had, however, under-estimated several points. First, he had 
 not allowed for the extraordinary marching power the French 
 actually developed, nor on their peculiar talents for extracting 
 nutriment out of places where his own men had starved ; and finally, 
 he had counted on the punctual arrival of the Russians, as of 
 course, he had every right to do. 
 
 These were his military external miscalculations ; but others, 
 social and internal to the Army, were still to come and were 
 rapidly developing. The Army, accustomed to regular magazine 
 supply, felt the hardships requisitioning entailed very severely — far 
 more so than the French, who were used to the system, and knew 
 too well the futility of complaint. The men grumbled to their 
 officers, the officers took the part of the men, and finally the 
 generals carried all their woes to the Archduke's entourage, who, 
 in turn, were only too glad to have a handle of offence against the 
 underbred ranker upstart, and under these influences the Arch- 
 duke began to turn restive. To put a stop to these evils, which 
 threatened to make command impossible, Mack determined to 
 reorganise the Army, redistributing the regiments amongst all the 
 corps, and rearranging these to get the controlling power into 
 better hands. In referring to this reorganisation, M. Colin is 
 hardly fair to the general, for he represents the step as merely 
 taken as an idle whim, to gratify Mack's imaginary passion for 
 interference ; and throughout he takes the part of the young Prince, 
 who, to my mind, appears to have played the part of an intractable 
 young prig, lending a ready ear to all Mack's detractors, and 
 ignoring the responsibilities which the Emperor had imposed on 
 the latter, together with the respect undoubtedly due to his riper 
 experience. The situation was, in fact, closely analogous to, 
 though even more difficult, than Bazaine's position vis-a-vis with the 
 Imperial Staff in Metz, and it seems astonishing that M. Colin can 
 have overlooked the resemblance. 
 
 This reorganisation consumed very nearly a week of very 
 
8o THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 precious time, and meanwhile reports were pouring in that left no 
 room for doubt as to Napoleon's crushing numerical preponderance, 
 or of its almost inexplicably rapid approach. The position of 
 anvil to the Russian hammer was clearly no longer tenable ; 
 but Mack still thought, very much as Nelson had done at sea 
 during his long continued chase of Villeneuve, that, however 
 great the odds, he would still be able to inflict sufficient punish- 
 ment on his adversary to keep him quiet for the remainder of the 
 season, and calculated that under all circumstances — of supply, 
 dissatisfaction in the Army, etc. — he would be able to hit harder with 
 a force recuperated by rest, than with one exhausted by hard 
 marching and scanty food, and it might have been well had he 
 stuck to this decision. At the last moment, however, the French 
 gave him an opening he would have been almost more than 
 human to have resisted. They left the whole of the north bank of 
 the Danube bare, and there was nothing to prevent Mack's retreat 
 right across their lines of communication towards Bohemia and the 
 Saxon frontier, where he might well count, not only on the support 
 of the second Russian Army, but on a most friendly reception 
 from the whole of the north Germans including Prussia, whose 
 orders for mobilisation were, in fact, already issued.* 
 
 This opening arose from a misconception on the part of 
 Napoleon of his adversary's position and frame of mind, quite as 
 much at variance with the real facts, as any of which the unfortunate 
 Mack was guilty. He had formed a fixed idea, almost from the 
 moment of his passage of the Danube, that the Austrians would 
 try and escape by marching south towards lake Constanz and the 
 Tyrol, and was urging on Soult by forced marches to intercept this 
 line of retreat. 
 
 Actually, though a small force under Jellachich did make its 
 escape, not without heavy losses, by this route, the idea of taking 
 the whole Army out by this way had never entered Mack's head, 
 who knew only too well the want of resources in that district. But 
 curiously, the news of the fighting in which Jellachich's force became 
 engaged, served only to confirm him in his decision to march out to 
 the north-east. The idea sprang quite naturally from the false 
 information he had already received, and deserves, to my mind, 
 far more serious consideration than has been accorded to it. 
 
 Though Mack by this time knew that the strength of the Grand 
 Army had been falsely reported to him, he still firmly believed in 
 the British diversion at Boulogne and rumoured risings in France. 
 
 * I cannot trace whether this was actually known to Mack at the time ; but there 
 was free communication with Ulm and the Prussian frontier, which was not more than a 
 day's ride distant, and hence may well have been the case. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 8i 
 
 When, therefore, he learnt of the French movement towards the 
 west — Soult, of course, had attacked from the east — he pictured to 
 himself Napoleon in full retreat back to France, by the only line on 
 which he could hope to find adequate subsistence, for his devastation 
 of the country to the north was by this time common knowledge 
 to all south Germany. 
 
 With his own Army in its semi-mutinous plight (i,e, as regards 
 its commanders), he could not hope to oppose successfully the on- 
 set of the whole French Army, and hence his resolution to move 
 towards Prussia was strengthened, not shaken, by the rapidity of 
 Soult's movements. He issued a general order to his troops in 
 which he stated that the French were in full retreat for their own 
 country, and whilst still maintaining secrecy as to his proposed 
 movement, led them to understand that stirring events were toward, 
 and arranged for a general concentration around Ulm. Read by 
 the light of subsequent events, the order appears bombastic ; but I 
 have little doubt that had success crowned his efforts, we should 
 now be as lost in admiration of his skilful concealment of his 
 intentions and soldierlike appeal to raise the drooping spirits of 
 his men, as we are taught to be over Napoleon's infinitely ex- 
 aggerated bulletins announcing victory to his troops before the 
 battle. Compare, for instance, the orders issued on the nights 
 preceding Austerlitz and Jena, and think how these would have 
 been held up to ridicule had not the events justified the 
 prediction. 
 
 Historians always forget that secrecy is the very essence of a 
 successful stratagem, and that no word of despondency or retreat 
 should be allowed to leak out in preliminary orders. A small 
 Army confronted by a larger one, must always be at a great dis- 
 advantage if defeated, and the confidence the leader shows in the 
 fighting spirit of his Army is simply a measure of the strength of 
 his character. Rewrite Napoleon's pre-Jena order of the day in 
 accordance with the facts as we now know them. " Soldiers, 
 during the last three days I have lost the Prussian Army and 
 found part of it again where I did not expect it ; where the other 
 part may be, or how large a fraction it is of the whole, I know as 
 little as you do. But of the following facts I am absolutely certain. 
 There is a hostile barren and mountainous frontier ten miles 
 behind us, and our only possible retreat lies through some 500 
 miles of country which we have stripped bare of every resource, 
 and whose inhabitants will cut up every single straggler they can 
 possibly lay hands on. The issue of the battle lies in your courage 
 and determination, and if you do not do your duty better than I 
 have done mine, * we shall never see our darlings any more.' " 
 
 G 
 
82 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 Such an order would, I take it, hardly have conduced to victory, 
 yet that is about what Mack's critics, after the event, would have 
 had him produce before it. 
 
 Ultimately, on the loth October, the decision was taken to 
 march north on the following day, and the troops moved out next 
 morning ; but the terrible weather had rendered roads, normally 
 reliable, almost entirely impracticable. A whole stretch overhang- 
 ing the Danube gave way under the passage of the guns, and 
 a number, with their teams and limbers, crashed over into the 
 swollen river beneath. The fields were almost swamps, and hours 
 were consumed in covering distances which usually might have 
 been traversed in minutes. At length the right wing fell suddenly 
 upon Dupont's Division, peacefully encamped near Albeck, and, 
 apparently, completely surprised it. Something like a stampede 
 resulted ; but the Austrians were in too great disorder, owing to 
 the lengthening of their columns, to take advantage of it, and a 
 remnant of the French being rallied, still held on to some ground 
 in the vicinity when night put an end to the struggle, thus enabling 
 Dupont, who had not studied the art of despatch writing under 
 his great master for nothing, to claim a victory. The Austrians, 
 leaving a few outposts in observation, fell back about halfway to 
 Ulm. 
 
 Then followed, on the part of the French, a series of Staff* 
 blunders and miscalculations as to the time of the delivery of 
 orders, far too intricate to unravel in the space at my disposal, but 
 the upshot of which was to leave the Austrians in undisputed 
 possession of the north bank for the two following days. Un- 
 fortunately for them, they were in no case to profit by the 
 opportunity. 
 
 On the 14th, the French had corrected their errors, and Ney was 
 marching in all haste with his whole corps for Elchingen. The place 
 was weakly held by the Austrians at the moment, and by a most 
 brilliant piece of daring, the bridge was captured and troops poured 
 over it before the Austrians, already on their way since early morning, 
 could arrive to dispute its possession. A very obstinate fight ensued, 
 
 * It is usual to seek to fasten the responsibility for these failures either on Ney or 
 Murat, according to the writer's sympathies ; to me it seems merely a case of indifferent 
 staff training and want of proper precautions — sending one officer to deliver several orders 
 and the like. Actually, the important order had only about five miles to traverse, and 
 the steeple of the village where it should have been delivered was clearly visible from 
 the point of despatch, the intervening country being perfectly practicable ; but the officer 
 by whom it was despatched, not being informed of its contents and having several others 
 to deliver as well, chose to take it on his way back, lost his way in the Danube morass 
 in the dark, and ultimately found himself within three miles of his destination at daybreak, 
 but unable to get there without going back to his starting-point and making the road he 
 should have taken the first time. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 83 
 
 ending, as usual, in the defeat of the Austrians — a defeat directly 
 traceable to the growing spirit of mutiny amongst the leaders. 
 Mack, in his defence, states that, on news of the attack being 
 received, the Archduke left headquarters without giving him notice, 
 taking with him the bulk of the Staff, and obstinately kept at a 
 distance of a couple of leagues from him all day, giving orders and 
 interfering in the details of the fight. Nevertheless, though locally 
 defeated at Elchingen, one half the Army only had been engaged, 
 and the remainder, under Werneck, halted outside the radius of 
 French observation, continuing its movement towards Neresheira 
 next morning, and there would seem still to have been a good 
 chance for the bulk of the Army at least to withdraw. But at this 
 point the strength of men and horses gave out Though there 
 was still food in Ulm, only about seven miles distant, it was as 
 impossible to get at it, as it was for our troops on the Plateau of 
 the Crimea to traverse the two miles of mud which lay between 
 them and their ships in Balaclava. Moreover, intrigue and dis- 
 sension in the higher ranks had done its work, and all discipline 
 above the company commands had disappeared. 
 
 Werneck still struggled on for two days further, and was joined 
 by some Cuirassiers with the young Archduke by the way ; these 
 latter succeeded in making good their escape, but the Infantry^ 
 worn out by hunger and pursued by Murat with his usual relent- 
 less energy, ultimately allowed themselves to be deceived by the 
 false statements of French Parlhuentaii-es, and laid down their arms 
 to a force they believed to be overwhelming, but which actually 
 consisted only, as has been already stated, of the stragglers of the 
 dismounted dragoons left behind to protect the convoys on the 
 lines of communication. 
 
 We need not pursue the fate of the garrison of Ulm and its 
 unfortunate commander further, it is sufficiently well known in its 
 outlines to every one. The only points calling for attention are 
 the persistent faith in Russian promises, revealed in Mack's effort 
 to secure fourteen days' delay in the actual surrender, and the 
 treachery by which this clause, after being admitted, was finally 
 evaded by the conqueror. All may be fair in love and War, but 
 such acts of perfidy leave an unpleasant savour ever after. 
 
 The point on which to fix one's attention is, after all, the 
 bearing of these events on the general principles of War as taught 
 in our schools, and from this standpoint I fail to perceive any 
 foundation for the deductions so freely drawn. That 200,000 men 
 under a brilliant leader, trusted by his men as no commander 
 before or since, should beat 80,000 under an average man, who 
 started with the feeling of his Army against him, seems to me a 
 
84 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 foregone conclusion. Why then drag in theories as to angular 
 bases, the line of the Main, and so forth, to account for the obvious ? 
 But the fact that in spite of all adverse circumstances these 80,000 
 very nearly did escape from the toils of the 200,000, seems to me 
 conclusive proof of the superiority of troops bred up in tradition of 
 hereditary and regimental discipline over the looser organisation 
 of revolutionary France. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Poland and East Prussia : influence of their topography on Napoleon's movements — The 
 "magazine system" again — The Russian Armies — Eylau and Friedland — Intro- 
 duction of the case-shot preparation by "massed" batteries — ^The eflfect of this 
 irmovation on strategy — Spain and Portugal — The British system of supply — The 
 Duke of Wellington's merit as a "strategist" — The campaign of 1814 — Its interest 
 rather diplomatic than military — Bar sur Aube — Sezanne — The question of obstacles 
 — *Hamley' — Practice in the writing of orders — Intelligent confidence in one's 
 leaders — Character and initiative — Waterloo : the cause of Napoleon's failure. 
 
 The campaign of Ulm, dealt with in the two previous chapters, 
 is of special interest because it marks the maximum of what 
 could be attained by the Emperor's method of making War 
 "without magazines," relying on the increased resources daily 
 rendered available for the troops by the area swept over in their 
 rapid marches. 
 
 As we have seen from the complaints of his marshals, he 
 touched about the high-water mark of the attainable in the work 
 he succeeded in getting out of his men. In the subsequent cam- 
 paign of Austerlitz the same degree of mobility, combined with 
 certainty in the execution of orders, could not be kept up, and 
 though in his movements to Jena * in good weather, and at the most 
 favourable season of the year, the rate was momentarily exceeded 
 up to the decisive collision, after which date he lived on the 
 enemy's accumulations, he never again approached it when in 
 command of approximately equal numbers. 
 
 Immediately after the occupation of Berlin his forces moved 
 into Eastern Prussia, thence into Poland, and then the weak points 
 of his system began to develop. Even before they had reached 
 the Passarge it became evident to him that it was not enough to 
 tell the troop commanders to provide themselves with four days* 
 rations in order to ensure its being done. He had to turn his 
 attention to the methods of the Frederician magazine and convoy 
 system, but then he began to learn, as Mack had learnt in the 
 preceding year, that it is one thing to order a system and quite 
 
 ♦ For the strategy of the Jena campaign, see 'Cavalry, its Past and Future,' by the 
 author. 
 
S6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 another to educate an army to carry it out. As the Austrians, 
 accustomed to magazines, could not take readily to requisitions, 
 so the French, accustomed to requisitions, could not adjust them- 
 selves to magazines, and, least of all, to the convoy duty these 
 entailed. The country was alternately either deep sand or deeper 
 mud, made roads almost non-existent, and the French, being poor 
 horse-masters, and altogether unaccustomed to the niceties of 
 baggage packing, where every pound counts, broke down the poor 
 little horses of the country as fast as they captured them. 
 
 The Russians, however, were at home in these surroundings, 
 and for once French mobility failed. They could not concentrate 
 in adequate numbers at the decisive point, and at Eylau they only 
 escaped disaster because their opponent had not the battlefield 
 instinct of the Emperor. Practically both sides were beaten, only 
 the Russians gave way in what for them should have been the 
 moment of victory. During that winter campaign the sufferings 
 of the French reached the limit of the endurable, and from that 
 time forward the French armies began to wane.* Heilsberg was 
 again a defeat, but then came to Napoleon a tactical inspiration 
 which enabled him for years to command success on the battle- 
 field, though he could no longer ensure it by the strategical 
 direction of his troops. 
 
 This inspiration was the direct consequence of the appalling 
 slaughter inflicted on Augereau's (Vllth) corps by the Russian 
 case-fire from their massed batteries, an incident already referred 
 to in my previous letters contributed to the United Service Magazine 
 (1903) on the "Evolution of Infantry Tactics." Whether the idea 
 originally emanated from Napoleon, or was suggested by Senarmont, 
 is, I believe, still a matter of opinion ; but after Heilsberg the French 
 began to make a practice of massing their Artillery and galloping up 
 to case-shot range to prepare the way for their Infantry, and Fried- 
 land, the final action of this campaign, was the first time in which the 
 power of the new form of attack was thoroughly demonstrated. Of 
 course case-shot had often been employed before, but only locally, 
 and not as a comprehensive idea. At the outset of the Revolution 
 the batteries were still far too deficient in mobility, and unaccus- 
 tomed to combined manoeuvres, and as, whilst the French Infantry 
 developed their skirmishing tactics, their enemies widened their 
 fronts to avoid being out-flanked, targets for the full develop- 
 ment of artillery power were rarely met with until, all the old 
 Regular Armies having disappeared, their places were taken by 
 bodies of armed men who could no longer fight in line, but 
 
 * See "The Napoleonic Conscription" in * Cavalry v. Infantry,' by the author, 
 published by Messrs. Hudson & Kimberley, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, Z7 
 
 had to be brought forward in dense columns if they were to be 
 used at all. 
 
 From this time forward battles assumed the stereotyped 
 form so often referred to in these pages,* and the last trace of 
 " strategy " in its eighteenth-century significance vanished. Hence- 
 forward, omitting the campaign in Russia in 18 12, as an exceptional 
 case, armies marched straight for one another by the straightest 
 roads on the broadest possible front for subsistence, on the 
 narrowest for fighting, and communications were only threatened 
 when a great excess of numbers enabled one to overlap the other 
 without incurring danger of defeat. 
 
 Meanwhile in Spain and Portugal other forces were at work 
 which conditioned the nature of the struggle. It is beyond all 
 doubt now that Napoleon never really grasped the peculiarities 
 either of the theatre of war or its inhabitants, nor had he taken to 
 heart the lessons of 1807 in Poland. He could not bring himself 
 to believe in the utter sterility of what was generally reputed a 
 rich country, and his marshals found it entirely impossible to 
 conform to his instructions to live on the country. To subsist 
 they had to separate, and if forced to combine to fight, a few days 
 of concentration brought them to the verge of starvation. 
 
 This was where the strength of our system, which was the old 
 Frederician system, of convoys, open markets, and magazines, made 
 itself felt. Once it had become adequately organised, and money 
 enough was forthcoming to keep it going, it will be found that all 
 the Duke of Wellington's great successes were based on an exact 
 calculation of the time it would take the enemy to concentrate to 
 interfere with his designs, and the admirable use he made of this 
 time allowance. 
 
 Probably no leader in history has ever gone down to the 
 bed-rock facts of the situation or seen more clearly all they implied. 
 By a rapid approach he invested the fortress indispensable for his 
 further movements, besieged it with all vigour to reduce its fire 
 power and the distance without cover to be traversed, and then 
 when the advance of the French relieving army was almost within 
 striking distance, he assaulted the breaches, sparing no loss of life 
 to succeed. For the rest he relied on the fighting power and 
 discipline of his men, and even when out-manoeuvred — as he 
 frequently was — his tactical quickness and the perfect cohesion of 
 his relatively well-fed forces always sufficed to cut through the 
 enveloping net his antagonist strove to weave around him. 
 
 But just as our tactics drew no attention from the other armies 
 
 * See •' Evolution of Infantry Tactics," by the author, which first appeared in the 
 United Sen-ice Magazine^ 1902-03. 
 
8S THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 too busy with their own concerns to attend to ours, our strategy 
 and its secrets remained unnoticed, and all eyes were centred on 
 Napoleon's last great efforts to keep back the allies from Paris. 
 
 This penultimate effort of his, grand as it undoubtedly was, 
 has never been subjected to the searching analysis it deserves in 
 this country, partly because we have been content to take our 
 information from contemporary French authorities, blinded by 
 their devotion to their great leader's name, and quite unaware of 
 the system of political intrigue which underlay all his calculations, 
 partly also because in considering the influence of the topography 
 of the district in which it was fought, we have entirely overlooked 
 the very considerable part played by the inhabitants in aiding the 
 defence and hampering the attack, a part which it is submitted 
 had far greater effect on the course of the struggle than the 
 direction of the rivers as obstacles. 
 
 In fact, the conditions in 1814 bring us nearer to the Boer War, 
 in its essence, than any other campaign ever fought in Europe. 
 The French armies were small, and, being in their own country, 
 were far more mobile than the invading hosts ; for the friendly 
 inhabitants facilitated their movements and concealed their where- 
 abouts by every means in their power, whilst revealing and 
 hampering those of the invader, who made also the fatal mistake 
 of forgetting that it is not expedient to push the law of force to 
 its utmost extremity. During the same year, where we in the 
 south of France respected private property and paid ready money 
 for supplies, thereby winning the inhabitants over to our side, the 
 Cossacks and Prussians behaved like devils incarnate, with the 
 result that no isolated riders or weak detachments were safe, and 
 every vestige of food was buried or hidden in the forests the 
 moment the enemy came in sight. 
 
 To this must be added, as Marwitz in his invaluable diary has 
 so often pointed out, the fact that the Prussian Cavalry horses 
 were so completely broken down and the men so indifferently 
 trained that modern scouting was an absolute impossibility, and 
 though the Cossacks could move, they were far too unintelligent 
 to send in either useful or reliable information. And over all lay 
 the dread of the Emperor's personality — if in 181 3 his presence 
 had been estimated as worth 40,000 additional men, in 18 14 it 
 was nearly double that figure. Whenever he appeared before the 
 Austrians, the latter ran, and it was all that Bliicher could do to 
 prevent the Silesian Army running too. 
 
 To prove that this was the case, it is only necessary to take 
 the situations as given in ' Hamley ' — almost any one will serve the 
 the purpose — and analyse it as between troops of equal quality and 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 89 
 
 equal mobility. It will be found that, in spite of all the obstacles 
 the student of ' Hamley ' is compelled to stumble over, a vigorous 
 offensive must have immediately led to decisive results. 
 
 The situation at Bar sur Aube on the morning of the battle of 
 Brienne will perhaps best serve our purpose (Hamley's * Operations 
 of War,' Chapter XIV.). 
 
 If in the above situation one eliminates the names Napoleon, 
 Blucher, Schwarzenberg, and substitutes Red force v. Blue force, 
 as in a War game, the odds are at least one hundred to one that 
 the orders issued by the numerically superior side would ensure 
 the surrender or retreat of the weaker within a very few hours, 
 and the same would be the case in almost any other situation the 
 campaign discloses. But in practice the weaker was almost 
 invariably successful, and it is only when one comes on the trail 
 of political intrigues and personal jealousies by which the allied 
 headquarters were riven that the explanation becomes apparent. 
 
 Blucher, for instance, was surprised and nearly captured by 
 Napoleon on the night of the loth February at Sezanne, not because 
 the Silesian army did not understand outpost duties, but because 
 the whole of Pahlen's Cossacks, some io,cxx) in strength, assigned 
 to Blucher, and entrusted by him with the special mission of 
 guarding his exposed flank, had been withdrawn by Schwarzenberg 
 some forty-eight hours earlier, and the notification of their with- 
 drawal did not reach him till the moment of the attack itself. 
 
 Whenever, throughout the campaign. Napoleon felt himself in 
 difficulties, he wrote a pitiful appeal to his father-in-law, the 
 Emperor of Austria, who for obvious reasons did not wish the 
 extreme humiliation of his daughter's husband, and if direct 
 orders could not be given to relax the pressure, other influences 
 and implements were always at hand to assist him in attaining 
 his ends. 
 
 It was only when at length Blucher and Gneisenau took the 
 bit between their teeth, and, neglecting every established rule of 
 the game, safety of communications, and so forth, marched straight 
 on Paris, confident in their power to overrun by sheer hard fighting 
 any force that might be placed across their path, that the campaign 
 was brought to the only conclusion which could satisfy the nations, 
 though the situation was by no means pleasing to their rulers. 
 
 Yet out of this campaign there has been pieced together a 
 marvellous theory of the value of obstacles, which has proved, I 
 am inclined to think, the greatest stumbling-block in the path of 
 rational military study ; simply because the reasons alleged in 
 support were so repugnant to common sense that the great majority 
 refused to consider a science which could postulate such absurdities. 
 
90 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 I do not suggest that this refusal formulated itself in the average 
 staff-college student's mind in quite such a direct form ; had it 
 done so, the evil would have minimised itself, but actually our 
 average young officers are far too modest to trust their own judg- 
 ment in such matters, and finding themselves in opposition to the 
 views of the text-book, which by tradition had acquired the weight 
 of revelation, they reasoned : " The book says it is so, and who 
 am I that I should dispute the conclusions of such an able author ? 
 Since it is quite evident to me that I never shall be able to 
 understand his conclusions, I must be very stupid, and it will be 
 mere waste of time for me to pursue the subject any further." 
 
 This, at any rate, was for many years my own attitude towards 
 the subject, and dozens of my friends have owned up to it likewise. 
 It was only when chance threw me amongst men who had never 
 heard of * Hamley,' but had marched and fought all over the ground 
 and studied War under very different masters, that I was at length 
 able to free myself from the chain of illusion and see things as 
 they are, and not through a mist of misinformation. 
 
 As between equal forces, obstacles cut both ways. If a hundred 
 men can defend, say, a bridge against a thousand for a given time, 
 when facing in one direction, it can be held equally well against 
 similar odds in the other. This is considering the bridge only. 
 Taking it with its topographical surroundings, re-entrant angles, 
 higher banks, etc., these alternate from side to side, so that on a 
 strategical front they usually balance one another, and the net 
 gain results to the side which can make the best use of the delay 
 the passage of the obstacle must entail. This brings in the question 
 of mobility or of greater numerical strength, which, if sufficient, 
 can be substituted in the equation for mobility, and the practical 
 solution of the problem is merely to turn the advantage of delay 
 against the adversary, by holding him in front with the least 
 possible force and turning his flank with the remainder, which 
 brings us back to the old original formula of concentration on the 
 decisive point, nothing more and nothing less. 
 
 Stated in this form, every average subaltern learns to solve it 
 in a few weeks. I have tested the point of late years over and 
 over again. I have taken some well-known military situation, 
 eliminated the awe-inspiring names, and given it to my pupils to 
 solve with just as much military information as was available to 
 the actual combatants, and in at least 95 per cent, of cases the 
 solution has invariably been that actually adopted when political 
 considerations did not intervene. 
 
 After a few weeks' practice they have worked with the pre- 
 cision of machinery, their departure from the normal being merely 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 91 
 
 the result of the spirit of the arm to which they happened to 
 belong ; but I do not suggest that I have made them " generals," 
 or anything in the least approaching that ideal, but at least I have 
 made the majority into rational subordinates, who, knowing the 
 difficulties and limitations of those whose business it is to give 
 orders, are prepared to obey readily, and not to oppose, even the 
 passive resistance of their own opinions, to the realisation of their 
 commander's intentions. 
 
 For this reason I welcome the new orders for the examination 
 of officers with all my heart, and see in it the surest promise of 
 advance in efficiency that all the talk of reform has as yet brought 
 with it. 
 
 In the old days, we are told, that blind obedience was the soldier's 
 first duty, and were led to believe that it actually was obtained under 
 the old regime ; but we may be permitted our doubts on the point, 
 for I imagine human nature in the last three centuries has remained 
 always a singularly constant factor, nor have those armies in 
 which blind obedience was most strictly enforced always justified 
 expectation. What was probably intended by the phrase was 
 " blind confidence " in the leader, and that quality grew automati- 
 cally in days when campaigns lasted seven years and upwards. 
 
 Our problem is to develop intelligent confidence in peace-time, 
 so as to eliminate the internal friction which automatically develops 
 in an army from the clash of conflicting points of view and varying 
 standards, both of knowledge and intelligence. This is the special 
 danger of the Volunteer Force, to which men bring what they 
 believe to be their inherent right of private judgement, as can 
 easily be seen if we endeavour to realise the mental attitude of the 
 individual — say a company commander, detailed to occupy a portion 
 of a line which in the interests of the many must occupy a certain 
 general direction, but which in itself is locally defective, and 
 glaringly so, as must often be the case. 
 
 The only way to make that man realise that he has not been 
 gratuitously sacrificed to the crass imbecility of an incompetent 
 staff is to train him to understand the limitations under which 
 that staff is by the nature of things compelled to work, and then, 
 by filling his mind with the accumulated experience of others, i.e, 
 with military history, enable him to see that his duty lies in the 
 subordination of himself to the welfare of his comrades, and not 
 in the display of his personal tactical ability. 
 
 You require to develop character, not to develop initiative. Of 
 that there is generally enough and to spare, and it seems to me 
 that by the present system of teaching men to understand their 
 exact importance in the whole hierarchy and the difficulties by 
 
92 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 which the exercise of command is trammeled, we shall, when the 
 emergency arises, find that the latent spirit of self-sacrifice and 
 duty to which the nation unquestionably owes its greatness and 
 triumphs in the past will sufficiently respond. 
 
 The mere acquisition of technical detail went all in the 
 opposite direction — its mastery in any one case is always too 
 obviously simple ; the difficulty has always been to secure the co- 
 ordination of many to varying circumstances, and that we shall 
 only reach when we have shown the individual the whole secrets 
 of the machinery, and made it clear to him that in the interests of 
 the whole it is often necessary to sacrifice a part. 
 
 The Waterloo campaign has been so widely discussed in this 
 country that its details may be taken as common knowledge. 
 There are, however, certain points of view bearing on my ruling 
 contention which have hitherto not received the attention they 
 deserve. 
 
 Broadly speaking, we may say that Napoleon, in this instance, 
 failed because he designed a work which made demands on the 
 strength and finish of his material beyond the power of the latter 
 to supply. His staff had been so disorganised by recent political 
 events that it failed conspicuously to transmit punctually to the 
 troops the orders they should have received ; and which, being 
 received, must in all human probability have turned the scale in 
 his favour. 
 
 But it was Napoleon himself who said that "war is essentially 
 a calculation of probabilities," and from the lips of a mathematician 
 the remark imports a great deal more than meets the layman's 
 eye. He knew — no one better — that for a given staff there is the 
 mathematical certainty of a certain percentage of failure to exactly 
 interpret and execute the commander's intentions, due to the 
 fallibility of the human material ; and his dicta that you can 
 never be too strong at the decisive point, and that you should 
 never risk a battle until you had ninety-nine chances out of a 
 hundred in your favour, make it sufficiently clear that he habitually 
 allowed for error in the execution of his plans, recognising that a 
 certain percentage of such error was inevitable under the 
 conditions which he knew to prevail in his staff service, and which 
 he personally was powerless to prevent. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that in this instance he was misled 
 in his calculations by the overwhelming confidence he had learnt 
 to place in his own tactical genius on the battlefield. It was the 
 fact that at that period no Continental army or leader had the 
 remotest chance of success against the combined powers of the 
 three arms, handled as Napoleon alone knew how to handle them. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 93 
 
 His art lay in his consummate power of getting the utmost out 
 of his men in the fighting-line, and thus retaining the largest 
 possible fraction in reserve, and in this no one of his rivals could 
 approach him. This gift literally was worth the 40,000 men his 
 presence was usually considered to outweigh — and Ligny is the 
 best possible proof in point. 
 
 But he had never had personal experience of Wellington and 
 the Peninsular tactics, and to my mind this explains everything. 
 On the 1 6th, at Ligny, within six hours he had inflicted a crushing 
 defeat on the Prussians, and he counted on smashing Wellington 
 in the same time, whilst he did not believe it physically possible 
 for Blucher to make his presence effectually felt before that time 
 expired. He expected to find the British troops drawn up like 
 the Prussians, in heavy masses, on the exposed slope of their 
 position, and seeing only the Belgians to the east of the Brussels 
 Road, a line of guns to the west, and the chateau of Hougoumont 
 with a few reserves behind it, he concluded Wellington was 
 retreating, and he had only a weak rear-guard to deal with. 
 
 From this standpoint his indifference to the menace of the 
 Prussians, or to the whereabouts of Grouchy, is seen to be entirely 
 in keeping with the situation. The rear-guard could be pushed 
 aside, and if Grouchy held, as he actually did, about 20 per cent, 
 more than his own numbers, by his march on Wavre, then the 
 Emperor had ample reserves in hand to deal with the army he 
 had beaten forty-eight hours previously, and which we now know — 
 thanks to the revelations of Grolman's biography — was in fact 
 formed up, and watching the battle, undecided whether to join in 
 or leave us to our fate, until, in Blucher's own presence, Grolman 
 himself gave the order to advance.* 
 
 ♦ With reference to the Emperor William's speech at Hannover, which aroused 
 so much attention in England at the time, the following extract from the ' Life of General 
 Carl von Grolman,' which appeared for the first time in 1895, ^s of particular interest. 
 The advance-guard of the 4th Corps reached St. Lambert at 10 A.M., the main body at 
 I P.M., and the 14th Brigade at 3 p.m. 
 
 '• The battle between the French and British had been raging since I P.M. 
 
 ** Billow, as we know, had the order to attack at once under these conditions. To do 
 so he had to cross the diftkult defile formed by the Losne stream, and then to deploy on 
 the further side. This proceeding would be greatly faciUtated by the occupation of the 
 wood of Frischermont, which, fortunately, the French had left unguarded ; indeed, 
 successful deployment depended on this occupation. Nevertheless Biilow took no steps 
 to effect this operation, although at one o'clock he had already three brigades in hand, 
 and by three the whole of his corps was on the ground. Meanwhile, one could see the 
 development of the French attacks, which the British withstood with unparalleled 
 heroism. 
 
 "Major von LUtzow, of the General Staff, had been for some hours in the wood of 
 Frischermont, waiting in vain for some effect to be given to his repeated requests to 
 occupy the wood, and, at last, leaving a detachment to continue the observation of the 
 enemy, he rode back to St. Lambert, where he found the Field Marshal and Gneisenau, 
 
94 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 To assume that Napoleon handled his troops as he did in the 
 full knowledge we now possess as to their position at each hour in 
 the day, is to make him out an irresponsible madman, which we 
 certainly know he was not ; but to view him as led away through- 
 out the campaign by his overweening confidence in his power to 
 compel the tactical decision in his own favour at the time and 
 place of his own choosing, gives us a key to his thoughts, orders, 
 and messages which unlocks the whole mystery which so long has 
 shrouded this most dramatic event. 
 
 to whom he reported the situation, and begged for immediate action, but no decision was 
 come to. Fortunately, at this moment, Grolman, who had been left behind in Wavre, 
 rode up, and on hearing the state of the case from Major von Liitzow, at once said, 
 ' Aber, imarsch marsch ; in des Feld MarschalFs name befehle ich to fort iiber das 
 defile's zu gehen.' (Attack at once ; in the Field Marshal's name I order you to cross 
 the defile.) The order was at once obeyed." 
 
 Comment is needless, but the importance of the admission these lines contain lies in 
 the fact that the author, General von Conradi, throughout displays a marked bias 
 against England. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Influence of the Napoleonic legend — His memoirs — The St. Gotthard Pass — Wiirzburg 
 — Essential cause of Napoleon's failure — Military reform in Prussia — Scharnhorst — 
 Clausewitz — His training — The permanent value of his work — War, the "struggle 
 for the survival of the fittest " — Frederick's system compared with the French school 
 — Clausewitz's purpose to train average men for the responsibilities of high command 
 — He was the first to introduce " scientific method " into military research — Influence 
 of short service — Competitive examinations — Continuity of tradition — The Prussian 
 General Stafi"— Influence of " mobility" — The study of military histor}'. 
 
 Though Waterloo brought with it the downfall of Napoleon, it by 
 no means diverted attention from the extraordinary man who for 
 so long had defied all Europe in arms. Every mind was turned 
 towards the solution of the strategic puzzles he had prepared, and 
 the methods of his adversaries received but scant attention. 
 Moreover, the course of his wars had made and unmade hundreds 
 of reputations, and the latter sought to justify their failure by 
 attacking the principles and conduct of the former. Hence for 
 years the libraries groaned under a perfect plethora of accusatory 
 and self-justificatory memoirs in which confusion of thought made 
 matters worse confounded, and to aggravate our troubles, the great 
 genius sought to justify himself by endeavouring in a series of most 
 mendacious self- exculpatory volumes to explain his career by 
 reference to those very principles of a bygone science which he 
 had himself most persistently violated, and never regarded except 
 when untrue to his own doctrines. I allude especially to his long 
 expositions as to the care he habitually devoted to his lines of 
 communication. 
 
 With most of these I have already dealt in previous chapters, 
 but to make the sequence of my argument clearer, I will refer 
 again to the alleged opening up of fresh communications with 
 France in the Marengo campaign by the occupation of the St. 
 Gotthard Pass, and to his orders for the establishment of inter- 
 mediate fortified bases at Wiirzburg and elsewhere during 1805 
 and 1806. In the former case, as I have pointed out, the line 
 could only be of use as long as the French were victorious, for the 
 Swiss would have risen against them en masse in the event of 
 serious defeat, and the latter were of no value as long as things 
 
96 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 went well in front, whilst every valid man absorbed by them for their 
 defence was one man less in the fighting-line, where alone the 
 decision lay. As police stations they were doubtless very necessary 
 indeed, but their adoption was a departure from Napoleon's cardinal 
 maxim, that one can never be too strong at the decisive point, and, 
 as the event proved, they were useless in defeat, because they were 
 never strong enough in themselves to arrest the advance of the 
 pursuing armies. 
 
 In the dust clouds raised by these almost purely personal dis- 
 cussions, the essential cause of his ultimate defeat, [viz. the fact 
 that the numerical strength of the forces the French Revolution 
 had called into being, far exceeded the power of control which 
 could be exercised by a single man without trained expert assistance, 
 was entirely overlooked, and whilst men continued to discuss what 
 might have been had mistakes not been made, they entirely 
 neglected to organise the training of their men and officers so as 
 to eliminate or reduce the percentage of mistakes which in the 
 nature of things must be made. 
 
 Meanwhile, in Prussia — in which country all real German 
 military reform originated, a point too often forgotten — the art of 
 defeating one's enemy in the field was being studied from a very 
 different standpoint. The Prussian Army had been by no means 
 so dead to the necessity of military study in the years before 
 Napoleon's appearance as it has been the custom to imagine. 
 Its reputation had attracted some of the most brilliant intellects in 
 the North of Germany, of whom Scharnhorst was the chief ; and 
 they had all received a very sound education not merely in military 
 matters, but in philosophy, mathematics, and, indeed, in all sciences 
 which tend to develop a man's intellectual power. 
 
 When these men came face to face with the realities of War, 
 and twenty-five years in the school of defeat gave them ample 
 opportunities, they were not satisfied with superficial explanations 
 founded on text-book cram, but wanted to get down to the very 
 heart of things and to know why armies fought at all. 
 
 This was practically the question propounded by Scharnhorst 
 in his early pamphlet, entitled ^Die Ursachen der Siege der 
 Franzosen im Feldzug 1792-3,' which seized hold of the central 
 idea of a " nation in arms," and may be said to to have underlain, 
 consciously or unconsciously, all schemes of Army Reform pro- 
 pounded and discussed before Jena, and out of which Scharnhorst 
 ultimately produced his " Universal Liability to Service Act," which 
 persists in all essentials to this day. 
 
 But Scharnhorst did not live to see the full development of his 
 system, and after his death it was von Clausewitz upon whom 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 97 
 
 devolved the task of sifting out and arranging the teaching of the 
 past campaigns. For this his previous training had admirably 
 fitted him. He had been on the Prussian Headquarter Staff all 
 through the disastrous campaign of Jena, and had afterwards 
 served with the Russian Army in 18 12, and again with his own in 
 1 81 3, 1 8 14, and 181 5. He had thus enjoyed ample opportunities 
 of seeing how things ought not to be done, and having trained a 
 naturally clear and powerful mind by the systematic study of 
 philosophy in the school of Immanuel Kant, he went down to the 
 bed-rock of his experiences and formulated in accurate language 
 the limitations of human knowledge as applied to the conduct 
 of War. 
 
 He died with his work unfinished, but his works published after 
 his death were seized upon by every thinking Prussian officer as 
 the exact expression of his own thoughts, and became at once the 
 standard book on War for his generation. 
 
 Most English readers find it difficult to understand either the 
 popularity his book enjoys abroad or to realise the profound think- 
 ing it contains ; but we as a race had never been through the 
 same school of defeat and been compelled to go down to the very 
 foundation of things as had the Germans. With them each man knew 
 from his own experience the whole depths of human weaknesses 
 and passions, and realised the limitations on action these imposed. 
 They had seen what they believed to be the most perfectly 
 disciplined and trained armies in existence, led. by masters of the 
 old eighteenth-century game, beaten and shattered by Republican 
 and Imperial troops alike ; they had seen patriotism fanned to 
 a white heat, but wanting the welding, discipline alone can give, 
 melt away before the astounding power of Napoleon's genius, and 
 they all felt that something more than abstract geometrical re- 
 lations between lines and bases was needed to give a satisfactory 
 explanation of these many and varying phenomena. 
 
 This was exactly what Clausewitz's work, even in the unfinished 
 state in which he left it, supplied. Every one felt that at last 
 some one had put into words what all had been unconsciously 
 thinking, and thus the book achieved perhaps the most remarkable 
 success ever attained by any military work in its own country. 
 To analyse it in detail is beyond both my power and space, but 
 its essence lies in this, that it views War as the " struggle for the 
 survival of the fittest " amongst the races, and shows how the 
 human element in it dominates practically all other considerations. 
 The will to succeed and the courage to endure are the two essentials, 
 and given these. Victory may be achieved under the most adverse 
 conditions. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 In Frederick the Great's time everything had been sacrificed to 
 the idea of economy of human life. The soldier cost money, and 
 no State had any to waste. The essence of the art of War con- 
 sisted in bringing the greatest number of individuals face to face 
 with the enemy and handling them as a unit under the control of 
 the one man best fitted to wield them. It did not pay to send 
 imperfectly drilled troops into the field, for not only did they eat 
 as much as well-trained ones, but their inefficiency endangered the 
 execution of the chief's design, on which the success of the whole 
 depended ; nor it did not pay to over-march them or exact avoidable 
 privations from them, because this brought them on the field too 
 exhausted to fight their best ; and though a genius like Frederick 
 could hit the happy mean, and in fact never hesitated to call on his 
 men for their utmost, lesser men mistook the ends for the means, 
 and, having devoted their whole attention in peace time to perfect- 
 ing the machine, when they took the field were afraid to use it for 
 fear of spoiling its appearance. 
 
 The French, however, started with the root idea that a musket 
 and bullets were all a man needed to kill his opponent, and cared 
 nothing for the cost of life. Men they had in abundance, but no 
 money ; and the whole history of the twenty-three years' fighting, 
 from 1792 to 181 5, was simply a record of successive experiments 
 to determine what value of each of the many factors which go to 
 make an army — numbers, skill-at-arms, drill, equipment, transport, 
 etc. — would give when combined the greatest possible product. 
 The solution arrived at by Prussia was the three years' short 
 service army, which gave numbers enough, without over-straining 
 the wealth-producing power of the population, to meet their possible 
 enemies on a reasonably broad front- 
 There does not seem to have been any inkling of the extra- 
 ordinary economic advantages which were to accrue to the country 
 from this adjustment of the length of service, or of the marvellous 
 way in which the short term of service was to develop the in- 
 tellectual capacity of the whole body of officers ; but accidentally 
 the Prussians lit on a solution of their problem of defence which 
 facilitated most wonderfully the second great principle which 
 Clausewitz had in his mind. 
 
 The French Revolution had shown that campaigns were no 
 longer decided by the tactical skill of a single leader handling his 
 army as a fighting unit as in Frederick's day. For the over- 
 powering " blow " of the old line in the hands of a master, in which 
 everything and everybody co-operated towards a single aim, the 
 looser style of fighting evolved as a consequence of the lack of 
 cohesion and training in the hordes of men with muskets the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 99 
 
 Revolution turned out, introduced the idea of " attrition " — the 
 gradual wearing away of the enemy's strength in a series of partial 
 encounters, in which victory fell to the side which could turn out 
 not the best general, but the best average of generals capable of 
 handling forces not exceeding about 25,000 men. Certainly Clause- 
 witz and his school fully realised what Napoleon's personal presence 
 always meant, but they knew, too, that such men were exceptional, 
 born, not made, and elected as the safer course, to devise a method 
 of training average men to give a uniform average of sound leading 
 as the best antidote to the exceptional merit of a bom leader. 
 
 Without Clausewitz's book, however, this system would have 
 been impracticable, for there would have been no scientifically 
 prepared groundwork to build upon ; and it is the consequence of 
 our neglect to study his works that for so many years the best 
 intellects the Army could produce — and they are second to none 
 in any other branches of investigation — have failed to turn out 
 anything but an empiric solution of all warlike problems, which, 
 like all empiric methods, is liable to be upset by the last newly 
 discovered fact or incident. 
 
 We laughed loudly over the poor old Boer women who painted 
 their babies green to cure them of measles ; but our own methods 
 in tactics and strategy are not more scientific. Green happens 
 to be a peculiarly good colour for reducing fevers ; the only mistake 
 they made was in laying it on in the form of paint. Invisibility 
 in War at times also happens to be a good thing, but when it leads 
 to the painting of horses "khaki," you are pushing the principle 
 too far ; and the same may be said of the abuse of " cover," of 
 " extended order," and most particularly of the sacrifice of mobility 
 in the Cavalry in order to secure fire power. Such errors would 
 be absolutely inconceivable in an Army trained on Clausewitz to 
 recognise the inherent " polarity " in all military practice. There 
 is no '* absolute " good or bad in War, only a " relative " relation of 
 better or worse, according to the action of the other side. 
 
 A " Staff College " had been in existence in Prussia for many 
 years, but its teaching had been as everywhere else, and still with 
 us, almost entirely " empiric." Under Clausewitz's influence it 
 became " scientific," in the true sense, beginning from an absolute 
 foundation of facts, and eliminating all " opinion " which could not 
 stand the stress of analysis. This was the very reverse of 
 " pedantry " in spirit, though in actual application it might easily 
 have degenerated into that condition, but for the check auto- 
 matically introduced into the working of the educational machine, 
 by the action of the short-service principle. 
 
 In the old Prussian Army, with long service, recruits had been 
 
100 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 few in number, and their training, particularly the minor tactical 
 side of it, had been left by tradition in the hands of the veteran 
 N.C.O.'s and soldiers, who, as long as War seemed imminent, had 
 the best of all incentives, their own security in face of the enemy, 
 to see that their pupils thoroughly understood their work. They 
 knew too well by experience the dangers to which sleeping on 
 sentry-go, dullness and stupidity on advance guard duty, etc., 
 might expose them. But, as the risk of War became less evident, 
 and the generation of old soldiers passed away, the exigencies of 
 the parade ground and barrack square absorbed their attention, 
 and the young soldier was taught, not how to exercise his wits 
 against an actual enemy, but how to get through his day's work 
 with the least chance of bringing down extra duties and drills 
 upon his company or squadron, and by degrees the N.C.O.'s became 
 a screen between the officers and men, with the one and only 
 object of maintaining the existing standard of appearance with 
 the least possible trouble to every one concerned. Thus the young 
 officer — exactly as was the case in our own service not many years 
 ago — found, not only no obvious incentive to work with and 
 through his men, but if he tried to do so, was met with passive 
 obstruction from all ranks, who liked the existing condition of 
 affairs because it saved everybody trouble, and had no desire to 
 see it disturbed. 
 
 Hence there existed no means of selecting as recruits for staff 
 training men who not only had brains capable of development, but 
 also a practical knowledge of the men and their needs, and in the 
 absence of such recruits, officers were chosen either for clerical 
 industry and amenability to empiric methods, or by downright 
 favouritism — precisely as happened in this country not very long 
 ago. 
 
 Compulsory short service without substitutes, however, com- 
 pletely upset the whole arrangement, for now the officers were 
 compelled to train their own men, and as these were both 
 physically and intellectually above the average of the nation, 
 they were compelled to exercise their own intellects to gain the 
 men's confidence, and again, without the sound common sense of 
 Clausewitz to support them, they could not have taught so as to 
 carry conviction to the minds of their pupils. With ten years' 
 training in such a school, officers soon learnt to understand the 
 practical human-nature elements of Warfare, and probably mainly as 
 a cause of the excessive stagnation of life in their small unchanging 
 garrison — a well-recognised evil half a century before Lieutenant 
 Bilse achieved his unenviable notoriety — commanding officers had 
 little difficulty in discovering the real character and grit amongst 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. loi 
 
 their young officers, and recommending the best for further training 
 at the Staff College. 
 
 Hence it became possible to dispense with competitive exami- 
 nations and to substitute a qualifying test only, and it is this 
 qualifying test, as opposed to the competitive one, which is the 
 essential cause of the excellent results obtained by the Prussian 
 General Staff considered as a whole. It gives them command of 
 a supply of practical men whose wits are sharpened and characters 
 strengthened by perpetual intimate contact with human nature, 
 and eliminates that most dangerous breed, who, disliking contact 
 with the everyday conditions of their existence, seek to escape 
 from it by devotion to the study of books whose meaning they 
 cannot fathom, because they are ignorant of this very knowledge 
 of men as they really are, from the best opportunities of acquiring 
 which they are most anxious to escape. 
 
 Given a competitive system, and such men are almost bound 
 to survive to the exclusion of better soldiers, for their clerical and 
 studious habits soon bring them to the front on their office stools, 
 from which lofty elevation they in turn condition the subjects to be 
 studied and the books to be issued to succeeding generations, with 
 the ultimate result that after half a century intellect is eliminated 
 from the competitive examinations and cramwork, pure and simple, 
 becomes the standard. Fortunately our constant sequence of 
 small Wars has prevented our reaping the whole fruits of such a 
 system ; but I think that no one who can recall what our Staff 
 College education of fifteen years ago had become will question 
 that we have had a very narrow escape. 
 
 Since then, however, the virtues of short service, even with a 
 voluntary system, have asserted themselves, and, given reasonable 
 continuity in the conditions, success is still within measurable 
 distance of achievement, though by how many years it may have 
 been thrown back by the hasty and ill-considered changes of the 
 past few years it would be difificult to estimate. 
 
 The essence of Prussian excellence lies in their continuity of 
 tradition. For nearly a hundred years now the process above 
 described has been in operation, and the intellectual pick of the 
 Army has received a practical training, thus there has grown up 
 in the country a very large body of expert military opinion, in 
 whose judgment the nation reposes unlimited confidence. 
 
 When the General Staff speaks, the majority of the public, 
 having served in the ranks, knows that the subject has been 
 approached from every possible side, and the last word has been 
 said ; and if a minority of Socialists and other discontented people 
 raise objections, the ex-soldiers, who are always in a majority — for 
 
: t •» e 
 
 102 THE E VOL UTION OF MODERN STRA TEG K 
 
 nearly two-thirds of the whole population have been through the 
 ranks — treat these opinions with dignified contempt, as the utterances 
 of creatures who, not having been found fit to serve, are really not 
 healthy men at all, and therefore not fit to give an opinion on 
 military subjects. It is exactly the attitude of the ex-public 
 school boy to the ex-private school pupil, when the latter attempts 
 to reform our educational arrangement. Yet, trivial as the circum- 
 stance may seem, it lay at the root of the German strategical 
 conduct of the War of 1 870. 
 
 The German Staff, being only human, made mistakes in spite of 
 their training, and knew that a certain percentage of mistakes 
 were inevitable ; but secure in the knowledge of this weight of 
 opinion backing them, they carried out undisturbed their ideas, 
 without fear of the possible consequences local mistakes in execu- 
 tion might involve in the nation behind them — the exact opposite 
 of the position of the French Government, to whom the vox populi 
 meant vox dei in its fullest significance, — after South Africa, we can 
 afford to sympathise with them. This was the broad principle which 
 underlay the German victories in France, the fact that the military 
 chiefs enjoyed the full confidence both of the Army and the nation 
 — the two being, in fact, almost synonymous terms. In detail, the 
 principal consequence of this training was to add enormously to the 
 mobility of the armies they directed. 
 
 It does not appear that " mobility," per se, had ever appealed 
 specially either to Clausewitz or his colleagues. With European 
 armies, all with much the same proportion of Cavalry, Artillery, 
 and Infantry, there seemed no possibility of appreciably varying 
 the rate of movement. Their principal care was rather directed to 
 the elimination of the friction resulting from the effort to direct 
 large masses towards a common cause. They had seen again and 
 again how both the Austrians and themselves had thrown away most 
 brilliant opportunities, partly because their leaders could not decide 
 rapidly as to what course to pursue, but mainly perhaps because 
 when they had decided it took them so long to issue orders to their 
 subordinates that the chance had passed before the Army had 
 begun to move, and to remedy this they went a step beyond their 
 Napoleonic model, and not merely organised their armies in Corps, 
 Divisions, Brigades, and so forth, but deliberately trained a Quarter- 
 master-General's Staff to handle them. Since they could not keep 
 the Army always at War to supply this staff with practical experience, 
 they provided the best expedient they could in the shape of autumn 
 manoeuvres, and to prevent men growing up with the idea that 
 manoeuvres and War were the same thing, they compelled them to 
 study and understand military history in its widest sense, which is 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 103 
 
 a very different subject indeed to the superficial generalisations on 
 insufficient and inaccurate data which masquerades under that name 
 in our educational curriculum. 
 
 Hence, when the campaigns of 1864-66 and 1870 ensued, though 
 there were still in the higher ranks a few survivals of Napoleonic 
 times for the most part too old to learn new tricks, each of these 
 had at his right hand a picked and trained intelligence, accustomed 
 to sift the true from the false, and to decide rapidly, on sound 
 general principles comprehensible to all, what orders to issue to meet 
 the special emergency. Their manoeuvre training gave them the 
 necessary grasp of the situation, and their military history study 
 the knowledge of the strength of their materials, i.e. prepared them 
 to estimate the phenomena inseparable from War, the confusion of 
 the battlefield, the excitement of victorious troops and the 
 depression and exhaustion of defeated ones, at their due and 
 proper value in relation to the work remaining to be done and the 
 sacrifices still necessary to secure the ultimate result. 
 
 This is the true purpose of the study of military history, and 
 the end cannot be gained by confusing the subject with what we are 
 pleased to call "strategy." The simple combinations which are 
 discussed with such tedious elaboration in the pages of * Hamley's 
 Operations of War,' for instance, in so far as they are true at 
 all, can be grasped by 90 per cent, of the subalterns of every Army. 
 The difficulty of enforcing their execution in a peace-trained force, 
 in which the junior ranks know nothing of the all-absorbing 
 excitement and extreme tension of mind, soul, and body involved, 
 is quite another matter, and the only guarantee possible that the 
 phenomena of War, when encountered, should be judged in their 
 proper proportion lies in a dissemination amongst all ranks of a 
 knowledge of what these things are and how they have been 
 conquered, or the reverse, by their forefathers in days gone by. 
 
 " What men have done that men can do " is a saying intelligible 
 to every one ; and if in a regiment when face to face with a difficult 
 situation, every man more or less remembers how the same regiment 
 met and overcame the same or similar difficulties, they, as a 
 corporate body, will bear with ease dangers and hardships, which 
 without such knowledge would fill them with the deepest 
 despondency. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Effect of alterations in armament on strategy — The " case-shot " attack — Becomes im- 
 possible in America against long-range small arms — The consequences disastrous to 
 the Federals — Richmond as an ** objective" — The Austro-Prussian campaign of 
 1866 — The Franco-German War — French fail to make use of the advantages of their 
 new infantry weapon — Fatal influence of Marshal Niel's views — Napoleon III.'s 
 reliance on Austrian and Italian assistance — The new French official account — 
 German comments — Critical moment in the strategical deployment of the German 
 armies — Want of "driving energy" in the French Army — Comparison with 1800 
 and 1805 — Breach of continuity in warlike tradition — Effect of rumours on French 
 Staff — Lorrach and Duttweiler — Absence of maps on the French side — ^Transport 
 and supply — Result of requisitioning — Commencement of hostilities before declaration 
 of War. 
 
 During the whole period we have hitherto been considering, the 
 conditions of armament remained virtually the same. In the 
 American Civil War (1862-64), though the weapons on both sides 
 were substantially of equal power, the relation between the three 
 arms was completely upset, owing to the introduction of the long- 
 range infantry rifle, which by its accuracy at long distances entirely 
 destroyed the possibility of the Napoleonic attack, in which 
 previously all strategy had culminated. 
 
 It will be seen by a reference to Chapter IX. that, relying on 
 the power of his Artillery to blow a hole with case-shot in any 
 battle formation which he conceived it possible to oppose to his 
 men, the Emperor had simplified his strategical procedure to the 
 utmost, suppressing all finesse and attempts at deception, and 
 aiming only at the most rapid possible concentration of masses on 
 the decisive point ; and since armaments are more readily changed 
 than ideas, even when the weapons changed, his principles were 
 maintained, with consequences which proved most disastrous on 
 the battlefield. 
 
 Without the aid of the guns, which could now no longer unlimber 
 at case-shot ranges, the power of the attack everywhere shattered 
 against the unshaken fire-power of the defenders' Infantry ; and an 
 entirely new time factor was thus introduced into all calculations. 
 The enormous numerical superiority the Northern States could 
 oppose to their opponents ought to have sufficed to crush down all 
 resistance in a very short period of time, but Isnowing little of War, 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 105 
 
 other than was to be found in the pages of their text-books, the 
 Union generals too often concentrated their masses upon impossible 
 tasks, instead of utilising them in the preparation of impossible tasks 
 for their adversaries. That great difficulties stood in their way 
 is of course admitted. Intrinsically, at first, each arm of the 
 Confederates was a better fighting machine than the corresponding 
 arm of the Unionists, and their whole Army possessed a higher 
 degree of mobility ; but making all reasonable allowances for these 
 advantages, it should not have taken two years, and odds at length 
 as great as five to one, to cover the 100 miles from Washington to 
 Richmond. 
 
 A further fundamental mistake made by the Unionists lay in 
 their choice of Richmond as an objective, whereas the enemy's 
 Field Army should have monopolised all their efforts ; but though 
 this error has attracted much criticism, particularly in Germany, I 
 find it difficult to accept the conclusion that under all circumstances 
 this course is imperative, and recent experience in South Africa 
 confirms my impression, from which, indeed, Napoleon himself 
 departed in one of his most successful campaigns, viz. that of Jena. 
 
 If the enemy can always outmarch you, it is impossible to over- 
 take him, and it seems to me, therefore, that under such circum- 
 stances, the only possible way of bringing him to action is to 
 advance against whatever point or position he is absolutely com- 
 pelled to defend. Only when the balance of the three arms is such 
 that for the time the defence has an advantage, then the advance 
 must be made in such a manner that he is compelled to attack you 
 — not the other way about ; and this is where the majority of the 
 Northern leaders, especially Grant, most constantly failed, e.g. at 
 Cold Harbour. If 10,000 Federals could not turn 1000 Confederates 
 out of a position by a frontal assault, then it is improbable that 
 10,000 Confederates could have carried a line of works against 
 1500 Federals ; hence, by leaving a relatively small body of men in 
 the Confederate front to act as a retaining force, a relatively large 
 body would have been set free to operate against the latter's flanks, 
 with the final result of a complete surround, with consequences as 
 fatal as at Sedan. Doubtless the want of roads and other com- 
 munications retarded such a consummation, but if the Federals 
 could have learnt to strip themselves of superfluities, and march as 
 light as their opponents, the end might have been attained in half 
 the time at a quarter of the cost 
 
 In the Austro-Prussian campaign of 1866, again tactics, not 
 strategy, conditioned the issue. The breech-loader as against the 
 muzzle-loader had an enormous retaining effect, which has generally 
 been ignored in the discussions which have raged on the campaign. 
 
io6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 On the night of Koniggratz, no matter what the previous faults of 
 the Austrians may have been, they possessed an undeniable 
 strategic advantage over their enemy, and had both armies been 
 equipped with weapons of the same relative, not necessarily absolute, 
 power, as in the Napoleonic times, the result could hardly have been 
 doubtful, for the Prussian centre must have been defeated before 
 either the Crown Prince or the Elbe Army could have arrived. 
 But the Austrian combination of muzzle-loading rifles and artillery 
 with imperfect shrapnel was not enough to compensate for the more 
 rapid fire and greatly reduced target the breech-loader enabled the 
 Prussians to expose, and time was thus gained for the latter's wings 
 to arrive. 
 
 Generally, throughout the campaign, if the two Infantries had 
 been equally well armed, the chances are great that the Prussian 
 flanking corps would always have arrived too late to avert disaster, 
 as did indeed happen at Trautenau. The Austrians were throughout 
 handled in conventional fashion, ignoring the change in the time 
 factor introduced, not by the breech-loader qtid breech-loader, but 
 in the fact that it was present on one side only, and not on both. 
 
 In the Franco-German War, though now both armies possessed 
 a breech-loader, the difference in the power of the weapons was 
 greater than perhaps has existed between any European armies in 
 history, but, unfortunately for the French, they entirely ignored the 
 nature of the advantage their superior weapon conferred. It would 
 have been better for them had they ignored the weapon in their 
 tactics altogether, and fought almost precisely as they had fought 
 in the old Napoleonic days, and did fight at Solferino, for their mis- 
 takes would rapidly have corrected themselves ; and though they 
 would certainly never have succeeded in overrunning the Prussians 
 with cold steel as they overran the Austrians, yet at whatever distance 
 their rush would have been stopped, the men would have flung them- 
 selves down and fired, and with the far flatter trajectory and greater 
 rapidity of fire the chassepot possessed, they would have had every 
 chance of beating down their opponents' fire-power sufficiently to 
 allow of their further advance under the impulsion of their following 
 columns. It would have been bloody work, and very unscientific, 
 but probably would have proved efficacious. 
 
 Had they studied the question from our present standpoint, 
 they would doubtless have seen that the possession of a longer- 
 range weapon and of a shrapnel shell, imperfect though the 
 latter was, gave them, as long as they fought on the offensive, 
 the power of choosing their own preparatory ranges. At 3000 and 
 1 500 yards their gunners had decidedly the best of it (a fact of 
 which the Prussians were well aware), and at 500 the spread of 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 107 
 
 their infantry projectiles was probably about one-tenth of that 
 of the needle-gun bullets. A first artillery position at 3000 yards, 
 followed by an infantry preparation at 500, which distance they 
 could have reached with almost nominal loss from infantry fire, 
 would have enabled them to secure the degree of fire superiority 
 on which all subsequent advance depends ; and had the French 
 Infantry once felt their own power of attack, their following masses 
 would have proved hard indeed to stop. But, unfortunately for 
 them, theory stepped in at the critical moment to deprive them of 
 the surest guarantee of success their nation possesses, viz. the 
 extraordinary energy with which they have always attacked. 
 
 The ruling idea which prevailed before the War amongst the 
 highest circles as to the use of the new weapon, emanated from an 
 engineer, Marshal Niel, and the school of fortress Warfare. Trusting 
 to the great increase in the rapidity of its fire, the Infantry were to 
 await the attack of the enemy behind entrenchments, overwhelm 
 him with bullets, and then charge out in counter-attack with the 
 bayonet ; and this unfortunate conception paralysed French strategy 
 from the outset, for in order always to be ready to fire, they had to 
 abandon all the secrets of mobility they had acquired during the 
 Revolution and under Napoleon, and go back to the methods of 
 marching, camping, and entrenching, which had characterised the 
 Warfare of the previous century. 
 
 At the very moment when a vigorous offensive might have 
 overwhelmed the Prussians, still in process of concentration, as, 
 indeed, Moltke seems to have anticipated in his orders to the First 
 and Second Army from the ist to 3rd August, they were marching 
 about from one entrenched camp to another, wasting the time and 
 energy which should have been devoted to advancing in digging 
 trenches, which only rivetted them more firmly to the ground.* 
 
 The fundamental cause of the French collapse in the opening 
 period of the campaign has been very generally ignored in all 
 English accounts of the War. Yet it is essential that it should 
 be known, if the true lessons the campaign teaches are to be 
 apprehended. At the time the Prussian official history was 
 compiled, it was not politic to tell all that was known, and even 
 now some links in the chain are still wanting. 
 
 The French had been in secret communication with both Austria 
 and Italy for some months previously, and had elaborated a gigantic 
 scheme of campaign, in which all three powers were to co-operate. 
 How far negotiations with Italy had proceeded I have never been 
 able to ascertain, but it is certain that Napoleon had planned his 
 
 * See the introductory chapters of the new French official history of the War for 
 details of these camps and precautions and the comments thereon. 
 
io8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 intended rapid irruption into south Germany in full reliance on the 
 appearance of an Austrian Army, which, joining him in Bavaria, 
 was to advance in combination with him upon Jena ; but the time 
 of the Prussian mobilisation had been most grievously miscalculated, 
 and long before even the French mobilisation had been completed, 
 it became evident that Austrian intervention would be too late. 
 With the hope of Austrian assistance went also all prospect of 
 Bavarian co-operation, and it would seem that the French secret 
 agents had in both cases allowed themselves to be most terribly 
 deceived as to the intensity of national feeling in both countries. 
 
 All hope of Austrian co-operation had not been abandoned on 
 the 1st August, and it was evidently in order to show that he, at 
 least, was resolute to carry out his part of the contract that the 
 movements of the French Rhine Army, which culminated in the 
 engagement at Saarbrlicken on the 2nd August, were initiated. 
 
 This, however, was even less than a half-measure, and the 
 French official account asks why, if the troops were to move at all, 
 the bull was not seized by the horns, and every available corps, four 
 in all and the Guard, concentrated at once upon the German First 
 Army, which stood for the moment isolated, and could not expect 
 support from the Second Army till the 3rd August at the earliest. 
 
 The German commentators on this suggestion seem to think 
 that nothing would have suited their purpose better, but they 
 cannot get over the fact that the First Army would have had to 
 face odds of two to one at the least, nor do they, very naturally, 
 take the same view of the moral and political consequences which 
 must have accrued to the French from gaining a first victory. 
 
 Undoubtedly, in the long run, better organisation and superior 
 numbers must have told in the German favour ; but Germany 
 was not as yet consolidated by success, and probably if a referendum 
 for and against union, under the leadership of Prussia, had been 
 possible the majority for the latter before the War would not have 
 been large. Even within the Army the men had not yet shaken 
 down. The proportion of reservists to men with the Colours was 
 very high. Officers had not yet found themselves with the War- 
 strength companies, or in the new places into which mobilisation 
 had flung them, and if such scenes as Meckel relates in the 
 " Midsummer Night's Dream," and Hoenig in the " Fighting round 
 the Quarries of Rozerieulles on the i8th August," actually did occur, 
 it does not need much imagination to picture what would have been 
 the consequences of a thorough defeat and energetic pursuit. 
 
 That Moltke was not unaware of the risk is evident from the 
 precautions he ordered to cover the critical moment during which, 
 owing to the difficulties of the passage through the defiles of the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. IC9 
 
 Hardt, the First Army would remain unsupported. But, curiously, 
 whilst one of these, viz. the advance of the Third Army on the 
 31st July, could not be immediately carried out, as its concentration 
 was not yet sufficiently advanced, the second one, which involved a 
 defensive attitude for the Germans, would have given the French 
 the very opportunity they most needed for developing the full 
 power of their superior long-ranging infantry weapon. 
 
 Why was not this opportunity seized ? The answer can only be 
 that the French Army, from the highest to lowest, had forgotten 
 what War for existence really entails. Siege work in the Crimea, 
 detachment service in Algiers, and the dilatory ineptitude of the 
 Austrians in Italy, had all alike contributed to make them forget 
 the value of time — in other words, mobility — and the absolute need 
 for " driving energy" on the part of the commanders. It is true that 
 their mobilisation had been slow, and stores were still deficient, 
 but men, rifles, and ammunition were on the spot, and with these 
 available, the very critical nature of the whole position, political 
 and military, would have impelled a great commander to take 
 great risks. 
 
 Let the reader turn to the lists of deficiencies in men and 
 material given in the pages of the French official, compare them 
 with the state almost of destitution which existed in Napoleon's 
 Army of Reserve in 1 8co, or even with the condition of affairs in 
 the Grand Army on the Rhine in 1805, and ask himself whether 
 Napoleon the Great would have allowed his initiative to be lamed 
 by such trifling excuses. Water-bottles, flannel bandages — pre- 
 sumably cholera belts — and ambulances may be useful accessories 
 to efficiency, but they are not indispensable, for, with a great 
 leader at their head, men have marched to victory even shoeless 
 and ragged. 
 
 This same forgetfulness of the teaching of War appears on every 
 page of this new official account, and points most clearly to the 
 need of the thorough organisation of a teaching organ in every 
 peace-trained army. With the actual instructions issued from 
 headquarters to the troops there is not much fault to be found — 
 vigilance, reconnaissances, all were ordered, but the form in which 
 they were ordered suggests that everybody knew how these things 
 should have been carried out, whereas, in fact, the whole spirit of 
 the old Revolutionary and Napoleonic traditions on these matters 
 had entirely faded out of the lower ranks. 
 
 When Napoleon, through Berthier, told one of his marshals 
 " to show his Cavalry," the latter knew at once what to do. He 
 massed all his light horse and dragoons together, and sent them 
 miles ahead towards the enemy, to find out and report what was 
 
no THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 going on. In 1870, when the " Major-General " * issued the same 
 instruction, independent cavalry regiments trotted a few miles 
 towards the frontier and returned. 
 
 Similarly, when in the old Imperial armies orders were issued 
 to institute an intelligence service, every one at once knew what to 
 do — the Marshals knew where to look for experienced officers, and 
 the latter knew how to deal with spies and question inhabitants. 
 In 1870, no one, when called on, seems to have had any idea of his 
 work at all, as a perusal of the reports sent in will abundantly 
 show. They do not seem to have known where the enemy's corps 
 were originally quartered, what railways led from thence to the 
 frontier, or how long they would take by these lines to traverse a 
 given distance. Hence, they were entirely at the mercy of camp 
 rumour, which even an ordinary tourist's guide-book would have 
 sufficed to explode. 
 
 Thus, quite at the commencement of the concentration, a 
 rumour sprang up in the French right wing that a Prussian army 
 of anything up to 80,000 men was collecting at Lorrach, an obscure 
 little village on the Rhine between Basle and Schaffhausen, served 
 only by a single line, which in those days ran only to Constance, 
 and had no through communication with Bavaria at all, and still 
 less with Prussia. No one stopped to inquire as to how the 
 Prussian army could have arrived there without wings, but the 
 story was passed on from office to office till it reached head- 
 quarters, where, to do them justice, they gave it no more attention 
 than its importance deserved ; but another, equally groundless, and 
 far easier to disprove, had the means at hand been employed, 
 seems to have exercised a very considerable influence on the minds 
 of the French chiefs. 
 
 There is a little place called Duttweiler, some fifteen miles 
 north of Saarbriicken, and not in direct railway communication 
 with any portion of Germany at all — a more unlikely spot for a 
 great concentration it would be almost impossible to imagine. 
 About the fourth or fifth day of mobilisation, a relay post of 
 cavalry, an N.C.O., and a few troopers for forwarding despatches 
 was established there by the Prussians, and the rumour of their 
 presence, gathering weight as it went, soon reached the frontier, 
 where it was picked up by the French intelligence officers in the 
 form of a " great gathering of the enemy," " 40,000 Prussian troops," 
 and so on till it reached the portentous number of 100,000, and in 
 this form duly reached headquarters, frightening every one as it 
 went ; and its influence seems to me plainly traceable in the 
 reports of all officers except the few who were in actual possession 
 
 * It will be noted that the title of* Major-General " had survived. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, iii 
 
 of the Emperor's ideas of co-operation with the Austrians. All 
 through the days this rumour circulated, the French cavalry were 
 at hand in overwhelming superiority ; it needed only the advance of 
 a single division to have cleared up the situation, yet not a man 
 was moved, though certainty on this point was at least most 
 desirable. 
 
 A word or two on the question of the map supply may here be 
 interpolated. It was not the case that the country had not been 
 mapped, as is generally supposed ; on the contrary, it had been 
 surveyed very completely, and the sheets of the 8ir>wir n^^P) which 
 can still be purchased, must have been available somewhere. But 
 these sheets appear to have been treated as highly confidential, for 
 I find a covering letter printed in the correspondence notifying the 
 despatch of three copies to each corps commander, with a note 
 that if the number is insufficient, more will be supplied ; but from 
 the rest of the book I gather that practically, until these three 
 copies arrived, the only maps available to the officers on the spot 
 were those in the private possession of General Ducrot, command- 
 ing a division in the ist corps, who knew the country so well that 
 he hardly needed one, and some rough lithographs, carelessly 
 traced from Reymann's 3 6o,^oU "^^P ^^ central Europe, which was 
 on sale at the time in nearly every bookseller's shop in the con- 
 tinent, with a copy of which, purchased in 1864, I have since 
 repeatedly gone over the ground and found it, for its scale wonder- 
 fully reliable ; but even the guide-books and railway maps 
 contained very reasonable information, had it only occurred to the 
 French officers to buy them. As an instance that even on the 
 Prussian side maps were not always forthcoming, may be cited 
 the case given by Von Verdy du Vernois in his " Study of the 
 Events on the Frontier from the 17th July to 2nd August, 1870," 
 in which he states that it was impossible to find a map of the 
 district around Saarbriicken for the guidance of the young officer 
 charged with the destruction of the railway near Saargemiind, 
 distant not ten miles away, although the regiment to which he 
 belonged had been quartered in the town for years before the 
 War. 
 
 A word is still wanting to explain the conditions of the 
 transport and supply arrangements on both sides at the commence- 
 ment of hostilities. Both armies started with the intention, derived 
 from previous Napoleonic experiences, of "making War support 
 War," as far, at any rate, as was possible. In other words, they 
 meant to work the requisition system for all it was worth ; but 
 both had lost the spirit and practice which alone renders it 
 practicable. 
 
112 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 The French troops arrived in their positions almost destitute 
 of commissariat waggons and horses, and immediately proceeded 
 to select all the most suitable of each from the country-side to 
 supply their deficiencies. For the most part they also drew their 
 food from the same sources, but, except locally, they had not nearly 
 exhausted it when the German advance began. 
 
 The latter now commenced to requisition on what they 
 believed to be the Napoleonic method. Each commander, as 
 he arrived, took not only all that he needed, but, to be on the 
 safe side, two or three days' supplies, with horses and carts to 
 convey them in addition ; his successor on the road did the same, 
 till presently every column was accompanied by a crowd of vehicles 
 and driven cattle, which were constantly breaking down, and 
 generally in everybody's way. The old Grand Army had known 
 better than that, for, by long experience, its intendants knew just 
 how much the combatant generals would tolerate, and dreaded the 
 Emperor's displeasure if they exceeded. But to the German 
 generals this experience was new, and they did now know when 
 to intervene, till the evil reached such a climax, that it is gravely 
 stated in a monograph by the General Staff in Berlin on the 
 supply of their army during 1870,* that had the French not 
 already cleared off a considerable proportion of the available 
 transport, it is doubtful whether Gravelotte could ever have been 
 fought, since, as it was, the block of vehicles in the defiles leading 
 up out of the Moselle valley was so intolerable that the movement 
 of the troops, and particularly of ammunition columns, was most 
 seriously interfered with. 
 
 There were yet some other points on the German side which 
 require to be dealt with before a correct general idea of the 
 conditions under which the two armies faced one another on 
 the frontiers can be arrived at. The War came upon that nation 
 absolutely as a " bolt from the blue," and though everything that 
 foresight could devise had been arranged and provided for, this 
 suddenness engendered an outbreak of nerves throughout the Army, 
 which, had the French availed themselves of their superior cadres 
 and struck at once, might have proved most prejudicial. 
 
 Von Verdy du Vernois' * Studies,' etc., above alluded to, is the 
 authority to be consulted on this head, and from his pages it is 
 evident that a very large number of persons along the frontiers 
 completely lost their heads, and saw French armies advancing 
 where no armies could be. The wave of enthusiasm which 
 passed over the country as the reservists fell in and entrained 
 
 * • Studien zur Kriegsgeschichte,' No. I. Das Franzosischen Fuhrwesen zur begrinn 
 des Krieges 1870-71. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 113 
 
 at the stations not only led to an incredible consumption of beer 
 and liquors, which affected most prejudicially the marching 
 qualities of the troops during the first few days (the Prussian 
 official explicitly refers to the matter), but the resulting noise and 
 confusion at the entraining stations caused the railway officials 
 to lose their heads, and after the first forty-eight hours the 
 carefully arranged time-tables broke down, and the trains were 
 forwarded as they came to hand. This was never officially 
 admitted, but it was a fact well known to all our railway people, 
 who have means of finding out these things, very soon after the 
 event. The matter is of importance, for us, because for many years, 
 indeed, long after our Indian railways had beaten the German 
 record of transportation in 1870, we were still officially taught to 
 regard the German figures of twelve to eighteen trains a day for a 
 single, and twenty-four for a double, line of railway as the safe 
 maximum attainable. 
 
 Another trouble, which, in the event of a sudden French 
 offensive, might have had most serious consequences, lay in the 
 overlapping of the headquarter system of intelligence with the local. 
 Whilst the former were, on the whole, kept well informed of events, 
 the latter were often entirely in the dark, and the evil was 
 aggravated by the constant supersession of the local commanding 
 officers by the arrival of superiors to take up their commands. 
 Instances of this are frequent in Von Verdy's pages. Thus at 
 noon on the 3rd August, we find Moltke telegraphing to find out 
 whether there really had been an engagement at Saarbriick on the 
 previous day or not. What might have happened had the French 
 boldly crossed the frontier may well be left to the imagination. 
 
 Finally, there is a lesson which may well be taken to heart, as 
 it reveals on how slight a thread the issues of Peace or War may 
 hang at critical moments. The officer commanding the cavalry 
 regiment on the extreme German right of the frontier mistook the 
 orders for mobilisation as orders for the commencement of hostilities, 
 and forthwith sent his men into French territory, where, before the 
 mistake was discovered, they had committed numerous acts of 
 hostilities. Actually the French forwarded a protest, but events 
 then marched so rapidly that nothing further was ever heard of the 
 matter. Imagine a similar error on the part of a hot-headed young 
 naval lieutenant in command of a submarine or destroyer, and 
 contemplate the possible consequences. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Moltke's memoir of 1869— Influence of universal service on the temper of the German 
 nation— Absence of confidence of the French nation in its leaders— German mis- 
 calculations—Errors in execution of Moltke's deployment — The Crown Prince and 
 Von Blumenthal— Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles— Events take the supreme 
 direction out of Moltke's hands— The German armies "fight themselves"— 
 "Readiness to assume responsibility/' the secret of their success— Want of this 
 readiness on the French side— The crisis of Gravelotte— Result of Clausewitz's 
 teaching — The Boer War and political considerations. 
 
 In marked distinction to the far-reaching plans of- campaign 
 formed by Napoleon III. — plans which should have eventuated in 
 a second Jena, but actually led him to Sedan — is Moltke's memoir, 
 prepared in the winter of 1868-69, on which the "strategical 
 deployment " of the German armies in 1870 was based. 
 
 Looking at the map of the Franco-German frontier, here — if 
 anywhere — one would have expected to find a subtle discussion of 
 the relative advantages and disadvantages of a re-entrant frontier 
 line — of double lines of operation, and all the other time-worn 
 jargon of the eighteenth-century school on which Hamley's 
 ** Operations of War," for decades the text-book of the British 
 Army, is founded. In actual fact there is not a word about any of 
 these matters, and only in the words, " Only the layman who be- 
 lieves that he can trace throughout the course of the campaign, the 
 prosecution of an original plan arranged beforehand in all its details," 
 can one detect an allusion to these time-worn shibboleths of our 
 military faith, which for so many years have confused the minds 
 of successive generations. 
 
 The whole problem is herein reduced within the limits of the 
 ** knowable," and no step beyond the moment of collision is 
 allowed to influence the decision ; all efforts being limited to the 
 concentration of every available man, horse, and gun in three 
 armies within supporting distance one of the other, before the 
 enemy's possible action could interfere with either. With these 
 three armies in hand — then, broadly speaking, it did not matter 
 what the enemy did — numerical odds must settle the matter in the 
 German favour. 
 
 But this simplicity of action was not arrived at without risk of 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 115 
 
 great sacrifice of local and individual interests, and it is open to 
 question whether any other country, less trained to the considera- 
 tion of military problems, and hence not so ready to accept with- 
 out question the decision of the superior authority which alone 
 held full information, would have stood the strain. 
 
 All Germany south of Rastadt and two-thirds of the Palatinate 
 had to be denuded of their local garrisons, and for a fortnight at 
 least lay open to French incursion ; but not an editor raised his 
 voice. Imagine what would happen in this country if, with no 
 fleet to protect us, on the outbreak of War, our much-abused War 
 Office decreed the withdrawal of all our southern garrisons behind 
 a line drawn from Lincoln to London, and thence to Plymouth. 
 Ink, even red ink, would not suffice to convey the vitriolic abuse 
 of all responsible authority which would flow spontaneously from 
 every editorial sanctum in the three kingdoms. Yet, as a fact, 
 orders to this effect once — just a century ago — did lie dormant in 
 the pigeon-holes of the Horse Guards, and would again become 
 necessary if the fleet should fail us. But would any Government 
 in these days of an enlightened, but undisciplined, democracy dare 
 to incur the odium of their issue ? The pages of the recent Royal 
 Commission relative to the occupation of Dundee, with its sequel, 
 Talana Hill, suffice to convey the answer. 
 
 The French, on their side, had no such confidence in constituted 
 authority, and from the very first their leaders did not dare to take 
 steps which their military judgment approved, for fear of the people 
 behind them. Once it had become apparent that the troops were 
 not fit to assume the offensive, a withdrawal and concentration to 
 the southward — even if it went as far as the Paris-Belfort railway — 
 was the only safe course open to them. The Germans could not 
 have marched on Paris leaving the French Field Army intact upon 
 their flank, and, to follow the latter up with safety, would have had 
 to make considerable detachments to mask Metz and Strassburg, 
 which would have gone far to redress the balance of numerical 
 superiority in favour of the French. The sacrifices such a move 
 would have entailed would have been no greater than those which 
 the Germans had already risked, but so far were they from being 
 -capable of such resolution, that they actually forbore even to 
 attempt to seize the openings the Germans gave them, and 
 maintained their troops in a long disseminated line parallel with 
 the frontier, some time after the need of concentration had become 
 apparent and had indeed been repeatedly discussed. 
 
 This was where the influence of Scharnhorst's system and 
 Clausewitz's subsequent work first made itself felt. On the one 
 hand, an Army which only the personal magnetism of Napoleon 
 
ii6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 the Great could have moved ; on the other, a Nation in arms, which 
 proved itself manageable by very ordinary men. On the one 
 hand, a system so sacrificed to intense individualism that no two 
 commanders could act in unison ; on the other, individuality so 
 trained and subordinated by a common education that, in spite of 
 an almost total absence of anything approaching genius, the sum of 
 individual intelligence and good will overcame the internal resistance 
 of the machine, and, in spite of mistakes and imperfections in the 
 subordinate commanders, always ended by bringing a sufficient 
 numerical superiority to bear on the decisive points. 
 
 Had we focussed our attention on this one point, a sound 
 national military education, instead of disseminating it over minutiae 
 of tactical forms, spiked helmets, and other trifles, we might have 
 been spared many a disillusionment on the South African veldt. 
 
 Broad and simple though the foundations were on which the 
 subsequent operations of the Germans were based, they were not 
 filled in without considerable misunderstandings and shortcomings, 
 indications of which may be read between the lines of the Prussian 
 official history, and though much may be gleaned to elucidate these 
 aberrations from the pages of subsequent writers, e.g. Cardinal von 
 Widdern and Von Verdy, much remains to be explained, the truth 
 about which will never be known until it is revealed on what data 
 Moltke actually based his estimate of the rate of a possible French 
 advance. 
 
 It all seems to me to turn on this point, viz. that the French Army, 
 being ready in men, guns, horses, and cartridges, and deficient only 
 in cholera belts, water-bottles, cooking-tins, etc., would they elect to 
 wait for the latter, or resolve to strike, as they had so often done 
 before, without them. 
 
 To adopt the latter alternative needed a " man," and a great 
 one. But did the Prussians really know that no such leader was 
 forthcoming, and if so, who told them } For this is always the 
 most difficult point to arrive at. It is easy to collect data as to 
 numbers, arms, and equipment ; but it needs an equal, if not a 
 greater, mind, and also opportunities, to estimate correctly the force 
 of a possible antagonist's leadership. The French Marshals were 
 all practical soldiers, with far more War experience than any of 
 the Prussians could boast. Who were the Prussians who summed 
 them all up with such certainty as to be ready to stake the fate 
 of their country on their opinion. It is quite certain that no junior 
 officer's report could have been taken in a matter of such importance. 
 Yet Moltke's opportunities had been of the briefest, and his 
 confidence in his power of diagnosing the potential capacity of a 
 possible antagonist must have been great indeed if he accepted 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 117 
 
 the risk with no better security. Possibly he was helped in his 
 judgment both by Bismarck and the King, who had each enjoyed 
 far ampler means of forming their opinions — but in what pro- 
 portion the merit of this correct estimate is to be assigned I know 
 of no written evidence to justify an opinion. Little less marvellous 
 was the accuracy with which he gauged the executive powers of his 
 own subordinates, though, as above pointed out, they mostly fell 
 short of his demands. 
 
 The concentration did not work out with the precision he had 
 expected, and if one of his commanders failed in energy, the latter 
 by excess of that quality completely took the leadership for the 
 moment out of Moltke's hands. 
 
 The first case occurred on the 30th July, when, in view of the 
 possibility of the French taking advantage of the temporarily 
 exposed position of the First Army, orders were sent to the Third 
 Army to assume the offensive next morning. Now it is only 
 reasonable to suppose that no such demand would have been 
 made by Molke, had it appeared from the original time-tables, 
 drawn up under his supervision, that the obstacles to movement 
 would be insuperable. But the Crown Prince, in reply, alleged the 
 unreadiness of his command, by reason of the absence of his 
 trains ; and his Cavalry division was, as a fact, not cissembled as a 
 unit till the morning of the 4th August. Blumenthal, Chief of the 
 Staff to the Crown Prince, was not a man to make unnecessary 
 difficulties, and since he had to deal with two Bavarian corps, cis 
 well as the Baden and Wiirtemberg divisions, whose organisation 
 was very far from being as perfect as the Prussians, the impediment 
 to movement may have been very great indeed. Still it is difficult 
 to believe that with the driving energy of a great leader the friction 
 could not have been overcome ; at any rate, here is a point well 
 worth the attention of future historians. Could the Crown Prince, 
 on the evening of the 30th July, have put together a force of 
 all arms capable of offensive action in the course of the 31st? 
 If it was feasible, as I believe it was, then the Crown Prince stands 
 condemned of want of energy. If it was not, then Moltke, Von 
 Verdy, Von Blumenthal, and the Crown Prince must all of them 
 have made mistakes in their several positions — Moltke in ordering 
 what he should have known was impracticable in its entirety ; von 
 Verdy in not pointing out that partial compliance was better than 
 none at all ; and the two latter in refusing all obedience and giving 
 an untenable excuse. 
 
 The contretemps in the case of the First Army was of a more 
 serious nature, and exercised very wide-reaching influence on the 
 subsequent course of the campaign. 
 
ii8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 Steinmetz's command consisted of the Vllth, Vlllth, and 1st 
 Army Corps, and the two former being close at hand, headquarters 
 Cologne and Coblentz respectively, were the first Prussian troops, 
 other than the weak frontier guard, to arrive within striking distance 
 of the French, their mission being to assume the offensive should 
 the French attempt an attack upon the heads of the columns of 
 the Second Army whilst these were emerging from the defiles 
 of the Haardt. 
 
 When, on the 2nd August, the French attacked Saarbriick, it 
 was considered by the Headquarter Staff that this movement could 
 only be a prelude to a further offensive against the Second Army, 
 whose position for the moment was exceedingly critical. The First 
 Army was therefore moved somewhat to the eastward into can- 
 tonments, which not only brought them nearer to the enemy, 
 but across the high-roads reserved for the special use of the Second 
 Army in the case of its further advance. 
 
 This point appears to have entirely escaped the attention of 
 headquarters, for Steinmetz's positions were approved, and he was 
 told to stand fast in them until at length the advancing columns 
 of the Second Army invaded their bivouacs and a brisk interchange 
 of telegrams took place. 
 
 It appears that it was the temper of Prince Frederick Charles 
 which gave way first, for he sent a positive order to the offending 
 division to clear out of his way, couched in language which he had 
 absolutely no right to employ to any one not under his immediate 
 command. 
 
 Steinmetz's report and request for instructions was quite 
 moderate in tone, though, as a fact, he was intensely annoyed, 
 for he saw in Prince Frederick Charles' attempt to squeeze him 
 out of the fighting-line an unsoldierlike desire to assert his royal 
 prerogative at a comrade's expense, and the idea made him very 
 indignant, as it naturally would. 
 
 Possibly it was this indignation which prevented either him or 
 his staff from looking at the map carefully before he reported to 
 Von Moltke the impossibility of complying with the Prince's re- 
 quest, on the ground that the former cantonments of the Vllth 
 and Vlllth Corps had been filled up by recent arrivals of the 1st 
 Corps and 1st Cavalry division, and that further advance of the 
 Second Army would squeeze him out of the front altogether. In 
 reply, however, he only received a pre-emptory order to clear the 
 roads, and he proceeded to do so in a manner so characteristic of 
 the man that one marvels that Von Moltke had not anticipated 
 and vetoed the movement. All this took place on the morning of 
 the 5th August, and in the evening he issued orders which certainly 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 119 
 
 had the effect of clearing the roads at the places named, but also 
 placed the whole of the Vllth Corps in front of the Second Army as 
 a species of advance-guard, and it was the execution of these orders 
 that brought about the engagement of Spicheren next morning, 
 which, though a success for the Prussians, brought about hopeless 
 confusion in the advance of both First and Second Armies, which 
 took days to straighten out again. 
 
 Looking at the map, there seems not the slightest reason why 
 the First Army should not have gained ground enough for its 
 purposes by a short march south-westward, by the two roads lead- 
 ing respectively through Sierck and Saarlouis, and such a move- 
 ment would have placed them on the extreme French left in a 
 very good position for realising Moltke's original directions in 
 which he allowed himself to hope for the " eventual co-operation 
 of all three armies in a decisive battle ; " and probably this was 
 the solution of the difficulty Moltke had expected Steinmetz to 
 adopt ; but temper had evidently clouded the latter's judgment, 
 as happened again with such terrible results at Gravelotte, and a 
 miscalculation of the strength of his materials took the direction 
 out of Moltke's hands for many days. 
 
 For Moltke had undoubtedly calculated on utilising to the 
 utmost the defensive powers which he all his life attributed to the 
 breech-loader. His first idea had been a defensive position 
 against a possible French inroad in the vicinity of Baumholder, 
 Tholey, St. Wendel. Such a position had been already recon- 
 noitred by the staff, and doubtless he hoped by a strategic offensive 
 in the future to compel the French to attack him on ground of his 
 own choosing. But now events took charge, and the two victories 
 on the same day (at Spicheren and Woerth) so far broke what 
 remained of the offensive spirit of the French Army that they 
 never attacked again. The German cavalry spirit now asserted 
 itself, and within a few days they improvised a service of recon- 
 naissance which never gave the enemy time to recover himself, 
 threatened all their flanks, and compelled the following infantry 
 to attack if they wished to fight at all. 
 
 Given the offensive spirit which breathed in the ranks of the 
 whole Prussian Army, events must have followed one another much 
 as they actually did up to the battle of Gravelotte without any 
 further direction on the part of the Headquarter Staff. The 
 cavalry found the enemy and the nearest infantry commanders 
 conformed on their own initiative, and it is doubtful whether, with 
 the means of intercommunication then in use — field telegraphs were 
 very elementary judged by modem standards, and the whole 
 system for the circulation of information and dissemination of 
 
120 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 orders still in a rudimentary condition — headquarter interference 
 with the troops in actual presence of the enemy would not have 
 done more harm than good, for, in as far as it was attempted, it 
 invariably arrived too late. 
 
 The new French official account, indeed, asks whether this is 
 strategy to let, as they phrase it, the movements of the enemy 
 dictate your operations ; but in this they seem to have misin- 
 terpreted the whole tendency of Clausewitz's school, which is, 
 primarily, to grow an army that can work itself in War the moment 
 the enemy develops sufficient resistance. A defeated army in 
 its own country has always greater freedom of operation than its 
 adversary ; at any rate, until driven up against the confines of its 
 territory, it can choose whether to run or fight, and superior mobility, 
 on a scale which can hardly exist as between European armies of 
 similar organisation, can alone deprive it of this freedom. 
 
 But this superiority was only obtainable by the Germans by 
 reason of their trained intelligence, which enabled them to act in 
 anticipation of orders. If the man on the spot had not attacked 
 at Borny (14th August) the moment he saw signs of withdrawal in 
 the French lines, I'Admirault's corps would have got clear across 
 the Moselle that night, and all the confusion in the streets of Metz 
 resulting from the fight, having been eliminated, either the whole 
 army less the garrison of Metz would have escaped altogether to 
 Chalons, or the pursuing Prussians would have found a fourfold 
 superiority at least against them on the i6th. 
 
 This readiness to accept responsibility in the junior commanders 
 no doubt often led the troops immediately at hand into almost 
 impossible situations ; as, for instance, at Vionville, and two days 
 later in the case of Manstein's premature attack on the French 
 camp at Amanvilliers, which took the whole conduct of the battle 
 of Gravelotte-St. Privat out of Moltke's hands ; but the same spirit 
 in their comrades alongside of them brought ready help, and at the 
 end of each day the balance of advantage remained with the 
 Germans, whilst on the other side its conspicuous absence robbed 
 the French of such chance of ultimate success as from time to time 
 the fortune of War disclosed to them. 
 
 If on the 1 6th August lAdmirault could have stifled all selfish 
 feelings and boldly assumed the responsibility the defeat of Wedell's 
 38th Brigade fairly thrust upon him, victory for that day was at 
 least secure. If on the i8th, I'Admirault, Frossard, and Le Boeuf, 
 without waiting for orders, could have backed one another up at 
 the climax of the fight so graphically described by Hoenig,* the 
 
 * • Twenty-four Hours of Moltke's Strategy,' translated by the late Colonel Walford, 
 R.x\. Published by the R. A. Institution, Woolwich. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 121 
 
 ultimate decision of the campaign might have been delayed in- 
 definitely, for defeat to the German right wing at this juncture 
 would have meant little less than disaster. 
 
 But the chance was allowed to escape, and the resolution of the 
 German leaders, in shirking no losses to compel victory, had its 
 due reward. 
 
 It is interesting to consider what might have happened had the 
 nerve of either the King or Moltke failed after the engagement of 
 Vionville, and the French been allowed time to recover from their 
 first shock. To begin with, the French lay with upwards of 
 100,000 men concentrated over against the weakest wing of the 
 Germans, whose sufferings in the intense heat which prevailed on 
 the waterless plateau overlooking the Moselle must soon have 
 become acute. The troops of the French Army were still far from 
 being beaten, as the brilliant elan with which they made their 
 counter-attacks on the i8th, equal to anything they had ever done 
 in Napoleon's time sufficiently proves ; and there was nothing 
 intrinsically insuperable to prevent them attacking southward from 
 the direction of Plappeville with their Ilnd and Ilird Corps, whilst 
 the IVth, Vlth, and Guard marched down the defiles which led 
 to the valley of the Moselle, to Metz, and then debouching under 
 cover of the fire of St. Quentin, across the German communications, 
 fought their way through to Nancy. 
 
 The feasibility of such a movement has often been discussed 
 and approved for the two days following the battle of Gravelotte, 
 but, then, I submit the time had gone by, the block of transport 
 east of the defiles of Gorze had been removed, and the Germans 
 were morally improved by two brilliant victories* The chance 
 could only have come to the French had the latter faltered before 
 the decision. If once the leaders had shown weakness in presence 
 of the truly appalling losses of the i6th, 25 per cent, of the numbers 
 engaged, despondency would have been spread broadcast, and 
 100,000 men would no longer have sufficed to accomplish what 
 30,000 could safely have been trusted to undertake forty-eight 
 hours later. 
 
 From all this, however, Clausewitz's teaching saved them. With 
 every mind in the army, certainly in the commissioned ranks, con- 
 centrated on the true objective, " the enemy's field army," and on its 
 destruction, the work of finding, holding, and final crushing of that 
 army would have accomplished itself even without Moltke's initial 
 impulse — not that the battle need have taken the form it actually 
 did take, but the corps would have marched to the sound of the 
 guns, and no physical obstacle of distance or the ground intervening, 
 a twofold numerical superiority would have been bound to tell. 
 
122 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 Southward, on the assumption indicated above, distance would have 
 prevented these numbers being brought to bear. 
 
 The redistribution of the German armies after Gravelotte, and 
 the allotment to them of their tasks, was more a matter of organisa- 
 tion, and certainly called for nothing in the nature of genius. 
 There was still a field army to be hunted down, and the steps to 
 find it were quite obvious. When at length its position was with 
 certainty established, the change of front to the right grew naturally 
 out of the situation, and only resolution to demand the utmost out 
 of the marching troops was needed to complete the design. It is 
 here that weaker leaders would have faltered ; they would have 
 complained that the discipline of their men was being destroyed 
 by these unheard-of exertions, that stragglers were dropping behind 
 by the thousand, that the men were physically too exhausted to 
 stand up to an enemy, and so forth, in the way irresolute sub- 
 ordinates always have done since the beginning of time, as, indeed, 
 their own forefathers had complained over this very ground not 
 eighty years before (Valmy, 1793) ; but the younger generation 
 had learnt its lesson better, and knew that endurance on the march 
 was strategically at least equal to courage in face of the enemy.* 
 
 It would take me far beyond the limits of my space to attempt 
 to unravel the movements of the contending forces subsequent to 
 Sedan. Moreover, the work as regards the operations on the 
 Loire has already been most brilliantly done by Lieut-Colonel 
 Lonsdale Hale, R.E., in his 'People's War in France.' All ap- 
 proach to equality in fighting value between the two combatants 
 had so completely disappeared that the Germans could accept 
 battle with confidence in any and every position, practically un- 
 troubled by such questions as lines of retreat. 
 
 Numbers, indeed, played again for the French somewhat the 
 same part as they had done in the days of the first Revolution ; 
 but there was no longer the same driving force of inflamed public 
 feeling ready and able to send unsuccessful leaders to the guillotine, 
 and the nation itself had not the same incentive to endurance 
 which had animated their ancestors. They did not want to be 
 beaten by a race they despised as they despised the Germans, but 
 they did not care as individuals to make the sacrifices by which 
 alone success could be reconquered. 
 
 Over and over again a little more persistence in their efforts 
 might have placed the Germans in most critical situations, but the 
 disciplined endurance of the latter held them together against 
 losses and sufferings to which new levies could not be expected to 
 
 * See Prince Hohenlohe's admirable description of the march to Sedan in his 
 * Letters on Strategy.' 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 123 
 
 stand up. The Germans "made the best practicable use of the 
 material at hand to the attainment of the object in view," and this 
 is Moltke's definition of the "Art of War," in other words, 
 •' Strategy." 
 
 Judged by the same standard, our strategy in the Boer War 
 was equally justified by ultimate success, whereas that of the 
 Boers emphatically was not. Had they understood the full value 
 of the mobile material at their disposal, we ought to have been 
 swept into the sea within three weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, 
 and whether under the special circumstances of the case we 
 could ever have reconquered our positions, every one may attempt 
 to decide for himself. Given, however, the defective mobility of 
 our own material, it seems to me difficult to find fault with the use 
 we made of it, and the various excuses put forward by the several 
 actors in the campaign before the Royal Commission seem to me 
 only so many attempts to justify common-sense action, and to 
 bring it into line with preconceived theory. 
 
 Political considerations from the first forced the soldier's hands, 
 but each within his own sphere of action dealt with emergencies 
 as they arose, and in so far as he failed, failed only by reason 
 of the defective material — defective only in point of mobility — with 
 which he had been supplied. Until our politicians and generals 
 took to washing their dirty linen in public, the Berlin critics con- 
 sidered the conduct of the Dundee detachment and the occupation 
 of Ladysmith as altogether admirable. Our troops, until the 
 arrival of adequate reinforcements, were clearly in a desperate 
 situation, but as long as it was possible they hit out and inflicted 
 punishment on their enemy ; then the occupation of Ladysmith 
 drew the attention of the Boers away from the seaboard, where the 
 decision actually lay, and, thanks to the stores already accumulated 
 in that place, time was gained for sufficient reinforcements to arrive. 
 More was not necessary, and if the conduct of operations on our 
 own part seemed a little slow, well, they remembered Moltke's 
 remark that " English officers did not go to the front in first-class 
 carriages," and made all due allowances. Even our tactical errors 
 they condoned until we ourselves began to criticise. Colenso 
 would have passed as a simple reconnaissance in force which failed 
 in its purpose — no unusual thing in War — had we but taken the 
 matter as all in the day's work and said nothing about it. But 
 when the storm of recrimination burst out, and every one began 
 to give his reasons, the bottom fell out of the whole concern, and 
 foreigners learnt with amazement the extraordinary ineptitude of 
 our whole system of military education. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The object of military education— The "spirit of the age" — Influence of numbers on 
 degree of literal obedience required — The true purpose of our armaments— The 
 •* strategy " of the eighteenth century doomed — Influence of superior mobility — 
 Steps necessary to secure it — The training of infantry to spade work — Improved 
 means of transport on roads — Supply of provisions — Co-operation of business men — 
 Our danger in War-time from the ** unemployed " — The dangers from the Press — 
 How to combat them — The purpose of a Great General Staff — Importance of training 
 in the writing of orders — Decentralisation and its safe limits — Concluding reflections. 
 
 If strategy be correctly defined as " the art of the leader," what 
 possible use can there be in trying to teach the subject to last- 
 joined subalterns or cadets, few of whom, in the nature of things, 
 can ever hope to apply such knowledge ? More or less in this form 
 the question is constantly put, even by men of experience, who 
 have been absorbing strategy themselves all their lives, without 
 being aware of the process. 
 
 The answer is that the great soldier, unlike the ordinary artist, 
 works with living materials, not dead ones, and if these materials 
 do not meet his desires half-way by ready and intelligent obedience, 
 his difficulties may rapidly rise to the insurmountable. But intelli- 
 gent obedience can only be rendered by men who not only 
 understand their own position in the machinery, but whose imagi- 
 nations have been trained to apprehend the cumulative effects of 
 many almost infinitesimal deviations from the line of conduct laid 
 down by regulations, and thus to realise the need for exactitude 
 and punctuality in all things which lies at the very root of all 
 military undertakings. Nowadays, wilful disobedience or neglect 
 of orders is so rare as to be hardly noticeable, but it needs very 
 little acquaintance with contemporary military literature to see how 
 incredibly great is the difficulty of moving large bodies of men, 
 because the habit of precise and accurate obedience has been 
 largely lost, and every one tries to exercise his independent 
 intelligence. 
 
 Those who saw the different types of soldiers working side-by- 
 side in South Africa — regulars, militia, colonials, and the latter-day 
 levies — will understand what I mean, and all will, I think, admit 
 that, even with the best of them, the punctual movement of masses 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 125 
 
 under the conditions of congestion prevalent in Europe — 60,000 
 men on a single road, for instance — would have been almost 
 impossible, not for want of good will, but because the "little 
 things " which go to reduce friction in an army, and whose presence 
 or absence only asserts itself in large concentrations, had grown 
 rusty by disuse in time of peace. 
 
 The " spirit of the age," i.e. the opinion of the average half- 
 penny newspaper reader, is all against what it regards as useless 
 pedantry, simply because its education has been neglected, and it is 
 unable to realise conditions it has never seen ; and in deference 
 thereto, discipline in " little things " is relaxed, until the maintenance 
 of punctuality and order becomes well-nigh impossible, and the 
 mobility of the whole Army suffers because the effect of even 
 apparently trifling irregularities is cumulative in a ratio more nearly 
 geometric than arithmetical. 
 
 The great difficulty, however, of getting these things regulated, 
 eliminating the useless pedantry and retaining all that is good, lies 
 in the fact that the exact amount of attention to detail requisite, 
 varies not only with the numbers engaged but with the theatre in 
 which the operations take place, and deviations from the regulations, 
 perfectly practicable and sensible in the Boer War, would, in fact, 
 be found fatal if tolerated in Europe. 
 
 What is most required at the present moment is a definite 
 pronouncement from the highest quarter as to the purpose for 
 which our military forces are maintained. What such pronounce- 
 ment might be I have, of course, no better means of knowing 
 than the ** man in the street ; " but assuming it to be based on 
 a study of our evolutionary history, I think there can be little 
 doubt of what it ought to be, and I should phrase it somewhat as 
 follows : — 
 
 "The land forces of this Empire exist for the purpose of 
 compelling any possible enemy or enemies to submit to our will. 
 
 " The fleet alone cannot accomplish this object, because 
 * ironclads cannot climb hills.' Hence we need an organisation 
 capable of very great expansion, and regulations — tactical, 
 logistical, etc. — capable of enabling the Army, this organisation, 
 to meet any European army or part of it in its own country on 
 equal terms." 
 
 Defeat in a great European War would probably lead to 
 disaster. Defeats such as Maiwand, Isandlwana, Magersfontein, 
 etc., hardly ruffle the surface of the Empire's existence. Hence our 
 regulations must be adapted to meet the greatest strain that can 
 be put upon them. If they are well adapted for that purpose, it 
 signifies little if they work a little stififly in smaller ones. In any 
 
126 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 
 
 case, no one regulation, whether for drill, training, equipment, or 
 clothing, can possibly be equally well adapted for all purposes, 
 therefore let us choose the highest, and leave it to the judgment 
 and intelligence of the " man on the spot " to adjust himself to his 
 surroundings, but do not gibbet him in the public press if he takes 
 a few weeks and loses some lives in the process. 
 
 The regulations of all sorts in vogue in all European armies 
 thirty years ago were the outcome of centuries of nearly continuous 
 Warfare, and, eliminating the accretions due to more or less pro- 
 longed periods of peace, they were undeniably well suited to the 
 conditions under which War was then waged. 
 
 Neither Napoleon's or Blucher's men carried a superfluous 
 shirt or boot in 1814, and if, according to our present lights, the 
 loads, both on man and horse, appear excessive, it is because we 
 have not had the experience of prolonged marching campaigns to 
 bring home to us just how much it pays to make the individual 
 carry when moving in very large bodies. 
 
 Since those days, however, and more particularly in the last 
 thirty years, through the invention and development of the telegraph, 
 motor-car, in its various forms, etc., the means of intercommunica- 
 tion between the man at the front and the intermediate depots has 
 increased to such a degree that it seems to me that the time is ripe 
 for a complete overhaul of every weight carried, with a view to 
 their reduction to the lowest possible terms which the technical 
 skill of the country warrants, for, as I have endeavoured to establish 
 in all my foregoing chapters, as between troops of equal fighting 
 value, mobility is the ultimate deciding factor. 
 
 The days of eighteenth century tricks and stratagems are past 
 and done with. In Europe, at any rate, there is no longer room to 
 indulge in them. The essence of successful leadership in future 
 will be — after the strategic deployment, in which forethought, 
 not leadership, is the main point, is completed — a rapid and 
 sustained advance which will overrun all opposition by its very 
 momentum. Napoleon's march to Jena, in 1806, is the prototype; 
 he made mistakes, and glaring ones, but the rapidity of all his 
 movements left his opponents no time to profit by them. 
 
 I have specified Jena, but, indeed, any one of his campaigns 
 would suit my purpose equally well, for if military history teaches 
 anything, it is that ordered mobility must tell. The army that 
 every day reaches points five miles further in advance than its 
 adversary expects, so completely upsets its plans and destroys his 
 " moral " that victory follows almost as a matter of course. 
 
 When armies are stationary, rumour is equally rife in both, 
 generally equally fantastic. From the 17th July to 4th August, 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 127 
 
 1870, there is little to choose between the wild-cat yams current in 
 either camp. Both saw armies where there were none, but the 
 moment the Germans gathered momentum, the wild-cat stories 
 ceased until, during the siege operations round Paris, their move- 
 ment came to a standstill, when rumour again asserted its power, 
 as Colonel Lonsdale Hale, in his ' People's War in France ' has 
 so admirably shown ; and so it will always be, for the cause has its 
 roots deep down in human nature, and no inventions of science can 
 ever prevail against it. 
 
 To attain this excess of speed, which alone guarantees against 
 uncertainty and panic, every effort will have to be strained, and, in 
 my opinion, the nation that first organises all its resources to the 
 attainment of the highest collective mobility will enter a campaign 
 with at least five chances to four in its favour. Now, all modern 
 inventions applicable to transport purposes on land depend 
 primarily on good roads, and their maintenance is chiefly a question 
 of adequate manual labour power. No technical knowledge is of any 
 service unless pick and shovel are available in capable hands for 
 execution. As a first step, therefore, I would train every dis- 
 mounted man in the Army to sustained and heavy, excavating 
 work — not merely the execution of fiddling little shelter-trenches, 
 but honest navvies' work, precisely as the sapper recruit is, and 
 always has been, trained at Chatham. What is wanted is strong 
 back-muscles and horny hands, which can put in eight hours' work 
 at a stretch without needing EUiman's embrocation to cure the 
 aches and pains ; and in securing this standard for the Army, I 
 should also rid it of its worst recruiting agent, the dissatisfied 
 reservist, who cannot keep a job because he has never learnt that it 
 is within his power to stick to one. If England is not big enough 
 for such training, then I would lend the battalions as units to 
 Canada, the Cape, and Rhodesia, who would gladly pay them 
 good working pay to help to develop their resources. Such work 
 would not be unpopular, for it would be both healthy and useful ; 
 and I have never myself seen a working party, either at home or in 
 India, that did not develop a wholesome pride in its task as soon 
 as its purpose was made obvious to them. 
 
 Having thus got the means of both making and maintaining 
 the communications I needed or might need, I would next turn 
 my attention to the different types of motor service required. The 
 modem steam or oil "lorry," weighing, fully loaded, about four 
 tons, would follow up my cavalry divisions, conveying all their spare 
 gear — reserve ammunition and the men's food. The horses must 
 still fend for themselves, since the weight and bulk of forage 
 supplies cannot by any known process be materially reduced ; but 
 
128 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 whereas a cavalry which, owing to its carrying lo stone of dead 
 weight, can only sweep over an area, say, 50 x lo miles a day, one 
 with only 5 stone could cover, with an equal exertion, 75 x 20, 
 and the chances of the latter for picking up adequate corn and hay 
 would be directly as the areas swept over, i.e. as 3 to i. 
 
 Again, in proportion as you can move the faster, the amount of 
 ammunition needed to effect a given purpose is reduced, for excess 
 of pace enables you to choose your target ; and as the Boer War 
 sufficiently shows, if the skill is there to utilise the speed, each 
 bullet has a tenfold better chance of finding a useful billet than 
 when the opportunity of selecting the target is denied you. Where 
 a slow-moving, half-trained mounted-infantry unit would hardly be 
 able to defend itself with 150 rounds a man, a smart cavalry unit, 
 able to round its adversary up, would be amply supplied with only 
 thirty rounds, a saving of dead weight to the horse of at least half 
 a stone, and the same principle works through all three arms, in 
 proportion as the mobility exists and the skill to employ it. 
 
 No nation requires to study this point more closely than we, for, 
 by the nature of the case, we shall have to improvise enormous 
 armies. I estimate them for the first line at no less than a million, 
 and no country has anything like the same difficulties as regards 
 horse supply to anticipate — not on the score of transport across the 
 "narrow seas" — this, perhaps, would hardly matter — but simply 
 because the true roadster is practically extinct, and the ''bus" 
 horse, our sheet-anchor in South Africa, is doomed. 
 
 It is almost a commonplace in modern continental works, 
 dealing with the conduct of the monster armies of the day, and 
 particularly in German ones, to find the food supply of the men 
 treated as the limiting condition — indeed, the almost insuperable 
 one, but I confess I cannot share this view. Thanks to the 
 progress of scientific investigation, the art of the preservation of 
 foods in a raw state, reduced in bulk and weight by desiccation, has 
 reached such a pitch that the question no longer possesses any 
 practical difficulty. I have myself seen and practically lived on 
 rations of mixed meat and vegetables, of which eight days' supply 
 weighs only one pound, so that a single mule would carry, pack- 
 saddle included, a day's rations for a War-strength battalion, or a 
 <single lorry, loading up two tons, and capable of moving forty miles 
 on a decent road in eight hours, about 32,000 rations, or enough 
 for a cavalry division of 2000 sabres for nearly a fortnight ; and 
 therefore anticipate but little trouble on that particular head. But 
 even setting this on one side, and considering the problem solely on 
 the basis of existing data, I cannot help thinking that even if the 
 armies of the present day, which may be put in on one field, have 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 grown to be almost ten times as numerous as those in Napoleon's 
 time, the means of distribution, including roads, and of conveying 
 orders and instruction, i.e. the telegraph, telephone, etc., have 
 increased their efficiency in even greater proportion. 
 
 It is one of the difficulties of all armies, more or less — rather more 
 in our case, owing to our particular conditions — that the soldier drifts 
 out of touch with civil life almost in precise proportion as he rises 
 in the service, and thus fails to appreciate the astounding develop- 
 ment civilian distribution services have attained, and I would 
 suggest that an ambitious young Staff College candidate could 
 make no better use of his time than by spending a few weeks of 
 his leave in studying the methods of the traffic departments of our 
 great railways, or the parcels delivery system of some great 
 co-operative store, such as the Army and Navy. 
 
 In Germany, provision has long since been made to secure the 
 co-operation of the principal business men in the country specially 
 qualified to advise on all questions relating to the supply and 
 equipment of the Army, and in 1870 the assistance these firms 
 rendered proved invaluable. In 1899 a number of our own 
 principal people concerned in the purchase of foods and their dis- 
 tribution offered their services to assist the War Office, as they 
 were scandalised at the appalling technical blunders in purchase, 
 packing, etc., of supplies ordered ; but their motive was misunder- 
 stood, and, anyhow, for want of prevision, it was then too late to 
 alter established custom, hence the offer was not accepted, with 
 consequences too familiar to the income taxpayer to need further 
 notice. Now would be the time to approach them again, and they 
 might easily be organised into a form of consultative and advisory 
 board, somewhat after the model of Railway Staff Corps, which 
 consists of all the traffic managers of our principal railways. 
 
 There remains, however, one gap in our organisation for War, 
 whose existence threatens the foundations of our whole fighting 
 power both on land and sea, but which, since it does not come directly 
 under the War Office or the Admiralty, is exceedingly liable to be 
 overlooked until too late. I allude to the organisation of a branch 
 under the Home Office for the special purpose of providing non- 
 pauperising employment for the hundreds of thousands who will 
 be thrown out of work automatically on the declaration of hostilities. 
 The subject is too vast to do more than indicate the need in these 
 pages ; but it appears to me that, if taken in time, it presents no 
 practical difficulties to men of the type of those who, again and 
 again in India, have fed millions under conditions for distribution 
 immeasurably more difficult than those in this country. 
 
 It is possible that the action of Mr. Long, indicated by him to 
 
 K 
 
ISO THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 a recent deputation which approached him with reference to the 
 question of the " unemployed " during the present winter, may 
 lead to the formation of a nucleus from which great things may 
 spring, but the difficulty arises from a standing misconception 
 which exists in this country as to what may be defined as " pay- 
 ing " and " not paying " enterprises respectively. A commercial 
 company must pay a dividend to attract capital ; but an immense 
 amount of wealth has actually accrued to the country at large by 
 undertakings which have never paid their shareholders a farthing. 
 
 Thus the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway has never paid a 
 dividend on its ordinary stock — probably never will — but its value 
 in economising transport charges to the farmers, etc., in the district 
 it traverses has been enormous. In Germany, this side of the 
 question has been statistically studied, it has been carefully estimated 
 what the saving to the farmers, arising from the existence of a non- 
 dividend paying line traversing an agricultural district, amounts to 
 on the average, and the result shows that for the good of the 
 community — not of the shareholder — railways, roads, or canals may 
 wisely be undertaken even when there is no prospect of a direct 
 return on the cost of construction. 
 
 If, now, in peace time, the several county councils were to 
 look round their districts and note where, by the application of 
 labour, irrespective of cost, improvements in communications, leading 
 to a diminution in the actual cost of transport, would be effected, 
 much would be accomplished towards removing the danger of 
 panic and bread-rioting, the dread of which will certainly paralyse, 
 in War-time, the energy of any Government our electoral system 
 is ever likely to give us. And they can afford to disregard 
 *' cost," because, if we win, it can and will be charged to the in- 
 demnity paid by the enemy. If we lose, then the gain in efficiency 
 of transport remains, and we shall the sooner recover from our 
 misfortunes. 
 
 If, when driven into War, as we certainly shall be, sooner or 
 later, our generals know that they have a united nation behind 
 them, and are not driven prematurely to attempt decisive action to 
 avert popular disturbances — disturbances our enemies will strain 
 every nerve to bring about — as we always did in the past, and if, 
 further, they know that all that technical skill can accomplish has 
 been done to provide them with reliable transportation — in which 
 term I include both roads and conveyances — I do not anticipate 
 that supply will in any way hamper their mobility. 
 
 The danger will more probably come from the friction and 
 delay — more or less inevitable in the transmission and preparation 
 of orders — which will arise from the exceedingly low average of 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY, 131 
 
 military education throughout the nation. It is not merely the un- 
 known factors presented by the exercise of their independent will 
 by our opponents which create this friction, but the standing 
 difficulty which arises from the dissemination of preposterous 
 tactical and strategical fallacies by our daily press. 
 
 Even to suggest how to combat this evil would entail a whole 
 series of articles, but this much, at least, may be indicated : the 
 trouble arises from ignorance, not from ill-will, and might be 
 alleviated, if not overcome, if editors were taken more into the 
 confidence of the directing minds of the Army. 
 
 The great difficulty, however, lies in the fact that even amongst 
 these directing minds, still less in the Army at large, there is 
 nothing approaching an agreement of opinion on tactical and 
 strategical points, which alone, in the absence of technical training, 
 can be accepted by a man in an editorial position as proof sufficient 
 to act upon. It is the great weakness of our position, resulting 
 from causes I have in these pages so often handled at length, that, 
 owing to the nature of our training, practically no two officers think 
 alike, and in despair at the hopelessness of finding agreement 
 amongst the experts, the layman, be he either statesman or editor, 
 has to accept the opinion of one or the other, with nothing but 
 common sense to guide him. 
 
 It is the main purpose of a " Great General Staff" to create 
 such a consensus of trained expert opinion that, in all vital questions 
 of efficiency, the mass of the nation may receive, through recognised 
 public channels, the information they require ; and from the marked 
 success which has of late attended the Staff College, the training 
 ground of the General Staff (here I speak of what I know), I am 
 confident that, with adequate funds, we could soon build up an 
 organisation adequate to meet our needs, and second to none in 
 efficiency. 
 
 Meanwhile, the education department, in its recent schemes for 
 the examinations for promotion in all ranks, has initiated a reform 
 which will go far to smooth the way of the Great General Staff 
 when at last it shall be called into existence. I allude especially 
 to the tactical schemes, which form an essential part of all such 
 examinations. 
 
 It would be difficult to overestimate the value of these exercises, 
 even in our present inchoate stage, when, before certain boards, 
 the better a man's work, the more probable his disqualification. 
 
 The reason for this lies in the fact that, whatever the board may 
 turn out to be, the candidate must prepare himself for the best, 
 and nothing trains a man's judgment better than thinking out the 
 orders necessary to meet a given situation, and submitting his 
 
132 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 ideas to the criticism of any one possessing, by mere length of 
 service, a little more practical experience. 
 
 Over and above the advantage accruing to the individual from 
 both learning to think and acquiring the habit of reducing his 
 thoughts to writing, the ultimate gain to the Army in mobility, 
 which must ensue when the system has taken firm root in the 
 services, will be enormous. Mobility, as we have seen in the case 
 of the Austrian armies in Napoleonic days, is not so much a 
 matter of marching power, but, with large forces, is dependent on 
 the time and certainty with which the orders for movement are 
 drawn up ; and to secure this rapidity, decentralisation is imperative. 
 
 Now, though it is probable that not one man in a hundred can 
 write absolutely ideal orders for anything, it is a matter of experience 
 that, with reasonable practice, probably ninety-five out of a hundred 
 will write practical orders good enough to be readily understood if 
 the number of units with which they have to deal is not too great, 
 and " provided always " that their recipients also have themselves 
 been trained to appreciate the difficulties and conditions under 
 which orders in the field always have to be given. 
 
 It is only when this last clause of the matter is fully realised 
 that intelligent co-operation can be secured, and this not so much 
 because orders may be hard to interpret, but because of a tendency 
 in human nature, which is far too often overlooked, but which is an 
 inevitable consequence of all decentralisation, and becomes greater 
 almost in precise proportion to the keenness and intelligence of the 
 subordinates to whom the order is addressed. 
 
 No order for movement can ever be executed without incon- 
 venience to some one, and the warmer one's feeling for the men 
 under one's personal command, and the keener one's intelligence in 
 judging the situation from one's own standpoint, the graver seem 
 the objections to obedience at the precise time and in the precise 
 manner prescribed for one. With regular troops, of course, dis- 
 obedience is out of the question ; the thing ordered is done, but 
 often in a grudging spirit, and with a shrug of the shoulders that 
 helps to shake the confidence of the men in the wisdom of their 
 superiors. Then follow grumbling letters home, which somehow 
 always get into the newspapers — for proud parents always like to 
 advertise in print the superior qualification of their offspring for high 
 command ; and when a sufficient mass of these documents have 
 appeared, some ignorant editor calls on the Government to dismiss 
 the incapables, a demand which no politician in need of votes 
 can afford to neglect for long. In regard to tactical action, the 
 danger is even greater, and, of course, greatest when dealing with 
 Volunteers or Colonials. 
 
 i 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 133 
 
 Let us take, for instance, a very common instance, the orders 
 or the occupation of a position extending for perhaps thirty miles, 
 and applying to three or four army corps — or " commands " I 
 suppose we must now call them. It is, of course, utterly impossible 
 that Army headquarters can select in detail a position for each of 
 the many hundred units concerned. It can only give a general 
 alignment, which again is divided and subdivided by each of the 
 sub-commands through which it has to pass, and each of which hcis 
 to balance local considerations with general ones, and often, to 
 fulfil the requirements of mutual support, local advantages have 
 to be sacrificed ; so that ultimately Captain X finds himself in, 
 tactically, a very tight hole indeed. If, then. Captain X is a real 
 soldier, who is ready to play the game, he takes it as all in the day's 
 work, and certainly does not let his men see that his position 
 disconcerts him ; but if, as very often will happen in a great War, 
 Captain X's only qualifications for command are certificates of 
 having studied minor tactics, he will very probably protest against 
 being placed in such a difficult position, and make it quite clear to 
 his subordinates that he would never have placed them in such a 
 precarious place, ignoring the fact that to alter it might entail 
 alterations in the whole of the rest of the alignment, and place 
 ninety-nine other companies in still worse straits. To many this 
 warning may appear superfluous — indeed, the suggestion will 
 probably be warmly resented ; but I would beg would-be critics 
 to turn back to the private letters, diaries, etc., which the South 
 African War called into existence, and ask them to re-read such 
 articles from the senior officers' standpoint. The keenness and 
 intelligence of the writer is often quite conspicuous ; but his in- 
 ability to distinguish the wood for the trees is still more glaringly 
 evident. At its beginning we were deluged with letters from 
 colonials inveighing against the crass imbecility of our staff officers, 
 often men whom it was easy for me to trace, and who have since 
 abundantly justified the high expectations I had previously formed 
 of them ; but as the War went on, opinions underwent a change, 
 and in the end the British staff officer thoroughly won the allegiance 
 of all ranks and conditions — but only think at what cost of mis- 
 understanding and friction. As it happened, we could wait ; but 
 in the next War our enemies may not be so accommodating as to 
 afford us the time. We can cure the evil in peace if we give our 
 minds to it ; and the new departure in examinations is the first 
 step in the right direction, only it must be understood and worked 
 in the proper spirit. 
 
 Our forefathers in Marlborough's time recognised the draw- 
 backs inherent in decentralisation, and met them by allowing their 
 
134 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 
 
 subordinates no latitude at all. In view of the restricted areas and 
 numbers with which they were concerned, they were probably right ; 
 but with the enormous access of numbers in arms the outbreak of 
 the French Revolution called into being, and still more the greatly 
 increased areas over which the range of modern weapons compels 
 us to operate, decentralisation has become inevitable, and with it 
 its corollary, viz. military education ; but the term must be accepted 
 in its broadest sense, and we must realise that even the subaltern, 
 nay, the very private in the ranks, must be taught to understand 
 the mechanism of War, so as to be able to reduce in his own person 
 the friction which clogs even the simplest evolutions desired by the 
 leaders to its lowest possible expi:ession. 
 
 To achieve this end, we want yet one further link in our educa- 
 tional chain, viz. provision for the intelligent instruction of our men 
 in military history. "What men have done, that men can do" is 
 a saying which can be made to appeal to every rank, and even 
 when, by dint of much practice, we have all become past masters 
 in the writing of orders, their execution will still make demands 
 upon all the resolution and heroism of which the recipients are 
 capable. 
 
 If men have marched shoeless and in rags in the past, if 
 regiments have stormed positions, leaving 60 per cent, killed and 
 wounded in their track, and did not complain, they can do so again, 
 for human nature changes very slowly ; but they must be taught 
 that these things are expected of them by the people at home, 
 and since knowledge of things military springs first from the 
 Army, it is in the Army that the beginning must be made. 
 
 The nation, in 1899, had sunk to such a depth of military 
 ignorance that it really did not know that bloodshed was a usual 
 consequence of the armed collision of combatants. Hence the 
 outbreak of hysteria with which they received the news of our 
 casualties in the early engagements of the War, and, as a conse- 
 quence, the reluctance of too many of our generals to risk decisive 
 action. But as against a European enemy, what use could any 
 general make of such subordinates .? Even Napoleon could have 
 won no victories had he been held to account for the lives of his 
 men in such fashion by his countrymen ; and unless we take steps 
 in time to bring home to the nation — and we can only do this 
 through the Army — that, in the words of Clausewitz, " One should 
 teach the soldier how to die, not how to avoid dying," all tactical 
 and strategical training will be in vain. 
 
 Fortunately, the present War is bringing with it the swing of 
 the pendulum ; but this same War may also involve us, and should 
 that happen, not the least of the contributory causes will prove to 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STRATEGY. 135 
 
 be the absolute conviction almost all foreign armies have acquired, 
 that British soldiers and generals have lost their fighting value, 
 and that with such men and leaders we can no longer hold India 
 against Russian invasion. 
 
 I do not share this view, but I am in a position to know that it 
 exists. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
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