Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/370

Rh 346 W A K the events of the Peninsular War, we are prepared to reply by adducing, either from almost any one of Napoleon s most important campaigns or from the Peninsula, specific lessons, for the most part experiences of human nature, and illustrations of the mistakes which men are liable to make, which have in no wise been diminished in value by the changes which have come over the face of war. As an instance in point, reference may here be made to a recently published study of the campaign of Fredericks- burg during the civil war in America. It deals in a sound and useful manner with both strategy and tactics, and yet it is based entirely on conclusions drawn from a period of war prior to the introduction of the breech loader. We are disposed to put it forward as a very powerful illustration of the kind of lessons which a careful student may draw from one condition of tactics and apply to another. What is most interesting in the work is perhaps the way in which those lessons are made to apply with exceptional force to the peculiar and special condi tions involved in breech-loader fighting. It seems impos sible for any one who has appreciated its excellence not to perceive that in a similar manner, with the like wise appreciation of those things which are permanent and those things which change, sound deductions may be drawn from even the tactical experiences of the Napoleonic era. Nay, the statement of the most brilliant and successful general in the British army of to-day appears to be indisputable, that a perusal of the words of even Caesar himself will suggest to any thoughtful soldier, who knows something also of modern war, reflexions that he may afterwards recall with advantage as applicable to modern campaigns. ianges in That tactics have been first and most directly affected by the changes which have recently taken place in the J conditions of modern war it is impossible to doubt. The &quot; nature of tactics has been always of a kind more tending to admit of rapid change, and more frequently suggesting to a commander of originality new developments. Napoleon indeed declared that tactics should be changed every ten years. Strategy has always, on the other hand, been as sumed to possess a more permanent character. All im portant changes in armament immediately affect tactics. No one now disputes the general character of the tactical changes which have been produced by the introduction of the breech-loader and the development of artillery. In deed, when we come to describe the broad features of modern tactics, we shall be dealing with matters as to which, except as to a few specific points, it may be said that practically the military world of Europe is agreed ; but we confess that we are not prepared to accept the assumption that tactics only have been changed, and that he who would be ready for future war on the grand scale must not also look for some change in the general char acter of strategy. Sir E. Hamley, in his Operations of War, has graphically described how it was that armies lived in the days of Edward III. ; how they depended absolutely upon the food and supplies which they found in the country through which they moved ; and how, when they had exhausted that country, and were opposed by an enemy holding a strong position, which they could not venture to assail, they were obliged to fall back simply because they had no arrangements for obtaining supplies regularly from their own land. Now the great strategic movements of armies have depended always upon this question of food and of warlike supplies in the first instance. It will therefore be evident at once that the character of strategy changed from the moment when a system was devised by which along a regular chain of posts, or &quot; line of communications,&quot; an army received its supplies of food, warlike implements, and reinforcements, from either its own country or some other source which came to be known as its &quot; base of supply.&quot; It began to be the object of generals to manoeuvre in such a way as to interfere with the lines by which their opponents were receiving their supplies and to protect their own. In many respects, no doubt, even the Roman armies in the time of Hannibal acted on strategical principles that are applicable in our own time. Yet the change in the conditions under which armies began to live in the field was so great from the moment when, in order to facilitate and hasten their movements, they began to be thus supplied from a particular &quot; base,&quot; and along these &quot;lines of com munication,&quot; that the art of handling them in campaigns changed almost as completely as tactics ever changed. New combinations became possible. Skill was turned into a new direction. In other words, strategy, like tactics, changes when its implements or weapons change. If now it be asked whether since the days of Napoleon and Wellington the implements of strategy have not changed almost as completely as those of tactics, it must be answered that the change has been even more complete. Since 1815 the face of Europe has been more altered Changes in than it had been in five previous centuries. It is now the general covered with a network of railways and telegraphs. The commerce of the world and its means of intercommunica tion have developed in a manner that has everywhere revolutionized the conditions of life. The advance of science has operated in a thousand forms upon the circum stances under which armies exist in the field. The condi tions of sea transport and of sea warfare are even more completely changed than those of land. Further, it must be remembered that battle-action is itself one of the deter mining factors of strategy. If, in their general character, the nature of battles and the circumstances under which battles have to be fought change very materially, that in itself involves a further change in the combinations which are open for manoeuvres in the field of which the ultimate object is to lead up to battle. Once more, the size of the armies which will enter into the next great campaign in Europe will be so vastly different from those which fought out the great wars of the past that their manoeuvring in campaigns must necessarily be very different from anything that Napoleon undertook. Now, even during the later wars of Napoleon, Jomini was obliged to admit that many of the experiences of the past must be materially modified as armies increased in size. One of the most familiar forms in which Napoleon exercised his strategic skill lay in defeating with his own entire army a fraction of the forces opposed to him, before it could be reinforced by the remainder of the enemy. Thus the element of time essen tially entered into the question. Even during the great campaign of 1813, when Napoleon, holding a central posi tion on the Elbe, endeavoured to strike from thence against the masses of the allies formed in a great circle round him at Berlin, in Silesia, and in Bohemia, experience showed that it was by no means easy to crush with sufficient rapidity armies of 120,000 men so as to pre vent them from being supported in time by others. As the allies gradually closed in on him, and the distances between their different forces diminished, this became continually more and more apparent. In fact, it became clear, if it had been doubtful beforehand, that the ques tion was altogether a matter of proportion between time, distance, and the resisting power of the several armies concerned. On the other hand, in 1814, when the nature of the country invaded caused a reduction in the size of the armies moving forward separately, Napoleon was able as of old to strike his blows right and left with telling effect. Now, if it were possible for an army of our day, supplied with all the implements with which modern science has