for
reinforcement. A dispassionate estimate would fix the number of his
troops in the field at any one time during these operations as not
lower than thirty-five thousand nor much higher than eighty thousand.

Another element of the utmost importance entered into the coming
campaign. The old vicious system by which a vigilant democracy had
jealously prescribed to its generals every step to be taken was swept
away by Bonaparte, who as Robespierre's "man" had been thoroughly
familiar with its workings from the other end. He was now
commander-in-chief, and he insisted on the absolute unity of command
as essential to the economy of time. This being granted, his equipment
was complete. It will be remembered that in 1794 he had explained to
his patrons how warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing
all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the
equilibrium of opposition destroyed. To this conception of
concentration for attack he had, in concert with the Directory, added
another, that of expansion in a given territory for sustenance. He had
still a third, that war must be made as intense and awful as possible
in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors. Trite and
simple as these aphorisms now appear, they were all original and
absolutely new, at least in the quick, fierce application of them made
by Bonaparte. The traditions of chivalry, the incessant warfare of two
centuries and a half, the humane conceptions of the Church, the regard
for human life, the difficulty of communications, the scarcity of
munitions and arms,--all these and other elements had combined to make
war under mediocre generals a stately ceremonial, and to diminish the
number of actual battles, which took place, when they did, only after
careful preparation, as an unpleasant necessity, by a sort of common
agreement, and with the ceremony of a duel.

Turenne, Marlborough, and Frederick, all men of cold-blooded
temperament, had been the greatest generals of their respective ages,
and were successful much in proportion to their lack of sentiment and
disregard of conventionalities. Their notions and their conduct
displayed the same instincts as those of Bonaparte, and their minds
were enlarged by a study of great campaigns like that which had fed
his inchoate genius and had made possible his consummate achievement.
He had much the same apparatus for warfare as they. The men of Europe
had not materially changed in