ht do anything, and was out of proportion
with the ordinary race of men.

There is an undefinable quantity in military genius which makes the
event uncertain. At the beginning the emperor had written that
Frederic's secret had been discovered, and consisted in what was
called the oblique order--that is, to make one wing much stronger than
the other, to refuse with the weak wing, and to attack with
overwhelming force with the strong. That method did not originate
with him, but he repeatedly employed it. Then there was his
innovation in the use of cavalry. He had learnt its value, against
the musket of those days, by experience; and he believed that
Seydlitz, in the open, at the head of seventy squadrons, was a thing
which no infantry could resist. Then there was the impetus his troops
derived from the extraordinary renown of their king, that there was
nothing to counterbalance on the other side. This was evident, was
matter of common knowledge. But even in his own army, on his own
staff, in the royal family, there were two opinions. There was a
school which taught that actual fighting must not be resorted to until
the use of brains has been exhausted, that the battle comes in when
the manoeuvre has failed, that the seizure of a strategic position, or
a scientific retreat, like that of Wellington into Portugal, of
Barclay in 1812 before Napoleon, of Johnston before Sherman, is the
first defence of armies, so that a force which is tactically inferior
may be strategically superior. Frederic was, I believe, the first
great soldier to reject this doctrine, and to act on the principle
that nothing can destroy the enemy except a pitched battle, and that
the destruction of the enemy, not the weakening of the enemy, is the
right object of war. His battles were very numerous and very
sanguinary, and not always decisive. Napoleon followed in his
footsteps, manoeuvring less, as he grew older, and fighting more. It
is the adopted teaching of the Prussian school, since Clausewitz and
Moltke.

During the French campaign of 1814 Napoleon said to Marmont: "We are
still 100,000." "No!" said the marshal; "only 60,000." "Exactly,"
Napoleon replied; "60,000 and myself, that is 100,000." Something of
this kind must be allowed in the person of the great king; and it kept
up his hopes after his enemies began to prevail in 1759. In 1760 he
was still successful at Liegnitz and at Torgau. But his country was
exhausted; his rank