success, there are examples enough, great and small. We are not now
speaking of the particular surprise which belongs to the attack, but of
the endeavour by measures generally, and especially by the distribution
of forces, to surprise the enemy, which can be imagined just as well in
the defensive, and which in the tactical defence particularly is a chief
point.

We say, surprise lies at the foundation of all undertakings without
exception, only in very different degrees according to the nature of the
undertaking and other circumstances.

This difference, indeed, originates in the properties or peculiarities
of the Army and its Commander, in those even of the Government.

Secrecy and rapidity are the two factors in this product and these
suppose in the Government and the Commander-in-Chief great energy, and
on the part of the Army a high sense of military duty. With effeminacy
and loose principles it is in vain to calculate upon a surprise. But so
general, indeed so indispensable, as is this endeavour, and true as it
is that it is never wholly unproductive of effect, still it is not
the less true that it seldom succeeds to a REMARKABLE degree, and this
follows from the nature of the idea itself. We should form an erroneous
conception if we believed that by this means chiefly there is much to be
attained in War. In idea it promises a great deal; in the execution it
generally sticks fast by the friction of the whole machine.

In tactics the surprise is much more at home, for the very natural
reason that all times and spaces are on a smaller scale. It will,
therefore, in Strategy be the more feasible in proportion as the
measures lie nearer to the province of tactics, and more difficult the
higher up they lie towards the province of policy.

The preparations for a War usually occupy several months; the assembly
of an Army at its principal positions requires generally the formation
of depots and magazines, and long marches, the object of which can be
guessed soon enough.

It therefore rarely happens that one State surprises another by a
War, or by the direction which it gives the mass of its forces. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when War turned very much upon
sieges, it was a frequent aim, and quite a peculiar and important
chapter in the Art of War, to invest a strong place unexpectedly, but
even that only rarely succeeded.(*)

(*) Railways, steamships, and telegraphs have, however,
enormous