rishes,
with skirmishes at outposts, half in earnest half in jest, with long
dispositions which end in nothing with positions and marches, which
afterwards are designated as skilful only because their infinitesimally
small causes are lost, and common sense can make nothing of them, here
on this very field many theorists find the real Art of War at home: in
these feints, parades, half and quarter thrusts of former Wars, they
find the aim of all theory, the supremacy of mind over matter, and
modern Wars appear to them mere savage fisticuffs, from which nothing
is to be learnt, and which must be regarded as mere retrograde steps
towards barbarism. This opinion is as frivolous as the objects to which
it relates. Where great forces and great passions are wanting, it is
certainly easier for a practised dexterity to show its game; but is
then the command of great forces, not in itself a higher exercise of the
intelligent faculties? Is then that kind of conventional sword-exercise
not comprised in and belonging to the other mode of conducting War? Does
it not bear the same relation to it as the motions upon a ship to the
motion of the ship itself? Truly it can take place only under the tacit
condition that the adversary does no better. And can we tell, how long
he may choose to respect those conditions? Has not then the French
Revolution fallen upon us in the midst of the fancied security of our
old system of War, and driven us from Chalons to Moscow? And did not
Frederick the Great in like manner surprise the Austrians reposing in
their ancient habits of War, and make their monarchy tremble? Woe to
the cabinet which, with a shilly-shally policy, and a routine-ridden
military system, meets with an adversary who, like the rude element,
knows no other law than that of his intrinsic force. Every deficiency
in energy and exertion is then a weight in the scales in favour of the
enemy; it is not so easy then to change from the fencing posture into
that of an athlete, and a slight blow is often sufficient to knock down
the whole.

The result of all the causes now adduced is, that the hostile action
of a campaign does not progress by a continuous, but by an intermittent
movement, and that, therefore, between the separate bloody acts,
there is a period of watching, during which both parties fall into the
defensive, and also that usually a higher object causes the principle of
aggression to predominate on one side, and thus leaves it in