erseverance can only be
termed desperate folly, and therefore can meet with no approbation
from any critic. In the most celebrated of all battles, that of
Belle-Alliance, Buonaparte used his last reserve in an effort to
retrieve a battle which was past being retrieved. He spent his last
farthing, and then, as a beggar, abandoned both the battle-field and his
crown.

CHAPTER X. EFFECTS OF VICTORY (continuation)

ACCORDING to the point from which our view is taken, we may feel as much
astonished at the extraordinary results of some great battles as at the
want of results in others. We shall dwell for a moment on the nature of
the effect of a great victory.

Three things may easily be distinguished here: the effect upon the
instrument itself, that is, upon the Generals and their Armies; the
effect upon the States interested in the War; and the particular result
of these effects as manifested in the subsequent course of the campaign.

If we only think of the trifling difference which there usually is
between victor and vanquished in killed, wounded, prisoners, and
artillery lost on the field of battle itself, the consequences which
are developed out of this insignificant point seem often quite
incomprehensible, and yet, usually, everything only happens quite
naturally.

We have already said in the seventh chapter that the magnitude of a
victory increases not merely in the same measure as the vanquished
forces increase in number, but in a higher ratio. The moral effects
resulting from the issue of a great battle are greater on the side of
the conquered than on that of the conqueror: they lead to greater losses
in physical force, which then in turn react on the moral element, and
so they go on mutually supporting and intensifying each other. On this
moral effect we must therefore lay special weight. It takes an opposite
direction on the one side from that on the other; as it undermines the
energies of the conquered so it elevates the powers and energy of the
conqueror. But its chief effect is upon the vanquished, because here it
is the direct cause of fresh losses, and besides it is homogeneous in
nature with danger, with the fatigues, the hardships, and generally
with all those embarrassing circumstances by which War is surrounded,
therefore enters into league with them and increases by their help,
whilst with the conqueror all these things are like weights which give a
higher swing to his courage. It is therefore