till have offered a most determined
resistance, which would have undoubtedly ended in their complete defeat,
but would have cost the conqueror much further bloodshed. We must
therefore reckon the Battle of Borodino as amongst battles, like
Bautzen, left unfinished. At Bautzen the vanquished preferred to quit
the field sooner; at Borodino the conqueror preferred to content himself
with a half victory, not because the decision appeared doubtful, but
because he was not rich enough to pay for the whole.

Returning now to our subject, the deduction from our reflections in
relation to the first stage of pursuit is, that the energy thrown into
it chiefly determines the value of the victory; that this pursuit is a
second act of the victory, in many cases more important also than the
first, and that strategy, whilst here approaching tactics to receive
from it the harvest of success, exercises the first act of her authority
by demanding this completion of the victory.

But further, the effects of victory are very seldom found to stop with
this first pursuit; now first begins the real career to which victory
lent velocity. This course is conditioned as we have already said, by
other relations of which it is not yet time to speak. But we must here
mention, what there is of a general character in the pursuit in order to
avoid repetition when the subject occurs again.

In the further stages of pursuit, again, we can distinguish three
degrees: the simple pursuit, a hard pursuit, and a parallel march to
intercept.

The simple FOLLOWING or PURSUING causes the enemy to continue his
retreat, until he thinks he can risk another battle. It will therefore
in its effect suffice to exhaust the advantages gained, and besides
that, all that the enemy cannot carry with him, sick, wounded, and
disabled from fatigue, quantities of baggage, and carriages of all
kinds, will fall into our hands, but this mere following does not
tend to heighten the disorder in the enemy's Army, an effect which is
produced by the two following causes.

If, for instance, instead of contenting ourselves with taking up every
day the camp the enemy has just vacated, occupying just as much of the
country as he chooses to abandon, we make our arrangements so as
every day to encroach further, and accordingly with our advance-guard
organised for the purpose, attack his rear-guard every time it attempts
to halt, then such a course will hasten his retreat, and consequently