individually rather than submit; for if the conqueror remained master
of the country, he would deprive them of their political power, to which
they cling even more closely than to their property. They therefore
prefer fighting to subjection, which is to them the greatest of all
misfortunes; and they readily carry the people along with them because
the people has long been used to follow and obey them, and besides has
but little to risk in the war. Amongst a nation in which equality of
conditions prevails, each citizen, on the contrary, has but slender
share of political power, and often has no share at all; on the other
hand, all are independent, and all have something to lose; so that they
are much less afraid of being conquered, and much more afraid of war,
than an aristocratic people. It will always be extremely difficult to
decide a democratic population to take up arms, when hostilities have
reached its own territory. Hence the necessity of giving to such a
people the rights and the political character which may impart to every
citizen some of those interests that cause the nobles to act for the
public welfare in aristocratic countries.

It should never be forgotten by the princes and other leaders of
democratic nations, that nothing but the passion and the habit of
freedom can maintain an advantageous contest with the passion and the
habit of physical well-being. I can conceive nothing better prepared
for subjection, in case of defeat, than a democratic people without free
institutions.

Formerly it was customary to take the field with a small body of troops,
to fight in small engagements, and to make long, regular sieges: modern
tactics consist in fighting decisive battles, and, as soon as a line
of march is open before the army, in rushing upon the capital city, in
order to terminate the war at a single blow. Napoleon, it is said, was
the inventor of this new system; but the invention of such a system did
not depend on any individual man, whoever he might be. The mode in which
Napoleon carried on war was suggested to him by the state of society in
his time; that mode was successful, because it was eminently adapted
to that state of society, and because he was the first to employ it.
Napoleon was the first commander who marched at the head of an army
from capital to capital, but the road was opened for him by the ruin of
feudal society. It may fairly be believed that, if that extraordinary
man had been born thr