ect your course upon a ledge of rocks or into a safe harbor?" War
is not, as some seem to suppose, a mere game of chance. Its principles
constitute one of the most intricate of modern sciences; and the general
who understands the art of rightly applying its rules, and possesses the
means of carrying out its precepts, may be morally certain of success.

History furnishes abundant proofs of the impolicy of relying upon
undisciplined forces in the open field. Almost every page of Napier's
classic History of the Peninsular War contains striking examples of the
useless waste of human life and property by the Spanish militia; while,
with one quarter as many regulars, at a small fractional part of the
actual expense, the French might have been expelled at the outset, or
have been driven, at any time afterwards, from the Peninsula.

At the beginning of the French Revolution the regular army was
abolished, and the citizen-soldiery, who were established on the 14th of
July, 1789, relied on exclusively for the national defence. "But these
three millions of national guards," says Jomini, "though good supporters
of the decrees of the assembly, were nevertheless useless for
reinforcing the army beyond the frontiers, and utterly incapable of
defending their own firesides." Yet no one can question their individual
bravery and patriotism; for, when reorganized, disciplined, and properly
directed, they put to flight the best troops in Europe. At the first
outbreak of this revolution, the privileged classes of other countries,
upholding crumbling institutions and rotten dynasties, rushed forth
against the maddened hordes of French democracy. The popular power,
springing upward by its own elasticity when the weight of political
oppression was removed, soon became too wild and reckless to establish
itself on any sure basis, or even to provide for its own protection. If
the attacks of the enervated enemies of France were weak, so also were
her own efforts feeble to resist these attacks. The republican armies
repelled the ill-planned and ill-conducted invasion by the Duke of
Brunswick; but it was by the substitution of human life for preparation,
system, and skill; enthusiasm supplied the place of discipline; robbery
produced military stores; and the dead bodies of her citizens formed
_epaulements_ against the enemy. Yet this was but the strength of
weakness; the aimless struggle of a broken and disjointed government;
and the new revolutionar