's
Dispatches).

A tactical defeat may sometimes be risked to serve a strategic end. In
June, 1864, General Hunter was operating with a Federal army in the
Shenandoah Valley, and owing to shortage of supplies was forced to fall
back. In so doing he uncovered the National Capital, and General Early
was sent by the Confederate Commander-in-Chief to capture Washington.
General Grant took immediate steps to protect the capital by the
dispatch of troops, and to further this end, General Lew Wallace,[1] on
his own initiative, confronted Early's corps at the _Monocacy_ on July
8, 1864. He met the enemy and was defeated, but he delayed Early's
corps until the troops sent by Grant were in position. "If Early had
been but one day _earlier_ he might have entered the capital before the
arrival of the reinforcements I had sent. General Wallace contributed
on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater
benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an
equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A
tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if
it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the
morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the
Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although
urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), Grouchy
pushed on eastwards, where he found Thielmann's Prussian Corps of
16,000 men holding the passage across the Dyle at Wavre. The _Battle
of Wavre_ was begun at 4 p.m. on June 18, and by 11 a.m. on the next
day Grouchy was victorious. But his victory was barren. His tactical
achievement was useless to the higher command and had exposed his own
force to considerable danger. As he sat down to pen a vainglorious
dispatch to the Emperor, he received the news that Napoleon was a
fugitive and the Imperial Army defeated and scattered. Grouchy's
feeble and false manoeuvres had permitted Bluecher to join forces with
Wellington. To the Emperor's dismay it was the Prussians who came from
the eastward to the sound of the cannon: "C'est les Prussiens qui
viennent!"

MORAL.--It is seen that Strategy may be defined as the art of
concentrating troops at the required strength, at the required time, at
the required place, for the purpose of overthrowing the enemy's main
armies; while Tactics may be defined as the art of arranging and
handling troops so