etreat.

If so many imposing facts prove that bases with two faces, one of them
being almost perpendicular to that of the enemy, are the best, it is
well to recollect that, in default of such a base, its advantages may be
partially supplied by a change of strategic front, as will be seen in
Article XX.

Another very important point in reference to the proper direction of
bases relates to those established on the sea-coast. These bases may be
favorable in some circumstances, but are equally unfavorable in others,
as may be readily seen from what precedes. The danger which must always
exist of an army being driven to the sea seems so clear, in the ease of
the establishment of the base upon it, (which bases can only be
favorable to naval powers,) that it is astonishing to hear in our day
praises of such a base. Wellington, coming with a fleet to the relief of
Spain and Portugal, could not have secured a better base than that of
Lisbon, or rather of the peninsula of Torres-Vedras, which covers all
the avenues to that capital on the land side. The sea and the Tagus not
only protected both flanks, but secured the safety of his only possible
line of retreat, which was upon the fleet.

Blinded by the advantages which the intrenched camp of Torres-Vedras
secured for the English, and not tracing effects to their real causes,
many generals in other respects wise contend that no bases are good
except such as rest on the sea and thus afford the army facilities of
supply and refuge with both flanks secured. Fascinated by similar
notions, Colonel Carion-Nizas asserted that in 1813 Napoleon ought to
have posted half of his army in Bohemia and thrown one hundred and fifty
thousand men on the mouths of the Elbe toward Hamburg; forgetting that
the first precept for a continental army is to establish its base upon
the front farthest _from_ the sea, so as to secure the benefit of all
its elements of strength, from which it might find itself cut off if the
base were established upon the coast.

An insular and naval power acting on the continent would pursue a
diametrically opposite course, but resulting from the same principle,
viz.: _to establish the base upon those points where it can be sustained
by all the resources of the country, and at the same time insure a safe
retreat._

A state powerful both on land and sea, whose squadrons control the sea
adjacent to the theater of operations, might well base an army of forty
or fifty thous