ount of the configuration of the country, or
of the small number of practicable routes for an army found therein.
Generally, however, a zone presents several _lines of operations_,
depending partly upon the plans of the campaign, partly upon the number
of great routes of communication existing in the theater of operations.

It is not to be understood from this that every road is of itself a
_line of operations_,--though doubtless it may happen that any good road
in a certain turn of affairs may become for the time-being such a line;
but as long as it is only traversed by detachments, and lies beyond the
sphere of the principal enterprises, it cannot truly be called the real
line of operations. Moreover, the existence of several routes leading to
the same front of operations, and separated by one or two marches, would
not constitute so many lines of operations, but, being the
communications of the different divisions of the same army, the whole
space bounded by them would constitute but a single line.

The term _zone of operations_ is applied to a large fraction of the
general theater of war; the term _lines of operations_ will designate
the part of this fraction embraced by the enterprises of the army.
Whether it follow a single or several routes, the term _strategic
lines_ will apply to those important lines which connect the decisive
points of the theater of operations either with each other or with the
front of operations; and, for the same reason, we give this name to
those lines which the army would follow to reach one of these decisive
points, or to accomplish an important maneuver which requires a
temporary deviation from the principal line of operations. _Lines of
communications_ designate the practicable routes between the different
portions of the army occupying different positions throughout the zone
of operations.

For example, in 1813, after the accession of Austria to the Grand
Coalition, three allied armies were to invade Saxony, one Bavaria, and
another Italy: so that Saxony, or rather the country between Dresden,
Magdeburg, and Breslau, formed the zone of operations of the mass of the
forces. This zone had three _lines of operations_ leading to Leipsic as
an objective: the first was the line of the army of Bohemia, leading
from the mountains of Erzgebirge by Dresden and Chemnitz upon Leipsic;
the second was the line of the army of Silesia, going from Breslau by
Dresden or by Wittenberg upon Leipsic; t