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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
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