assing
continually between the army and the base, will generally be able to
keep open the communications.

6. The study of the measures, partly logistical and partly tactical, to
be taken by the staff officers in bringing the troops from the order of
march to the different orders of battle, is very important, but requires
going into such minute detail that I must pass it over nearly in
silence, contenting myself with referring my readers to the numerous
works specially devoted to this branch of the art of war.

Before leaving this interesting subject, I think a few examples should
be given as illustrations of the great importance of a good system of
logistics. One of these examples is the wonderful concentration of the
French army in the plains of Gera in 1806; another is the entrance of
the army upon the campaign of 1815.

In each of these cases Napoleon possessed the ability to make such
arrangements that his columns, starting from points widely separated,
were concentrated with wonderful precision upon the decisive point of
the zone of operations; and in this way he insured the successful issue
of the campaign. The choice of the decisive point was the result of a
skillful application of the principles of strategy; and the arrangements
for moving the troops give us an example of logistics which originated
in his own closet. It has been long claimed that Berthier framed those
instructions which were conceived with so much precision and usually
transmitted with so much clearness; but I have had frequent
opportunities of knowing that such was not the truth. The emperor was
his own chief staff officer. Provided with a pair of dividers opened to
a distance by the scale of from seventeen to twenty miles in a straight
line, (which made from twenty-two to twenty-five miles, taking into
account the windings of the roads,) bending over and sometimes stretched
at full length upon his map, where the positions of his corps and the
supposed positions of the enemy were marked by pins of different colors,
he was able to give orders for extensive movements with a certainty and
precision which were astonishing. Turning his dividers about from point
to point on the map, he decided in a moment the number of marches
necessary for each of his columns to arrive at the desired point by a
certain day; then, placing pins in the new positions, and bearing in
mind the rate of marching that he must assign to each column, and the
hour of its se