ing a knowledge of these details, and
that it is indispensable to take them into consideration in the
arrangement of all plans. We propose to sketch the principal points
which ought to guide in this sort of combinations.

ARTICLE XI.

Military Statistics and Geography.

By the first of these sciences we understand the most thorough knowledge
possible of the elements of power and military resources of the enemy
with whom we are called upon to contend; the second consists in the
topographical and strategic description of the theater of war, with all
the obstacles, natural or artificial, to be encountered, and the
examination of the permanent decisive points which may be presented in
the whole extent of the frontier or throughout the extent of the
country. Besides the minister of war, the commanding general and his
chief of staff should be afforded this information, under the penalty of
cruel miscalculations in their plans, as happens frequently in our day,
despite the great strides civilized nations have taken in statistical,
diplomatic, geographical, and topographical sciences. I will cite two
examples of which I was cognizant. In 1796, Moreau's army, entering the
Black Forest, expected to find terrible mountains, frightful defiles and
forests, and was greatly surprised to discover, after climbing the
declivities of the plateau that slope to the Rhine, that these, with
their spurs, were the only mountains, and that the country, from the
sources of the Danube to Donauwerth, was a rich and level plain.

The second example was in 1813. Napoleon and his whole army supposed the
interior of Bohemia to be very mountainous,--whereas there is no
district in Europe more level, after the girdle of mountains surrounding
it has been crossed, which may be done in a single march.

All European officers held the same erroneous opinions in reference to
the Balkan and the Turkish force in the interior. It seemed that it was
given out at Constantinople that this province was an almost impregnable
barrier and the palladium of the empire,--an error which I, having lived
in the Alps, did not entertain. Other prejudices, not less deeply
rooted, have led to the belief that a people all the individuals of
which are constantly armed would constitute a formidable militia and
would defend themselves to the last extremity. Experience has proved
that the old regulations which placed the elite of the Janissaries in
the frontier-cities of