been
defined, "the art of making good combinations preliminary to battles
as well as during their progress." The particular tactical combination
depended upon a condition now passed away, which was the inability of
the lee ships of a fleet at anchor to come to the help of the weather
ones before the latter were destroyed; but the principles which
underlay the combination, namely, to choose that part of the enemy's
order which can least easily be helped, and to attack it with superior
forces, has not passed away. The action of Admiral Jervis at Cape St.
Vincent, when with fifteen ships he won a victory over twenty-seven,
was dictated by the same principle, though in this case the enemy was
not at anchor, but under way. Yet men's minds are so constituted that
they seem more impressed by the transiency of the conditions than by
the undying principle which coped with them. In the strategic effect
of Nelson's victory upon the course of the war, on the contrary, the
principle involved is not only more easily recognized, but it is at
once seen to be applicable to our own day. The issue of the enterprise
in Egypt depended upon keeping open the communications with France.
The victory of the Nile destroyed the naval force, by which alone the
communications could be assured, and determined the final failure; and
it is at once seen, not only that the blow was struck in accordance
with the principle of striking at the enemy's line of communication,
but also that the same principle is valid now, and would be equally so
in the days of the galley as of the sailing-ship or steamer.

Nevertheless, a vague feeling of contempt for the past, supposed to be
obsolete, combines with natural indolence to blind men even to those
permanent strategic lessons which lie close to the surface of naval
history. For instance, how many look upon the battle of Trafalgar, the
crown of Nelson's glory and the seal of his genius, as other than an
isolated event of exceptional grandeur? How many ask themselves the
strategic question, "How did the ships come to be just there?" How
many realize it to be the final act in a great strategic drama,
extending over a year or more, in which two of the greatest leaders
that ever lived, Napoleon and Nelson, were pitted against each other?
At Trafalgar it was not Villeneuve that failed, but Napoleon that was
vanquished; not Nelson that won, but England that was saved; and why?
Because Napoleon's combinations failed, and N