the "ifs" and "buts" of their
stupendous gamble.

In my inmost heart, I did not expect I should have to fight a great
defensive battle. All my dispositions were made with the idea of
carrying out effectively the combined offensive which, as narrated in
the last chapter, was concerted between Foch and myself.

There was only one reservation in my mind, and that concerned
the danger of leaving a gap anywhere in our long line, or of
failing to give a sufficiently close support to the weary but most
gallant Army of the King of the Belgians. As will presently be shown,
I had to run a terrible risk to safeguard against this danger, but I
hold that the risk was justified.

Many of Napoleon's great campaigns developed in a totally unexpected
manner, quite different to his original conception, but he always
claimed that his constant success was due to the initial correct
direction and impulse which he always imparted to his armies. Tolstoy
states that the only directions he gave at Borodino, three in number,
were never carried out, and could never, as the battle developed, have
been carried out. I have not verified the great Russian novelist's
statement, but it may well be true. History relates that in the Jena
campaign of 1806, Napoleon, in three days, made three erroneous
calculations of the Prussians' doings.

"On the 10th," says Hamley, in his "Operations of War," "he thought
Hohenlohe was about to attack him; on the 10th also he judged that the
Prussians were concentrating on Gera; and on the 13th he mistook
Hohenlohe's army for the entire Prussian force. Still, his plan, made
on these suppositions, was in the main quite suitable to the actual
circumstances. And this, as is mostly the case, was owing _to the
right direction_ given to the movements _at the outset_. The
preliminary conditions of a campaign seldom offer more than three or
four alternatives; an attack by the centre or either flank, or some
combination of these. If the enemy has made such false dispositions as
to render one of these alternatives decidedly the best, the General
who has the faculty of choosing it thereby provides in the best
possible way for all subsequent contingencies. _A right
impulse_ once given to an army, it is in a position to turn events not
calculated on, or miscalculated, to advantage."

As a humble but life-long disciple of this great master of war, I
venture to make the same claim for the operations now about to be
discussed.