to false
manoeuvres, for want of the information which only the cavalry could
supply. Lee at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg, Hooker at
Chancellorsville, Grant at Spotsylvania, owed defeat, in great
measure, to the absence of their mounted troops. In the Valley, on
the contrary, success was made possible because the cavalry was kept
to its legitimate duty--that is, to procure information, to screen
all movements, to take part in battle at the decisive moment, and to
carry out the pursuit.

With all his regard for Napoleon's maxims, Jackson was no slave to
rule. In war, circumstances vary to such an extent that a manoeuvre,
which at one time is manifestly unsound, may at another be the most
judicious. The so-called rules are never binding; they merely point
out the risks which are generally entailed by some particular course
of action. There is no principle on which Napoleon lays more stress
than that a general should never divide his force, either on the
field of battle or the theatre of war. But when he marched to
M'Dowell and left Ewell at Swift Run Gap, Jackson deliberately
divided his forces and left Banks between them, knowing that the
apparent risk, with an opponent like Banks, was no risk at all. At
the battle of Winchester, too, there was a gap of a mile between the
brigades on the left of the Kernstown road and Ewell on the right;
and owing to the intervening hills, one wing was invisible to the
other. Here again, like Moltke at Koniggratz, Jackson realised that
the principle might be disregarded not only with impunity but with
effect. He was not like Lord Galway, "a man who was in war what
Moliere's doctors were in medicine, who thought it much more
honourable to fail according to rule than to succeed by innovation."*
(* Macaulay.)

But the triumphs of the Valley campaign were not due alone to the
orders issued by Lee and Jackson. The Confederate troops displayed
extraordinary endurance. When the stragglers were eliminated their
stauncher comrades proved themselves true as steel. In every
engagement the regiments fought with stubborn courage. They sometimes
failed to break the enemy's line at the first rush; but, except at
Kernstown, the Federals never drove them from their position, and
Taylor's advance at Winchester, Trimble's counterstroke at Cross
Keys, the storming of the battery at Port Republic, and the charge of
the cavalry at Cedarville, were the deeds of brave and resolute men.

A retreat is the mos