each minor
advantage, but pressing the enemy without pause or rest till he is utterly
overthrown--an idea in which Cromwell had anticipated Napoleon by a century
and a half. Scarcely distinguishable from this is a third idea--that of
taking the offensive, in which there was really nothing new at all, since
its advantages had always been understood, and Frederick the Great had
pressed it to extremity with little less daring than Napoleon himself--nay
even to culpable rashness, as the highest exponents of the Napoleonic idea
admit. Finally, there is the notion of making the armed forces of the enemy
and not his territory or any part of it your main objective. This perhaps
is regarded as the strongest characteristic of Napoleon's methods, and yet
even here we are confused by the fact that undoubtedly on some very
important occasions--the Austerlitz campaign, for example--Napoleon made
the hostile capital his objective as though he believed its occupation was
the most effective step towards the overthrow of the enemy's power and will
to resist. He certainly did not make the enemy's main army his primary
objective--for their main army was not Mack's but that of the Archduke
Charles.

On the whole then, when men speak of the Napoleonic system they seem to
include two groups of ideas--one which comprises the conception of war made
with the whole force of the nation; the other, a group which includes the
Cromwellian idea of persistent effort, Frederick's preference for the
offensive at almost any risk, and finally the idea of the enemy's armed
forces as the main objective, which was also Cromwell's.

It is the combination of these by no means original or very distinct ideas
that we are told has brought about so entire a change in the conduct of war
that it has become altogether a different thing. It is unnecessary for our
purpose to consider how far the facts seem to support such a conclusion,
for in the inherent nature of things it must be radically unsound. Neither
war nor anything else can change in its essentials. If it appears to do so,
it is because we are still mistaking accidents for essentials, and this is
exactly how it struck the acutest thinkers of Napoleonic times.

For a while it is true they were bewildered, but so soon as they had had
time to clear their heads from the din of the struggle in which they had
taken part, they began to see that the new phenomena were but accidents
after all. They perceived that Na