, etc., have both formerly and in recent years absorbed their
time and their strength. The ordnance and the staff corps, also, had
abundant special duties. Still it may reasonably be assumed that
officers of the classes mentioned have usually made themselves
somewhat familiar with the best writings on military art. If we had
in the country in 1861 a class of men who could be called educated
soldiers in the scientific sense, we certainly should find them in
the several corps just referred to.

Here, however, we have to meet the question What is military art as
applied to the problem of winning battles or campaigns? We are
obliged to answer that outside of the business administration and
supply of an army, and apart from the technical knowledge of
engineering and the construction of fire-arms and ammunition, it
consists in the tactical handling of bodies of men in accordance
with very few and very simple principles of strategy. The literature
of the subject is found in the history of wars analyzed by competent
men like Napoleon, Jomini, the Archduke Charles, Sir William Napier,
Clausewitz, Moltke, Hamley, and others; but it may be broadly said
that the principles of this criticism and analysis may be so briefly
stated as to be printed on the back of a visiting-card. [Footnote:
Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, in his admirable "Letters on
Strategy," states them in five brief primary axioms. Letters on
Strategy, vol. i. pp. 9, 10.] To trace the campaigns of great
soldiers under the guidance of such a critic as Jomini is full of
interest to any intelligent person, and there is nothing in the
subject of the slightest difficulty of comprehension if full and
authentic topographical maps are before the reader. To make much
instructive use of military history in this way demands a good deal
of voluminous reading and the command of charts and maps extensive
enough to allow the presentation of the face of a country on a large
scale. With these advantages all wars, both ancient and modern, are
full of instructive examples of the application of the simple
principles of strategy under innumerable varying circumstances and
situations; and this union of simple theory in ever-changing
practical application is what constitutes the theoretic knowledge of
the general as distinguished from the tactical and administrative
duties of the subordinate. [Footnote: Jomini expresses it thus:
"J'en couclus que l'histoire militaire raisonnee de plusieur