ents — that is, activity and resolution, with moderate military abilities, produce greater effects than the highest strategical and tactical genius without them.
Turenne, and Montecuculli, those acknowledged masters in the art of war, are referred to as a striking instances of the fruitlessness of fruitless conceptions unaccompanied by corresponding vigor of action.
Nothing could be superior in originality and boldness of design, in scope and scientific combination to Turenne's plans of campaigns, and some of his marches are ranked with those of Napoleon and Marlborough, but when the hour of decisive action had arrived, he was as destitute of name and morampaigns of the Rhine are marked by the same vigor of conception and fruitlessness of result.
We cannot refuse to admire the refined subtlety, the wily devices of Turenne and Montecuculli; but their attitude reminds us, rather of two expert fencers at an assault of arms, playing with buttoned foils, and exhibiting their easy grace
h jury, they take especial care to repudiate all attainder of blood, and forfeiture of every kind.
Yet here is a President who undertakes, by a simple proclamation, to do what the Constitution does not allow to be done in any case, under any circumstances.
His rule of warfare would have suited Timour or Genghis Khan, and was extensively acted upon by those enlightened models.
But it has been repudiated by every Christian people for two hundred years. The last that followed it was Marshal Turenne, when he ravaged the Palatinate with fire and sword; by which act he doubtless damned his own soul, and earned for himself the execration of posterity throughout the civilized world.
Lincoln, however, but avows the principle on which his plunderers have all along been acting.
Establish the principle that it is lawful to destroy everything which can be useful to an enemy, and you justify the utter destruction of every country into which an enemy may penetrate.
Houses, mills, barns, gr
ranslated from the French for the Mobile Advertiser.]
The presence of the general on the field is absolutely necessary — he is the head; he is the whole army.
It was not the Roman army that conquered the Gauls, it was Cæsar.
It was not the Carthaginian army that threw terror among the Romans at the gates of Rome, it was cannibal.
It was not the Macedonian army that marched on the Indus, it was Alexander.
It was not the French army that carried war on the Weser and on the Inn, it was Turenne.
It was not the Prussian army that defended Prussia during seven years against the three greatest powers of Europe, it was Frederick the Great.
Generals in chief are guided by their own experience or their genius.
Tactics, evolutions, the silence of the engineer and the artillerist, may be learned from books, or treatises, like geometry; but the knowledge of the high parts of war is only acquired by experience, and by the study of the history of wars and battles of great captains.
T
reater part of Germany at twenty-nine.
Italy at thirty-two, and Spain at thirty-six.
Henry IV.
of France became chief of the Hunguenot army at the age of sixteen, at nineteen, King of Navarre; at forty he had conquered all his enemies and placed himself on the throne of France.
Saxe entered the army at twelve, and soon obtained the command of a regiment of horse.
He gained the celebrated victory of Fontenay at forty-nine.
Vauban at the age of twenty-five had conducted several sieges.
Turenne had won all his military reputation by the age of forty.
The great Conde gained the famous battle of Rocrol at the age of twenty-two, and won all his military fame before twenty-five.--Prince Eugene, of Savoy, was Colonel at twenty one, Lieutenant Field Marshal at twenty four, gained the battle of Zente at thirty four and of Blenheim at forty-one.--Charles the Twelfth of Sweden completed his first successful campaign against Denmark at eighteen, overthrew eighty thousand Russians at Narva
