is an example of those
_insurmountable_ obstacles which can always be surmounted. To oppose him
it would have been necessary to adopt a system of cordon; and we have
already seen what is to be expected of it. The position of the Swiss and
Italians at Suza was even less wise than the cordon-system, because it
inclosed them in a contracted valley without protecting the lateral
issues. Their strategic plan ought to have been to throw troops into
these valleys to defend the defiles, and to post the bulk of the army
toward Turin or Carignano.

When we consider the _tactical_ difficulties of this kind of war, and
the immense advantages it affords the defense, we may be inclined to
regard the concentration of a considerable force to penetrate by a
single valley as an extremely rash maneuver, and to think that it ought
to be divided into as many columns as there are practicable passes. In
my opinion, this is one of the most dangerous of all illusions; and to
confirm what I say it is only necessary to refer to the fate of the
columns of Championnet at the battle of Fossano. If there be five or six
roads on the menaced front, they should all, of course, be threatened;
but the army should cross the chain in not more than two masses, and the
routes which these follow should not be divergent; for if they were, the
enemy might be able to defeat them separately. Napoleon's passage of the
Saint-Bernard was wisely planned. He formed the bulk of his army on the
center, with a division on each flank by Mont-Cenis and the Simplon, to
divide the attention of the enemy and flank his march.

The invasion of a country entirely covered with mountains is a much
greater and more difficult task than where a denouement may be
accomplished by a decisive battle in the open country; for fields of
battle for the deployment of large masses are rare in a mountainous
region, and the war becomes a succession of partial combats. Here it
would be imprudent, perhaps, to penetrate on a single point by a narrow
and deep valley, whose outlets might be closed by the enemy and thus the
invading army be endangered: it might penetrate by the wings on two or
three lateral lines, whose outlets should not be too widely separated,
the marches being so arranged that the masses may debouch at the
junction of the valleys at nearly the same instant. The enemy should be
driven from all the ridges which separate these valleys.

Of all mountainous countries, the tactical def