e events of Turin, Blenheim, and
Ramillies maneuvers resembling those seen at Talavera, Waterloo, Jena,
or Austerlitz, which were the causes of the victory in each case? When
the application of a rule and the consequent maneuver have procured
victory a hundred times for skillful generals, and always have in their
favor the great probability of leading to success, shall their
occasional failure be a sufficient reason for entirely denying their
value and for distrusting the effect of the study of the art? Shall a
theory be pronounced absurd because it has only three-fourths of the
whole number of chances of success in its favor?

The _morale_ of an army and its chief officers has an influence upon the
fate of a war; and this seems to be due to a certain physical effect
produced by the moral cause. For example, the impetuous attack upon a
hostile line of twenty thousand brave men whose feelings are thoroughly
enlisted in their cause will produce a much more powerful effect than
the attack of forty thousand demoralized or apathetic men upon the same
point.

Strategy, as has already been explained, is the art of bringing the
greatest part of the forces of an army upon the important point of the
theater of war or of the zone of operations.

Tactics is the art of using these masses at the points to which they
shall have been conducted by well-arranged marches; that is to say, the
art of making them act at the decisive moment and at the decisive point
of the field of battle. When troops are thinking more of flight than of
fight, they can no longer be termed active masses in the sense in which
I use the term.

A general thoroughly instructed in the theory of war, but not possessed
of military _coup-d'oeil_, coolness, and skill, may make an excellent
strategic plan and be entirely unable to apply the rules of tactics in
presence of an enemy: his projects will not be successfully carried out,
and his defeat will be probable. If he be a man of character, he will be
able to diminish the evil results of his failure, but if he lose his
wits he will lose his army.

The same general may, on the other hand, be at once a good tactician and
strategist, and have made all the arrangements for gaining a victory
that his means will permit: in this case, if he be only moderately
seconded by his troops and subordinate officers, he will probably gain a
decided victory. If, however, his troops have neither discipline nor
courage, and his sub