le of bad strategy adduced by lecturers and writers on the
art of war for the warning of students.

The supposition that over-sea raids, even when successful in
part, in any way demonstrate the inefficiency of naval defence
would never be admitted if only land and sea warfare were regarded
as branches of one whole and not as quite distinct things. To be
consistent, those that admit the supposition should also admit that
the practicability of raids demonstrates still more conclusively
the insufficiency of defence by an army. An eminent military writer
has told us that 'a raiding party of 1000 French landed in Ireland
without opposition, after sixteen days of navigation, unobserved
by the British Navy; defeated and drove back the British troops
opposing them on four separate occasions... entirely occupied the
attention of all the available troops of a garrison of Ireland
100,000 strong; penetrated almost to the centre of the island,
and compelled the Lord-Lieutenant to send an urgent requisition
for "as great a reinforcement as possible."' If an inference is to
be drawn from this in the same way as one has been drawn from the
circumstances on the sea, it would follow that one hundred thousand
troops are not sufficient to prevent a raid by one thousand, and
consequently that one million troops would not be sufficient to
prevent one by ten thousand enemies. On this there would arise the
question, If an army a million strong gives no security against
a raid by ten thousand men, is an army worth having? And this
question, be it noted, would come, not from disciples of the
Blue Water School, 'extremist' or other, but from students of
military narrative.

The truth is that raids are far more common on land than on the
ocean. For every one of the latter it would be possible to adduce
several of the former. Indeed, accounts of raids are amongst
the common-places of military history. There are few campaigns
since the time of that smart cavalry leader Mago, the younger
brother of Hannibal, in which raids on land did not occur or
in which they exercised any decisive influence on the issue of
hostilities. It is only the failure to see the connection between
warfare on land and naval warfare that prevents these land raids
being given the same significance and importance that is usually
given to those carried out across the sea.

In the year 1809, the year of Wagram, Napoleon's military influence
in Central Germany was, to say the