If disorders of the human frame refuse to yield to one
kind of treatment, another must be tried, and so on, until at last the
right method is discovered. There can be no question that this is also
true of the military and other callings in life. The man of a fertile
brain, ever ready to suggest new methods when old ones have failed, is
the most likely to succeed. It was to this cause, more than to any
other, that Napoleon at first owed his success. When he was a young
man, it was the custom in Europe to imitate blindly the tactics of
Frederick the Great of Prussia, and to rely on ponderous heavy squares
and a slow stiff method of moving. Napoleon was the first to see that,
however suitable such tactics had been during the time of the great
Prussian general, before the development of artillery, they were not
adapted to the changed circumstances under which battles were fought in
his own time; and so in 1806 at Jena he smashed to pieces the Prussian
force, which came against him in all the pride of inherited traditions,
handed down from one of the greatest generals of his age. While it is
almost a truism to say that what is appropriate to one age is not
suited to another, it is only men of the type of Napoleon and Gordon
who are quick enough to see the necessity for a change of method, and
sufficiently resourceful to adopt new plans. Ninety-nine generals out
of a hundred would never have thought of utilising a little steamer to
destroy a land force, but would have proceeded in the old-fashioned
methods of a siege, and perhaps have lost an enormous number of men in
the process. The enemy are always more or less prepared for
conventional methods of fighting, but it stands to reason that they are
unprepared for new ideas. Hence much of Gordon's success.

In addition to this fertility of resource, Gordon displayed wonderful
courage in carrying out his ideas. No sooner had Quinsan fallen than he
saw that it would be a good thing to make a change in his headquarters,
and to transfer them thence from Sung-kiang. With the old centre were
associated all sorts of traditions connected with the army before his
time, in the days when discipline was lax, and the one idea of the
soldiers was that the war was being carried on for the sake of
providing them with loot. There were loot agents and other means by
which the officers and soldiers could easily dispose of their booty.
All this was demoralising, so Gordon decided on an immediate ch