Maxims of War.

The Art of War is the Art of Life, because benevolence is always ready precisely when it is not wanted. The only Right is Might.

"The Will is the Man." This is the first maxim. When a friend of General Grant's went to Mrs. Grant, and told her that her husband's military operations were on an impossible basis, she went on with her knitting, and quietly said, "Oh, but you know, he is such an obstinate man." That was the secret of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and the Wilderness.

Bacon writes that in war we require the hundred eyes of Argus to plan, and the hundred hands of Briareus to execute; caution in strategy, celerity in tactics. First the blow and then the word. This is illustrated in Russia's advance upon India. England has illustrated it frequently and habitually. A conspicuous instance which occurs to mind is Nelson's destruction of the Danish Fleet, at Copenhagen, to prevent it from falling into the clutches of Napoleon. Admiral Courbet's bombardment of Foochow, the Russian destruction of the Turkish Fleet at Sinope, and the English bombardment of Alexandria, come within the same category.

We all remember how the split between Beaconsfield and Derby was precipitated by the British Fleet steaming through the Dardanelles, and menacing Constantinople. England and Russia were both ready to pounce on the prize. Of course, possession is nine-tenths of the law. So again with Herat. It belongs to Russia just as much as to England, in fact, to whoever is strong enough to bind the strong man.

Todleben and Kinglake agree that Lord Raglan and St. Arnaud, with the Allied Armies, could have marched straight into Sebastopol, after the victory of the Alma. A delay of only a few days enabled Todleben to improvise the defences which necessitated a disastrous siege of two years.

"In War, The Moral is to the Physical as three to one." This is Sir W. Napier's favourite maxim in writing of the page 4 Peninsula War. It was evidenced there strikingly enough, with the ill-welded armies of Junot, Victor, Massena, Soult, Ney, Marmont, and Jourdain, variously defeated by Wellington, at Vimiera, Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and the other battles of this war. However, the British experience in India is much more pertinent to the axiom.

"Nothing happens but the unforeseen," Some individual, though, will invariably be found to possess the secret of Achilles' vulnerable heel. When Wellington fortified the inexpugnable lines of Terres Yedras, he stood quite alone in the opinion that they would be of any avail against the overwhelming mass of the French Army, which was to drive the English to their ships. Yet he persevered for months in this dismal work. We recall a graphic letter by Lord John Russell, where he describes how he rode with Wellington along the lines, and watched the myriad tents of Massena's Army spread out below.

The eagle eye of Wellington gazed brightly, cheerfully, and confidently on the spectacle. The corner was then rounded. Massena had to retreat, and be pursued.

The war maps, hurriedly issued by English publishers on the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, in 1870, gave Germany as the arena of conflict, with only a small slice of France. But Trochu had given the warning. So did Bismarck ten years before, when, as French Ambassador, he dilated on his audacious projects to Napoleon III. There never was a falser maxim than "Forewarned is Forearmed." It is just the very way of lulling an antagonist into false security to tell him exactly what you mean to do.

Grant expressed his admiration for, and envy of, the magnetic power in influencing men possessed by General Sheridan. At Five Forks this was the power which captured a key position equivalent to Quatre Bras or a little Herat. While planning the operations which led up to this capture, Grant was fully sensible of their extreme difficulty. He has related how that, on giving Sheridan an alternative course to pursue, in the event of failure, he noticed the chagrin on Sheridan's face at the suggestion of the possibility of such a thing. "But you'll not fail," said Grant, warming up. Sheridan seized his hand, and exclaimed; "General, that's what I like to hear you say!" However, to achieve this success, he had to fling himself off his horse, grasp the standard as it fell from the hands of a man shot down, and lead the rally on foot.

Sheridan's ride from Washington, when he turned his flying and disorganised troops upon the enemy, and beat General Early in the Shenandoah Valley, is an achievement which is unique in the chronicles of warfare. Somebody may be able to refer to its parallel—we cannot. This forcibly illuminates the saying of page 5 Wellington that he estimated the presence of Napoleon as equal to 40,000 men.

Cromwell at Dunbar, Napoleon at Austerlitz, and Wellington at Salamanca, all conquered by seizing the movement to strike when the enemy was executing an unwise extension. It was an opportunity like the foam of ocean, "a moment white, then lost for ever." There is all the regularity of mechanism in studying these grand operations. Jomini, as a young Swiss lieutenant, astonished Napoleon by a transparent analysis of his principles, which even Napoleon himself could not have enunciated so plainly.