his opponent; and therefore, if the strength of his army is equal, he may also gain many advantages over him; or if his force is inferior, he may, by his superior talent, keep the contest evenly balanced; but it is completely contradictory to the nature of the thing to look here for the highest honour and glory of a general; such a campaign is always rather a certain sign that neither of the generals has any great military talent, or that he who has talent is prevented by the force of circumstances from venturing on a great decision; but when this is the case, there is no scope afforded for the display of the highest military genius.
We have hitherto been engaged with the general character of strategic manœuvring; we must now proceed to a special influence which it has on the conduct of war, namely this, that it frequently leads the combatants away from the principal roads and places into unfrequented, or at least unimportant localities. When trifling interests, which exist for a moment and then disappear, are paramount, the great features of a country have less influence on the conduct of the war. We therefore often find that bodies of troops move to points where we should never look for them, judging only by the great and simple requirements of the war; and that consequently, also, the changefulness and diversity in the details of the contest as it progresses, are much greater here than in wars directed to a great decision. Let us only look how in the last five campaigns of the Seven Years’ War, in spite of the relations in general remaining unchanged in themselves, each of these campaigns took a different form, and, closely examined, no single measure ever appears twice; and yet in these campaigns the offensive principle manifests itself on the side of the allied army much more decidedly than in most other earlier wars.
In this chapter on the defence of a theatre of war, if no great decision is proposed, we have only shown the tendencies of the action, together with its combination, and the relations and character of the same; the particular measures of which it is composed have been described in detail in a former part of our work. Now the question arises whether for these