To this view of the relative connection of results in war, which may be regarded as extreme, stands opposed another extreme, according to which war is composed of single independent results, in which, as in any number of games played, the preceding has no influence on the next following; everything here, therefore, depends only on the sum total of the results, and we can lay up each single one like a counter at play.
Just as the first kind of view derives its truth from the nature of things, so we find that of the second in history. There are cases without number in which a small moderate advantage might have been gained without any very onerous condition being attached to it. The more the element of war is modified the more common these cases become; but as little as the first of the views now imagined was ever completely realised in any war, just as little is there any war in which the last suits in all respects, and the first can be dispensed with.
If we keep to the first of these supposed views, we must perceive the necessity of every war being looked upon as a whole from the very commencement, and that at the very first step forwards, the commander should have in his eye the object to which every line must converge.
If we admit the second view, then subordinate advantages may be pursued on their own account, and the rest left to subsequent events.
As neither of these forms of conception is entirely without result, therefore theory cannot dispense with either. But it makes this difference in the use of them, that it requires the first to be laid as a fundamental idea at the root of everything, and that the latter shall only be used as a modification which is justified by circumstances.
If Frederick the Great in the years 1742, 1744, 1757, and 1758, thrust out from Silesia and Saxony a fresh offensive point into the Austrian Empire, which he knew very well could not lead to a new and durable conquest like that of Silesia and Saxony, it was done not with a view to