A new Alexander must therefore try the use of a good pen as well as his good sword; and yet he never went very far with his conquests.
But although Louis XIV. had in view to overthrow the balance of power in Europe, and at the end of the seventeenth century had already got to such a point as to trouble himself little about the general feeling of animosity, he carried on war just as it had heretofore been conducted; for while his army was certainly that of the greatest and richest monarch in Europe, in its nature it was just like others.
Plundering and devastating the enemy’s country, which play such an important part with Tartars, with ancient nations, and even in the Middle Ages, were no longer in accordance with the spirit of the age. They were justly looked upon as unnecessary barbarity, which might easily be retaliated, and which did more injury to the enemy’s subjects than the enemy’s government, therefore, produced no effect beyond throwing the nation back many stages in all that relates to peaceful arts and civilisation. War, therefore, confined itself more and more both as regards means and end, to the army itself. The army with its fortresses, and some prepared positions, constituted a State in a State, within which the element of war slowly consumed itself. All Europe rejoiced at its taking this direction, and held it to be the necessary consequence of the spirit of progress. Although there lay in this an error, inasmuch as the progress of the human mind can never lead to what is absurd, can never make five out of twice two, as we have already said, and must again repeat, still upon the whole this change had a beneficial effect for the people; only it is not to be denied that it had a tendency to make war still more an affair of the State, and to separate it still more from the interests of the people. The plan of a war on the part of the state assuming the offensive in those times consisted generally in the conquest of one or other of the enemy’s provinces; the plan of the defender was to prevent this; the particular plan of campaign was to take one or other of the enemy’s fortresses, or to prevent one of our own from being taken; it was