accidental, or which might have been avoided.
Others thought that everything was to be explained by the momentary influence of the particular policy of Austria, Prussia, England, etc., with regard to their own interests respectively.
But is it true that the real surprise by which men’s minds were seized, was confined to the conduct of war, and did not rather relate to policy itself? That is, as we should say: did the ill success proceed from the influence of policy on the war, or from a wrong policy itself?
The prodigious effects of the French revolution abroad were evidently brought about much less through new methods and views introduced by the French in the conduct of war than through the changes which it wrought in state-craft and civil administration, in the character of governments, in the condition of the people, etc. That other governments took a mistaken view of all these things; that they endeavoured, with their ordinary means, to hold their own against forces of a novel kind, and overwhelming in strength; all that was a blunder in policy.