If even in tactics there is a difficulty, which all experienced soldiers admit there is, in succeeding in an attack in separate columns where it depends on the perfect connection of the several columns, how much more difficult, or rather how impossible, must this be in strategy, where the separation is so much wider. Therefore, if a constant connection of all parts was a necessary condition of success, a strategic plan of attack of that nature must be at once given up. But on the one hand, it is not left to our option to discard it completely, because circumstances, which we cannot control, may determine in favour of it; on the other hand, even in tactics, this constant close conjunction of all parts at every moment of the execution, is not at all necessary, and it is still less so in strategy. Therefore in strategy we should pay the less attention to this point, and insist the more upon a distinct piece of work being assigned to each part.
We have still to add one important observation: it relates to the proper allotment of parts.
In the year 1793 and 1794 the principal Austrian army was in the Netherlands, that of