it would be a double exterior line, and the enemy's a double interior, if the latter divided his forces into two masses, giving them such directions as to enable him to concentrate all his forces before the two armies first referred to could
Bulow would have been more nearly right had he asserted that an army on its own soil is less dependent on its primitive line of operations than when on foreign ground; for it finds in every direction points of support and some of the advantages which are sought for in the establishment of lines of operations; it may even lose its line of operations without incurring great danger; but that is no reason why it has no line of operations.
OBSERVATIONS UPON THE LINES OF OPERATIONS IN THE WARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
At the beginning of this terrible and ever-varying struggle, Prussia and Austria were the only avowed enemies of France, and Italy was included in the theater of war only for purposes of reciprocal observation, it being too remote for decisive enterprises in view of the end proposed. The real theater extended from Huningue to Dunkirk, and comprised three zones of operations,—the first reaching along the Rhine from Huningue to Landau, and thence to the Moselle; the center consisting of the interval between the Meuse and Moselle; the third and left was the frontier from Givet to Dunkirk.
When France declared war, in April, 1792, her intention was to prevent a union of her enemies; and she had then one hundred thousand men in the zones just described, while Austria had but thirty-five thousand in Belgium. It is quite impossible to understand why the French did not conquer this country, when no effectual resistance could have been made. Four months intervened between the declaration of war and the