within the
- To take possession of an important point upon the communications of an enemy already retreating.
However great may be the temptation to undertake such operations as those enumerated, it must be constantly borne in mind that they are always secondary in importance, and that the essential thing is to be successful at the decisive points. A multiplication of detachments must, therefore, be avoided. Armies have been destroyed for no other reason than that they were not kept together.
We will here refer to several of these enterprises, to show that their success depends sometimes upon good fortune and sometimes upon the skill of their designer, and that they often fail from faulty execution.
Peter the Great took the first step toward the destruction of Charles XII. by causing the seizure, by a strong detachment, of the famous convoy