In forming the plan of a campaign, it is requisite to foresee everything the enemy may do, and to be prepared with the necessary means to counteract it.
Plans of campaign may be modified ad infinitum according to circumstances—the genius of the general, the character of the troops, and the topography of the theatre of action.
NOTE.
Sometimes we see a hazardous campaign succeed, the plan of which is directly at variance with the principles of the art of war. But this success depends generally on the caprice of fortune, or upon faults committed by the enemy—two things upon which a general must never count.
Sometimes the plan of a campaign, although based on sound principles of war, runs the risk of failing at the outset if opposed by an adversary who acts at first on the defensive, and then, suddenly seizing the initiative, surprises by the skilfulness of his manœuvres.
Such was the fate of the plan laid down by the Aulic council for the campaign of 1796, under the command of Marshal Wurmser. From his great numerical superiority, the marshal had calculated on the entire destruction of the French army, by cutting off its retreat. He founded his operations on the defensive attitude of his adversary, who was posted on the line of the Adige, and had to cover the siege of Mantua, as well as central and lower Italy.
Wurmser, supposing the French army fixed in the neighborhood of Mantua, divided his forces into three corps, which marched separately,