NOTE.
The campaign of 1814 in France was skilfully executed upon these principles. Napoleon, with an army inferior in number, an army discouraged by the disastrous retreats of Moscow and of Leipzig, and still more by the presence of the enemy in the French territory, contrived, notwithstanding, to supply his vast inequality of force by the rapidity and combination of his movements. By the success obtained at Champ-Aubert, Montmirail, Montereau, and Rheims, he began to restore the morale of the French army. The numerous recruits of which it was composed, had already acquired that steadiness of which the old regiments afforded them an example, when the capture of Paris, and the astonishing revolution it produced, compelled Napoleon to lay down his arms.
But this consequence resulted rather from the force of circumstances than from any absolute necessity; for Napoleon, by carrying his army to the other side of the Loire, might easily have formed a junction with the armies of the Alps and Pyrenees, and have reappeared on the field of battle at the head of a hundred thousand men. Such a force would have amply sufficed to re-establish the chances of war in his favor; more especially as the armies of the allied sovereigns were obliged to manœuvre upon the French territory with all the strong places of Italy and France in their rear.
MAXIM XI.
To direct operations with lines far removed from each other, and without communications, is to commit a fault which always gives birth to a second. The detached column has only its orders for the first day. Its operations on the following day depend upon what may have happened to the main body. Thus, this column either loses time upon emergency, in waiting for orders, or it will act without them, and at hazard. Let it therefore be held as a principle, that an army should always keep its columns so united as to prevent the enemy from passing between them with impunity. Whenever, for particular reasons, this principle is departed from, the detached corps should be independent in their operations. They should move toward a point fixed upon for their future junction. They should advance without hesitating, and without waiting for fresh orders; and every precaution should be taken to prevent an attack upon them in detail.