NOTE.
Ambitious men who, listening only to their passions, arm natives of the same land against each other (under the deceitful pretext of the public good), are still more criminal. For however arbitrary a government, the institutions which have been consolidated by time, are always preferable to civil war, and to that anarchy which the latter is obliged to create for the justification of its crimes.
To be faithful to his sovereign, and to respect the established government, are the first principles which ought to distinguish a soldier and a man of honor.
MAXIM LXXII.
A general-in-chief has no right to shelter his mistakes in war under cover of his sovereign, or of a minister, when these are both distant from the scene of operation, and must consequently be either ill informed or wholly ignorant of the actual state of things.
Hence, it follows, that every general is culpable who undertakes the execution of a plan which he considers faulty. It is his duty to represent his reasons, to insist upon a change of plan, in short, to give in his resignation, rather than allow himself to be made the instrument of his army’s ruin. Every general-in-chief who fights a battle in consequence of superior orders, with the certainty of losing it, is equally blamable.
In this last-mentioned case, the general ought to refuse obedience; because a blind obedience is due only to a military command given by a superior present on the spot at the moment of action. Being in possession of the real state of things, the superior has it then in his power to afford the necessary explanations to the person who executes his orders.
But supposing a general-in-chief to receive positive order from his sovereign, directing him to fight a battle, with the further injunction, to yield to his adversary, and allow himself to be defeated—ought he to obey it? No. If the general should be able to comprehend the meaning or utility of such an order, he should execute it; otherwise he should refuse to obey it.