MILITARY EXAMPLES
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a false movement.”—Napoleon.
In the year (366 B.C.) the King of Sparta, with an army of 30,000 men marched to the aid of the Mantineans against Thebes. Epaminondas took up a post with his army from whence he equally threatened Mantinea and Sparta. Agesilaus incautiously moved too far towards the coast, whereupon Epaminondas, with 70,000 men precipitated himself upon Lacedaemonia, laying waste the country with fire and sword, all but taking by storm the city of Sparta and showing the women of Lacedaemonia the campfire of an enemy for the first time in six hundred years.
Flaminius advancing incautiously to oppose Hannibal, the latter took up a post with his army from whence he equally threatened the city of Rome and the army of the Consul. In the endeavor to rectify his error, the Roman general committed a worse and was destroyed with his entire army.
At Thapsus, April 6, 46 B.C., Caesar took up a post with his army from whence he equally threatened the Roman army under Scipio and the African army under Juba. Scipio having marched off with his troops to a better camp some miles distant, Caesar attacked and annihilated Juba’s army.
At Pirna, Frederic the Great, captured the Saxon army entire, and at Rossbach, Leuthern and Zorndorf destroyed successively a French, an Austrian and a Russian army merely by occupying a post from whence he equally threatened two or more vital points, awaiting the time when one would become inadequately defended.
Washington won the Revolutionary War merely by occupying a post from whence he equally threatened the British armies at New York and Philadelphia; refusing battle and building up an army of Continental regular troops enlisted for the war and trained by the Baron von Steuben in the system of Frederic the Great.
Bonaparte won at Montenotte, Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli and Austerlitz his most perfect exhibitions of generalship, merely by passively threatening two vital points and in his own words: “By never interrupting an enemy when he is making a false movement.”
Perfection in Mobility is attained whenever the kindred army is able to act unrestrainedly in any and all directions, while the movements of the hostile army are restricted.
NUMBERS
“In warfare the advantage in numbers never is to be despised.”—Von Moltke.
“Arguments avail but little against him whose opinion is voiced by thirty legions.”—Roman Proverb.
“That king who has the most iron is master of those who merely have the more gold.”—Solon.
“It never troubles the wolf how many sheep there are.”—Agesilaus.