“You are a brave man, captain; but I fear not much of a strategist.”
Strategy was the god of this poor military simpleton, as it was of his favourite pupil, McClellan. It was the same sort of strategy that caused the rout at Bull’s Run, and the consequent prolongation of the American civil war. But for it the army of the North might have stacked arms in the streets of Richmond in three weeks after leaving Washington, and the long sanguinary strife have been shunned.
Well do I remember both preceptor and pupil. There was bad management in Virginia; exactly what I should have expected from my experience of their tactics in Mexico. In our campaign through the country of the Aztecs the latter was scarcely known, or only as a smart drill master. Nor would he ever after have been heard of, but for the patronage of his superannuated Chief—the “Grand Strategist,” as he was desirous of being deemed.
The last remark of the general gave me the cue to flatter him.
In hopes of obtaining my end, I availed myself of the opportunity.
“General!” I said, with a look of real reverence, “I am aware there will not appear much strategy in what I propose—at least to you, who are capable of grand combinations. My idea is of the simplest.”
“Well, let us hear it, captain. Perhaps it may show better in detail. A great deal depends upon that. An army brought into the field en masse—as Napoleon would say—with its infantry here and its artillery there, and the cavalry scattered over the ground, is like a machine without screws. It must soon fall to pieces. I never move my battalions in that way. If I had—”
“If you had, general,” I meekly interposed, seeing that he had made a pause, “you wouldn’t have been here now, as you are—conqueror of the capital of Mexico.”
“You are right, captain; quite right!” rejoined he, evidently beginning to like me, “Quite right, sir. And don’t you think that Cortez’s campaign was inferior to that which I—I—have had the honour of planning; and of conducting, Sir—conducting?”
“A mere skirmish to it.”