The treatise before us elucidates the general principles of strategy and tactics, and applies them to the different classes of field—operations, without entering into details, or describing the minor manœuvres, which belong more appropriately to another class of works.
The first chapter treats of bases and lines of operations, strategic points, plans of offensive and defensive campaigns, and strategical operations. Under the last head are embraced forward movements and retreats, diversions, (combined movements and detachments,) the pursuit of a defeated enemy, and the holding of a conquered country. The great lesson of the chapter, prominent in almost every paragraph, is the necessity of concentration. Divergent marches, scattering of forces, unless ample facilities are secured for a speedy rally, when necessary, to a common point, are among the most fruitful sources of disaster.
The organization of armies next receives attention. The explanation of the composition of the army, its divisions and subdivisions, and the adjustment of the relative proportions of the different classes of troops, is brief and lucid. In the article on the formation of troops the relative merits of formation in two ranks or three are discussed at length.
Under the head of marches and manœuvres are considered the rules by which these movements should be conducted. These apply to the adjustment of the columns, and the division, when necessary, of the forces upon different roads in order to facilitate progress and make subsistence more easy, the detailing of scouts and advance and rear guards, etc. The adaptation of these rules to forward movements and battles leads to a description of the order of march of the division, the precautions to be observed in the passage of defiles, bridges, woods, and rivers, and when the column has arrived in the presence of the enemy, and the conduct of flank marches, marches in retreat, and the simultaneous movement of several columns. The importance of precautions against surprise, of preserving the mobility of the columns, and of providing for concentration on short notice whenever it may be necessary, is not lost sight of, but is dwelt upon with great frequency. But military rules are not more inflexible than other human rules. Though they are based upon fixed principles, cases may, and do, arise when they cannot be strictly adhered to,—sometimes when they ought not to be. When should they be strictly observed? When and how far is it prudent to depart from them? "These questions," says General Dufour, "admit of no answers. Circumstances, which are always different, must decide in each particular case that arises. Here is the place for a general to show his ability. The military art would not be so difficult in practice, and those who have become so distinguished in it would not have acquired their renown, had it been a thing of invariable rules. To be really a great general, a man must have great tact and discernment in order to adopt the best plan in each case as it presents itself; he must have a ready coup d'oeil, so as to do the right thing at the right time and place; for what is excellent one day may be very injurious the next. The plans of a great captain seem like inspirations, so rapid are the operations of the mind from which they proceed: notwithstanding this, everything is taken into account and weighed; each circumstance is appreciated and properly estimated; objects which escape entirely the observation of ordinary minds may to him seem so important as to become the principal means of inducing him to pursue a particular course. As a necessary consequence, a deliberative council is a poor director of the operations of a campaign. As another consequence, no mere theorizer can be a great general."
Battles, on which the fortune of the campaign must turn at last, receive a large share of attention. The decision of the question as to when they shall be fought, though sometimes admitting of no choice, is more often, with a skilful general, a matter of pure calculation, depending upon fixed principles, which General Dufour recites in a few brief, but suggestive sentences. His directions for the disposition and manoeuvres of the forces in both offensive and defensive battles are quite complete, though the thousand varying circumstances by which these may be modified, and which render it impossible for one battle to be a copy of another, can only be hinted at. Among the elements of a battle here considered are the disposition of the forces, the manner of bringing on and conducting the engagement, the manœuvres to change position on the field, bringing on reinforcements, seizing all advantages that may offer, and the manner of conducting pursuit or retreat. The attack and defence of mountains and rivers, of redoubts, houses, and villages, covering a siege, infantry, cavalry, and artillery combats and reconnoissances, each involve special principles, and are treated separately. In the course of the article on battles, some general observations are introduced on conducting manœuvres so as to insure promptness, security, and precision. The conduct of topographical reconnoissances is well explained by means of a map of a supposed district of country, with marked features, which is to be examined. On this the course of the reconnoitring party, as it goes over the whole, is traced step by step, and fully explained in the letter-press. In the concluding chapter the author treats of convoys, ambuscades, advance posts, the laying-out of camps, and giving rest to troops.
Such are the outlines of a subject which General Dufour has handled in a masterly manner. His maxims are practical in their bearing, they commend themselves to our common sense as sound in principle, and are such as have received the indorsement of the best authorities. His style is clear and comprehensive; nothing superfluous is inserted, nothing need be added to make the subject more clear. The illustrations, which are given wherever they are needed, are simple and clear; the explanations are sufficient. This work will be a valuable manual to soldiers, and students will find it an excellent text-book. We hail it as an important addition to our growing military literature.
Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as modified by Human Action. By GEORGE P. MARSH. New York: Charles Scribner. 8vo. pp. 560.
The student of Physical Geography must not expect to find in this massive book a systematic exposition of the science in the manner of Guyot and the French and German geographers; nor must he expect to see worked out on its pages the elaborate application of Geography to History, such as one day will be done, and such as was attempted, though with results of varied value and certainty, by the eloquent and plausible Buckle; but he will find an unexpected development of man's dominion over the world he inhabits. Mr. Marsh takes his readers very much by surprise; for few are aware, we apprehend, that in the course of his wandering life, and while prosecuting his eminent philological studies, he has made leisure enough to survey the natural sciences with critical exactness, pursue an extended course of inquiry into physical phenomena, note and digest the results of Italian, Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, and American naturalists, ply every guide and ploughman, every driver and forester, every fisherman and miner, every lumberman and carpenter, for the results which men attain by observing within the narrow circle of their occupation,—and weave all into a copious work which subordinates all results to a grand psychological law, the mastery of man's mind over the world it calls its home.
The work which we are noticing aspires to and rightly claims a foremost place among the literary productions of America, despite a certain homely flavor and a certain unpretending way which its author has of saying things which are really great and fine. The main thought illustrated is not new, but it is brought out so forcibly, and illustrated by such encyclopedic learning, that it has the power of novelty. Mr. Marsh shows, as many before him have done, that man is now using the organic and inorganic forms of the earth in a manner so subsidiary to the might of his intellect and his will, that such obstacles as mountains and seas, which used to impede him hopelessly, now are his auxiliaries; but he does more than this: he demonstrates the destructive and annihilating sway of man over the world in the past and in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by the improvident destructiveness of man to desolation and desert, he enters into a thorough study of the fact, that, no sooner does man recede from the barbaric state than he commences a career of destructiveness, cutting off, in a manner reckless and criminally wasteful, forests, the lives of quadrupeds, birds, insects, and in short every living thing excepting the few domestic animals which follow him and serve him for companionship or for food. Mr. Marsh shows, with more than prophetic insight, with the mathematical logic of facts, that, unless compensations far more general and adequate than have yet been devised are provided, the destructive propensities of civilized man will convert the world into a waste. Some of our readers have paused thoughtfully over that chapter in "Les Misérables" which deals so grimly with the sewerage of cities, and details with the faithfulness of an historian the exhausting demands of those conduits which carry untold millions to the sea, and waste that aliment of impoverished soils which not all the science of the age has found it possible to restore; but Mr. Marsh, not drawing single pictures with so strong lines, spreads a broader canvas, and compels his reader to equal thoughtfulness. To quote but one instance is enough. We have in America thus far escaped, and as singularly as fortunately, the importation of the wheat-midge which has been the scourge of the grain-fields of Europe: it will, doubtless, some time be a passenger on our Atlantic ships or steamers; it will commence its work; and then man has the task of importing its natural antagonists, of promoting their spread, and so of compensating the evil. The work which we are noticing abundantly shows, that, if man were not in the world, the natural compensations which the Divine Being has introduced would produce perfect harmony in all things; that man, from his first stroke at a tree, his first slaying of a beast or bird, introduces an element of disorder which he can compensate only after civilization has reached a height of which we yet know nothing, and of which our present civilization gives us but the suggestion.
To those who may not care to master the philosophy of "Man and Nature," the book presents great attractions in the fund of new and entertaining knowledge given in the text, and yet more largely in the foot-notes. Many have waded through Mr. Buckle's two volumes a second time for the purpose of gleaning his facts and gathering up in the easiest way the latest word in science and literature. Mr. Marsh spreads a homelier table, but one just as varied and hearty. Never in the course of our miscellaneous reading have we met an equal store of fresh facts. As hinted above, they are gathered from every source: the experience of the maple-sugar maker in Vermont is quoted side by side with the testimony of the European scholar. The reader will be amazed that there are so many common things in the world of which he has never heard, and that they have so large and fruitful an influence over the world's progress.