their impetuous enthusiasm pervading the smaller States, and shaking the pettier thrones of Germany into readiness to buy safety at his price. He had need of them in Austria to paralyse her efforts, after the disasters of 1866, towards fusing her broken empire into a new form of power. He had need of them even to counteract the zeal of their brother-democrats in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, who would have treated Germany but as one province of the great democratic empire of the future. He has won them for the time to his cause. They have followed the Prussian standard with ardour. They have learnt to cheer the Prussian monarch whom they once regarded as absolutism incarnate. The fusion of their principles into the calm blood of Northern Germany has given to it that glow of patriotism which roused the whole country as one man against France in the genuine spirit of warlike fervour. And now they have seen brought into actual practice in the field that 'moral strength and united spirit' which the editor of the Military Memorial' in 1860 longed for to give safety to his country; although the 'free institutions and political develop'ment' which he coupled with them, the soldiers that should think, and the officers who should have no gulf of etiquette between them and the private,' remain as much a dream as though the history of the past ten years were still to be written.

To pass to the Memorial' itself. Prince Frederic Charles, when yet a young soldier and having served but in one petty civil war, had the courage and discernment to examine and set in the clearest light those leading principles of the French military service which in the war of 1859, as in former periods of its success, had made it the envy and admiration of other continental armies. A person,' he says, 'who supposes that the French fight in an irregular and disorderly way, like the 'hordes of Attila, is as much mistaken as one who expects to 'find in them an adversary subjected to the strict rules of 'military art. We must look for the truth between these two 'extremes.' And he goes on to explain that the recent successes of the French at Magenta and Solferino were due, not so much to special tactical discoveries, as to certain very simple principles put into practice by them in all times of war, from the Revolutionary epoch downwards. The most essential of these might be thrown, the Prince asserts, into a few broad rules; and his statement of these may be abbreviated as follows.

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form of tactics, but rely upon their general knowledge of the profession. In the next, the private, as well as the general, is familiarised with the axiom that moral force is more important than physical. Hence the French soldier may say approvingly of his leaders, We have no tacticians,' judging of them not by their talent for manoeuvring, but by their gift of impressing their men with the needful impulse, and of intimidating the enemy by putting on a bold front. A third French principle has been to keep in close order when opposed to irregular enemies as in Africa, but in a looser form when fighting overdrilled soldiers like the Austrians or Russians. A fourth, and one of the most essential, is never to make a merely passive defence, but constantly to act on the offensive. This was held by Marshal Bugeaud in particular to be vital to the efficiency of the French soldier. A fifth-and the mention of it must have surprised many military students-is to use the skirmishing order only as a make-shift, and not as a vital part of an attack. The sixth and last is to surprise and overcome the enemy by the vehemence of that first fiery assault for which the nation had been famed from the time of Cæsar downwards. Connected with this of necessity, the Prince found that rapidity of manoeuvring to which the French only, of all European armies, were at that time accustomed. The Prince adds to these reflections, that the French, as an inevitable consequence of their looser system, make a more disorderly retreat than any other army; whilst in the attack or defence of a strong place, on the contrary, they are more methodical than their neighbours. Finally, he remarks, before closing his observations, the French use in their attack columns of the most varied nature, and dispose them in every sort of way, so as to keep back a great part of their troops ready to defend their flanks at need. And this plan, the Prince suddenly concludes, is no more than an imitation of 'the oblique order' of Frederic the Great.

'I can assure you positively,' are his words, 'that in this they have only imitated him. It is the same with the majority of the principles of which I have spoken; they are more or less in conformity with true tactics; but in place of being of French origin they have been formerly employed by our generals with greater or less success. It rests, then, with each of us to put them in practice in future, which will be the easier for us the more we are convinced of their importance. History is there to prove to us that these principles are not the exclusive privilege of the French, nor the immediate result of their national character. May we only ponder this while there is still time.

'Now, if Prussia puts to herself this haughty question, What will be our fate in a war with France? We can conquer her, I shall

answer; and we shall conquer her with a certain blow, if we know how to detach ourselves, in time of war, from the routine of the drill ground, the demands of regulations, and from our system of skirmishers. Here is the difficulty, this is my only anxiety. The motive power which these forces give is insufficient to maintain discipline, to bring the soldiers up to the enemy, and to make them sustain their fire. Thank God we have others, and we shall know how to bring them to our aid.'

So decisive a condemnation of the army of which the Prince was already deemed one of the ornaments, was not to be treated as mere idle rhapsody. Criticisms, objections, and answers followed, until the Prince, in deliberately closing the discussion, declared specifically, that there were three con'ditions to be observed at once, in order to render the Prussian 'army capable of conquering that of France.

(1.) To develope the military qualities of each individual 'soldier earnestly in time of peace. (2.) To give the army leaders who have a thorough acquaintance with the three principal arms. (3.) To oppose to the French a more varied and elastic form of tactics.'

To ask for a new system without showing the way to what was needed would have been unworthy of the care with which the Prince had studied his subject. He laid down, therefore, distinctly the chief maxims which in his view should regulate the tactics of the future army of Prussia. Skirmishers should be employed by columns of companies, so as to increase the mobility of the infantry and give them freer fields of action. The troops generally should be disposed in depth rather than breadth, so as to be more ready for flank movements, and expose less front to the enemy's fire; and they should support their skirmishers in echelon rather than in square, as the form more appropriate to the quick movements which the former were to make.

In this Essay, and the discussion which followed, were the germs of a mechanical transformation of the whole Prussian service as great as that which has been wrought in the last few years in the model of its constitution. The famous Tactical Instructions of 1861' (of which Sir C. Staveley has just given us a faithful translation) laid down the principles by which the whole duty of a Prussian army and its component parts were in future to be guided. Those who would study with advantage the best system yet devised for the conduct of Advance and Rear guards, Outposts and Bivouacs-those who would see for themselves the theory on which the Prussians execute their great practice-manoeuvres in peace time, and how

VOL. CXXXII. NO. CCLXX.

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