. Great captains : a course of six lectures showing the influence on the art of war of the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon. /fCr Battu or You must note that demoralization always plays animmense part in battle. The Old Dessauer capped allbattle-tactics with his : Wenn Du gehst nicht zuriick, sogeht der Feind zuriick I (If you dont fall back, why,the enemy will fall back.) Whenever a tactical ma-noeuvre unnerves the enemy, it at once transforms hisarmy into a mob. The reason why Picketts charge didnot succeed was that there was no element of d
. Great captains : a course of six lectures showing the influence on the art of war of the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon. /fCr Battu or You must note that demoralization always plays animmense part in battle. The Old Dessauer capped allbattle-tactics with his : Wenn Du gehst nicht zuriick, sogeht der Feind zuriick I (If you dont fall back, why,the enemy will fall back.) Whenever a tactical ma-noeuvre unnerves the enemy, it at once transforms hisarmy into a mob. The reason why Picketts charge didnot succeed was that there was no element of demoraliza-tion in the Union ranks. Had there been, Gettysburgmight have become a rebel victory. The Peloponnesian War shows instances of far-seeingstrategy, such as the seizure of Pylos ( 425), whence ALEXANDER. 7 the threat of incursions on Spartas rear obliged her torelax her hold on the throat of Athens. Brasidas was thegeneral who, at this time, came nearest to showing themoral and intellectual combination of the great marches through Thessaly and Illyria and his defeatof Cleon at Amphipolis were admirable. He it was who. ^ .Creei* first marched in a hollow square, with baggage in thecentre. The soldier of greatest use to us preceding Alexanderwas unquestionably Xenophon. After participating inthe defeat of Cyrus tEe Tounger by Artaxerxes, atCunaxa ( 401), in which battle the Greek phalanxhad held its own against twenty times its force, Xeno-phon was chosen to command the rear-guard of thephalanx in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand to the Sea; 8 GREAT CAPTAINS. and it is he who has shown the world what should be thetactics of retreat, — how to command a rear-guard. Nochieftain ever possessed a grander moral ascendant overhis men. More tactical originality has come from the An-abasis than from any dozen other books. For instance,Xenophon describes accurately a charge over bad ground inwhich, so to speak, he broke forward by the right of com-panies, —
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