the volunteers of 1792 and 1793. Condemn the Convention and its decrees. Execrate with just severity the tyrannous rule of the bad men who seized the reins of power amid the terror of the community; yet the fact remains, that the original movement which successfully opposed activity to discipline, and the bold dash of courage to the long training of the serf, was as genuine and patriotic as it was fervent and sudden.

Then sprang to light a new method of war, the foundation of a long series of victories. The enthusiasm of the volunteer-the swift road opened to the soldier's chief prize, military rank-the intelligence of a high class of recruit (of such Moreau was an instance), embracing arms under the pressure of a time ruinous to other professions-these, and supplies of men ever pouring from the crowded depôts, atoned for defaults of drill and lack of matériel. Scarce enough were cavalry and artillery in these early armies of the Revolution, for the Convention found it easier to call for than to create the necessary horses to equip them. But a swifter impulse given to the masses of foot than any army had hitherto known supplied every need. These half-drilled volunteers, in their columns, moved as much more rapidly than the German lines, as those dull copies of the battalions of Frederick outran the unwieldy order of battle which his tactics superseded. In vain did the French printed instructions (quoted in the recent treatise of the veteran writer Jomini) provide that 'the deployed order should be the only one used in battle, columns being reserved for partial combats, such as the attack of isolated posts, villages, &c. ;'

the Republican generals soon found that their troops, little practised on parade, could only be moved to assault by a general use of the system of columns. And since the latter were too conspicuous as marks to be thrust unaided within the enemy's reach, the addition was made at the same time of numerous skirmishers thrown out along the front to force back the hostile lines by a biting fire from every available cover, being in fact a direct copy, as far as circumstances allowed, of that harassing system of the American riflemen which their best officers had seen employed. with such success in the campaigns of Washington and Lafayette. Thus were born the new Tactics, soon brought to perfection by wars carried on upon the broken ground which forms much of the frontier of France, and found upon trial to be everywhere the most formidable means of attack. Add to them the high average intelligence of the French soldier, and the instrument was prepared wherewith Napoleon was destined to overthrow successive combinations of the most formidable armies of Europe.

Let those who have watched the care and training which are required in order to perfect the deployed movements of a single regiment, to enable it whilst thus extended to take a new position, or even to change its front, conceive such manoeuvring applied to forty or fifty battalions at a time. Not under the most favourable circumstances could the machine move otherwise than with laborious slowness; and to attempt the outflanking of an enemy, or the occupation of a new position by surprise, must have been a task beyond the powers of any but a Frederick matched against a Frederick's slow opponents. Yet

this was the system by which the Republican armies were to be vanquished and the Republic subdued! Against it dashed the new audacious tacticians, moving their forces in a somewhat disjointed manner indeed, but with a rapidity hitherto wholly unknown; turning, dividing, distracting their enemies, and appearing at such wholly unexpected points, to renew their often baffled assaults, that their repulse appeared but as a feint to the slow defenders of the position they attacked. In perfectly open and level ground the enemy's infantry would have been their match and his cavalry their destruction; but such parade warfare seldom occurs even in Europe, and the allied generals felt their own manoeuvring (which assumed the foe to be always exactly in their front) to be quite inadequate to the new occasions which arose.

Not that the Republican levies met with much continued success in their earliest campaigns. On the contrary, their ill-discipline exposed them to some very severe checks. In the face of cavalry, especially, these improvised soldiers behaved at first with such disorder as has been only repeated since in the defeats of the Federal volunteers at the commencement of the late American war. The teachings of necessity and a certain natural quickness soon overcame this defect, by instructing them in the art of using the advantages of cover more than had ever been done before. Placed behind ravines, hedges, or the long rows of trees which so often take the place of enclosures in continental countries, they soon found themselves more than a match for the well-trained squadrons led against them; whilst their first panics gave them a strange advantage by inducing a care

lessness on the part of the enemy's horse which often did away with his original superiority. The commanders of the allied infantry were, in general, even less fortunate. Envious of the increased rapidity shown by their foe, they introduced a system of movement by detached columns-not masses like those of the French, but mere fractions of their old battle order, marching at open distance as though ready to deploy at the word, and disconnected with one another. This innovation broke up the solidity of the old German line without giving any compensation for its loss. The battles of the early years of the Revolution were fought in a fragmentary way, the contending forces being thrown over an extent of ground totally disproportioned to that they were competent to hold; and every action was reduced to a series of partial combats carried on without regard to unity or general plan, with results beyond the control or even the immediate knowledge of the commander-in-chief. Of this we have a very striking instance in the victory of the French in the year 1794 at Fleurus, when the Allies retired on the news of the fall of Charleroi. For three days they had vainly advanced towards the place with straggling columns directed on so many different points of a vast semicircular front, as to make no general progress in spite of partial successes at each extremity. The change wrought by the improved tactics which were to be hereafter learnt by the Germans in bitter

1 The Archduke Charles, in his 'History of the Campaign of 1796,' complains bitterly of the error of the Austrian cavalry in repeatedly following the enemy's skirmishers into broken ground, thus throwing away all the advantages of speed; and he attributes this vice to their former easy successes.

lessons, was finely illustrated on this very ground twenty years later, when Blucher drew up on a front of three miles, for his battle at Ligny, a force scarcely less than that which Coburg had dispersed over thirteen !

Then came a new era in warfare. The world was to be made acquainted with such a change in Strategy, the art which rules the greater combinations of war, as should for a time throw altogether into the shade the study of mere tactics. The genius of the young prince Charles, improved by observation in the field, and by a year's devotion to study in retirement,' wrought in Germany in 1796 wonders such as were only eclipsed by the still greater exploits of Napoleon, who at that very time began his career of conquest by overrunning the fair plains of Italy. Neither the discipline nor the spirit of the Austrian troops can claim the merit due to the Archduke's campaign in the former theatre, for they failed to hold the ground for an hour against his brilliant rival on the other side of the Alps. Yet was Charles's triumph over the then famous generals of the Directory, Moreau and Jourdan, hardly less remarkable than that of Bonaparte over the feeble veterans whom he overthrew in Lombardy and Venetia. The servile manner in which our military historians follow those of the Imperial school makes the story of Bonaparte's victories of 1796 familiar enough. Yet had it not been for the sudden inspi

1 During the year 1795 the Archduke was kept from the armies by illness contracted in the field; and it is recorded that he gave his leisure solely to the study of theory. The early age (eighteen) at which he had taken up arms had hitherto deprived him of the opportunity.