It must continually be insisted upon in military history, that general actions, however decisive, are but the functions of campaigns; and that campaigns, in their turn, are but the functions of the political energies of the governments whose armies are engaged. The object of a campaign is invariably a political object, and all its military effort is, or should be, subsidiary to that political object. One human community desires to impose upon the future a political condition which another human

To understand the battle of Waterloo it is necessary, more perhaps than in the case of any other great decisive action, to read it strategically: that is, to regard the final struggle of Sunday the 18th of June as only the climax of certain general movements, the first phase of which was the concentration of the French Army of the North, and the second the passage of the Sambre river and the attack. This second phase covered four days in time, and in space an advance of nearly forty miles. There

We have seen what the 15th of June was in those four short days of which Waterloo was to be the climax. That Thursday was filled with an advance, rapid and unexpected, against the centre of the allied line, and therefore against that weak point where the two halves of the allied line joined, to wit, Charleroi and the country immediately to the north of that town and bridge. We have further seen that while the unexpectedness of the blow was almost as thorough as Napoleon could have wished, the ra

When the Prussians had concentrated to meet Napoleon at Ligny they had managed to collect, in time for the battle, three out of their four army corps. These three army corps were the First, the Second, and the Third, and, as we have just seen, they were defeated. But, as we have also seen, they were not thoroughly defeated. They were not disorganised, still less were the bulk of them captured and disarmed. Most important of all, they were free to retreat by any road that did not bring them again

In approaching this famous action, it is essential to recapitulate the strategical conditions which determined its result. I have mentioned them at the outset and again in the middle of this study; I must repeat them here. The only chance Napoleon had when he set forward in early June to attack the allies in Belgium, the vanguard of his enemies (who were all Europe), was a chance of surprising that vanguard, of striking in suddenly between its two halves, of thoroughly defeating one or the other

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