of the war a Lieutenant-Colonel; and no sooner was it determined to reform the educational department of the army, than his fitness to take part in that important work was recognised. In looking about for officers qualified to instruct their comrades, the eye of the Duke of Cambridge fell at once upon him, and he became the First Professor of Military History and Tactics in the New Staff School or College at Sandhurst. It was the position which, above all others, in time of peace, recommended itself to his tastes and habits. Master already of his subject as a whole, he applied himself forthwith to consider it in detail, and preparing a course of lectures for the pupils whom it became his duty to educate, he got together at the same time materials for the volume now on our table. These details respecting the author we have been induced to give for two reasons. First, facts such as are here stated fully justify Colonel Hamley, if any justification be needed, in standing out as the teacher of an art, which circumstances enabled him to study both in the closet and in the field. And next, the fact that his treatise has arisen out of a series of lectures delivered at different times and to different audiences, will account for the tendency here and there exhibited to run into repetition; which, however necessary it may be-and we know that it is necessary to impress important truths on the attention of listeners, is felt by the general reader to detract from, rather than to add to, the merits of a work of this nature. Indeed, we are inclined to believe that when he comes to prepare a new edition-and we anticipate that the necessity of so doing is not very remote-the gallant author will himself perceive that its value will be enhanced, rather than diminished, by a little judicious curtailment.

Nobody with the works of Jomini, the Archduke Charles, and Marshal Marmont before him can pretend to say anything that is absolutely new in explanation of the great principles on which the art of war is founded. Jomini in particular may be said to have exhausted the subject; yet Jomini, for obvious reasons, neglects not a few of the points which both the soldier studying his profession, and the civilian who reads for general instruction and amusement, desire to have specially brought before them. His matter is all excellent, his arrangement of it is generally defective. He is a voluminous and a diffuse writer, who, trying to combine the two characters of a military teacher and a military historian, not unfrequently fails in both. What he says as a historian is not enough for a historian to have said, what he demonstrates as a teacher he demonstrates imperfectly. Besides, his rule and his example are rarely if ever enunciated connectedly. He first presents us with a narrative of events, and

by

by and by supplements it with a set of rules, which, like Euclid's Axioms, we must accept as facts to be admitted, not as problems to be proved. The Archduke Charles, on the other hand, is the historian of certain wars, which he describes with accuracy and criticizes freely. He does not pretend to draw, from either his own story or his own conclusions, conclusions applicable to other cases. And as to Marmont, he dogmatizes, and that is all. It is not so with Colonel Hamley, who, with great skill, steers clear of the defects into which his predecessors ran. His object is—and he attains it to mix example with precept; and so by reasoning based on fact to carry us on with him, step by step as he advances, till we come to understand not only whence it befel that in the Salamanca campaign Marmont failed and Wellington succeeded, but the reasons why the same incidents occurring again, the same results will surely follow. And this, in point of fact, is the great charm and merit of his work. It is composed upon a plan which has all the novelty about it to which any work dealing with a subject not new can attain. And hence it is that we venture to predict concerning it that it will not only find many readers in other than military circles here, but that it will become a text-book in every school where the art of war is studied, both in England and elsewhere.

Colonel Hamley distributes his Treatise into six parts, each of which is sub-divided into chapters, the latter, we presume, coinciding in matter and length with the Lectures in which they severally originated. The first part treats of 'The Conditions of Modern War,' a term which the author adopts, because he purposely declines to waste his own and his reader's time with discussing campaigns, or the incidents connected with them, from which nothing is now to be learned. After stating in a few introductory pages the objects of his treatise, and the manner in which it is proposed to effect them, he points out certain conditions which are indispensable in his opinion to any measure of success, however moderate, in war as it is now conducted. The first of these is, that a General shall have at his disposal a force disciplined and organized up to the highest attainable point of perfection. No doubt, under particular circumstances,-in rugged mountains and pathless forests, untrained warriors may meet disciplined troops on favourable terms. But in all countries which admit of the movements of great bodies, a regular army is immeasurably superior to an armed population. For discipline by no means incapacitates individual men from any enterprise or any incident in a campaign. On the contrary, it is but the union in the same persons of very different qualities, each an important element in war. It means cohesion of the units and suppleness

of

of the mass-it means increased firmness and increased flexibility-it means the most efficient combination of many and various parts for a common end.'

Accepting this point as settled, we are next led to consider 'the necessity of a good starting point;' in other words, it is shown that to rush into war without first of all establishing a base and making adequate provision for the supply of the many wants to which all armies are liable, is to ensure discomfiture. It was the neglect of these precautions which in feudal times rendered hostilities at once so profitless to the troops engaged and so disastrous to the countries over which they spread. The first expedition of Edward III. against the Scots, as Froissart describes it, offers an apt illustration of the truth which we are discussing. From his rendezvous at Durham the King crossed the Tyne to seek the enemy. He was then between Newcastle and Carlisle, and only a few hours' journey from either town, yet his army fell

at once into distress :

'Messengers were sent to Newcastle to make proclamation in the King's name that whoever wished to get money he had only to bring provisions, wine, &c., for which he should be instantly paid, and a safe conduct granted him. . . . . Next day the messengers which the Lords had sent for provisions returned about noon with what they had been able to procure for them and their households; but it was not much and with them came people of the country to take advantage of the situation of the army, and brought with them on mules and small horses bread badly baked in baskets, and poor thin wine in large barrels, and other kinds of provisions to sell, with which the army was tolerably refreshed and their discontent appeased. . . . . . Thus they had remained for three days and three nights without bread, wine, candles, oats, or any other forage; and they were afterwards for four days obliged to buy badly-baked bread at the price of sixpence the loaf, which was not worth more than a penny, and a gallon of wine for six groats scarcely worth sixpence. Hunger, however, was still felt in the camp notwithstanding this supply; and frequent quarrels happened from their tearing the meat out of each other's hands.'

6

The English, be it observed, were all the while in their own country. It fared still worse with them as soon as they entered that of the enemy. An advance of twenty miles brought them in presence of the Scots, who occupied a commanding position. The intention of the English lords,' says the Chronicle,'' was to keep the Scots besieged there; for as they could not well fightwith them they hoped to starve them. They knew from the prisoners that they had neither bread, wine, salt, nor other provisions except cattle, which they had seized in the country.' The result was that the Scots decamped, by which time the English

were

were in such a plight, that instead of pursuing they turned homeward the same day. They halted in a beautiful meadow where there was plenty of forage for their horses, and much need was there of it, for they were so weakened by famine that they could scarce move,'

Equally disastrous to victors as well as to vanquished were the campaigns of the Black Prince in Auvergne and Navarre, the troops eating up everything as they advanced, and leaving only a desert through which to return. Indeed feudal wars could not well be conducted on any other principle; for an army was then but an assemblage of barons, knights, and squires, with their retainers, who brought with them to the rendezvous only supplies enough to serve them on the road, and looked to the country which they were about to invade not only for subsistence, but for plunder. Compare this state of things with the demands of modern war, and make your estimate of what these latter are after reading some only of the details which are given in the French official account of the campaigns of 1859 in Italy:—

On the 1st of February, 1859, France could produce in arms, without any effort more than usual, 640,000 men, a numerical establishment which, besides providing troops for home service, maintained the army of Italy, from the time of the battle of Magenta to the time of the battle of Solferino, at the force of about 130,000 men. Of these about 10,000 were cavalry, and the force of field artillery was, at various epochs, from 312 to 400 guns. These guns, nearly all rifled, carried with them ammunition for a great battle. Every corps of the army was accompanied by 110 carriages, containing a second supply of ammunition for artillery and infantry. Finally, a grand park of 439 carriages, organised at Lyons, carried fresh supplies to St. Jean de Maurienne, from whence artillery horses drew them over Mount Cenis to Susa.

The arsenals of France were in full operation, converting the old Napoleon gun into a rifled weapon. The whole army was supplied with rifled muskets. Besides the field artillery, 200 guns and 70 mortars were provided for the siege of the Italian fortresses, each supplied, on the average, with 900 rounds of ammunition.

Tents were provided to contain nearly a million of men-almost enough to house the population of Paris, and covering an area much greater than the city.

For the necessary supplies of forage and grain the French markets were exhausted, and the vast total was completed by purchases in other countries. The civil bakeries of France were charged with the supply of the troops in the interior, and the Government establishments were thus free to devote all their resources to providing bread for the army of Italy, and to amassing reserves for its future subsistence. But these conversions could not take place in a moment; and to give time for the organisation of supplies, provisions for

100,000

100,000 men and 10,000 horses for twenty days were collected at various towns in Piedmont.

• Thus far, then, the French soldiery might survey with great satisfaction the enormous provision made for its comfort and efficiency. But there is another set of items in the account, very interesting and significant, though by no means equally cheering to contemplate. For instance, 363,000 kilogrammes of lint were provided, being 10,000 dressings a day for more than three months. About 1000 cases of surgical instruments also figured gravely in the list. Every battalion was followed by a mule bearing surgical instruments and dressings for 200 wounded. Every division, besides instruments, was provided with 2000 dressings. In view of ulterior wants, we are told, there was a reserve of lint and bandages representing 2,800,000 dressings. The medical arrangements comprehended everything necessary for 15,000 sick for three months. Besides the field hospitals which first received the wounded and diseased, military and civil establishments were organised in the interior of France to relieve the army of such incumbrances. Such are some of the colours used in painting some of the gloomier pictures that hang in the temple of Fame, where the bright eye of glory is covered with a patch, and where the exulting tread of conquest is exchanged for a painful hobble upon wooden legs.'

These are very striking details, illustrating as they do facts to which the readers of military operations seldom pay attention, and showing on what a scale one great nation must prepare for the contest on which it proposes to enter or expects to be engaged with another. They bring before us at the same time, vividly and painfully, the source of those errors and perplexities by which all Governments and Generals, and especially English, are liable at the commencement of a war to be beset. For to send forth an army into the field is like sending forth a city equal to the capital of a great state-to transport it, with all its means of food and shelter, from place to place, at uncertain times and in unforeseen directions, and to have it all the time entirely dependent on the country from which it set forth for the maintenance of its numbers and the supply of its daily wants.

Having explained all this, and shown by extracts from his correspondence, how often and how severely the Duke of Wellington suffered from the neglect of the Governments which he served, Colonel Hamley proceeds to point out that as its line of magazines forms the base from which an army must operate, so it is indispensable to a sustained and dubious enterprise that the roads should be good roads-not mere byways, soft and unsound-by which an army as it moves away from its base is to communicate with its supplies. This dictum in the art of war he illustrates by reference to numerous examples of the difficulties under which armies