_“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a false
movement.”--Napoleon._
In the year (366 B.C.) the King of Sparta, with an army of 30,000 men
marched to the aid of the Mantineans against Thebes. Epaminondas took
up a post with his army from whence he equally threatened Mantinea and
Sparta. Agesilaus incautiously moved too far towards the coast, whereupon
Epaminondas, with 70,000 men precipitated himself upon Lacedaemonia,
laying waste the country with fire and sword, all but taking by storm the
city of Sparta and showing the women of Lacedaemonia the campfire of an
enemy for the first time in six hundred years.
* * * * *
Flaminius advancing incautiously to oppose Hannibal, the latter took up a
post with his army from whence he equally threatened the city of Rome and
the army of the Consul. In the endeavor to rectify his error, the Roman
general committed a worse and was destroyed with his entire army.
* * * * *
At Thapsus, April 6, 46 B.C., Caesar took up a post with his army from
whence he equally threatened the Roman army under Scipio and the African
army under Juba. Scipio having marched off with his troops to a better
camp some miles distant, Caesar attacked and annihilated Juba’s army.
* * * * *
At Pirna, Frederic the Great, captured the Saxon army entire, and at
Rossbach, Leuthern and Zorndorf destroyed successively a French, an
Austrian and a Russian army merely by occupying a post from whence he
equally threatened two or more vital points, awaiting the time when one
would become inadequately defended.
* * * * *
Washington won the Revolutionary War merely by occupying a post from
whence he equally threatened the British armies at New York and
Philadelphia; refusing battle and building up an army of Continental
regular troops enlisted for the war and trained by the Baron von Steuben
in the system of Frederic the Great.
* * * * *
Bonaparte won at Montenotte, Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli and Austerlitz
his most perfect exhibitions of generalship, merely by passively
threatening two vital points and in his own words: “By never interrupting
an enemy when he is making a false movement.”
* * * * *
Perfection in Mobility is attained whenever the kindred army is able to
act unrestrainedly in any and all directions, while the movements of the
hostile army are restricted.