“A great captain can only be formed,” says the Archduke Charles, “by
long experience and intense study: neither is his own experience
enough--for whose life is there sufficiently fruitful of events to
render his knowledge universal?” It is, therefore, by augmenting his
information from the stock of others, by appreciating justly the
discoveries of his predecessors, and by taking for his standard of
comparison those great military exploits, in connection with their
political results, in which the history of war abounds, that he can
alone become a great commander.