Wars of Frederick the Great. 8i

Great leaders, such as Prince Eugene and Marlborough,
fully understood both courses, but in long successions of bat-
tles in Louis XIV.'s time they stood alone in their art and
tactical genius. The others adhered more and more, as time
went on, to the hard-and-fast rules of the game — a proceed-
ing which, in case of disaster, relieved them of personal
responsibility.
"Thus the tactical science of the epoch had on the whole
evolved the form best suited to the characteristics of armies
of the period and their weapons — namely, the closed line as
principal supporter of the fire-fight, but the form had tended
towards solidification, and showed itself rigid and incapable
of adaptation to circumstances. A false conception of the
condition on which success depended had led the minds of
tacticians of the day astray in a search after the unattain-
able — namely, a normal form of action equally adaptable to
all conditions. What in the hands of the masters was 'art'
in the highest form, in the hands of their disciples became
pure 'rule of thumb' — a characteristic tendency of the time
which will be found to repeat itself also in the strategy of the
same period." And if one were writing a history of the
tactical decadence in the England of the present day, the
position could not be summed up in truer or terser terms.
"The strategy or method of conducting war" — apart
from the influence of the personality of the leaders and the
mental evolution of the troops, the method of conducting
war in all periods — "is conditioned by the politics, the
system of supply, the roads or other lines of communication,
and the recruiting and tactics of the armies employed.
