The artillery is developing as a means of breaking the
infantry; cavalry for charging them when broken, for pursuit and
scouting. To this day this triple division of forces dominates soldiers'
minds. The mechanical development of warfare has consisted largely in
the development of facilities for enabling or hindering the infantry
to get to close quarters. As that has been made easy or difficult the
offensive or the defensive has predominated.
A history of military method for the last few centuries would be a
record of successive alternate steps in which offensive and defensive
contrivances pull ahead, first one and then the other. Their relative
fluctuations are marked by the varying length of campaigns. From the
very outset we have the ditch and the wall; the fortified place upon a
pass or main road, as a check to the advance. Artillery improves, then
fortification improves. The defensive holds its own for a long period,
wars are mainly siege wars, and for a century before the advent of
Napoleon there are no big successful sweeping invasions, no marches
upon the enemy capital and so on. There were wars of reduction, wars
of annoyance. Napoleon developed the offensive by seizing upon the
enthusiastic infantry of the republic, improving transport and mobile
artillery, using road-making as an aggressive method.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91