How often is it repeated, although in so doing the speakers betray
their own shortcomings, that strategy is a mere matter of
common-sense? Yet the plain truth is that strategy is not only the
determining factor in civilised warfare, but that, in order to apply
its principles, the soundest common-sense must be most carefully
trained. Of all the sciences connected with war it is the most
difficult. If the names of the great captains, soldiers and sailors,
be recalled, it will be seen that it is to the breadth of their
strategical conceptions rather than to their tactical skill that they
owe their fame. An analysis of the great wars shows that their course
was generally marked by the same vicissitudes. First we have the
great strategist, a Hannibal, or a Napoleon, or a Lee, triumphing
with inferior numbers over adversaries who are tacticians and nothing
more. Then, suddenly, the tide of victory is checked, and brilliant
manoeuvres no longer avail. Fabius and Scipio, Wellington, Nelson,
and St. Vincent, Grant, Sherman, and Farragut, have replaced the mere
tacticians; and the superior resources, wielded with strategical
skill, exert their inevitable effect. Or it may be that fortune is
constant throughout to her first favourite; and that a Marlborough, a
Frederick, a Washington, a Moltke, opposed only by good fighting men,
never by an accomplished strategist, marches from victory to victory.
It is impossible, then, to estimate the ability of any general
without considering his strategy. Moreover, in this age of
inventions, of rapid movement, and of still more rapid communication,
the science is more complicated and even more important than
heretofore; and it is deserving, therefore, of far closer attention,
from both soldiers and civilians, than it has hitherto received. It
is for these reasons that I have described and discussed in such
minute detail the strategy of the campaigns with which Jackson had to
do.