methods become more and more the creation, not of the epoch, but of uncontrolled individual captains, who in many cases discovered their genius very late and by accident. While in 300 there were Roman armies, in 100 there were the armies of Marius and Sulla and Cæsar; and Octavian's army, which was composed of Cæsar's veterans, led its general much more than it was led by him. But with this the methods of war, its means, and its aims assumed raw-natural and ferocious forms,[1] very different from those prevailing before. Their duels were not eighteenth-century Trianon duels, encounters in knightly forms with fixed rules to determine when a man might declare himself exhausted, what maximum of force might be employed, and what conditions the chivalry permitted a victor to impose. They were ring-battles of infuriated men with fists and teeth, fought to the bodily collapse of one and exploited without reserve or restraint by the victor. The first great example of this "return to Nature" is afforded by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies, which, instead of artificial manoeuvres with small bodies, practised the mass-onset without regard to losses and thereby shattered to atoms the refined strategy of the Rococo. To bring the whole muscular force of a nation on to the battle-fields by the universal-service system was an idea utterly alien to the age of Frederick the Great.[2]
Similarly, in every Culture, the technique of war hesitatingly followed the advance of craftsmanship, until at the beginning of the Civilization it suddenly takes the lead, presses all mechanical possibilities of the time relentlessly into its service, and under pressure of military necessity even opens up new domains hitherto unexploited — but at the same time renders largely ineffectual the personal heroism of the thoroughbred, the ethos of the noble, and the subtle intellect of the Late Culture. In the Classical world, where the Polis made mass-armies essentially impossible — for relatively to the general smallness of Classical forms, tactical included, the numbers of Cannæ, Philippi, and Actium were enormous and exceptional — the second Tyrannis (Dionysius of Syracuse leading) introduced mechanical technique into warfare, and on a large scale.[3]
- ↑ A story is told of Sun, that when for a jest (or a demonstration of tactics) opposed forces were made up from the court ladies, one of the commanders, the sovereign's favourite wife, was executed by Sun's command for disobeying an order. — Tr.
- ↑ Frederick's "conscripts" (Landeskinder) were a long-service element, small in proportion to the population, and of serf status. Only the relative poverty of Prussia compelled this much of departure from the then normal procedure of recruiting volunteers, to which the Prussian army reverted as soon as its treasury could afford to do so. Maurice de Saxe is the one outstanding soldier of the period who advocated universal citizen service. But the famous "Rêveries" were written ("in thirteen sleepless nights") in 1732, before he had held high command. The military works of Leibniz touch upon the subject, but he was a practical man as well as a philosopher, and his detailed proposals are in the spirit of the time. On the contrary, the pure philosopher Spinoza definitely advocated universal service. — Tr.
- ↑ Large, that is, relatively to the general development of Classical technics in other fields, which was of the slightest — not in any way outstanding if judged by, say, Assyrian or Egyptian standards.
