service of real infantry, armed with good muskets and bayonets, and well provided with ammunition. Dragoons, in fact, should be clothed and shod so as to be able to march with facility.'

The increased use of fieldworks visible in the American campaigns is now admitted to be as much the consequence of the peculiarities of the terrain and troops engaged on it, as of the increased range of firearms. Nevertheless, the subject should not be omitted in even a summary view of the progress of tactics. In an essay written before the war closed, it was shown how the woods of Virginia were intrenched by the contending armies. But this knowledge of the value of breastworks was wanting to Grant himself in his early days, as we see by his surprise at Shiloh, which a few hours' labour with the axe would have prevented. European generals can have but little experience of forest warfare. Yet the mere account of it, now familiar by report, would have sufficed to save even the slow leaders of Austria from their surprise and disgrace among the pine woods of Hohenlinden.

How easily these ready protections of an army can be improved by modern appliances and engineering skill so as to take the character of fortresses, has been remarkably illustrated by the successive sieges of Sebastopol, Düppel, and Petersburg. The Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers contain the first detailed notice of the works of the latter place that has been anywhere published. This monograph, by Lieutenant Featherstonehaugh, deserves

Edinburgh Review, January 1865.

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our notice for its valuable account of that system of rifle-pits, which is destined henceforward to play an important part not only in regular sieges, but whereever an intrenched position is taken up. Judging by its contents, we may believe that the younger members of the scientific corps do not intend to let its old reputation decay, or their observation lag behind the age.

In passing from the consideration of tactics and the changes that art is undergoing, it seems necessary to refute but one more popular error which has been countenanced by names lent to it with perhaps injudicious haste. It has been said that the rapid multiplying of railways and their depôts must tend to modify the conditions under which troops are brought into action. In so far as this relates to their actual collision, this is plainly an error. Cuttings, embankments, crossings, bridges, are none of them new creations. The defence of a railroad station is that merely of a building of certain size, and involves no new principles. Had the increasing wealth of civilised countries not spent itself in this way, it would have found-as it still finds-other outlets in forms of planting, building, draining, which would change particular fields of combat, but in no way affect a certain system already adapted for seizing or for maintaining a given position, or show that it could be, as a whole, altered for the better. The idea, baseless when viewed in this light, has been supported by the alleged winning of the battle of Montebello by the French as a consequence of their actual use of a railway to bring up reinforcements; and the employment of trains during a

single action has been mixed up with the general notion of the value of railroads for battle purposes. Space does not allow us to follow out the details of the affair where Forey won his reputation. It is enough to say that Rüstow (an able writer, and, as between Emperor and Kaiser, thoroughly impartial), denies in his work this pretended cause of the defeat of the Austrians, and ascribes it simply to the wellknown want of resource and self-possession which has for the last eighty years constantly marked their general officers when detached. It may be added that the long annals of the American war give no reason to believe that we are near the day when commanders will arrange their order of battle with a view to bring their troops under fire by train.

Far otherwise is it as regards the greater combinations of war. The wondrous facilities which steam conveyance and the electric telegraph afford for transporting and collecting troops and supplies seem to promise almost as great a revolution in strategy, as gunpowder is admitted to have made in tactics. If (as has been shown in the earlier portion of this paper) it was mainly the change for the better in land-carriage and cultivation which enabled two minds of a different order of genius to reap suddenly, in 1796, the full advantages which a century's progress had wrought-if it was indeed the result of increasing civilisation that Napoleon's strategy ranks so far above that of Frederic, and the Archduke Charles's above that of Charles of Loraine-what may be expected when the full powers lately developed in the growth of wealth, the freedom of communication, the rapid transmission of intelli

gence, are wielded by high ability in the interests of war? What, in short, may be read in the history of the close of the American struggle-in the utter crushing of the splendid resistance offered by the South-more striking than the lesson that the advantage of superiority in population, in manufacturing power, and material wealth is increased beyond all former belief by the new resources of the railroad and steam fleet? See, for an example, how the well-maintained lines of the Federals turned the whole tide of the western campaigns by the reinforcements brought up after the defeat of Chickamauga. On the other hand, view the impotent state of the Confederate armies for any joint operationas for the relief of Vicksburg-when the waste of war and the strict blockade caused their roads to fall bit by bit out of repair.

The least observation of these phases of that gigantic contest, added to what we have lately seen in Italy and Denmark, is sufficient to show a great change to come in future European wars. Old lines of defence must vanish, bases formerly distant be brought near, concentration of great masses be the rule rather than the exception, months of preparation and of movement be contracted into days. As regards the strategy of purely inland campaigns, railroads and telegraphs, it may be freely assumed, will be soon so multiplied that their effect will be felt in this way wherever civilisation extends. This will be generally admitted. But it is not so apparent at first that a similar change may be expected wherever the theatre of war is open to approach by navigation. In spite of Crimean experience, and of the marvels worked

by Grant when he had once felt his way to the true use of his steam transports, few are aware how immensely the naval Powers of the world have augmented the striking force of their armies by the improvements in their fleets. France has been long the most formidable of neighbours: but it is not too much to say that her present policy of amity with England, and the undisputed rank of her navy as the second in Europe, has doubled at the very least her warlike means against the more distant Continental Powers.

Attractive as the subject of strategy is to many intellects, it is to be regretted that its study has been so limited among ourselves that its first principles have to be forced upon the public at every separate occasion. This has been partly due to the very strict attention of the best of our officers to the details of their own branches of the service-branches from which they rarely, in the scientific corps never, ́ are removed. In the old United States army this was better managed: officers were trained more completely for the different arms; and the highest parts of a soldier's profession were not altogether overlooked at Westpoint as until recently at Woolwich. And as cabinets, however able, must generally, when entering on war, be dependent for their greater combinations on the private or official opinion of professional soldiers, it is not surprising that the views which have guided our own on certain recent emergencies have too often seemed narrow and illchosen. Federal generals failed at the first from want of proper material wherewith to execute their designs. Yet the early reports of M'Clellan, Halleck,