'Miss Wedderburn there was doubly armed 'Seven virgins laid hold of one man, woes me! The volume intitled than a duplicate of the Walks in Edinburgh' is little more Traditions; and few, if any, of the descriptive pieces will be read with interest beyond the precincts of "Auld Reekie." ART. III. An Exposition of the First Principles of grand Military Combinations and Movements, compiled from the Treatise upon great Military Operations by the Baron de Jomini, Aidede-Camp General to H. M. the Emperor of all the Russias, &c. With Remarks on the leading Principles of the efficient Constitution of Armies, from the same Author. By J. A. Gilbert, Lieutenant, Royal Artillery. 8vo. pp. 160. Egerton. 1825. You ou Russians," said Bonaparte, in the midst of a torrent of invective, which he addressed to an envoy of the Emperor Alexander," You Russians all think yourselves Generals, because you have read Jomini: but if he could have taught you any thing, do you suppose I would have suffered him to write ?" A single such expression of contempt, the sarcasm of a splenetic moment, uttered merely for its sting, is too seriously remembered, as proceeding from so great a man; and it goes forth to the world with all the imposing authority of a mighty name. Yet every individual about Bonaparte's person well knew that, in an hour of less irritation or more candour, he would have been himself the first to acknowledge the merits of Jomini's famous treatise. That work had offered, in fact, only the able exposition of those simple principles of military science, upon which Napoleon himself had built up the fabric of his glory. That "war is nothing more than the art of throwing upon any given point, a greater force than your enemy can there oppose to you," was his favourite aphorism; and we learn from Segur that, during his invasion of Russia, as probably in all his former campaigns, he was fond of repeating it upon every occasion. It was that axiom in which consisted the secret of all his successes: former Generals had sometimes caught an accidental and fortunate glimpse of the principle; the great Frederic of Prussia had partially understood it in practice; but it had remained for his own dar ing, and fertile, and original genius to render it the primary and systematic foundation, and the main-spring of all his operations. If it was his transcendant glory as a General to be the first to discover fully and to put into practice the true principles of military science, it is at least the merit of Jomini to have been the earliest among writers to exhibit those principles to demonstration and proof. His treatise may be considered as an elaborate piece of reasoning, and a lucid commentary, upon that great and fundamental maxim of Napoleon to which we have referred. This principle, in itself, is so palpably simple, that it may excite a smile how it should have been reserved for the great captains and the tactical writers of the nineteenth century to discover and proclaim it. But the fact itself, and the truth of the principle, no scientific soldier will, we believe, in these times, be found hardy enough to deny; and the critical study of the campaigns, both of antiquity and of modern ages, will abundantly show, that the great events of warfare have ever been as they must ever be materially dependant upon the influence of one unchangeable cause. That the application of this cause had been, until the days of Frederic and Napoleon, altogether blind and fortuitous is true, but the cause itself had, nevertheless, always been in action; and, in every struggle, that party will be found to have prevailed who had presented a greater force, moral and physical, upon the decisive point of contest, than his adversary had been able there to oppose to him. This deduction is of course subject to be modified by the unforeseen occurrence of political causes, by the relative courage and discipline of armies, and by those general accidents and vicissitudes of fortune upon which it is impossible to calculate; but such is the condition of all human affairs, and the fate of all human sagacity. To discover where the decisive point of contest is seated, how to direct the combinations of strength upon it with precision and secrecy, and then to strike and pour upon an enemy, to confound and overwhelm him with the rapidity of lightning and the violence of a torrent: all this it is, which is still left to the penetration, the creative faculty, and the energetic fire of genius to perform. The peculiarities of a contest may vary infinitely, but the laws of military science are immutable: the just application of them to circumstances must depend upon the degree in which original talent, scientific knowledge, and practical experience, have been blended in the mind of the actor, The natural force of a rare and stupendous genius may of itself form a great captain, and surprise the world by happy achievements made in ignorance of general K 2 rules, rules, and without the aid of instruction and experience. But very few in the world, and " far between," are the masterspirits, who seize by intuition the great principles of any science; and the soldier, like the member of any other profession, who aspires to success and real eminence, will not lightly neglect every occasion either of studying the theory or witnessing the practice of his vocation. Assuredly, for thus studying the theory of military science, the work of Jomini - Traité des Grandes Operations Militaires is one of the most valuable aids which has ever been written. It is composed of a narrative and a critical examination of the campaigns of Frederic of Prussia, of those of the early war of the French Revolution, and, lastly, of the Italian campaigns of Bonaparte. From the first and third of these parts it is, by comparing the operations of Frederic and Napoleon, that the author has chiefly deduced the fundamental principles of scientific warfare. From the second part he has drawn his negative proofs and inferences of error. As he himself (a Swiss by birth) long served in the French armies under Napoleon, his personal experience has been great; but the admirable reflections, which he deduces from his historical text, form the chief excellence of the treatise, and their worth is too generally recognised among military men to need exposition here. Mr. Gilbert, the intelligent young officer, whose little volume is before us, appears to be deeply impressed with the extensive utility of M. de Jomini's profound and original deductions. But he has justly seen that, while the size and expense of a work of eight volumes with plates are sufficient to render it a stranger to the private libraries of most military men,' the duties of their active profession are likely to interfere in many cases with the detailed study of its contents. In fact, there are many circumstances in the nature of the original work, which must necessarily prevent it from becoming a manual of universal instruction. Its closely woven narrative of the events of some twenty campaigns, its minute and tedious details, and its gradual developement of abstract principles through a long train of experimental facts and elaborate reasoning: all these are appalling obstacles in the way of the youthful military student, who has for the first time to seek acquaintance with the great elements of the science which he is about to profess. Jomini's treatise, in short, is not a book of elementary instruction. It is an argumentative course of inductive philosophy, illustrated by a long series of celebrated experiments, and intended to explain and establish the truth of certain scientific principles. Those Those principles it has clearly established; and they are no longer to be questioned, but have been received as the undisputed elements of the science. Mr. Gilbert, therefore, has only modestly proposed to himself to compile and collect, from Jomini's scattered reasoning, a compendium of these universal principles and general rules; to disencumber this exposition of the experimental proofs from which Jomini had deduced them; and, taking their correctness for granted, merely to give a few examples explanatory of their application. All this he has done with clearness, precision, and energetic brevity. 6 After opening his volume with a short introduction, Mr. Gilbert proceeds, in his two first chapters, to give definitions of the terms peculiar to what may justly be called the Science of War.' The third chapter enumerates the general combinations or branches of the science. These, according to Jomini, are of three kinds; and on their due application alone depends the whole problem of attaining the single end of every war, a decisive superiority on the vital point of contest. The first of these great combinations is styled the art of embracing the lines of operation.' We are aware that this definition is copied exactly from Jomini; but would it not be advisable to simplify the form of the expression? In itself it means nothing more than the art of selecting the most favourable lines of operation. In all sciences it is desirable to adopt the most familiar terms in which definitions can be embodied with accuracy, and in no science more than in that of war, which is one rather of action than nice disquisition. -- We cannot follow Mr. Gilbert through the able dissertation which occupies chapters v. and vi., on the principles of this first great combination. The second- the art of bringing, with rapidity, concentrated forces upon the decisive point of the line of operations, engages, with its dependant laws, the four next chapters of the volume. And the third great branch of war the art of combats, or of combining the simultaneous action of the great mass of an army upon the decisive point of a field of battle, is treated in the tenth chapter. This branch of the science, which is more shortly defined by the old writers as "the order of battle," is naturally followed by two chapters, wherein the merits of the different orders of attack - the parallel, the perpendicular, and the oblique, are explained and discussed. Chapter xiii. treats of the disposition of troops on the ground; and the fourteenth and last chapter is devoted to illustrate the general K 3 general precepts of the art of combats by reference to several great examples. These examples, selected at much length from Jomini, consist chiefly of three of the battles of the great Frederic: -Rosbach, Leuthen, and Prague. But here we cannot help regretting that Mr. Gilbert has not rather preferred to select his illustrations from the seven years' war of our times, - the glorious and scientific contest, which developed the transcendant genius of our own great captain, and which, under his auspices, has covered our gallant army with unfading laurels. From Colonel Jones's admirable account of the Peninsular War Mr. Gilbert might have gleaned as authentic, instructive, and scientific delineations to illustrate the great combinations of the art of combats, as Jomini has any where been able to accumulate from the records of modern warfare. For instance, why should not Mr. Gilbert have substituted the battle of Salamanca for that of Rosbach, which it closely and curiously resembled in many beautiful points of tactical interest: - in the demonstrations of retreat by which both Frederic and Wellington provoked the overweening confidence of their adversaries, in the common error of Soubise and Marmont in extending their lines to encircle the flank and intercept the communications of the Prussians and British, and in the rapid, masterly, and overwhelming movement, by which the two heroes of Prussia and England suddenly threw their forces across the heads of the hostile lines of march, assumed the offensive, and seized their brilliant victory. We propose this general suggestion for Mr. Gilbert's consideration, because, as his volume can scarcely fail of success, he will be enabled, in a future edition, both to increase its national interest, and to animate military students by the examples of our national glories. As it is, Mr. Gilbert's work has higher claims to praise than as a mere ordinary compilation or abridgment: it will be seen, indeed, from our outline of its contents, that it is a complete grammar of the elementary principles of warfare; and it offers, in a condensed and perspicuous form, all the spirit of the most profound and original treatise on military science which has appeared in our times. ART. IV. Phantasmagoria; or, Sketches of Life and Literature. 2 Vols. 8vo. London. 1825. WE E look upon titles to books with an eye of concern. They are really important with the world. The title of Phantasmagoria is an unlucky selection in the abstract: as |