Читать книгу The Art of War - baron de Antoine Henri Jomini - Страница 29

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The celebrated maxim of the Romans, not to undertake two great wars at the same time, is so well known and so well appreciated as to spare the necessity of demonstrating its wisdom.

A government maybe compelled to maintain a war against two neighboring states; but it will be extremely unfortunate if it does not find an ally to come to its aid, with a view to its own safety and the maintenance of the political equilibrium. It will seldom be the case that the nations allied against it will have the same interest in the war and will enter into it with all their resources; and, if one is only an auxiliary, it will be an ordinary war.

Louis XIV., Frederick the Great, the Emperor Alexander, and Napoleon, sustained gigantic struggles against united Europe. When such contests arise from voluntary aggressions, they are proof of a capital error on the part of the state which invites them; but if they arise from imperious and inevitable circumstances they must be met by seeking alliances, or by opposing such means of resistance as shall establish something like equality between the strength of the parties.

The great coalition against Louis XIV., nominally arising from his designs on Spain, had its real origin in previous aggressions which had alarmed his neighbors. To the combined forces of Europe he could only oppose the faithful alliance of the Elector of Bavaria, and the more equivocal one of the Duke of Savoy, who, indeed, was not slow in adding to the number of his enemies. Frederick, with only the aid of the subsidies of England, and fifty thousand auxiliaries from six different states, sustained a war against the three most powerful monarchies of Europe: the division and folly of his opponents were his best friends.

Both these wars, as well as that sustained by Alexander in 1812, it was almost impossible to avoid.

France had the whole of Europe on its hands in 1793, in consequence of the extravagant provocations of the Jacobins, and the Utopian ideas of the Girondists, who boasted that with the support of the English fleets they would defy all the kings in the world. The result of these absurd calculations was a frightful upheaval of Europe, from which France miraculously escaped.

Napoleon is, to a certain degree, the only modern sovereign who has voluntarily at the same time undertaken two, and even three, formidable wars—with Spain, with England, and with Russia; but in the last case he expected the aid of Austria and Prussia, to say nothing of that of Turkey and Sweden, upon which he counted with too much certainty; so that the enterprise was not so adventurous on his part as has been generally supposed.

It will be observed that there is a great distinction between a war made against a single state which is aided by a third acting as an auxiliary, and two wars conducted at the same time against two powerful nations in opposite quarters, who employ all their forces and resources. For instance, the double contest of Napoleon in 1809 against Austria and Spain aided by England was a very different affair from a contest with Austria assisted by an auxiliary force of a given strength. These latter contests belong to ordinary wars.

It follows, then, in general, that double wars should be avoided if possible, and, if cause of war be given by two states, it is more prudent to dissimulate or neglect the wrongs suffered from one of them, until a proper opportunity for redressing them shall arrive. The rule, however, is not without exception: the respective forces, the localities, the possibility of finding allies to restore, in a measure, equality of strength between the parties, are circumstances which will influence a government so threatened. We now have fulfilled our task, in noting both the danger and the means of remedying it.