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MAXIM XXVIII.

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No force should be detached on the eve of a battle, because affairs may change during the night, either by the retreat of the enemy, or by the arrival of large reinforcements to enable him to resume the offensive, and counteract your previous arrangements.

NOTE.

In 1796, the army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by General Jourdan, effected a retreat, which was rendered still more difficult by the loss of his line of communication. Seeing, however, that the forces of the archduke Charles were scattered, Jourdan, in order to accomplish his retreat upon Frankfort, resolved to open himself a way by Wurtzburg, where there were at that moment only two divisions of the Austrian army. This movement would have been attended with success, if the French general, believing he had simply these two divisions to contend with, had not committed the error of separating himself from the corps of Lefevre—which he left at Schweinfurt to cover the only direct communication of the army with its base of operation.

The commission of this fault at the outset, added to some slowness in the march of the French general, secured the victory to the archduke, who hastened to concentrate his forces.

The arrival of the two divisions, also, of Kray and Wartesleben, during the battle, enabled him to oppose fifty thousand men to the French army, which scarcely numbered thirty thousand combatants. This last was consequently beaten, and obliged to continue its retreat by the mountains of Fuldes, where the badness of the roads could be equalled only by the difficulty of the country.

The division of Lefevre, amounting to fourteen thousand men, would, in all probability, have turned the scale in favor of Jourdan, had the latter not unfortunately conceived that two divisions only were opposing his passage to Wurtzburg.