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MAXIM LVIII.

Table of Contents

The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty and want, are the best school for a soldier.

NOTE.

Valor belongs to the young soldier as well as to the veteran; but in the former it is more evanescent. It is only by habits of service, and after several campaigns, that the soldier acquires that moral courage which makes him support the fatigues and privations of war without a murmur. Experience by this time has instructed him to supply his own wants. He is satisfied with what he can procure, because he knows that success is only to be obtained by fortitude and perseverance. Well might Napoleon say that misery and want were the best school for a soldier; for as nothing could be compared with the total destitution of the army of the Alps, when he assumed the command, so nothing could equal the brilliant success which he obtained with this army in the first campaign in Italy. The conquerors of Montenotte, Lodi, Castiglione, Bassano, Arcole and Rivoli had beheld, only a few months before, whole battalions covered with rags, and deserting for the want of subsistence.