Читать книгу Battle Studies - Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq - Страница 6

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Near Longeville-les-Metz on the morning of August 15, 1870, a stray projectile from a Prussian gun mortally wounded the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line. The obscure gunner never knew that he had done away with one of the most intelligent officers of our army, one of the most forceful writers, one of the most clear-sighted philosophers whom sovereign genius had ever created.

Ardant du Picq, according to the Annual Register, commanded but a regiment. He was fitted for the first rank of the most exalted. He fell at the hour when France was thrown into frightful chaos, when all that he had foreseen, predicted and dreaded, was being terribly fulfilled. New ideas, of which he was the unknown trustee and unacknowledged prophet, triumphed then at our expense. The disaster that carried with it his sincere and revivifying spirit, left in the tomb of our decimated divisions an evidence of the necessity for reform. When our warlike institutions were perishing from the lack of thought, he represented in all its greatness the true type of military thinker. The virile thought of a military thinker alone brings forth successes and maintains victorious nations. Fatal indolence brought about the invasion, the loss of two provinces, the bog of moral miseries and social evils which beset vanquished States.

The heart and brain of Ardant du Picq guarded faithfully a worthy but discredited cult. Too frequently in the course of our history virtues are forsaken during long periods, when it seems that the entire race is hopelessly abased. The mass perceives too late in rare individuals certain wasted talents—treasures of sagacity, spiritual vigor, heroic and almost supernatural comprehension. Such men are prodigious exceptions in times of material decadence and mental laxness. They inherit all the qualities that have long since ceased to be current. They serve as examples and rallying points for other generations, more clear-sighted and less degenerate. On reading over the extraordinary work of Ardant du Picq, that brilliant star in the eclipse of our military faculties, I think of the fatal shot that carried him off before full use had been found for him, and I am struck by melancholy. Our fall appears more poignant. His premature end seems a punishment for his contemporaries, a bitter but just reproach.

Fortunately, more honored and believed in by his successors, his once unappreciated teaching contributes largely to the uplift and to the education of our officers. They will be inspired by his original views and the permanent virtue contained therein. They will learn therefrom the art of leading and training our young soldiers and can hope to retrieve the cruel losses of their predecessors.

Ardant du Picq amazes one by his tenacity and will power which, without the least support from the outside, animate him under the trying conditions of his period of isolated effort.

In an army in which most of the seniors disdained the future and neglected their responsibilities, rested satisfied on the laurels of former campaigns and relied on superannuated theories and the exercises of a poor parade, scorned foreign organizations and believed in an acquired and constant superiority that dispenses with all work, and did not suspect even the radical transformations which the development of rifles and rapid-fire artillery entail; Ardant du Picq worked for the common good. In his modest retreat, far from the pinnacles of glory, he tended a solitary shrine of unceasing activity and noble effort. He burned with the passions which ought to have moved the staff and higher commanders. He watched while his contemporaries slept.

Toward the existing system of instruction and preparation which the first blow shattered, his incorruptible honesty prevented him from being indulgent. While terrified leaders passed from arrogance or thoughtlessness to dejection and confusion, the blow was being struck. Served by his marvelous historical gifts, he studied the laws of ancient combat in the poorly interpreted but innumerable documents of the past. Then, guided by the immortal light which never failed, the feverish curiosity of this soldier's mind turned towards the research of the laws of modern combat, the subject of his preference. In this study he developed to perfection his psychological attainments. By the use of these attainments he simplified the theory of the conduct of war. By dissecting the motor nerves of the human heart, he released basic data on the essential principles of combat. He discovered the secret of combat, the way to victory.

Never for a second did Ardant du Picq forget that combat is the object, the cause of being, the supreme manifestation of armies. Every measure which departs therefrom, which relegates it to the middle ground is deceitful, chimerical, fatal. All the resources accumulated in time of peace, all the tactical evolutions, all the strategical calculations are but conveniences, drills, reference marks to lead up to it. His obsession was so overpowering that his presentation of it will last as long as history. This obsession is the rôle of man in combat. Man is the incomparable instrument whose elements, character, energies, sentiments, fears, desires, and instincts are stronger than all abstract rules, than all bookish theories. War is still more of an art than a science. The inspirations which reveal and mark the great strategists, the leaders of men, form the unforeseen element, the divine part. Generals of genius draw from the human heart ability to execute a surprising variety of movements which vary the routine; the mediocre ones, who have no eyes to read readily therein, are doomed to the worst errors.

Ardant du Picq, haunted by the need of a doctrine which would correct existing evils and disorders, was continually returning to the fountain-head. Anxious to instruct promising officers, to temper them by irrefutable lessons, to mature them more rapidly, to inspire them with his zeal for historical incidents, he resolved to carry on and add to his personal studies while aiding them. Daring to take a courageous offensive against the general inertia of the period, he translated the problem of his whole life into a series of basic questions. He presented in their most diverse aspects, the basic questions which perplex all military men, those of which knowledge in a varying degree of perfection distinguish and classify military men. The nervous grasp of an incomparable style models each of them, carves them with a certain harshness, communicates to them a fascinating yet unknown authority which crystallizes them in the mind, at the same time giving to them a positive form that remains true for all armies, for all past, present and future centuries. Herewith is the text of the concise and pressing questions which have not ceased to be as important to-day (1902) as they were in 1870:

"General,

"In the last century, after the improvements of the rifle and field artillery by Frederick, and the Prussian successes in war—to-day, after the improvement of the new rifle and cannon to which in part the recent victories are due—we find all thinking men in the army asking themselves the question: 'How shall we fight to-morrow?' We have no creed on the subject of combat. And the most opposing methods confuse the intelligence of military men.

"Why? A common error at the starting point. One might say that no one is willing to acknowledge that it is necessary to understand yesterday in order to know to-morrow, for the things of yesterday are nowhere plainly written. The lessons of yesterday exist solely in the memory of those who know how to remember because they have known how to see, and those individuals have never spoken. I make an appeal to one of those.

"The smallest detail, taken from an actual incident in war, is more instructive for me, a soldier, than all the Thiers and Jominis in the world. They speak, no doubt, for the heads of states and armies but they never show me what I wish to know—a battalion, a company, a squad, in action.

"Concerning a regiment, a battalion, a company, a squad, it is interesting to know: The disposition taken to meet the enemy or the order for the march toward them. What becomes of this disposition or this march order under the isolated or combined influences of accidents of the terrain and the approach of danger?

"Is this order changed or is it continued in force when approaching the enemy?

"What becomes of it upon arriving within the range of the guns, within the range of bullets?

"At what distance is a voluntary or an ordered disposition taken before starting operations for commencing fire, for charging, or both?

"How did the fight start? How about the firing? How did the men adapt themselves? (This may be learned from the results: So many bullets fired, so many men shot down—when such data are available.) How was the charge made? At what distance did the enemy flee before it? At what distance did the charge fall back before the fire or the good order and good dispositions of the enemy, or before such and such a movement of the enemy? What did it cost? What can be said about all these with reference to the enemy?

"The behavior, i.e., the order, the disorder, the shouts, the silence, the confusion, the calmness of the officers and men whether with us or with the enemy, before, during, and after the combat?

"How has the soldier been controlled and directed during the action? At what instant has he had a tendency to quit the line in order to remain behind or to rush ahead?

"At what moment, if the control were escaping from the leader's hands, has it no longer been possible to exercise it?

"At what instant has this control escaped from the battalion commander? When from the captain, the section leader, the squad leader? At what time, in short, if such a thing did take place, was there but a disordered impulse, whether to the front or to the rear carrying along pell-mell with it both the leaders and men?

"Where and when did the halt take place?

"Where and when were the leaders able to resume control of the men?

"At what moments before, during, or after the day, was the battalion roll-call, the company roll-call made? The results of these roll-calls?

"How many dead, how many wounded on the one side and on the other; the kind of wounds of the officers, non-commissioned officers, corporals, privates, etc., etc.?

"All these details, in a word, enlighten either the material or the moral side of the action, or enable it to be visualized. Possibly, a closer examination might show that they are matters infinitely more instructive to us as soldiers than all the discussions imaginable on the plans and general conduct of the campaigns of the greatest captain in the great movements of the battle field. From colonel to private we are soldiers, not generals, and it is therefore our trade that we desire to know.

"Certainly one cannot obtain all the details of the same incident. But from a series of true accounts there should emanate an ensemble of characteristic details which in themselves are very apt to show in a striking, irrefutable way what was necessarily and forcibly taking place at such and such a moment of an action in war. Take the estimate of the soldier obtained in this manner to serve as a base for what might possibly be a rational method of fighting. It will put us on guard against a priori and pedantic school methods.

"Whoever has seen, turns to a method based on his knowledge, his personal experience as a soldier. But experience is long and life is short. The experiences of each cannot therefore be completed except by those of others.

"And that is why, General, I venture to address myself to you for your experiences.

"Proofs have weight.

"As for the rest, whether it please you to aid or not, General, kindly accept the assurance of most respectful devotion from your obedient servant."

The reading of this unique document is sufficient to explain the glory that Ardant du Picq deserved. In no other career has a professional ever reflected more clearly the means of pushing his profession to perfection; in no profession has a deeper penetration of the resources been made.

It pleases me particularly to associate the two words 'penseur' and 'militaire,' which, at the present time, the ignorance of preconceived opinion too frequently separates. Because such opinion is on the verge of believing them to be incompatible and contradictory.

Yet no calling other than the true military profession is so fitted to excite brain activity. It is preëminently the calling of action, at the same time diverse in its combinations and changing according to the time and locality wherein it is put to practice. No other profession is more complex nor more difficult, since it has for its aim and reason the instruction of men to overcome by training and endurance the fatigue and perils against which the voice of self-preservation is raised in fear; in other words, to draw from nature what is most opposed and most antipathic to this nature.

There is, however, much of routine in the customs of military life, and, abuse of it may bring about gross satires which in turn bring it into derision. To be sure, the career has two phases because it must fulfill simultaneously two exigencies. From this persons of moderate capacity draw back and are horrified. They solve the question by the sacrifice of the one or the other. If one considers only the lower and somewhat vulgar aspect of military life it is found to be composed of monotonous obligations clothed in a mechanical procedure of indispensable repetition. If one learns to grasp it in its ensemble and large perspective, it will be found that the days of extreme trial demand prodigies of vigor, spirit, intelligence, and decision! Regarded from this angle and supported in this light, the commonplace things of wearisome garrison life have as counterweights certain sublime compensations. These compensations preclude the false and contemptible results which come from intellectual idleness and the habit of absolute submission. If it yields to their narcotic charms, the best brain grows rusty and atrophies in the long run. Incapable of virile labor, it rebels at a renewal of its processes in sane initiative. An army in which vigilance is not perpetual is sick until the enemy demonstrates it to be dead.

Far, then, from attaching routine as an indispensable companion to military discipline it must be shown continually that in it lies destruction and loss. Military discipline does not degenerate except when it has not known the cult of its vitality and the secret of its grandeur. The teachers of war have all placed this truth as a preface to their triumphs and we find the most illustrious teachers to be the most severe. Listen to this critique of Frederick the Great on the maneuvers which he conducted in Silesia:

"The great mistake in inspections is that you officers amuse yourselves with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of a serious conflict. Take shoe-makers and tailors and make generals of them and they will not commit worse follies! These blunders are made on a small as well as on a large scale. Consequently, in the greatest number of regiments, the private is not well trained; in Zaramba's regiment he is the worst; in Thadden's he amounts to nothing; and to no more in Keller's, Erlach's, and Haager's. Why? Because the officers are lazy and try to get out of a difficulty by giving themselves the least trouble possible."

In default of exceptional generals who remold in some campaigns, with a superb stroke, the damaged or untempered military metal, it is of importance to supply it with the ideals of Ardant du Picq. Those who are formed by his image, by his book, will never fall into error. His book has not been written to please aesthetic preciseness, but with a sincerity which knows no limit. It therefore contains irrefutable facts and theories.

The solidity of these fragmentary pages defies time; the work interrupted by the German shell is none the less erected for eternity. The work has muscles, nerves and a soul. It has the transparent concentration of reality. A thought may be expressed by a single word. The terseness of the calcined phrase explains the interior fire of it all, the magnificent conviction of the author. The distinctness of outline, the most astounding brevity of touch, is such that the vision of the future bursts forth from the resurrection of the past. The work contains, indeed, substance and marrow of a prophetic experience.

Amidst the praise rendered to the scintillating beauties of this book, there is perhaps, none more impressive than that of Barbey d'Aurevilly, an illustrious literary man of a long and generous patrician lineage. His comment, kindled with lyric enthusiasm, is illuminating. It far surpasses the usual narrow conception of technical subjects. Confessing his professional ignorance in matters of war, his sincere eulogy of the eloquent amateur is therefore only the more irresistible.

"Never," writes Barbey d'Aurevilly, "has a man of action—of brutal action in the eyes of universal prejudice—more magnificently glorified the spirituality of war. Mechanics—abominable mechanics—takes possession of the world, crushing it under its stupid and irresistible wheels. By the action of newly discovered and improved appliances the science of war assumes vast proportions as a means of destruction. Yet here, amid the din of this upset modern world we find a brain sufficiently master of its own thoughts as not to permit itself to be dominated by these horrible discoveries which, we are told, would make impossible Fredericks of Prussia and Napoleons and lower them to the level of the private soldier! Colonel Ardant du Picq tells us somewhere that he has never had entire faith in the huge battalions which these two great men, themselves alone worth more than the largest battalions, believed in. Well, to-day, this vigorous brain believes no more in the mechanical or mathematical force which is going to abolish these great battalions. A calculator without the least emotion, who considers the mind of man the essential in war—because it is this mind that makes war—he surely sees better than anybody else a profound change in the exterior conditions of war which he must consider. But the spiritual conditions which are produced in war have not changed. Such, is the eternal mind of man raised to its highest power by discipline. Such, is the Roman cement of this discipline that makes of men indestructible walls. Such, is the cohesion, the solidarity between men and their leaders. Such, is the moral influence of the impulse which gives the certainty of victory.

"'To conquer is to advance,' de Maistre said one day, puzzled at this phenomenon of victory. The author of "Etudes sur le Combat" says more simply: 'To conquer is to be sure to overcome.' In fine, it is the mind that wins battles, that will always win them, that always has won them throughout the world's history. The spirituality, the moral quality of war, has not changed since those times. Mechanics, modern arms, all the artillery invented by man and his science, will not make an end to this thing, so lightly considered at the moment and called the human soul. Books like that of Ardant du Picq prevent it from being disdained. If no other effect should be produced by this sublime book, this one thing would justify it. But there will be others—do not doubt it—I wish merely to point out the sublimity of this didactic book which, for me, has wings like celestial poetry and which has carried me above and far away from the materialistic abjectness of my time. The technique of tactics and the science of war are beyond my province. I am not, like the author, erudite on maneuvers and the battle field. But despite my ignorance of things exclusively military, I have felt the truth of the imperious demonstrations with which it is replete, as one feels the presence of the sun behind a cloud. His book has over the reader that moral ascendancy which is everything in war and which determines success, according to the author. This ascendancy, like truth itself, is the sort which cannot be questioned. Coming from the superior mind of a leader who inspires faith it imposes obedience by its very strength. Colonel Ardant du Picq was a military writer only, with a style of his own. He has the Latin brevity and concentration. He retains his thought, assembles it and always puts it out in a compact phrase like a cartridge. His style has the rapidity and precision of the long-range arms which have dethroned the bayonet. He would have been a writer anywhere. He was a writer by nature. He was of that sacred phalanx of those who have a style all to themselves."

Barbey d'Aurevilly rebels against tedious technicalities. Carried away by the author's historical and philosophical faculties, he soars without difficulty to the plane of Ardant du Picq. In like manner, du Picq ranges easily from the most mediocre military operations to the analysis of the great functions of policy of government and the evolution of nations.

Who could have unraveled with greater finesse the causes of the insatiable desires of conquest by the new power which was so desirous of occupying the leading rôle on the world's stage? If our diplomats, our ministers and our generals had seized the warning of 1866, the date of the defeat of Austria, it is possible that we might have been spared our own defeats.

"Has an aristocracy any excuse for existing if it is not military? No. The Prussian aristocracy is essentially military. In its ranks it does accept officers of plebeian extraction, but only under condition that they permit themselves to be absorbed therein.

"Is not an aristocracy essentially proud? If it were not proud it would lack confidence. The Prussian aristocracy is, therefore, haughty; it desires domination by force and its desire to rule, to dominate more and more, is the essence of its existence. It rules by war; it wishes war; it must have war at the proper time. Its leaders have the good judgment to choose the right moment. This love of war is in the very fiber, the very makeup of its life as an aristocracy.

"Every nation that has an aristocracy, a military nobility, is organized in a military way. The Prussian officer is an accomplished gentleman and nobleman; by instruction or examination he is most capable; by education, most worthy. He is an officer and commands from two motives, the French officer from one alone.

"Prussia, in spite of all the veils concealing reality, is a military organization conducted by a military corporation. A nation, democratically constituted, is not organized from a military point of view. It is, therefore, as against the other, in a state of unpreparedness for war.

"A military nation and a warlike nation are not necessarily the same. The French are warlike from organization and instinct. They are every day becoming less and less military.

"In being the neighbor of a military nation, there is no security for a democratic nation; the two are born enemies; the one continually menaces the good influences, if not the very existence of the other. As long as Prussia is not democratic she is a menace to us.

"The future seems to belong to democracy, but, before this future is attained by Europe, who will say that victory and domination will not belong for a time to military organization? It will presently perish for the lack of sustenance of life, when having no more foreign enemies to vanquish, to watch, to fight for control, it will have no reason for existence."

In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect. The morning after Sadowa, not a single statesman or publicist had yet divined what the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line had, at first sight, understood. Written before the catastrophes of Froeschwiller, Metz and Sedan, the fragment seems, in a retrospective way, an implacable accusation against those who deceived themselves about the Hohenzollern country by false liberalism or a softening of the brain.

Unswerved by popular ideas, by the artificial, by the trifles of treaties, by the chimera of theories, by the charlatanism of bulletins, by the nonsense of romantic fiction, by the sentimentalities of vain chivalry, Ardant du Picq, triumphant in history, is even more the incomparable master in the field of his laborious days and nights, the field of war itself. Never has a clearer vision fathomed the bloody mysteries of the formidable test of war. Here man appears as his naked self. He is a poor thing when he succumbs to unworthy deeds and panics. He is great under the impulse of voluntary sacrifice which transforms him under fire and for honor or the salvation of others makes him face death.

The sound and complete discussions of Ardant du Picq take up, in a poignant way, the setting of every military drama. They envelop in a circle of invariable phenomena the apparent irregularity of combat, determining the critical point in the outcome of the battle. Whatever be the conditions, time or people, he gives a code of rules which will not perish. With the enthusiasm of Pascal, who should have been a soldier, Ardant du Picq has the preëminent gift of expressing the infinite in magic words. He unceasingly opens an abyss under the feet of the reader. The whole metaphysics of war is contained therein and is grasped at a single glance.

He shows, weighed in the scales of an amazing exactitude, the normal efficiency of an army; a multitude of beings shaken by the most contradictory passions, first desiring to save their own skins and yet resigned to any risk for the sake of a principle. He shows the quantity and quality of possible efforts, the aggregate of losses, the effects of training and impulse, the intrinsic value of the troops engaged. This value is the sum of all that the leader can extract from any and every combination of physical preparation, confidence, fear of punishment, emulation, enthusiasm, inclination, the promise of success, administration of camps, fire discipline, the influence of ability and superiority, etc. He shows the tragic depths, so somber below, so luminous above, which appear in the heart of the combatant torn between fear and duty. In the private soldier the sense of duty may spring from blind obedience; in the non-commissioned officer, responsible for his detachment, from devotion to his trade; in the commanding officer, from supreme responsibility! It is in battle that a military organization justifies its existence. Money spent by the billions, men trained by the millions, are gambled on one irrevocable moment. Organization decides the terrible contest which means the triumph or the downfall of the nation! The harsh rays of glory beam above the field of carnage, destroying the vanquished without scorching the victor.

Such are the basic elements of strategy and tactics!

There is danger in theoretical speculation of battle, in prejudice, in false reasoning, in pride, in braggadocio. There is one safe resource, the return to nature.

The strategy that moves in elevated spheres is in danger of being lost in the clouds. It becomes ridiculous as soon as it ceases to conform to actual working tactics. In his classical work on the decisive battle of August 18, 1870, Captain Fritz Hoenig has reached a sound conclusion. After his biting criticism of the many gross errors of Steinmetz and Zastrow, after his description of the triple panic of the German troops opposite the French left in the valley and the ravine of the Mance, he ends by a reflection which serves as a striking ending to the book. He says, "The grandest illustration of Moltke's strategy was the battle of Gravelotte-Saint Privat; but the battle of Gravelotte has taught us one thing, and that is, the best strategy cannot produce good results if tactics is at fault."

The right kind of tactics is not improvised. It asserts itself in the presence of the enemy but it is learned before meeting the enemy.

"There are men," says Ardant du Picq, "such as Marshal Bugeaud, who are born military in character, mind, intelligence and temperament. Not all leaders are of this stamp. There is, then, need for standard or regulation tactics appropriate to the national character which should be the guide for the ordinary commander and which do not exact of him the exceptional qualities of a Bugeaud."

"Tactics is an art based on the knowledge of how to make men fight with their maximum energy against fear, a maximum which organization alone can give."

"And here confidence appears. It is not the enthusiastic and thoughtless confidence of tumultuous or improvised armies that gives way on the approach of danger to a contrary sentiment which sees treason everywhere; but the intimate, firm, conscious confidence which alone makes true soldiers and does not disappear at the moment of action."

"We now have an army. It is not difficult for us to see that people animated by passions, even people who know how to die without flinching, strong in the face of death, but without discipline and solid organization, are conquered by others who are individually less valiant but firmly organized, all together and one for all."

"Solidarity and confidence cannot be improvised. They can be born only of mutual acquaintanceship which establishes pride and makes unity. And, from unity comes in turn the feeling of force, that force which gives to the attack the courage and confidence of victory. Courage, that is to say, the domination of the will over instinct even in the greatest danger, leads finally to victory or defeat."

In asking for a doctrine in combat and in seeking to base it on the moral element, Ardant du Picq was ahead of his generation. He has had a very great influence. But, the doctrine is not yet established.

How to approach the adversary? How to pass from the defensive to the offensive? How to regulate the shock? How to give orders that can be executed? How to transmit them surely? How to execute them by economizing precious lives? Such are the distressing problems that beset generals and others in authority. The result is that presidents, kings and emperors hesitate, tremble, interrogate, pile reports upon reports, maneuvers upon maneuvers, retard the improvement of their military material, their organization, their equipment.

The only leaders who are equal to the difficulties of future war, come to conclusions expressed in almost the same terms. Recently General de Negrier, after having insisted that physical exhaustion determined by the nervous tension of the soldier, increased in surprising proportions according to the invisibility of the adversary, expressed himself as follows:

"The tide of battle is in the hands of each fighter, and never, at any time, has the individual bravery of the soldier had more importance.

"Whatever the science of the superior commander, the genius of his strategic combinations, the precision of his concentrations, whatever numerical superiority he may have, victory will escape him if the soldier does not conduct himself without being watched, and if he is not personally animated by the resolution to conquer or to perish. He needs much greater energy than formerly.

"He no longer has the intoxication of ancient attacks in mass to sustain him. Formerly, the terrible anxiety of waiting made him wish for the violent blow, dangerous, but soon passed. Now, all his normal and physical powers are tried for long hours and, in such a test, he will have but the resoluteness of his own heart to sustain him.

"Armies of to-day gain decisions by action in open order, where each soldier must act individually with will and initiative to attack the enemy and destroy him.

"The Frenchman has always been an excellent rifleman, intelligent, adroit and bold. He is naturally brave. The metal is good; the problem is to temper it. It must be recognized that to-day this task is not easy. The desire for physical comfort, the international theories which come therefrom, preferring economic slavery and work for the profit of the stranger to the struggle, do not incite the Frenchman to give his life in order to save that of his brother.

"The new arms are almost valueless in the hands of weakhearted soldiers, no matter what their number may be. On the contrary, the demoralizing power of rapid and smokeless firing, which certain armies still persist in not acknowledging, manifests itself with so much the more force as each soldier possesses greater valor and cool energy.

"It is then essential to work for the development of the moral forces of the nation. They alone will sustain the soldier in the distressing test of battle where death comes unseen.

"That is the most important of the lessons of the South African war. Small nations will find therein the proof that, in preparing their youth for their duties as soldiers and creating in the hearts of all the wish for sacrifice, they are certain to live free; but only at this price."

This profession of faith contradicts the imbecile sophisms foolishly put into circulation by high authority and a thoughtless press, on the efficiency of the mass, which is nothing but numbers, on the fantastic value of new arms, which are declared sufficient for gaining a victory by simple mechanical perfection, on the suppression of individual courage. It is almost as though courage had become a superfluous and embarrassing factor. Nothing is more likely to poison the army. Ardant du Picq is the best specific against the heresies and the follies of ignorance or of pedantry. Here are some phrases of unerring truth. They ought to be impressed upon all memories, inscribed upon the walls of our military schools. They ought to be learned as lessons by our officers and they ought to rule them as regulations and pass into their blood:

"Man is capable of but a given quantity of fear. To-day one must swallow in five minutes the dose that one took in an hour in Turenne's day."

"To-day there is greater need than ever for rigid formation."

"Who can say that he never felt fear in battle? And with modern appliances, with their terrible effect on the nervous system, discipline is all the more necessary because one fights only in open formation."

"Combat exacts a moral cohesion, a solidarity more compact that ever before."

"Since the invention of fire arms, the musket, rifle, cannon, the distances of mutual aid and support are increased between the various arms. The more men think themselves isolated, the more need they have of high morale."

"We are brought by dispersion to the need of a cohesion greater than ever before."

"It is a truth, so clear as to be almost naïve, that if one does not wish bonds broken, he should make them elastic and thereby strengthen them."

"It is not wise to lead eighty thousand men upon the battle field, of whom but fifty thousand will fight. It would be better to have fifty thousand all of whom would fight. These fifty thousand would have their hearts in the work more than the others, who should have confidence in their comrades but cannot when one-third of them shirk their work."

"The rôle of the skirmisher becomes more and more predominant. It is more necessary to watch over and direct him as he is used against deadlier weapons and as he is consequently more prone to try to escape from them at all costs in any direction."

"The thing is then to find a method that partially regulates the action of our soldiers who advance by fleeing or escape by advancing, as you like, and if something unexpected surprises them, escape as quickly by falling back."

"Esprit de corps improves with experience in wars. War becomes shorter and shorter, and more and more violent; therefore, create in advance an esprit de corps."

These truths are eternal. This whole volume is but their masterful development. They prove that together with audacious sincerity in the coördination of facts and an infallible judgment, Ardant du Picq possessed prescience in the highest degree. His prophetic eye distinguished sixty years ago the constituent principles of a good army. These are the principles which lead to victory. They are radically opposed to those which enchant our parliamentarians or military politicians, which are based on a fatal favoritism and which precipitate wars.

Ardant du Picq is not alone a superior doctrinaire. He will be consulted with profit in practical warlike organization. No one has better depicted the character of modern armies. No one knew better the value of what Clausewitz called, "The product of armed force and the country's force ... the heart and soul of a nation."

No more let us forget that he launched, before the famous prediction of von der Goltz, this optimistic view well calculated to rekindle the zeal of generals who struggle under the weight of enormous tasks incident to obligatory service.

"Extremes meet in many things. In the ancient times of conflict with pike and sword, armies were seen to conquer other solid armies even though one against two. Who knows if the perfection of long-range arms might not bring back these heroic victories? Who knows whether a smaller number by some combination of good sense or genius, or morale, and of appliances will not overcome a greater number equally well armed?"

After the abandonment of the law of 1872, and the repeal of the law of 1889, and before the introduction of numerous and disquieting reforms in recruitment and consequently, in the education of our regiments, would it not be opportune to study Ardant du Picq and look for the secret of force in his ideas rather than in the deceptive illusions of military automatism and materialism?

The martial mission of France is no more ended than war itself. The severities of war may be deplored, but the precarious justice of arbitration tribunals, still weak and divested of sanction, has not done away with its intervention in earthly quarrels. I do not suppose that my country is willing to submit to the mean estate, scourged with superb contempt by Donoso Cortes, who says:—

"When a nation shows a civilized horror of war, it receives directly the punishment of its mistake. God changes its sex, despoils it of its common mark of virility, changes it into a feminine nation and sends conquerors to ravish it of its honor."

France submits sometimes to the yoke of subtle dialecticians who preach total disarmament, who spread insanely disastrous doctrine of capitulation, glorify disgrace and humiliation, and stupidly drive us on to suicide. The manly counsels of Ardant du Picq are admirable lessons for a nation awakening. Since she must, sooner or later, take up her idle sword again, may France learn from him to fight well, for herself and for humanity!

ERNEST JUDET. PARIS, October 10, 1902.

Ardant du Picq has said little about himself in his writings. He veils with care his personality. His life and career, little known, are the more worthy of the reader's interest, because the man is as original as the writer. To satisfy a natural curiosity, I asked the Colonel's family for the details of his life, enshrined in their memory. His brother has kindly furnished them in a letter to me. It contains many unpublished details and shows traits of character which confirm our estimate of the man, Ardant du Picq. It completes very happily the impression made by his book.

"PARIS, October 12, 1903.

"Sir,

"Herewith are some random biographical notes on the author of 'Etudes sur le Combat' which you requested of me.

"My brother entered Saint-Cyr quite late, at twenty-one years, which was I believe the age limit at that time. This was not his initial preference. He had a marked preference for a naval career, in which adventure seemed to offer an opportunity for his activity, and which he would have entered if the circumstances had so permitted. His childhood was turbulent and somewhat intractable; but, attaining adolescence, he retained from his former violence a very pronounced taste for physical exercise, especially for gymnastics, little practiced then, to which he was naturally inclined by his agility and muscular strength.

"He was successful in his classes, very much so in studies which were to his taste, principally French composition. In this he rose above the usual level of schoolboy exercises when the subject interested him. Certain other branches that were uninteresting or distasteful to him, as for instance Latin Grammar, he neglected. I do not remember ever having seen him attend a distribution of prizes, although he was highly interested, perhaps because he was too interested. On these occasions, he would disappear generally after breakfast and not be seen until evening. His bent was toward mechanical notions and handiwork. He was not uninterested in mathematics but his interest in this was ordinary. He was nearly refused entrance to Saint-Cyr. He became confused before the examiners and the results of the first part of the tests were almost negligible. He consoled himself with his favorite maxim as a young man: 'Onward philosophy.' Considering the first test as over and done with, he faced the second test with perfect indifference. This attitude gave him another opportunity and he came out with honors. As he had done well with the written test on 'Hannibal's Campaigns,' he was given a passing grade.

"At school he was liked by all his comrades for his good humor and frank and sympathetic character. Later, in the regiment, he gained naturally and without effort the affection of his equals and the respect of his subordinates. The latter were grateful to him for the real, cordial and inspiring interest he showed in their welfare, for he was familiar with the details of the service and with the soldier's equipment. He would not compromise on such matters and prevaricators who had to do with him did not emerge creditably.

"It can be said that after reaching manhood he never lied. The absolute frankness from which he never departed under any circumstances gave him prestige superior to his rank. A mere Lieutenant, he voted 'No' to the Coup d'Etat of December 2, and was admonished by his colonel who was sorry to see him compromise thus his future. He replied with his usual rectitude: 'Colonel, since my opinion was asked for, I must suppose that it was wanted.'

"On the eve of the Crimean war, his regiment, (67th) not seeming destined to take the field, he asked for and obtained a transfer to the light infantry (9th Battalion). It was with this battalion that he served in the campaign. When it commenced, he made his first appearance in the fatal Dobrutscha expedition. This was undertaken in a most unhealthy region, on the chance of finding there Cossacks who would have furnished matter for a communiqué. No Cossacks were found, but the cholera was. It cut down in a few hours, so as to speak, a large portion of the total strength. My brother, left with the rear guard to bury the dead, burn their effects and bring up the sick, was in his turn infected. The attack was very violent and he recovered only because he would not give in to the illness. Evacuated to the Varna hospital, he was driven out the first night by the burning of the town and was obliged to take refuge in the surrounding fields where the healthfulness of the air gave him unexpected relief. Returned to France as a convalescent, he remained there until the month of December (1854). He then rejoined his regiment and withstood to the end the rigors of the winter and the slowness of the siege.

"Salle's division to which the Trochu brigade belonged, and in which my brother served, was charged with the attack on the central bastion. This operation was considered a simple diversion without a chance of success. My brother, commanding the storming column of his battalion, had the good fortune to come out safe and sound from the deadly fire to which he was exposed and which deprived the battalion of several good officers. He entered the bastion with a dozen men. All were naturally made prisoners after a resistance which would have cost my brother his life if the bugler at his side had not warded off a saber blow at his head. Upon his return from captivity, in the first months of 1856, he was immediately made major in the 100th Regiment of the Line, at the instance of General Trochu who regarded him highly. He was called the following year to the command of the 16th Battalion of Foot Chasseurs. He served with this battalion during the Syrian campaign where there was but little serious action.

"Back again in France, his promotion to the grade of lieutenant-colonel, notwithstanding his excellent ratings and his place on the promotion list, was long retarded by the ill-will of Marshal Randon, the Minister of War. Marshal Randon complained of his independent character and bore him malice from an incident relative to the furnishing of shoes intended for his battalion. My brother, questioned by Marshal Niel about the quality of the lot of shoes, had frankly declared it bad.

"Promoted finally to lieutenant-colonel in the 55th in Algeria, he took the field there in two campaigns, I believe. Appointed colonel of the 10th of the Line in February, 1869, he was stationed at Lorient and at Limoges during the eighteen months before the war with Germany. He busied himself during this period with the preparation of his work, soliciting from all sides first-hand information. It was slow in coming in, due certainly to indifference rather than ill-will. He made several trips to Paris for the purpose of opening the eyes of those in authority to the defective state of the army and the perils of +the situation. Vain attempts! 'They take all that philosophically,' he used to say.

"Please accept, Sir, with renewed acknowledgements of gratitude, the expression of my most distinguished sentiments.

"C. ARDANT DU PICQ.

"P. S. As to the question of atavism in which you showed some interest in our first conversation, I may say that our paternal line does not in my knowledge include any military man. The oldest ancestor I know of, according to an album of engravings by Albert Dürer, recovered in a garret, was a gold and silversmith at Limoges towards the end of the sixteenth century. His descendants have always been traders down to my grandfather who, from what I have heard said, did not in the least attend to his trade. The case is different with my mother's family which came from Lorraine. Our great-grandfather was a soldier, our grandfather also, and two, at least, of my mother's brothers gave their lives on the battlefields of the First Empire. At present, the family has two representatives in the army, the one a son of my brother's, the other a first cousin, once removed, both bearing our name.

"C. A. DU P."