Читать книгу The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte - Charles Downer Hazen, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - Страница 29
ОглавлениеMAXIM XXIV.
Never lose sight of this maxim: that you should establish your cantonments at the most distant and best-protected point from the enemy, especially where a surprise is possible. By this means you will have time to unite all your forces before he can attack you.
NOTE.
In the campaign of 1745, Marshal Turenne lost the battle of Marienthal, by neglecting this principle; for if, instead of reassembling his divisions at Erbsthausen, he had rallied his troops at Mergentheim, behind the Tauber, his army would have been much sooner reunited; and Count Merci, in place of finding only three thousand men to fight at Erbsthausen (of which he was well informed), would have had the whole French army to attack in a position covered by a river.
Some one having indiscreetly asked Viscount Turenne how he had lost the battle of Marienthal: “By my own fault,” replied the marshal; “but,” added he, “when a man has committed no faults in war, he can only have been engaged in it but a short time.”
